Back to the Garden

by Selena Kitt

  That made me wince with guilt, but I didn’t change my mind. “Of course.” I slipped the twenty, the picture, and the slip of paper into my pocket next to the ration book. “I’m really sorry this happened to you.” That was true but I felt like I shouldn’t have said it. I actually saw tears brimming in his eyes and this time, I did look away, glancing up at the clock. “What time are you shipping out?”

  “That reminds me.” I pretended not to notice him wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand as he reached into his coat pocket with the other. “Will you give her this?” He handed me an envelope. It had her name on it – Naomi. I thought I’d never heard such a beautiful, exotic name and I said it in my head, savoring the flavor. Naomi. Naomi. “Tell her…tell her…” He gripped my arm, squeezing. “I love her. And please, take…take good care of her for me.”

  I nodded, flashing suddenly to the moment my father had left, his eyes grave. “You’re the man of the house now, Patrick.” Now two women had been entrusted to my care.

  “You can count on me.” I said it with as much conviction as I could muster, and it seemed to satisfy Jerry. He nodded, giving me a short salute before turning to go. It was a strange but poignant gesture, and for some reason, it made my chest burn.

  “Can I ask you something?” He turned back for a moment, his eyes sweeping over me, and I knew what he was looking for—some sort of deformity, some logical reason a seemingly able-bodied man wasn’t wearing a uniform, like he was.

  “I was born in Canada.” I’d explained this fact a hundred times, a thousand. “Uncle Sam says I have to be a U.S. citizen to go to war.”

  He nodded. “Well, I’m glad. I’m glad you’re here. I know you’ll take good care of Naomi for me.”

  I agreed I would, and then he shook my hand, thanked me again, and was gone, weaving his way through the crowd and pushing out through the glass doors. I saw it was starting to snow, my wish coming true, although I didn’t even know if I was going to make it to stand in line for our weekly rations at this rate.

  I killed the hour and a half waiting for Naomi’s bus by sitting on a bench in the cold and warming myself by looking at her picture. I was under an overhang, and the snow was falling in fat, drifting flakes, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. Instead, I memorized her face, every soft curve, gentle slope and delicate line. What did her voice sound like? Her laugh? How did she look when she was happy? Excited? Sad?

  That last, I had a feeling I was going to get the chance to see, and I didn’t relish the thought. I could sit and moon and fantasize about this beautiful girl, but the reality was she was married, and her husband had entrusted me to tell her some horrible news, something that was likely to make her cry. That made my stomach lurch, and I stood in front of the bench, glancing at the clock and beginning to pace.

  Up until that moment, I’d been so transfixed with the thought of meeting the beauty in the picture, I hadn’t fully considered the weight of my message to her. We all lived our lives now with some measure of anxiety, like a constant hum in our ears, the possibility of disappointment, depravation, destruction, even death, around us all time. I didn’t want to be the one to drop the bomb on this poor young girl’s hopes, but I had volunteered. I’d taken the money, the information, the photo. I felt suddenly like I’d made a deal with some devil.

  It was then that the bus showed up, right on time. Of course. Greyhound always ran late, but this one had to be right on time. I knew they’d cut their schedule because of gas rationing, and there were only eight busses a day now. This was number seven. I stood, filled with a sick anticipation, glancing at the photo again before tucking it into my coat pocket to watch the steady stream of people coming off the bus.

  I saw bus riders every day, and there was always one thing they had in common—they looked tired. Everyone who came off a bus looked as if they’d been put through my mother’s wringer, some of them twice. To me, they looked like people who had been going to their worst fate, who had resigned themselves to it, only to be reprieved at the eleventh hour. Most came off the bus and breathed as if they’d never had air in their lungs before.

  One of the things I loved about working at the bus station was watching the riders greet the people picking them up. There were families waiting for soldiers, sisters waiting for brothers, mothers waiting for sons—and then there were the couples. I could watch them all day long, wrapping their arms around each other, kissing passionately right there in front of everyone, any sense of morality and decorum lost in that sweet moment of meeting again. It filled me with a secret, voyeuristic pleasure, and a longing I understood but hadn’t found a way to quench.

  I knew that was just what Naomi was expecting. I saw it on her face as she stepped off the bus, searching for her man. She looked tired, just like all the rest of the passengers after a four-day cross-country trip, but she was still fresher, her cheeks flushed, eyes bright, her red skirt flashing a bit of knee as she stepped down, her coat open to reveal a silky white blouse, her hair spilling over it like a dark river. I stood mesmerized for a moment, the look of anticipation on her face rooting me in place.

  I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t.

  It was the searching look on her face that moved me, the little quiver in her lower lip. I stepped up and took her elbow, just as if I knew what I was going to do and say. “Naomi?” I steered her away from the crowd, looking into her puzzled eyes. “Jerry asked me to meet you.”

  She looked relieved, then disappointed. “Is he—?”

  I waited for her to complete the sentence, hoping she might fill in the blanks and save me from actually having to tell her. Then I saw her leap far past the point I wanted her to go.

  “No...!” She shook her head, eyes wide. “He’s not! He’s not dead!”

  “No!” I assured her, feeling her panic—she was actually shaking. Her relief wasn’t just visible, it was physical. She collapsed against me, her eyes closing for a moment, and I didn’t have much choice but to hold onto her, or she would have just puddled on the concrete. “Please, don’t faint,” I begged, leading her to the bench I’d vacated and settling her there beside me. I wanted to keep holding her like I was, actually, but it didn’t feel safe. She literally felt like liquid in my arms.

  “You frightened me.” Her voice shook as she tilted her face up, looking speculative. “Are you…who are you?”

  “I’m…” It seemed easier to tell her about Jerry than to explain who I was. “I’m sorry, but your husband got new orders. He had to ship out. Today. Just a few hours ago.”

  “He…he what?”

  Just when I thought she couldn’t possibly look any more disappointed than she had the moment before…then the worst possible scenario I’d been able to imagine, short of her fainting, actually happened. She burst into tears. I fumbled, patting her shoulder as she turned her face into my chest and looking helplessly at the people passing by as if any one of them could help me with the sobbing woman in my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, and she kept saying it, over and over. At first I thought she was apologizing for crying, but then I realized perhaps she just didn’t know what else to say. I had the forethought—although it was more like an afterthought, really, since the front of my coat was streaked and wet already—to retrieve a handkerchief and hand it to her. She used it to cover her face, but she wasn’t through. She sobbed silently against me, her whole body shaking with the force, and I couldn’t do anything but put my arms around her and hang on.

  “Hours?” she gasped, using my handkerchief to wipe her face, blow her nose. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her nose red and swollen. She looked as far from the picture of her I had in my pocket as she possibly could have, and yet here, in person, I still thought she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, puffy face and all. “He was here? You talked to him?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “He asked me to meet your bus, to tell you what happened.” I didn’t tell her about the twenty dollar bill. I felt bad now for
even taking it. “Oh, and he gave me this.” I pulled the envelope out of my coat pocket, careful to keep the picture I had of her safely tucked away. “For you.”

  She snatched it out of my hands, greedy, tearing it open and devouring it in the fading afternoon light. I felt like more of a voyeur sitting there on that bench, watching her eyes go over his letter, than I did watching lovers kiss in the bus station, or even watching my own mother bathe herself. In fact, Naomi had the same look my mother always had when she read my father’s letters in the tub—there was something eager and hungry in her expression, a face filled with such pleasure it was almost pain, as if she were eating something decadent or listening to a delicious secret.

  “How did he look?” She turned her eager eyes up to me as I stumbled over the question.

  “He…uh…fine.” I shrugged. “No holes. That’s good, right?”

  She laughed, her cheeks still wet with tears, and the sound made me feel dizzy with delight. I wanted to hear that sound again…and again…and again. “Yes, yes, that’s good.” She sniffed, folding the letter and slipping it into her coat pocket. “I can’t believe it. We timed this so perfectly. I was so looking forward to...to…” The disappointment in her voice was a stark juxtaposition to her laughter the moment before. I wanted more of the latter.

  “Stop right there!” I held up my hand in mock horror. “Don’t tell me any more—you’ll insult my delicate sensibilities!”

  I was rewarded with another laugh, and this time, she blushed. “So how do you know my Jerry?”

  My Jerry.

  I swallowed and attempted an explanation, feeling a lot like I’m sure the soldier had, standing at the ticket booth window, explaining to a stranger. It took me a few tries, but she finally got it.

  “So you just volunteered?”

  I had to confess. “Well…he did offer me twenty dollars.”

  Naomi’s eyes widened. “He must have been very desperate. Jerry Liebovitz and money don’t part easily.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken it,” I admitted, fishing the crisp bill out of my pocket and pushing it at her. “Here.”

  “Oh no you don’t.” She closed my hand back around it, shaking her head and smiling. “I want to be able to tease him about this twenty dollars for the rest of my life.”

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh?”

  “That’s all I was worth to you? Twenty dollars? Is that the going rate for wives now? Oy!” Her voice took on the tone of some nagging fishwife, and I couldn’t help barking laughter. Poor Jerry.

  “Well, thank you for staying…” She rolled her eyes and hit her forehead with her hand. “And where are my manners? What’s your name, Good Samaritan?”

  “Patrick.” I still had my arm around her shoulder, and I kept hoping she wouldn’t notice, but I held out my other one and she shook it. “Patrick Connell.”

  “A good Irish name.”

  “Ha. I wish I had the luck of the Irish!”

  “Well, you’re my Irish luck for the day.” She gave me a wan smile and then sighed. “I don’t know what I would have done, just wandering around the bus station, wondering what happened to him.” She shivered, pulling her coat around her, and I remembered the cold—I didn’t feel it. In fact, I was quite warm.

  “Let’s get your bag and get you inside.” I nodded to where the baggage handler was still unloading. “We’ll get you back on a bus toward home.”

  “I guess that will have to do.” She sighed. “Although I don’t relish the long trip back.”

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t been thinking it all along, but when Mr. Howard told us the last bus out that night had been delayed into the wee hours of the morning because of mechanical issues, it seemed natural to offer Naomi a room at our place for the night.

  “Are you sure?” Naomi tugged on my coat sleeve, and I was more sure than ever. “You’ve done so much for me—for us—already.”

  “It’s just me and my mother,” I explained. “We’re a few blocks over. And Mr. Howard can vouch for me. Right?”

  Mr. Howard snorted, but he said, “He’s a good kid.”

  “See?”

  “I guess it would be all right.” She glanced at her bag, which I had insisted on carrying, and then back at me. “There’s a guest room?”

  “Of course,” I replied, taking her elbow and leading her. “Fit for a queen. I’ll even put a pea under your mattress if you want.”

  “That was a princess.” Naomi buttoned her coat as we walked. The sidewalk was dusted with snow and we left footprints in it.

  I sighed. “Well, I hope the princess can live with macaroni and cheese for dinner, because I don’t think the grocer’s still open.”

  “Rations?” she asked knowingly, hands in her pockets.

  “I was hoping for a big juicy steak.”

  She groaned. “Oh, that sounds like heaven. It’s been so long since I had a steak.”

  “Or bacon,” I commiserated. My mouth watered at the thought. “Remember bacon?”

  “Afraid not.” Naomi shook her dark head. “We don’t eat pork.”

  “Are you—?” I didn’t want to finish the sentence, but I didn’t have to.

  “With a last name like Leibovitz, you thought we were…what, Catholic?”

  I flushed. “I didn’t want to assume.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not afraid to say I’m Jewish. I’m proud to be a Jew.” I admired the jut of her chin, the emphasis of her convictions. “And I’m proud of my husband and what he’s fighting for.”

  “You should be.”

  I knew it was coming, and braced myself for it. “So why aren’t you over there?”

  “I’m not a U.S. citizen,” I replied. “And they tell me you have to be one to join the army.”

  “Oh.”

  We walked in silence down the street. Just around the corner was the grocer, and while I swallowed my guilt—I always wondered, should I tell people I wanted to go to war? That I tried to get drafted? That they’d refused me three times? It seemed overly defensive on my part, and I usually just said nothing—I was hoping they’d still be open.

  “You can see the water from here,” Naomi observed, and I glanced up at the coastline. The dock where my father shipped out, probably the same one her husband had left from a few hours ago, was obscured by the railway station but you could see a thin line of water under the orange setting sun. My mother called this area “Transportation Central,” because the bus station, train yard and boat dock all converged down here at the edge of the water.

  “You can see it from our house, too.” I steered her around the corner, thrilled to see a line out the grocer’s door. It was probably the first time I’d been really happy to stand in a ration line. In spite of there being a war on, I was embarrassed to think all we could offer a guest was some meatless dinner. Besides, I knew my mother would be disappointed if I didn’t bring home rations, and I couldn’t bear disappointing two women in one day. “We’re right on the water, so we have blackouts on that side of the house every night.”

  “Really?” Naomi’s eyes widened as we took our place in the ration line. “You have to do everything in the dark?”

  “Oh, they gave us black shades,” I explained, pleased at the movement of the line, which didn’t even stretch to the end of the shop. This wasn’t going to take nearly as long as I feared. Maybe my Irish luck comment was coming true? “We pull them down, and viola, the house goes dark on one side.”

  “Are they really afraid someone might attack?”

  “We are at war.” I nodded. “After Pearl Harbor, it’s a real possibility.”

  I felt her shiver next to me, and I didn’t think it was from cold. I wanted to put my arm around her, but without the excuse I’d had at the bus station, I thought it would be too forward. Still I was thrilled when she took a step closer, pressing into my side.

  “I wish this war was over.” Naomi glanced toward the water again, although we couldn’t see it at all now—the line had m
oved.

  “We all do, dearie.” The woman in front of us turned and looked at me from under the black veil of her hat. She’d obviously been listening. “I’ve lost one son already, and have two more over there.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Naomi murmured. She looked sad, and I decided, even if she was still just as beautiful with her mouth turned down at the corners, I didn’t want to see that expression again in these next few hours.

  I glanced at the woman in front of us and saw her speculative look, her narrowed gaze. Thankfully, I avoided the usual questions as the line turned into the grocer’s, and she was served next.

  “So I shouldn’t ask if they have pork chops?” I teased.

  “I hate to have you spend your rations on me,” Naomi said seriously as I hopefully handed over my ration stamps. I’d lost weight this year on rations, with only two eggs allotted a week, a few ounces of butter and cheese per person, and meat scarce—the grocer at the other end of town sold horse meat, which my mother refused to buy, although I’d considered it. Protein was scarce, but we all made sacrifices because there was a war on.

  I took the package the grocer handed over and paid for the purchase. I had change set aside for that purpose, although flashing the twenty dollar bill occurred to me.

  “Lamb?” I inquired, peering into the paper bag. The grocer was an old man with a bulbous, gin-blossomed nose and bleary eyes, and he just grunted an agreement as he took my money. I glanced behind me, seeing we were the end of the line, and leaned against the counter. “Do you have any beef steaks?”

  He grunted again, shaking his head, but I knew better than to leave it at that. This time, I did pull out the twenty. “I can pay you.”

  His eyes lit up like I was Santa Claus and he called over his shoulder, “Mama! Two strip!” He looked at the money, and then at me. “Two enough? It’s all I have.” Two days wages for two steaks. I didn’t have to break the twenty, though, and for that I was grateful.

  “Steak!” Naomi murmured as we left the shop. “What a treat!”