Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  “Hello,” I called from the sidewalk.

  She paused her drying long enough to give me a thorough once-over. “Come out of the sun there, before you cook yourself.”

  “Thank you.” I hoisted the suitcase along brightly, not wishing to give any appearance of fatigue, though I felt like I could have slept for two solid days.

  “You’re the new girl.” She said it flatly, with no wrinkle of curiosity.

  “Brenda Dubie, yes.”

  She nodded, but did not volunteer her name. Instead she slid an inch down the bench. “Have a seat.”

  “Thank you, but I still have two more bags to bring along. Would you mind guarding this one for me for a minute?”

  “Guarding?” She tossed her hair back, and was she suppressing a smirk? “With my life, Brenda Dubie. Anyone tries to grab your gear, I’ll shoot ’em dead in the street.”

  Now I saw that she was indeed smiling. “In that case,” I replied, “do me a favor and drag the body away when you’re done? Last place I moved, by the time I’d brought all my luggage there was a whole pile of corpses.”

  She gave the least little laugh, one “heh.” And I set off on trip number two. I was already thinking about how good it would feel to shed my traveling dress, which I’d put on in my bedroom in Chicago two days before, and sink into a warm bath.

  When I returned the third time, more than a little damp between my shoulder blades, the young woman was brushing her hair out in broad daylight for any and all to see. Apparently, New Mexico was considerably more informal than Illinois.

  “How many more suitcases you got?” she said.

  “This is the last.”

  “Sit down a second, then, before you keel over.”

  “I believe I will,” I said, occupying the bench beside her. “Thank you.”

  “It’s a free country.” She studied her brush. “I’ve been thinking.”

  I took a deep breath. Soon I would go inside, find the matron of the boardinghouse, introduce myself, and beg on bended knee for a glass of water. “Have you?”

  “I see you hauling your stuff here, three trips, without asking for help of any kind.”

  “I didn’t feel that any was offered.”

  “Yes.” She started brushing again. “You took care of it by yourself. That’s what got me thinking. Strong-headed, straight-backed, doing all that when everybody knows I’m the tough girl around here, I’m the one who gets things done and doesn’t wait for a man to save me from fainting.”

  I gave the young woman another look. Her short sleeves revealed strong arms.

  “I figured one of two things could happen,” she continued. “Either we’d wind up fighting like cats, or we’d end up friends. Seeing as how there’s already warfare enough in this world, and the two of us as joined forces could pretty much own this town, I calculate that we should be friends. Put her there.”

  She offered her hand, and I shook it quickly. “I like your math. My name is—”

  “Brenda, yes. I’m Lizzie Hinks.” She returned to the brushing. “Whelped in Roanoke, but my husband, Timothy, hails from here, and when he was called to duty I came to live with his family. He’s a medic in the South Pacific, tell you about that later. His mom is a first-class sourpuss. We collided half a dozen times a day, always over nothing. I didn’t want to find out whose head was harder, or go to jail for murder, so I moved here. Not bad, though Mrs. Morris falls an inch or two on the strict side.”

  “I haven’t met her,” I explained. “We exchanged letters.”

  “If Mrs. Morris was to go best two rounds out of three with my mother-in-law, I might not bet on either one—but I’d sure buy a ticket for the bout.”

  Right then I knew that Lizzie Hinks would indeed be my friend.

  “What’s going on out here?” A large, brassy woman barged out onto the porch, chesty and aggressive. “Jabbering to yourself again?” Then she spotted me. Hands on hips, she bobbed her chin in my direction. “And you would be?”

  “Brenda Dubie.” I rushed to my feet.

  “You don’t have to stand for her,” Lizzie said.

  “Manners are wasted on girls like you,” the woman sneered, before turning back to me. “I’m Mrs. Morris. Would you like to see your room?”

  “Please.”

  She spun and strode back into the house, lily of the valley perfume trailing in her wake; Lizzie waved fingers in my direction. “See ya.”

  “Glass of water?” Mrs. Morris called to me. I raced to catch up and say yes.

  I was on the third floor, she said as she led me up the stairs, which meant the room would be hot. There was a fan, but I was not to leave it on all day. Nighttime only.

  “Here we are,” she said, stepping aside from a doorway.

  I inched past her into the room. Whitewashed, small, with modest furniture. It was indeed warm in there. I leaned out the window. The view was the back lot of another boardinghouse, by the looks of it, laundry on the line, girls chatting and smoking on the back steps.

  “The outside staircase is fire escape only,” Mrs. Morris advised, filling the doorway. “It is more ladylike to use the stairs inside the house.”

  I took a good gulp from the glass she’d given me. “I should go down for my bags.”

  “No need,” Mrs. Morris said. “I give that Hinks girl a break on rent in exchange for bellhop services.”

  “And she loves every minute of it.” Lizzie dropped two of my suitcases at the doorstep. I was impressed.

  “Thank you,” I sang after her, but she had already started back down the stairs.

  “The reverend and I live on the first floor, so we are privy to all comings and goings. There are no locks on the doors here, to prevent concealment.” She glared at me meaningfully. “There will be no smoking. No alcohol. No male visitors at any time.”

  This last item she said with a sort of forward lean, as if I had already committed some infraction. “Don’t worry about me, ma’am,” I piped. “I’m here to play organ in your husband’s church, and direct the choir. No time or interest in making trouble.”

  “I have no idea what constitutes trouble in a madhouse like Chicago,” she said. “But in my experience, religious liberals think dogma is optional and rules are suggestions. The reverend sermonizes vigorously against such evils.”

  I worried that I might have landed in a predicament. But I gave her a smile. “I look forward to hearing him preach,” I said, “and playing hymns that uplift our spirits.”

  Mrs. Morris relented with her scowl, a guard dog accepting a new bone. “Maybe you’ll be one of the good ones.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Lizzie huffed, returning with suitcase number three. “Starting with dinner tonight.” She winked at me. “My treat.”

  “Which reminds me,” Mrs. Morris said. “Curfew is nine, lights out at ten, one hour later on Saturdays.”

  “One thing?” I said. “Has any mail come for me?”

  She shook her head. “Nary a postcard.” And with a stiff bow, Mrs. Morris and her lily of the valley perfume were gone.

  I sat on the bed, too tired to unpack, yet not so exhausted that I did not wonder where Charlie was, what he might be doing at that hour, when I might hear from him.

  “Come on, new girl,” Lizzie said, reappearing in my doorway. “Reverend Mother is gone, let’s go get a hot dinner and a cold beer.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, standing. “She didn’t seem so terrible.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Kid, you have a lot to learn.”

  August morning in New Mexico is sweet as berries. Lizzie was a contrast, storming into the kitchen with a hunk of bread in her mouth, but putting on the brakes when she saw me deep in the news. “What in the world are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?”

  “What possible good can come of reading a newspaper?”

  “Are you serious?” I spread the pages. “Your husband is a medic in the Pacific, right? With this, you can guess at
what he’s doing, or how the war is going in a place he might be sent. Today for example.” I turned the front page toward her. “We sank the Tamatsu Mara, four thousand four hundred Japanese dead. I think Charlie is involved in submarine warfare.”

  “Sub work in the desert? You’re loco, kid.”

  “What better way to conceal it?” I went back to my newspaper.

  But Lizzie snatched it away, tossing her bread end on my plate. “Come with me.”

  I followed her out to the porch, where she hiked her skirt above her knees, and dropped to all fours. “We don’t need to know what our men are doing,” she said. “Our job is to be ready when they come home.”

  With that, Lizzie straightened her back like a plank and began doing push-ups. “One. Two. Three.” So that was where the arm muscles came from. “A man needs a woman strong enough to hold him tight, and to bear his babies. Nine. Ten. Eleven.”

  Her back flexed with each push, her arms pumped like pistons. Every inch of her was firm, and I felt a flush of envy. “You want to land this Charlie guy, I suggest you get going. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen.”

  “You are insane,” I said, laughing.

  She concentrated harder, face reddening but her breath steady as she lowered and rose. “Nineteen. Twenty.” She popped up. “There. I do them twice a day. And when Timothy comes home, I am going to squeeze him till he feels every one.”

  “Instead of reading the newspaper, you want me to do push-ups?”

  “It’s a free country,” Lizzie said. “But if you’re serious about Charlie, take my advice.” She tidied her dress. “I’m late for work. Stay cool.”

  After breakfast I put the paper back where the reverend had left it—he’d gone to visit parishioners in the hospital before I came down—then climbed the stairs to finish unpacking. Where was Charlie? Why hadn’t he answered my letter?

  When I was small, five or six, I loved to hide in doorways and startle Frank as he passed by. A little sister’s way of being annoying, but I adored how he would jump and shout, and then clench me and say, “Got me again.” That’s how those questions about Charlie were: waiting patiently for me to pass, so they could ambush me. The worst one: what if I’d traveled all this way, and Charlie never wrote me back, never came to see me?

  My room was cool in the morning, shaded at the back of the house. No one was around, but I closed the door anyway. In barely enough space, I stretched out with a straight back, legs stiff, hands under my shoulders, and lowered my chest to the floor.

  When I pushed up, first I felt the burden of my own weight. Exhaling hard, I pressed down with my hands and watched my arms wobble as my body rose. I had to bow my head, grimacing and straining, to make it all the way up.

  “One.” I sat back on my haunches.

  “Miss Dubie,” I heard a call from below. “Ready to see our church?”

  “Be right there, Mrs. Morris.” I snatched up the wide straw hat Lizzie had loaned me, and trotted down the stairs. The second push-up would have to wait.

  Outside, the church presented quite a contrast with the spired steeples of Hyde Park. This house of worship was smooth adobe. Inside its wide wooden doors the place was echoey and cool. Colored light spilled through stained glass onto the stone floor. Mrs. Morris charged up the center aisle trailing lily of the valley perfume, her heels banging the floor like a mallet. I heard people speaking in front, and a man and woman emerged from the office area.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Sanchez,” the man was saying, at high volume.

  “We pray for your family, senor,” the woman answered in a Spanish accent.

  “I can rely on you to keep this matter private, I hope.”

  The woman did not answer, but bowed repeatedly as she backed away.

  “Very kind of you to come see me,” he said, again too loudly.

  Mrs. Sanchez hurried past, eyes down. But then Reverend Morris was shaking my hand, welcoming me, pointing at this and that feature of the church.

  “A revitalized music program will strengthen our worship,” he boomed. The man was stiff-necked, and he had a nervous tic: angling his chin forward, as if to stretch the muscles in his throat. “Another form of devotion.”

  “I’m delighted to be here,” I said. “What became of your last organist?”

  I’d asked in an offhand way, making conversation. But it must have contained blasphemy of some kind, because the reverend and his wife both froze solid.

  “I’m sorry,” I backpedaled. “I can tell I’ve misspoken.”

  “It was me,” Mrs. Morris said. “I’ve been the music director everywhere my husband has been a preacher. But here, some circumstances arose—”

  “Outside circumstances,” the minister interjected. “And we agreed that someone new, with musical skill and a prayerful spirit, would be good for our congregation.”

  “As I wrote to you,” I said, beginning a speech I’d rehearsed on the train, “I am not a deeply churched person. But I can promise you a strong music program and dependable choir conducting.”

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Reverend Morris said, overloud again. After which we all had a nice long awkward moment in the nave of the church. I was already planning my interrogation of Lizzie Hinks. She would know what these “circumstances” were.

  “May I see the organ?” I said at last, sighs of relief all around.

  “Of course,” Reverend Morris foghorned. “This way.”

  The organ bench and choir loft stood in front, to one side, instead of in the balcony over the entry. That was helpful, because I preferred to see what was going on directly, rather than reversed in a mirror as a balcony required. However, it meant I had a better view of the pulpit than of the choir, which would make conducting a challenge.

  While the Morrises stood shoulder to shoulder, I slid onto the bench. It was a decent organ: three manuals of sixty-one keys, stops for flute, reed, trumpet—plus a swell division, which promised good volume. The console, though not ornate, was warm, reddish cherry. I slipped off my shoes and admired the two octaves of pedals.

  “Pretty instrument.” I switched the organ on. “With a nice array of stops.”

  They nodded enthusiastically, but oddly, without saying anything. I saw Mrs. Morris wringing her hands. And then a note began to play, ghostly, all on its own.

  “It seems we have a volunteer,” I said, cool as an ice cube. One by one I closed the stops, and when I removed the lower manual the note ceased.

  “There is an occasional cipher on that keyboard,” Mrs. Morris said. “Sometimes I’ve had to confine my playing to the upper manuals.”

  “Well,” I replied, “don’t we all have good days and bad days?”

  “That’s where the Lord comes in,” the minister boomed. “Faith keeps us steady.”

  What song to play first, to establish my ability and set them at ease? My last audition had been for Oberlin, a run through the literature of French and German composers, mostly hoping to impress three conservatory professors with the range of my repertoire. They showed as much response as a trio of statues, then recommended me unanimously for admission. Now the pressure was different, because I was rusty. I’d practiced very little during my whirlwind with Chris. Also I’d been playing popular songs instead of classical. I smiled, imagining how they would panic if I played “Alley Cat.” But in truth only one piece would do: that difficult Toccata in D Minor by Bach.

  I would not have to perform the whole thing to put them on their heels. In fact, I was only a few measures along when Mrs. Morris flinched—her eyes flattening as if someone just behind them had closed the blinds. Thirty seconds more music, and she marched away up the aisle, her shoes hammering.

  I paused, hands hovering over the keys. “Is everything all right?”

  “Excellent,” Reverend Morris declared at top volume. His chin did that tic, tensing the muscles in his neck. “Continue, please. It sounds heavenly.”

  28.

  All day the crew would gather at
the concrete bowl and blow things up. Gunpowder, TNT, ammonia-based explosives. They tried devices that blew in one direction, then two, then four. They compared a medium bomb detonating in four directions with a small bomb exploding in six ways.

  Over the course of a day, some boys went slightly deaf. By the next morning the ringing in their ears would have stopped, but then they’d ride in a truck bed back down for another day of detonating.

  Others grew blasé, retreating from explosions only as far as the site boss insisted. He had stopped using the air horn, instead blowing a referee’s whistle he’d found in a closet at Fuller Lodge. It lay atop a pile of athletic gear, from back when The Hill had been a boys’ school. The whistle was a small prize compared with another find: a pump, complete with needle, to inflate basketballs. Now, most nights after dinner, there were pickup games in which the boys appeared casual while choosing teams, but turned fiercely competitive the moment play began.

  It was not unusual to see a guy at breakfast with a shiner, inflicted by a stray elbow during a rebound tussle. One morning a boy showed up at the tech area with his arm in a sling. Someone bumped him, and he’d broken his wrist.

  “I’m half-tempted to prohibit basketball,” the site boss threatened.

  “You do that, sir,” Monroe advised. “The boys’ll hate you till the rivers run dry.”

  So they concentrated on the next detonation, a hexagonal TNT. And when it had burst, the first person down to the concrete bowl was always the same: Charlie Fish.

  He’d measure how far the wood or metal pieces had flown. He’d study the burn marks on the concrete. He’d kneel with a protractor, assessing the angles of force. Then he’d write notes furiously while the crew set up the next explosion. The number of devices grew by painful steps—sixteen, eighteen—always with one or two not detonating. Therefore, even though Charlie continued to set records for the number of simultaneous explosions, each test was also a failure.