We threw our arms around each other, and I felt him go still. “Let me look at you,” I said, pulling back. “Are you all right?”
But as soon as we parted, I saw the tremor return to his hands. I drew him close again, and the calm returned to his body.
One November when I was a girl, as my mother opened the fireplace flue, a small brown bird flew into the house. She screamed, chasing it around, while the bird zoomed in and out of the living room, and around the overhead light in the kitchen. Somehow I knew to wait. Soon enough, the bird landed on the curtains. It stayed there long enough for me to cover it with a wastebasket, and then I reached inside. At first it fluttered and flailed against my hand, but then it calmed, and I held it gently, and removed the basket. The bird turned its head from side to side, not struggling, not fighting, while I carried it to the front door, and set it on the stoop. When I let go, it did not move for a few seconds. Then it rose, zipping away into the trees.
Now it was Charlie, settling in the same way, calm as long as I held on. “What happened to you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m not allowed to tell.”
“All right,” I said. “All right.” I squeezed him close, arms around his back so I could feel the rise and fall of his lungs. “You don’t have to. I can see for myself anyhow.”
Charlie nodded. “The future will be even worse.”
“We are going to talk about it later,” I said, “as much as you can. But first I have to work. I don’t want you waiting somewhere, or wandering around. You stay with me.”
“Please,” he said.
“We need to go.” I took his hand and led him across town to the church. We went straight to the side door, where Mrs. Morris was waiting, making sure I saw her check her watch.
“I was wondering where you’d run off to,” she said. “You should be playing now.”
“Mrs. Morris, this is my sweetheart, Charlie Fish. He’s had an upsetting incident, and he’ll be joining us at worship today.”
“Your sweetheart?” My landlady gave Charlie the once-over like an interrogator shining a spotlight on a spy, but he only ducked his head to one side. “How do you do?” She held out a hand. “Welcome.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” His voice was quiet, as if he had no spare breath. He let go of my hand only long enough to shake with her.
“Charlie, you come right with me.” I breezed past Mrs. Morris, leading him to the front pew. “I will sit with you when I can. Otherwise I’ll be right there.” I pointed at the organ console, which somehow felt about half a mile away.
Charlie sat, but when I let go of his hand he seized me for a moment more. I peeled him off and went to my place. It did not feel like he was clinging. More like what his letter said. Needing me.
The service passed in a blur, though it was a pleasant relief to have the reverend speak at a normal volume. I played the hymns, I conducted the choir. Every time I glanced Charlie’s way, his hands shook like he was in an earthquake. When I was able to sit beside him, he relaxed the moment we touched. What was I being asked to do?
After church we took a stroll, because that is how we started every visit, getting reacquainted. Usually we chatted, but that day we were quiet.
The thing I noticed most though? The thing about which, of all the unusual aspects of that day, I am proudest? I had strength. It was different from the uppity tricks of my girlhood, and from the interior drive that had helped me cross the country. This was strength of a giving kind: Charlie needed me, and I was solid as a tree.
We turned onto the block near the boardinghouse. I had not planned it, but there we were. “I’m certain this isn’t something you did,” I began. “I know your conscience, Charlie. I know you would refuse to do anything that went against it.”
“But I did,” he said. “I did go against it.”
“I don’t believe it. It must have been something you saw.”
He answered with a nod.
“Something truly horrible,” I continued. “But you can’t tell me about it.”
“If I did, it would be treason. They would have grounds to shoot me.”
“So you have a terrible secret?”
Charlie swallowed hard. “The worst. And it is not over yet.”
We had reached the front walk of the boardinghouse. “Fine,” I said. “I don’t need to know what it was. You don’t have to tell me. Just pretend you have. Because I believe you. I agree that it is horrible, and I sympathize completely.”
I reached for the door, letting go of him for a second, and his hands fluttered immediately. “Oh, Charlie.” I reached back and he clung to me again. Like I was a lifeguard and he did not know how to swim.
I felt such a strange mix of emotions: worrying about what he had seen, discovering how much I cared about him, wanting his well-being, and hoping I possessed the strength for both of us. That was when the idea came to me. The impulse of a lifetime.
“Charlie,” I said, “kneel down.”
He searched my face. “What?”
“Trust me on this. Kneel down.”
“All right.” Charlie put one knee down and I stopped him.
“That’ll be enough. Now, repeat after me.”
“What are you doing?”
“You’ll see. Brenda . . .”
“Brenda,” he replied.
“Will you marry me?”
Of all the times I have seen Charlie’s surprised expression, that is the one I will cherish all of my life. His face went as open as a newborn babe’s. I heard a door slam somewhere but I ignored it.
“Say it,” I insisted.
“I haven’t even met your father, much less asked his permission.”
“We’ll ask him after the war.” I put one hand on my hip. “Now are you going to do what I say or not? Repeat after me.”
Charlie’s face. Charlie’s frightened, wounded, excited, beautiful face.
“Brenda.” He pressed his eyes closed for a second, then opened them wide. “Will you please marry me?”
“Oh heck, Charlie. I sure will.”
He stood and we hugged and laughed and kissed, and laughed again. How would I have known, or even thought to suspect, that we’d had an audience?
“What’s all this?” Mrs. Morris was striding off the stoop. “What’s going on here?”
“Mrs. Morris.” Charlie practically leapt to his feet. “Do you think your husband could perform a wedding today?”
“Today?” I said.
“I don’t want to wait another minute,” he answered.
Mrs. Morris scrunched her face up, as if she thought we were playing a practical joke. “I don’t know his schedule for this afternoon. But I suppose we can ask.”
“Wonderful,” Charlie said. He ushered her forward, then took my hand as we followed. “Brenda this is your best idea ever.”
In fifteen minutes, the arrangements were set. Reverend Morris brought Charlie to the phone to request a few days’ leave. He sat me at the dining table with a blank marriage license.
“Yes, you are both present,” he said, checking a box. “Lucky thing New Mexico isn’t a waiting-period state. And you are both eighteen or older, yes?”
“I’m twenty-one,” I said. “Charlie is twenty.”
He turned the paper around, pointing. “Sign here.”
I wrote my full name, and felt like I was becoming weightless.
“I’ll have Charlie sign when he’s off the phone,” he said. “You should get ready.”
I ran upstairs, effortless as if I’d grown wings.
Lizzie was about to work a Sunday shift. “Hey, kid,” she called from the hallway. “What’s the ruckus downstairs?”
“Charlie and I are getting married.”
“No kidding?” She poked her head into my room. “That’s great news.”
I bit my lip a little. “Right now.”
“Yahooooo.” Lizzie rushed in and bear-hugged me, leaning me from side to side. “Fantastic. But wait. Wh
at are you going to wear?”
I stirred the dresses on the curtain rod that passed for my closet. “One of these?”
“Hang on.”
She hurried away, and while she was gone I ached for my mother. This would have been our moment, our sweetest shared experience. But for Charlie’s sake, I could not delay. Too many decisions depended on waiting till the war was over. It might break my mother’s heart, but Charlie could not wait, and neither could I.
Lizzie returned with a sweet white outfit, trimmed in blue. “This was going to be my welcome home dress for Tim, if I lost enough weight to fit in it. But I never will.” She held the dress up against me. “What do you think?”
“Honestly, Lizzie? It’s perfect.”
“Try it on. I have to get ready or I’ll be late, so come show me.”
The dress had thirty cloth-covered buttons running up the front, starting below the navel and finishing at the throat. The buttons were small, so it took some time to fasten them all. Makeup was next, then my hair. Finally I went to Lizzie’s door.
“Va-va-voom,” she said, laughing. “Prim and proper, Brenda, but muy caliente.”
“Whatever that means,” I said, laughing with her.
“It means this dress fits you perfectly. Approximately. Anyway, it’s my wedding present.”
I gave her a hug, unable to prevent a few tears of delight.
“Cut it out,” Lizzie said, thumbing my makeup smooth. “You’ll wreck your face.”
“I need to get going.”
She gave me a long look, wistful and sweet. “I guess those push-ups paid off. Go have a great life, kid.”
Mrs. Morris sat on the organ bench, shaking her head at the droning notes. “All these ciphers. How have you managed to play this thing?”
“The first manual is clean,” I called from the aisle. “But there’s no A-flat below middle C.”
“We need to make some repairs around here.”
“I know just the guy,” I answered.
Charlie stood at the altar, beside Reverend Morris. He had his hands in his pockets, in an attempt, I knew, to keep them from shaking.
Mrs. Morris closed all the stops to the lower manuals, and used the top one to play “Here Comes the Bride.” But what made Wagner’s old chestnut work was that Reverend Morris knew the words. I’d played at a dozen weddings, but I’d never heard the verses.
Here comes the bride, all dressed in white,
Radiant and lovely she shines in his sight
Gently she glides, graceful as a dove
Meeting her bridegroom, eyes full of love.
Long have they waited, long have they planned
Life goes before them, opening its hand.
I could only smile. Long have we planned? Try forty-five minutes.
I would have loved my family to be there, to be holding Daddy’s arm, to see Frank maybe at the altar as best man. But I had been on my own long enough that walking alone seemed as right as Charlie being my destination. I held a few posies Mrs. Morris had snipped from her garden, and the simplicity of it all felt beautiful.
Her playing was not bad either. I couldn’t help noticing—heavy-handed, but accurate. But what struck me was that she was smiling as she played. It was the first time I’d seen her happy.
By the second verse her hands were confident. She and the reverend made eye contact, and the look between them was as poignant as anything I’d seen before. He stood tall and calm, no sign of his tic.
Asking God’s blessing as they begin
Life with new meaning, life shared as one.
Entering God’s union, bowed before his throne
Promise each other to have and to hold.
Charlie gave me that hundred-watt smile, which calmed every butterfly in my belly. He took his hands out of his pockets and from halfway up the aisle I could see their tremor. But I was not afraid. I remembered the things my mother had said about men damaged by war, and I believed in Charlie, I believed in his ability to overcome whatever had horrified him.
In a few more steps it did not matter anymore, because I reached him. I have never stood taller.
Mrs. Morris hurried over to serve as witness, right at my elbow. The reverend smiled at me, at Charlie, and then took a long fond gaze at his wife.
At last he cleared his throat. “Given that one of you has already attended worship once today, and the rest of us twice, I’ll get right to business.” He took my flowers, handing them to Mrs. Morris, then instructed Charlie and me to join hands. We did, and I felt full to the brim. This was the boy whose strong fingers had opened the box of sheet music, back in Chicago a lifetime ago. This was the man who had slept beside me, against me, and for whom I had felt desire in every cell.
Reverend Morris recited the vows, and Charlie repeated them first. Then it was my turn. I barely remember. But I do recall feeling my feet on the floor, my shoes on the hard stone of the church, and everything about the moment was solid and real.
I don’t know at what point Mrs. Morris started holding her husband’s hand. But I noticed when we reached the part with the ring, and it turned out she had loaned Charlie one for the day, a gold band, simple as can be. He slid it onto my finger to tell the whole world that I was his now, and he was mine. Somehow the preacher and his wife holding hands made the moment even sweeter.
He told us to kiss, and as we did, in my heart I made a long speech about my commitment, while I received from Charlie the promise of lasting pleasure. Then it was all done but the blessing. Reverend Morris raised both arms over us. “Let us pray.”
We bowed our heads.
“To the mystery of the universe that brought us and all creation into being,” he said, “we dare to beseech the heavens and the Almighty. The world has been a dark and violent place for too much of the lives of these beautiful people. May the war end before their youth does, while their love is green and young. May their efforts and energies turn away from rations, coping, and loss, and instead create a generous future of family, community, and abundance. May they keep music at the center of their happiness, too, whether they are fixing instruments or playing them. Wherever they may journey in the years ahead, may they make a joyful noise.”
Amen. Then Mrs. Morris scurried back to the organ and struck up Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” while Charlie and I kissed again, and started up the aisle. Reverend Morris, robes trailing, ran down the side so that he would be waiting for us at the church doorway. Once Mrs. Morris finished the song, she dashed out the side door. He shook Charlie’s hand, and gave me a warm embrace. We stepped out into a sunny New Mexico afternoon in July, and were greeted by a cascade of rice.
“What in the world?” Charlie said.
There was Mrs. Morris, by herself, holding a burlap bag of rice, digging into it, and throwing a heaping handful into the air.
As a wedding gift, Reverend and Mrs. Morris let us use their car, an ancient black Hudson with a full tank of gas. They’d also called a member of the congregation who owned a small adobe in Taos, who said yes, we could stay there for a honeymoon. Mrs. Morris produced a camera, and ordered Charlie and me to pose in front of the Hudson. I have that photo on my dresser to this day. Me and my husband of five minutes.
Then hugs all around, everything smelling of Mrs. Morris’s lily of the valley perfume, and we climbed into the Hudson. Sunshine had made the seats scalding. The car started right up, and with me at the wheel because Charlie preferred it, I eased away from the curb. A glance in the rearview mirror lifted my heart even higher: Reverend Morris with his arm over Mrs. Morris’s shoulders, and her arm around his waist, and both of them waving with their free hands. Taking a deep breath, I pulled away as Charlie reached over and took my hand, and off we drove into the rest of our lives.
The adobe was small, two rooms with a kiva fireplace and a stack of split wood. The place smelled of ashes. When I slipped off my shoes, the red-tile floor was cold.
“No lights please,” I said, and dug in the
drawers till I found matches for the candle in the center of the breakfast table. I was surprised by how much light it gave.
I had never said I loved him. Maybe it was because of how rarely those words were spoken in my family. Maybe it was the way Chris had declared his love as a way of possessing me. Maybe I was plain scared. But Charlie had never said it to me either. I thought this was the time, we smiled at each other, I breathed in.
Charlie kissed my cheek and turned and got busy building a fire, and the moment was gone. In no time the kiva crackled and snapped as the wood caught. It took him one trip to bring my small bag of things, and he had nothing to carry for himself.
He tossed the bag on the bed, then returned to me in the kitchen. We spent a minute admiring the fire, enjoying it, before we turned to look at each other, perfectly aware of what came next, modest, shy, but utterly ready. Charlie started to undo the buttons of my dress—there were so many, so small, and his fingers slipped. I could feel his impatience, and it thrilled me.
He’d managed to undo five buttons, perhaps six, when he drew back and examined the dress more closely.
“Buttons, buttons,” he said, laughing, grabbing my hips. “Too many buttons.”
It was a rough kind of contact. But his urgency pleased me, showed me the depth of his desire. Though I was nervous, I found myself relaxing. As if a knot within me chose that moment to untie. I brought his hands up below my collarbone. “Rip it.”
“What?” he said. “I don’t want to ruin your dress.”
I shook my head. “Just rip it off.”
He put his mouth on mine and I arched up to meet him, as he gave a strong pull and the fabric gave way, and I heard the most wonderful sound—better, more glorious than any organ or choir: dozens of buttons skittering away on a red-tile floor.
42.
“I found something incandescent for you,” Giles said, ambling into Charlie’s lab. He arranged some pages, placing them on the desk with a flourish. “Take a gander.”
“You’ve never come in here before.”
Giles shrugged. “Any department other than Electronics is intellectually unclean. I thought you knew.”
Universe of Two Page 35
