Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  “Oh go on.” She fanned the air before sitting again. “I’m trying to read.”

  We ambled away—no planned route, no destination—a companionable silence.

  “Who was that?” Charlie asked after a while.

  “Who, Lizzie?”

  “The woman hanging laundry in back. She gave me a double-barreled frown.”

  “Oh, that’s Mrs. Morris. She hates me but I don’t know why.”

  “Because she doesn’t know you,” he said. “Otherwise she’d love you.”

  That reply made me think of my mother, and how deft Charlie always was at dealing with her prickliness. He’d done it again with Mrs. Morris. I pulled him closer. “Tell me about your work.”

  “I’m not allowed to say,” he answered.

  “But you can tell me, Charlie.”

  “Actually, no. It’s against the law, and might be treason.”

  “Do you have to take everything so seriously?”

  “Brenda.” He hesitated, which at the time I thought was insecurity but now believe was him showing patience with me. “It is serious. There are women on The Hill who don’t know what their husbands do all day.”

  “What could the army possibly be up to that would require couples to keep secrets from each other?”

  After another minute of strolling, he replied. “I guess I can say that my job is something like what I did in your parents’ basement, only a million times more complicated. I’ve never had to work so exactingly or concentrate so hard.”

  “Do you like it?”

  He stopped. “Do I like it?”

  “Sometimes when I’m learning a complicated new organ piece, the difficulty is part of the pleasure. I’ve been working for months on the Bach Toccata in D Minor, for example, and it is pummeling me, but in a way I really enjoy.”

  He smiled, and without thinking I reached over and touched his face. Right this minute, all these years later, I am so glad I did that, because his grin grew even wider. It’s an image I’ll always treasure. “Charlie Fish, I sure have missed your smile.”

  “Brenda, I have missed your everything.”

  We stood a minute, feeling it, pleasure and pain at the same time. I was twenty years old, thousands of miles from home, standing with the boy I’d come all that way to see. I wondered if we were about to kiss. Would it be like before? Or would Chris ruin it?

  Instead Charlie chuckled. “You know, you look just like Brenda.”

  I pressed my forehead to his chest. “I’m her. I’m really her.”

  After a minute we started along again. “The fact is,” he said, “I do like it. I use my whole brain, it’s wonderfully rewarding.”

  “Lucky you.”

  He’d been about to speak, but caught himself. “Your job’s no conservatory, is it?”

  I shook my head. “At least one of us is doing work we like. That’s not bad for wartime, right?”

  “Perhaps. But I dislike the pressure of my work, and the haste, and especially how the things I make might be used.”

  “Which is how?”

  He shook his head. “That’s the treason part. Tell me about your job.”

  “Well, hang on tight, because it’s a lot.”

  And I deluged him: The reverend asks me to play hymns so basic, I’m ecstatic if I get to use a minor third chord in the tonic-dominant pattern. He preaches at the top of his lungs, though his sermons are not especially powerful. Yet the congregation loves him, they answer his bombast with gentleness. On the way out of worship the white parishioners press his hands or shake them, while the local Spanish people hold back, waiting their turn, and instead of handshakes they give him hugs, people making the sign of the cross. Last in line, always, is Mrs. Sanchez—who cleans the church and who I met on my first day. She hugs the minister with both arms, and I find it reassuring. The organ has potential, I continued, but badly needs repair. Without knowing how, I manage to annoy the minister’s wife several times a day. The best thing by far has been the choir, because it mixes all the different kinds of people who live in Santa Fe, young and old, white and brown, and for some reason the people’s voices here are wonderfully clear, unmannered, and mercifully on pitch. A shortage of basses, with the war on, but most choir members attend every rehearsal, and come on Sunday ready to sing their hearts out.

  Charlie nodded all the while. When I’d finished ranting, though, I remembered how quiet Chris could be after I’d spoken—until he started talking about himself again. “Am I a terrible complainer?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I was thinking, it’s a long way from ‘the Hammond spinet has ninety-two tone wheels.’”

  “Hey, mister, I loved selling organs. And it’s ninety-one.”

  “But you should hear yourself.” Charlie continued walking, gazing at the ground. “Your life is full now.”

  “It has to be. I’m making my own way.”

  “But you’re not doing it with the hard part of yourself, Brenda. You’re doing it with the lovely person that music makes you become.”

  “Go on.” I gave his arm a poke. “Buy me lunch?”

  He smiled again, ducking his head toward me. “I happen to be starving.”

  I took him to La Fonda, figuring he’d been there before. But he followed me to the table wide-eyed. We ordered food, and in an awkward quiet we waited for it to arrive.

  “So this is the place I’ve been hearing about,” he said. “Some of my crew comes here every Saturday night. Here and the tattoo shop.”

  “You haven’t gotten one, I hope?”

  “Never.” Charlie wrinkled his nose. “It’s a stain you can’t wash out.”

  “Why do so many boys do it, then?”

  He shrugged. Then fiddled with his glass, leaning closer, and again I thought he might kiss me. Instead he started talking. “Imagine I’m making a manual for an organ, Brenda. But instead of sixty-one keys, I keep making fifty-eight, and then I can’t finish.”

  “Sounds like a lousy instrument.” I sipped my water. “You won’t be able to play all kinds of songs on it.”

  “Exactly. Like those keys, my job is very small. But until I complete my part, the whole project is stalled.”

  “You can’t stall things in a war, Charlie.” I could feel my heat rising. “Time costs lives. There are millions of boys fighting in Europe, the Pacific. Lizzie’s husband will be part of the invasion of Japan—they say it will involve five million American soldiers—”

  “With casualties of up to one million, I know.”

  “If you’re working on something to help them win, you have to finish. You need to make all sixty-one keys.”

  “That’s the trouble,” he said. “I can’t.”

  He looked downtrodden as a hobo. The responsibility weighed him down, I could see that in his slumped shoulders. But I didn’t know how to help. I summoned some gumption. “I know what you do,” I declared.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been following your success, in the newspapers.” I was all but preening.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh yes. The Nagara.” I nodded, full of myself. “Shinyo, Tamatsu, Yoshino.”

  “I don’t understand those words.”

  “The subs, Charlie.” I grinned. “I’ve kept track. I’m an encyclopedia on the topic.”

  “Who told you I am working on submarines? It’s ridiculous.”

  “I memorized it all for you,” I said. “The Taiyo, an aircraft carrier.”

  He laughed a little. “Brenda, we are in the middle of a desert.”

  I could feel my dander rising. “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “I’m not. But submarines?” He smiled, and it felt condescending. “Really?”

  At that, I snapped back. “You know why you can’t finish your little part?”

  “You have a theory?”

  “You make it look like good manners,” I said. “And humility, but that’s not it.”

  “What are you talking ab
out?” His smile was gone now.

  “You complained about the math, you whined about the soldering. Now it’s about finishing whatever it is you have to finish. Why don’t you have a spine for once?”

  “If you had any idea—”

  “But can you tell me? Oh no, that would be treason.” My mother would have chastised me, but I found pleasure in using my brattiest voice.

  “It’s not as simple as—”

  “Yes it is, Charlie. Whatever your little task is, I’m sure you can do it or they wouldn’t have chosen you. You’re afraid, that’s all. Afraid and weak.”

  “Brenda.” He looked crestfallen. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “I came all this way to be with you, Charlie. I upended my whole life to give us a chance. But honestly . . .”

  “Yes?” He sat straight in his chair. “Please, be honest.”

  “All right.” I pushed my utensils aside, it felt like rolling up my sleeves. “The real reason you can’t build this mystery thing is that you don’t know how to be courageous.”

  His mouth hung slightly open. I could have stopped then, but no.

  “Be a man, Charlie Fish. Be a soldier. We’re surrounded by them now, just pick one and imitate him. If you can help end the war and you hesitate? You’re not a man.”

  Charlie looked at me head-on. His reply surprised me, because it showed how he maybe knew me better than I knew myself. “Seems like you have developed a lot of expertise on what a man is.”

  “Yes,” I said, confident as ever, and unconcerned about what pain I might inflict. I was an idiot with a machine gun. “That’s because I met one.”

  Charlie fell back, curled over like I’d punched him in the gut. “You did?”

  “Of course. I’ve been surrounded by men,” I backpedaled. “Real men.”

  “One. You said you met one.”

  “Yes,” I blurted. “A pilot. Home to recover after getting shot down.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Back in the war.”

  “Being a man again?”

  If Charlie had yelled at me, if he had argued, I might have changed direction. But his woundedness brought out some horrible predator in me, a creature that found energy in his hurt. “There is nothing wrong with being strong, and direct, and heroic.”

  “You went on dates with him?”

  The simplicity of the question marked the beginning of my disarming. I’d had months to absorb the reality of Chris, but to Charlie it was all new. The first inkling arose that I might be making a mistake. “I did. A movie, a couple of dinners.”

  “Did he meet your mother?”

  It was a surprisingly intimate question. The wall of righteousness that stood between my guilt and Charlie started to crumble. I shook my head.

  “Did you kiss him?”

  Charlie and I had not yet kissed hello, even after all those months apart. We had not kissed at all that day. How could I tell him the truth? At what point did honesty become cruelty? The pain was written on his brow, which was creased like an old man’s.

  “No,” I lied. “He tried but I wouldn’t let him.”

  Charlie fiddled with his silverware, eventually arranging it in a straight line. “I don’t know how the existence of a pilot you dated in Chicago erases the technical complexity of what I’m being asked to build.”

  “Because you say you can’t make this thing, and I say you won’t.”

  Charlie nodded, sliding his spoon up and back. “That might be true.”

  “Then be a man.”

  Charlie faced me then, and I saw that the rims of his eyes had gone red. Rubbing them with his wrist, he stood, dropped some bills on the table, and walked away.

  “Charlie,” I called, but he kept going, across the square and around the corner.

  At that moment the waitress arrived, setting a plate before me and one at Charlie’s place. “Do we need anything further here for now?”

  “We’re fine,” I said, casual as a millionaire, la-di-da. But in truth, I felt nothing but cruel, a stranger who had just driven away the most decent man I knew. On that golden afternoon, I sat by myself and wondered what the price of my behavior would be.

  32.

  “All I am suggesting,” Giles said, using a tire iron to nudge a smoky log end into the coals, “is that the war may conclude before we achieve our goal.”

  “That would be fine with me.” Charlie sipped his beer, then tossed a twig into the bonfire. “I’d prefer it if no one ever used the Gadget.”

  “You two,” Monroe scoffed, staggering into the light, his arms piled with wood. “Dumb as a pair of fence posts.”

  “Pray tell how we are dumb,” Giles said.

  Monroe dumped his load on the ground. “My daddy,” he said, adding logs to the fire. “Couldn’t bear a whiskey bottle in the house. Said it was challenging him night and day to drink it. Oppie and them others? Same thing.” He continued piling on the wood. “That Gadget is their whiskey. No rest till they blow up something big.”

  “What if there’s peace first?” Charlie asked. “The Germans have been in retreat since the Battle of the Bulge ended in January. The Soviets freed the Lodz ghetto, and liberated those horrific camps. We are genuinely winning.”

  “Look at it the other way.” Monroe circled the fire before the wind could blow smoke in his face. “Of one hundred and sixty something thousand Jews in that ghetto, near about a thousand were left, right?”

  “So the newspapers say,” Giles said. “All the rest were killed or forced to move.”

  “And them people in Auschwitz, you saw the pictures, right?”

  “Living skeletons. It was terrible. What’s your point?” Charlie said.

  “Any of that making you fellas feel peaceful? Or less interested in cutting Hitler’s fool head off? Cause the military guys, you know they all saw that truck, and got twice as happy to show the Third Reich what a good hard American boot in the ass feels like.”

  Charlie laughed.

  “It’s true and you damn well know it.”

  “What about Japan?” Charlie said. “Would they ever use the Gadget over there?”

  “What in hell for?” Monroe set another log on the flames, jerking his hand back to avoid a burn. “We’re already fire-bombing them into ashes. Ain’t one of their fighters or flak guns can touch our big bombers, so we can drop as we please.”

  “Nevertheless, they’re making us earn every inch,” Giles said. “Iwo Jima was a slaughter.” He took a long draw from a bottle of whiskey.

  “Go easy there,” Monroe said. “Save some for a thirsty brother.”

  “How about that photo of the marines raising the flag?” Giles marveled. “I’m astonished the emperor didn’t surrender right then.”

  “That boy? We’d have to drop the Gadget right in his fool lap before he’d give up,” Monroe said. He took the whiskey bottle and drank long. “Anyway.” He shuddered. “Anyway it’d be mighty hard convincing the world we were justified in flattening Japan, when they can’t barely shoot back.”

  “This is why I’m going to the debate tomorrow,” Charlie said. He tilted his head back to gaze at the clear winter stars. “I want to hear the big guys hash it out.”

  Monroe studied him. “Again the crazy man believes the world makes sense.”

  “Or hopes it will someday.”

  Giles kicked a log with his heel. “I wish you were heading to Santa Fe instead.”

  “Change of subject,” Charlie said, tilting the bottle to finish his beer.

  “It’s a long-distance version of opia, you know what I mean?”

  “Afraid not,” Charlie said.

  “That’s the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which is both invasive and vulnerable.”

  “Change of subject,” Charlie repeated, and they all fell silent. The new logs began to catch, and the three of them moved back from the growing heat.

  “Hey, is Trigger in here?”

  Lying on his bun
k, Charlie winced and did not answer.

  “Trigger?” the soldier called again. He was baby-faced, with little on his uniform to show rank or accomplishments. Soldiers rarely entered the barracks. He stutter-stepped forward. “Charlie Fish?”

  “Right here,” he said, sitting up. “What’s the matter?”

  “No matter, sir. But my superior officer, Captain Halsey, found something.”

  Charlie set Midnight aside, her belly now entirely white, and stood. “Yes?”

  “Well,” the soldier said, removing his hat. “The captain’s wife had a baby last fall, and sent him a big envelope of pictures. He said it got wet on the way here, but all he was paying attention to was the photos. Today, when he was looking at them for the ninety-ninth time, he discovered something stuck to the back.” The soldier held a regular envelope. “He ordered me to deliver it pronto, with his apologies.”

  Charlie recognized the handwriting immediately. He had gone three months without a letter from Brenda, an agonizing dry spell. But the postmark on this one said Chicago, September—more than two months ago. Perhaps everything was about to be explained.

  Charlie raised his eyes. “Please tell the captain no apology is necessary, and I appreciate him sending this along.”

  “Will do, sir.” The soldier put his hat on and hurried out.

  “Poor fella seemed like he was scared of us civilian heathens,” Monroe said, ambling over. “It might be catching.”

  “How does a newbie like that know my nickname?”

  “Hill’s a small place,” Monroe said. “So what’d he bring?”

  Charlie handed him the letter and sank down onto his bunk.

  “Well dog my cats,” Monroe said. “Probably all through this war, guys write letters home, then get killed. Right? So the letter comes a month behind the news that he’s dead. This puts me in mind of that sort of thing.”

  “Brenda is not dead,” Charlie said.

  “Naw. Only you never talk about her or see her no more.” He tapped the envelope against his leg. “Coals outside are still hot, you know, and paper burns quick. I could solve this problem for you in about ten seconds. All clears.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Thanks anyway.”