Not that night. “You seem like a good guy, Chris. Maybe a great guy. But you barely know me.”
“Well, you haven’t exactly thrown the doors open. Introducing me to your mom, things like that.”
“Well, I—” He was right. I’d kept him entirely separate. But the secrecy was all about Charlie, about protecting him. And maybe protecting myself, if people knew what I was doing. “I haven’t met your family either,” I said, going on offense.
“There hasn’t been time,” he said. “Besides, I feel like I’ve known you all my life.”
“When’s my birthday? Who’s my best friend? How many kids do I want to have?”
“None of that matters,” Chris said. “I mean, it’s important, it’s all important. But no answer you could give to those questions would change how I feel. Besides, I know your personality, I know your character. That’s what I love.”
He had doubled down. The guy was taking all of his chips, piling them in my lap.
“Brenda,” he whispered, leaning closer. “Don’t you love me a little bit too?”
“Maybe,” I said, suddenly feeling like an honest human being again. I didn’t have to make any declaration I did not feel. “I might.”
Chris jumped to his feet. “Look at this place,” he crowed, his arms wide. “Look at this beach, look at that moon. What is all this, if it’s not love?”
I did not reply. And when he stormed away, I did not follow. I sat with my head down, picking at his father’s blanket.
Today I try to remember what I was thinking about while Chris was gone. I search my memory. But it’s a blank. Except for one little observation: his arm worked pretty well without that sling. And one little calculation: Rainbow Beach was not huge. It would take only a few minutes for him to reach the far end, and turn around.
I had never been with a boy so pretty. Nor one so accomplished. I might never have the opportunity again. Maybe there was something wrong with me.
Soon I saw the occasional glow of a cigarette, drawing nearer. Gradually it became Chris, moving at his usual brisk pace. I stood as he approached.
He was speaking before he reached me. “I get it now, Brenda. I understand.” He flicked the butt away. “See, I feel the pressure because of shipping out in two days, but you have all the time in the world to choose a guy. What’s the hurry, right?”
He arrived at the blanket. “I’m not afraid of the war, you know. But if I can’t have you—”
I interrupted him by planting a kiss on his lips, full-on, and I could tell it took him by surprise because he nearly fell over. Which made us clutch each other more, as I became aware of the warmth of his body from the march up and down the beach, and the thrum of his heart in his chest.
But there was a surprise for me. This man who’d made me a puddle by feeding me steak? Turned out to be a lousy kisser. Stiff, wooden, he pressed his lips against mine with no passion. Again I couldn’t help wondering: If Chris loved me, why didn’t I feel it?
We parted, two steps backward, suddenly shy. “Let me take you home,” he said.
“Please.”
On the way to the car we held hands again. Also when he drove, and he stopped judiciously short of my house.
“Can we have dinner tomorrow, please?” Chris asked. “I have a million things to do, and my dad wants to spend the afternoon together. But the evening . . .”
“Of course,” I said. “I didn’t say I have no feelings for you, Chris. I’m not one hundred percent sure, that’s all.”
His hands wrung the steering wheel. “Maybe I can help. Maybe I can think of something perfect for tomorrow night.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” And that was the truth. I kissed his cheek and hopped out, waiting till he drove off before I started down the sidewalk toward home.
My mother was up, reading in the living room. Her new favorite novel was about a girl growing up in Brooklyn, which I imagined made my mother think of her childhood in Chicago, though I hadn’t read a word of it.
“Hi,” I said. “How’s the book?”
“Great,” she answered. “How was dinner with Greta?”
“Pretty good,” I lied, easy as slipping out of my shoes. “I heard a lot about Brian.”
She nodded. “If you’re still hungry, there’s chicken soup on the stove.”
“Actually, I am.” I started for the kitchen, then paused in the doorway. “Why’d you make that? You hate chicken soup.”
“I didn’t make it,” she said.
“Who did, then?”
Finally my mother lowered her book. “Greta. To help you recover from your stomach problems.”
My mouth went dry. “I can explain.”
“You’ll need to, if you want to keep her as a friend. But I do hope you’re feeling better.” She lifted the book again; it was like a wall.
I came back to the living room. “Mother, you can’t just—”
“Don’t you say one word to me in your peevish voice,” she said. “I don’t have the patience for it.”
“I said I can explain.”
She closed the book on one finger. “And you’ll expect me to believe you. May I tell you something, Brenda?”
I put my hands on my hips. “I have a feeling you will, whether I want you to or not.”
Making no reply, she opened the book again.
“Well, I’m not going to beg you for a lecture,” I said. “Say what’s on your mind.” I stepped closer. “Please.”
She placed the book on a side table. “You are a grown-up now, Brenda. You do not answer to me. All you answer to is your own conscience. I don’t need to know what you’ve been doing, and I don’t want to know. Any time you have to sneak around, it’s not right. Do whatever you have to do to live in the light of day, my girl.”
I dropped my hands, bare as if I’d just stepped out of the shower. “I am trying,” I said. “I am really trying.”
“If it made you lie to Greta, try harder.”
“I will,” I said. And I believed it. One dinner to get through, and then I would. Chris deserved a good last night before returning to the war. But I would leave sorting out the rest till the battles were ended.
“Good night.” My mother picked the book back up and put her nose in it. I admire her for that today, admire her restraint when she must have been livid, respect her discretion when she must have been burning with curiosity. “Oh, and there’s a letter from Charlie. I put it on your bed.”
I couldn’t open it that night, any more than I could have eaten a bowl of Greta’s soup. I did not deserve anything good. Chris loved me, I did not know what I felt, and I had lied to everyone.
In the long arc of my life, that night was the lowest. The time I’d shown the least regard for what really mattered. Everything about my predicament revealed how little I understood what was important.
But now, with the wisdom of retrospect, I sometimes feel more empathetic about that girl, and the pain she was feeling, all of her own making. Perhaps this moment was her beginning. Twenty years old, the summer of 1944 coming to an end, the blood of countless boys darkening the soil of two continents, perhaps she was starting to grow up. Each person does it at their own pace, and maybe her time had come.
Every other letter from Charlie, I’d torn open the same way I unwrapped Christmas presents—fast as I could, to see the treasure inside. But this one? I placed it on the dresser unopened, angled against a picture of my brother holding up a fish he’d caught. My name in Charlie’s handwriting would be there to greet me in the morning.
But when I woke, all of my thoughts were on Chris. His fast talking, his quick stepping, his fearlessness. Stupid as it sounds, the authoritative way he threw his finished cigarettes down.
Though I disliked how bad he was at listening. Often when I told him something, his reaction was plain silence, no dialogue, then on we’d go to the next topic that interested him. And the boy was vain. I never knew the world had so many mirrors.
But
the way girls reacted to him was amazing. How they ogled me, too, on his arm or sitting with him. I’d never felt prestige before, and I found myself standing taller.
I stayed in bed till my mother left for the armory, not dozing but avoiding. As soon as she closed the front door, I got up to open the letter. I expected innocence, humility, trustworthiness—traits I’d thought were vulnerabilities now revealed with all their power. For the first time since I’d met Charlie, I felt afraid of him.
Dear Brenda: Everything here has intensified. The hours, the difficulty of the work, the impatience of our directors, everything. July has been unspeakably hot, and possibly the thing that has intensified most is what everyone expects of me.
Although I am a tiny part of a large and complex organization, it turns out that my little contribution is an essential one. Imagine an automobile, and my job is to make the ignition key. I still do not understand what the entire vehicle will be, but I know that the leaders here are smart men, and they believe that if it works, it will prove decisive in ending the war.
How could anyone be opposed to that? How could anyone not work his hardest to help make it happen? Every day more boys die in France, in Poland, in Guam. Sometimes I feel like half the world is waiting for Charlie Fish to finish his work, so the planet can start spinning properly again.
I believe I could handle all the pressure, Brenda, if only you were beside me. I believe I could do a great job for this country, if only I could hear your voice. I could sleep at night, instead of worrying hour after dark hour, if I could see your face for a few minutes while you play something lovely on the organ. This place would seem beautiful to me, instead of barren, if you were here.
I’m writing you an awful corny letter today, I know, and maybe I should apologize for it. But I’m not sorry. I have finally admitted to myself how much being with you improves my life. I hope that hearing these things, in some small way, improves yours too.
And if it does not, would you please do me the favor of letting me know? I long for you so many times each day, if you do not feel the same way it would be better for me not to continue to pine. And I won’t be bothering you.
But boy, if it turns out you feel the way I do. . . .
Charlie.
It was too large for me to absorb. Too honest for me to accept. Somehow the period after his name meant that he knew—not about Chris, but all of the other things. That I had written one letter to his two. That mine were short, and more like journals than heartfelt communication. Here he was, mister sincerity, calling what I had not realized was my barely masked bluff. I felt about half an inch tall.
Folding the letter back into its envelope, I put it in a drawer and went downstairs. I had things to do. A list in my head.
My mother had left coffee for me and when I opened the icebox for milk, I saw the soup. Lighting a burner, I put the pot on the stove and stood waiting till the edges began to bubble, then ladled myself a bowlful. I brought it to the table, pushing the papers aside because I could not bear any news that morning. Spoon by spoon, I ate that soup, and drank the last drops.
Then I phoned Greta’s house. Her mother answered, and when she said hello it seemed to come from a great distance, as if I had actually been sick after all.
“Greta’s not here,” her mother told me. “Out with Brian, of course. The grand adventure. Four days left.”
“Would you please tell her that she made the most delicious soup I have ever tasted in my life?”
“Why, Brenda, that is sweet of you,” her mother replied, which told me that Greta had not revealed my lies to her mother. It deepened my guilt, that she’d remained loyal. “I know she’ll be pleased. She worked a long time on that one.”
“I could really tell. Please give her my thanks.”
“You get well soon,” her mother said.
I went to work though it was two hours till opening time, propped the store’s door open as if to welcome people in, and sat at the spinet model. But I did not play. Why prepare for a future I might never have? People could talk all they liked—Chris, Charlie, Greta—but nobody really knew when the war would end, and what things would be like. It was all guesses and fancy words.
My mother arrived promptly at one, took a long squint at me while unpinning her hat and stowing that giant purse. “I have to reconcile month-end numbers today,” she said. “You mind the floor, all right?”
“Of course,” I replied, my tone flat as a sidewalk, though she had already bustled back into the office. Also there were no customers who needed minding. Soon I heard her punching keys and pulling the crank on the adding machine. I rose and went to the front window, where I stood for the rest of the afternoon, willing myself not to check the time, watching the world go by.
Sometime in midafternoon I heard a match struck behind me. I turned and my mother was lighting a cigarette. “How long have you been there?” I asked.
“Long enough,” she said. “Are you all right?”
I faced forward again. “Not one person has come in today.”
She exhaled loudly. “The war has caught up with us. July numbers are terrible.”
“Are we going to have to close the store?”
She sidled up beside me. “Your father was smart, and bought the building outright years ago. So there’s no rent, no expense besides the light and heat.”
“We’re not making any money though, are we?”
My mother stood smoking for a while. “I have an idea, but it requires homework. If you don’t mind holding the fort, and locking up, I want to do some digging.”
“Fine. I have plans for this evening.”
She picked a bit of tobacco off the tip of her tongue. “I expected as much.”
“One way or another, this will be the end of the secrecy.”
“One way or another?” She blew smoke at the ceiling, then turned away to fetch her hat and purse. “Why does that description not give me a particularly good feeling?”
Perhaps it was some form of self-punishment: When Chris asked where I’d like to eat, I suggested the place Charlie and I had our first date. I knew what I wanted to do, I’d practiced the words I would say—we’ll figure it all out when the war is over. He wore his dress uniform, looking sharp and fit, and I stood taller just to be walking with him. When we reached the diner though, he drew back a step.
“Really?” he said. “I was hoping to treat you to something fancy.”
“This place has been good luck for me.”
Chris laughed, easy as flying a kite. “When we’re married you can pick the movies, but I’ll choose the restaurants.”
“When we’re married, I’ll change the diapers but you will wash them.”
He laughed again, maybe one degree less, then held the door and in we went.
The diner was crowded, and smelled of eggs. We took the one open booth. The poor guy had jitters all over him. Sewing machine leg, reading the menu front and back, then front again. He lit a cigarette, put it in the ashtray, and half a minute later started to light another one.
“Easy, Chris.” I put a hand on his arm. “It’s just me.”
“Well, that’s the thing of it,” he replied. “Because nothing about you, Brenda, is ‘just you.’ Everything is special.”
I shook my head. “Half a minute at Dubie’s Music would change your mind.”
“I don’t think so,” he insisted. “This week with you has been the greatest of my life, everything upside down since I saw you at that dance.” He paused for a deep breath.
“Chris,” I said. “Why are you so nervous? Is it your arm? Your family? Going back tomorrow?”
He flared his eyebrows up and down. “Something bigger.”
“Bigger than all that?” I took his hand. “Tell me.”
“Can I talk it through for a second, and you won’t chime in?”
I nodded. “No chiming.” And when you are done, I thought, I will tell you to call me when the war is over and we will see how everything
looks, but until then, stay safe and fight hard and come home in one piece.
“Like I was saying.” He reached for his water glass, and I saw that it was empty.
There, right there, I reached the pinnacle terrible moment. Because, of course, I remembered the night at that diner with Charlie, my belly full of pistachios I’d eaten out of nervousness, and when I wanted water the waitress would not bring it. He’d asked nicely, twice, but it never came.
Now Chris held his glass out as a waitress hurried by. “Miss, could you please—”
But she kept her pace right on past. He licked his lips, and I could see his nerves had turned his mouth into a Sahara. Another waitress passed the other way, plates balanced on both arms, and Chris raised a finger. “Excuse me?”
She bustled on to deliver those plates. He winked at me, stretching his good arm out into the aisle beside our booth. There was no missing it. In a second the waitress was hustling back, walking right through his outstretched arm, not masking her annoyance.
Chris stood up, uniform and all. “Goddamnit,” he said, way too loud. “What does a United States airman home on leave for one more day have to do to get a drink of water in this lousy place?”
The room went still, silent, not a fork hitting a plate. A big man with gray hair emerged from behind the counter with a pitcher. He filled Chris’s glass in one motion.
“Asking nicely never hurts,” the man said. He looked me over, which felt comfortable as a searchlight, then set the pitcher down. “How about I leave this here, soldier, and you don’t bother my other customers anymore.”
“That’d be perfect.” Chris sat back down. “Just perfect.”
I watched the man return to behind the counter, impressed by Chris’s forcefulness, and also embarrassed by it. Certainly he’d had a better result than Charlie. To my relief, the conversations started up around us again, the clink of silverware.
Universe of Two Page 20
