Misfit

by Adam Braver

  Filing out of the church, you feel inspired. Finally there is a sense of right that you understand, and there is muscle behind it to back you up. The preacher is standing by the doors, shaking hands with the congregants. It’s bright outdoors. But the sunlight stops at the doorway, not spilling into the nave, where the only light is a sparkle from a stained-glass window, making diamonds on the dark wood. The preacher takes your great-aunt’s hand. “A pleasure to see you, Mrs. Martin,” he says.

  She responds, “Such inspiring words.”

  “And who do we have here?”

  She introduces you. Makes sure to explain that you’re staying with her out of need, just for a short while, only until the mother is healed. And you’re not clear if her emphasis on the temporary is because there is something about you that she finds embarrassing, or if she’s underscoring her sense of charity. The preacher takes your hand as a welcome. And a blush comes on so warm and fierce you can feel it boring down into your toes. It’s as though he’s spotted your desire to be naked, and even saw you as such, maybe X-rayed you with the power that he has. All you can do (and remembering what Mrs. Martin said earlier) is look down.

  Mrs. Martin smiles at the preacher, and she puts her hand on your shoulder, squeezing in the exact spot where Buddy did earlier in the week. She’s talking to you but looking right at the preacher. “Don’t you have something you want to say, my dear?”

  You flounder for words. Search as though language is something new, while they both wait. She squeezes again, and, like a reflex, the words push out: “Thank you.”

  “I’ll pray for your mother,” he says, “but I’ll expect you to take the reins of your own life, honestly and truly . . . Remember, the power of God will guide you as long as you live righteously.” And then he turns to your great-aunt. “And bless you, Mrs. Martin. Keep spreading the word, and living by it.”

  “Amen,” she says. “Amen.”

  The ride home is silent. You look out the window at the orchards going by, rehearsing how you’re going to tell her about Buddy. You’ll do it right when you get home, while Buddy and his mother are still gone, and Mrs. Martin is at her most pious. Your mouth goes a little dry thinking about it. Your head a little foggy. But you have the power of God behind you. And you’re obliged to have clean hands and a clear heart.

  First she slaps you across the face. Then she tells you you’re disgusting. And she says she will tolerate no such talk in her house. She says maybe you talk that way with your mother, but not in this house. You stand there in the living room, face tingling and on fire. She paces around you, hands opening and closing, and you can hear her breath as though you’re deep inside her lungs. Then she stomps into the kitchen, but comes right out. Circles you. Three times around. You’re almost too dizzy to stand, but too light to fall. And you do everything within your power to make yourself invisible (clench your fists, squeeze your eyes, summon all your will), but when you glance down you still see your hand sticking out of the cuff of the dress she put you in. And then she disappears to her bedroom. And you’re alone in the living room (maybe the first time you’ve been alone anywhere in this house other than your room?). For a moment your shoulders drop. Your head clears. And you draw in a breath, inflating some life back into yourself. It will be okay. The shock has passed. You tell yourself that over and over again. But then you hear her footsteps coming out of the bedroom. And they’re not just squeaking the hardwoods; they sound as though they’re breaking them. You shoot your eyes to the floor. Don’t dare glance up. Hope she’ll only pass on through. But again she circles. Round and round. And then she stops behind you. She’s mumbling. Over and over. An incantation. And at first the words make no sense. But as she keeps repeating them, you pick up the rhythm, and you start to find the words, For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you . . . For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you . . . For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you . . . For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you . . . Soon you’re chanting it over and over in your head, as though it’s the only sound in the entire universe, with the words becoming almost nonsensical. The first blow drops you to your knees. Across the back and between the shoulder blades. It’s something hard, like a cane, whistling by your ear when she pulls it back. And you brace. Prepare for another blow. You want to say no. You want to say anything. But you have no voice. There are no words inside you. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you . . . For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you . . . For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you . . . She doesn’t stop. Even for a breath. And then it smacks down on you again. But you don’t fall off your knees until the fourth blow. And as you lie on the floor, being beaten from the back of your thighs up to your shoulders and back down your rear, all you can think of is crawling away, climbing into your suitcase, somehow magically snapping the latches and locking yourself inside, holding on to Clark Gable, both of you stowing away into another life where this one will become nothing more than a pitiable story.

  1945: Metropolitan Airport, Van Nuys, CA

  In the old Timm Aircraft plant at Metropolitan Airport, movie actor Reginald Denny set up a manufacturing shop. In the early thirties, his acting career in full bloom, Denny, a former RAF pilot in World War I, opened a model-plane store on Hollywood Boulevard, initially calling it Reginald Denny Enterprises but soon recasting it as the Radioplane Company. The crown jewel was the remote-controlled plane that he and his team developed: the Dennymite. Initially built in 1938 with the hobbyist in mind, Denny’s plane garnered interest from the army. A radio-controlled model airplane would be perfect for training antiaircraft artillerymen. Now he produces the OQ-2 drones. Daily, by the hundreds. Located in Van Nuys, about twenty miles outside of Los Angeles, Metropolitan Airport is an industrial center surrounded by farmland. Once the airport to the stars, and later auxiliary soundstages for the pictures, the airport was bought in 1942 by the military, which then converted many of the buildings into manufacturing centers for defense while still maintaining the soundstages. At one end, aircraft was being assembled; at the other, scenes from Casablanca were being filmed. Now, in the midforties, production is in full swing. The civilian workers, mostly women, are dedicated, faceless in our anonymity, with a posture that conveys a sense of pride in its stoutness. We build the drones. Measure the balsa. Cut. Assemble and glue. Some paint the parts. Stretch fabric over the frame. Others make miniature parachutes, which, down the line, are folded inside the fuselage. Some of us inspect for quality control.

  We’re all orphans in here. Seated at tables along the perimeter of this giant warehouse, forming the production line. It’s a home for girls. It’s an income. And it supports the war effort. But more than anything it’s something to do. Something to keep your mind off being a bride who has lost her footing since her husband was shipped away. All of us may be alone, but at least we’re alone together. Most of the time we’re all thinking the same things, and carrying the same worries, and while at times it can feel good to say them out loud as some kind of verification or reminder that you’re not alone with these feelings, the truth is that most of the time giving voice to any of your thoughts usually makes you feel more alone. Like you wish you’d never said anything. There are a lot of us girls in here, but it still feels hollow and distant, maybe on account of us being in a hangar, where the ceiling lifts high above us and the metal beams are crisscrossed, exposed, and the reminder of the room’s true function only makes you feel smaller, and lesser, and fewer.

  She always sits in the same places, be it her workstation or the same chair in the break room for lunch, and it’s hard to tell if it’s out of habit, insolence, or indifference. She would blend with all the others if it weren’t for her seeming dedication to not being noticed and heard. The r
est of us girls are always carrying on, fighting for attention with our stories, and worries, and gossip. She carries herself best with the older women, the ones whose husbands left career jobs to go fight, who seem as though they’ve seen it all before and have lost the energy to fight to establish any presence. But a sadness coats her face as a kind of dull foundation. She can’t be more than nineteen; her face looks like it’s still forming, her shoulders slim and fragile, her body only recently burst, and when she talks it’s easy to forget what she’s saying; instead you study her face, trying to see what she’ll look like when she’s old, and the funny thing is that it’s impossible to tell, like trying to imagine the finish cracking on smooth porcelain. She gives off the feeling of someone who’s lived this life before. Knows what it’s like to be in a world of displaced women. And how it’s navigated. It’s the mechanical-ness of the work that soothes her, she says. And sometimes we can catch a glimpse of her, staring straight across the hangar, her hands stretching and tightening a parachute’s fabric before she glances down to inspect it, and we can see what she’s envisioning: a room all cozy and yellow-lighted from a setting sun; she sits on a dark brown couch in front of a fireplace, a book on her lap, and a nerve up her back so calm and at ease that she wouldn’t even flinch if the book dropped off her lap and slammed on the floor.

  She’ll answer questions, but she doesn’t say much about herself. Her husband of a couple years left his job at Lockheed a year ago, driven by his calling for the uniform. He enlisted as a merchant marine, first working as a physical fitness instructor and then deployed to the South Pacific by ship when the war began. His being a merchant marine initially gave her some sense of ease. After all, their role is just to transport troops and supplies. And she says that so naively, as though he’s not actually moving through a war zone in the South Pacific. “Isn’t it basically the navy?” a gal to the left says to her, but she shakes her head and repeats, “It’s the merchant marines,” and she doesn’t say it with any sense of pride, just as a matter of fact. We never intend to be cruel in here, just practical, because it seems that a practical outlook will make whatever might happen easier to bear. We’ve seen it before. We know how it works. A girl on her right says, “Wouldn’t the Japs go after his ship just the same as they would any other?” “Especially,” another interjects, “if it’s carrying supplies. They’d want to cut it off. I imagine it would be the first target. It’s what they do with lifelines.” Again, we’re not trying to be cruel. Only being practical. But she’s not listening. She’s drifting away, while her hands stay at work. Eyes sailing away from us. Going off into that room of hers.

  Sometimes she puts on like she really misses him. Other times it’s hard to tell. One time she said she was fed to him. We never knew what she meant, fed. A couple of us local to Van Nuys knew his name; he was a big football star in high school. But that’s about all we knew. Another time she told a story about a camping trip up in the mountains at Big Bear, and she told it like it was one of those things she really missed—we’ve all got our own, the one memory that really sums up how much we miss our husbands—but after she told it, and her eyes were all watery, some of us swore she told it like she was never there. Like the way people try to place themselves inside a magazine ad or movie, wishing it were their life.

  Once, she said she’d had a miscarriage just before he left. Another time, she said she wished they’d tried to get pregnant, so they would’ve at least had their life in motion when he returned. She talks with such sincerity. Even when her stories don’t always match.

  She says that after work, when she gets home to her mother-in-law’s house, supper is always waiting for her, and they sit on the couch, eating, looking at two photos of him; one is his senior portrait and the other is a military portrait. They just sit there quietly, and neither of them bothers to make conversation. Like a cross between watching a movie and visiting a grave site. We ask if she ever goes to her own folks’ house. She replies with an authority in her voice we’ve never heard before (or at least never noticed): her mama’s often occupied and her daddy’s an important man in the movies. We ask who he is. Do we know him? And she raises a funny little smile, almost impish, and says, “Now, ladies, if I told you who he is, then you’d never treat me the same again.”

  Ronald Reagan, now Captain Ronald Reagan, is assigned to the army air force’s First Motion Picture Unit in Culver City. He produces training films for the army air force. One of his duties is to build enthusiasm for the war effort through promoting the solidarity of sacrifice among those back home. The war is everybody’s responsibility. In a sense, we’re all soldiers. To this end, Captain Reagan wants stories of ordinary Americans hard at work. Reginald Denny, his old acting friend, suggests the Radioplane Company, where pretty young girls stretch canvas over miniature airplane fuselages. Dainty and ordinary, yet just as committed as their brothers and boyfriends and husbands and fathers stationed in Europe. That kind of story is sure to raise morale. And so Captain Reagan arranges for a spread in Yank magazine. And when the army photographer, a young private, shows up for the shoot at midmorning, we’re all sitting just a little bit straighter, patting our hair down, and rolling on an extra layer of lipstick.

  Except for her.

  She doesn’t fuss. There is nothing out of the ordinary in her behavior. In fact, she barely even looks up when the private walks through, squinting while he sets up the shot in his head, squatting and taking in all the different angles. While we sway right to left with each of the private’s movements like stalks in the breeze, she just keeps her hands on task, today screwing propellers onto the little bodies.

  We’ve never thought of her as pretty. Not striking in any standout way. Her face is sweet and her smile is warm enough. But she’s not someone you’d pick out of a crowd. Or even remember from one day to the next.

  The private says we should just ignore him, pretend he’s not here. Act natural. Then he proceeds to move up and down the production line, taking pictures of us from various angles. We’re not supposed to pose, but we do find ways to lift our chins, or turn in slight profile, and even sneak in a tempting expression. Those of us farther down the line glance out of the corners of our eyes, seeing how far away he is, rehearsing our poses in our heads. But she just continues to work. Never looking up. Just one more propeller on one more fuselage.

  Then something curious happens. The private snaps a photo of her. And then he snaps another. Not only does he stop moving down the line, it’s as though he’s been walled off. He drops his bag to the floor and kicks it forward; his legs go into a horseback-riding stance, and he brings the camera up to his face with both hands and starts clicking. One picture after the next.

  And she still doesn’t look up. It’s hard to say if she’s that oblivious, or if she’s that natural. But he doesn’t stop.

  Finally, after what seems long enough, he puts down the camera. We all begin our mental rehearsals again. He walks up to her, trying to talk in a hushed voice, but it’s just noisy enough in this hangar that everybody has to talk loudly to be heard, and therefore we can always hear every conversation. He tells her he has some ideas for a different kind of photo. He says he can’t get over how comfortable she is in front of the camera. And then he asks if she has a sweater, and she says she does, and he says to get it, but she says she’s on her shift, and he says what about during lunch, that should be soon, and she keeps screwing on the propellers, head down, lifting her eyes only when she talks, and she says she supposes that would be okay, if he thinks it’s best. And he says great, and steps backward, nearly tripping over his bag, and in that moment we have to wonder if we haven’t all been had.

  She returns to her seat after lunch. Still wearing the sweater. She called him Shutterbug when he left, and she said sure, and we didn’t know what sure meant, until he said he’d be certain to get more film and then take care of finding the location. But what is most striking, or perhaps most memorable, is how different she looks since she�
��s returned. It’s like her bones have settled into something more solid. Her walk is poised. The men who work here stop and take notice like something around her is all sexed up. The little girl has gone out of her face, leaving a womanly confidence that is at once stunning, alluring, and a little frightening. And when she sits, it seems as though she’s still standing. As if she’s grown a little larger. There’s never a moment when she acts as though she’s no longer one of us, but we get the feeling that she’s no longer one of us.

  But oddest of all is how we can’t keep from staring at her.

  You wouldn’t know she’d ever had a husband. Since that day she modeled for the private, she never talks about him anymore. Never gives an update. Nothing about the merchant marines, or her opinion about the war. It’s not as though her fidelity is in question. It’s more like you get the feeling that she never was married. Never part of a family or anything else. Just materialized. As though she’s existed out of nowhere.

  She tells us she’s been posing for the private regularly, and that one weekend he drove her out to the Mojave Desert for a session. And he told her she’s a natural, and apparently he’s even managed to get some interest in her portfolio, and there’s talk of some money for a specific job, and the private predicts that once the Yank spread runs she can leave this lousy job. And then she pauses. Stares down at the floor, then looks up, slowly scanning all our faces. For a moment she looks like her old self. “I didn’t mean lousy,” she says. “It’s just an expression. You know that.” After she spits that out, her posture straightens, and she’s back to her new self. We tell her it’s okay. But what we don’t say is that we know she did mean lousy. We know exactly what she meant.