Darnay Road

by Diane Munier

  I nod and all my cool goes away. Come around like for dates? I’m trying to imagine kissing his very beautiful mouth saying things I can’t get enough of. I’m trying to imagine that this exists on this earth where so many cruel and bad things are happening and he’s preparing to go into the thick of. I’m trying to imagine having the freedom and courage to be naked with him, on the trestle, as we run from an oncoming train and jump hand in hand into the river. Not that there’s water under the trestle anymore, but this is my fantasy and it’s coming fast.

  I’ve been told a hundred times no dating before I’m sixteen and then just double dating, but those rules are out the window in my mind. This isn’t dating some Joe. This is Easy. Granma knows him and he only has two weeks.

  “You’re still the prettiest girl I ever saw,” he says. He’s smiling even more and it is melty. I’m melting like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. I’m going into a puddle of goo. Moondoggie—was I serious? Easy is the most wonderful man I have ever seen. I don’t have a thing to say back that isn’t ridiculous. He’s probably going to notice any minute how stupid I am. I realize I need to close my mouth though. And maybe lick my lips. He laughs a little at that. He doesn’t seem shy at all, and that’s exciting and so terrifying I end up turning and fumbling for the door’s handle, and handing that off to him. Then I get in and drop my bag and put my books on the table and I hear those old black shoes coming from the kitchen. She gets in the hall and I can see she was going to let me have it for being late, but she gets a load of Easy behind me and I step aside and there’s that uniform and him in it grinning at her. She comes straight for him and gives him a hug and he is so kind in the way he hugs back, and I wonder where he learned it, to hug so well because I doubt his mother ever did him that way.

  “Look at you,” she keeps saying, holding him at arm’s length and looking him up and down. “Just look at you. Where on earth did you come from—a soldier!” Then to me, “Did you know?”

  I am shaking my head and smiling big.

  “Look at the handsome man you’ve become,” she says. “And so respectable! A Soldier!”

  He’s blushing. It makes tears come to my eyes to see him so happy and blushing. I don’t know what we’re going to do with him.

  “He’s staying with Disbro,” I volunteer.

  She looks at him and her smile goes away. “Oh for heaven sakes you are not.”

  “Yeah, me and my brother Cap. It’s fine.”

  “Well I don’t know about that,” she says. She looks from me to him.“How long you here for?”

  “I got two weeks,” he says. “We’re fine there. We paid him for it. It’s good.”

  “Easy,” Granma says, “I am never quite comfortable with where you go once you leave this house.”

  I know what she means. But she has always put me first. I know that—my safety. The rest of the world can go to hell, but she watches over me.

  But people should help one another. And I am not allowed to ask in front of the person if they can spend the night. Not even for Abigail May, not that I have to ask for her to stay at all anymore.

  “I just wanted to see you and talk to Georgia while I’m here. I guess I need to see if that’s okay. I wanted to spend time with Georgia. I know she’s got school, but if she wants to…I’d like to spend time with her before I have to go back.”

  “Are you going to war?”

  “No Ma’am. Not yet. But once I get back I won’t get to come home for at least a year. If I ship out they’ll give me leave before I do. But I know she’s…fourteen. But you know me…and…if Georgia wants…to,” he looks at me and he’s smiling.

  “Enough of it,” Granma says. “Come in the kitchen and eat and we’ll figure out how to save the world.”

  I take that as a yes but I know it’s still kind of a no, like that will stop me.

  She goes in the kitchen and I take two steps to Easy, and just like at the school he wraps me in a hug that takes me to the tips of my shoes. Here’s what I know in his very strong arms with my face against his very strong heart. I am the luckiest girl in the entire United States of America.

  Darnay Road 47

  We barely sit down to eat but Abigail May and Ricky are at the door, not waiting until I answer of course, but coming on in like they own the place.

  Well Ricky never comes over, not for ages anyway. That’s fine by me he lives for football then basketball, anything with a ball attached so he can show everyone how tough he is.

  But here they are now, making noise in the hallway. Granma has just sat down, and Easy is eating his first bite of pork chop, saying he remembers how she always made them with the crispy stuff on them and he’s thought of them so many times and she’s asking about the food at Basic and I want to hear everything, every word but I have a very strong urge to intercept the Brodys, not so much Abigail May, though I don’t want her to gush in front of Easy, like Georgia and Easy sitting in a tree type gushing, but Ricky is the one I’m not sure about. So I hurry to the hall and I end up listening to Ricky when I don’t want to listen to him or anyone but Easy.

  “Why’s he here?” Ricky asks me, looking at me like Easy threw a rock at his car or something. “Tim said Disbro had Cap in the truck.”

  Abigail May grabs my arm. “Cap too?” she says with her ‘holding in the squeals,’ face. “I was in practice when I heard—the whole school knows! Everybody says he’s your very own soldier and he’s handsome like a movie star. And he kissed you? Did he?”

  “No,” I say. Kissed me? It’s enough we hugged…twice. I’m about scarlet thinking about it and the whole school saying all that? Well he is the most handsome boy any of us will ever see, I mean there is no one like Easy for looks, but I can’t just spill that out, can I?

  “Moondoggie,” Ricky says like he’s going to throw up. “It’s on your face.”

  “You don’t make sense,” I say and I’m so mad at him.

  Abigail May is already in the kitchen and Easy is laughing at something she said.

  “What did he come here for?” Ricky says, his hand on my arm.

  I pull away. “What?”

  “He’s not going to be around,” Ricky whispers more loudly than most people talk. “Don’t give it away.”

  “Give what….” Then I punch him on the arm but he’s so big it doesn’t even faze him. He steps around me and goes in the kitchen. Who does he think he is?

  Easy is standing when I get in there. He shakes hands with Ricky. He initiates because he’s just so fine. Ricky has to learn how to be a grown-up now and he seems happy to see Easy because you can’t look at him and not be happy.

  Abigail May has gone around to his side of the table and pulled up a chair so close she is beaming. It makes tears spring to my eyes because this is what he deserves.

  So we all eat, and there’s plenty if we don’t want seconds, but there’s chicken from the night before and I get that out and the boys eat it cold and Easy tells us about joining up and standing in a long line of boys and dropping his drawers and bending over, and the cough. We laugh until there are tears and Ricky says they’re not getting him and Easy says he’s got to decide for himself. He’ll go wherever Americans need help, and I almost die. I have to clutch my chest because I have never known such bravery until Easy. But he’s always been in the line of fire and stood so tall, so tall, that’s what I know.

  “How is your mother?” Granma says and I should have asked that, right off, but I’ve been so full of my own surprise.

  “My mom passed last year,” he says.

  He looks at me.

  Abigail May, too. Well everyone but my Granma. Her eyes are on Easy.

  “Easy…,” I say.

  He’s shaking his head, smiling, but his eyes fill with tears and he goes back on the hind legs of his chair and looks to the side knuckling under his eyes. Abigail May takes his hand cause she’s right there. “I’m so sorry Easy.”

  He sniffs and sets his chair back on all fours the
way Granma likes but she won’t fuss now. No sir. He pulls his hand from Abigail and clasps them over his plate, leaning forward some. “Well…I went in after that. My grampa signed.”

  First one he looks up at is me. He winks like he does and he smiles, and his eyes are so sad.

  “Well she’d sure be proud of how you’ve handled yourself,” Granma says and he thanks her then and I look at Ricky and there’s no more anger in his face. Just admiration. And I don’t think I’ve seen that before. It helps out his face a lot.

  But I’m watching Easy and Granma says there is pie and I nearly forgot. I made a cherry pie just yesterday because Granma had a taste for it, then she wouldn’t eat it. So I get up, happy for something to do. The pie is in the bread box and I slide the front up and get plates and I know he watches me the whole time.

  I cut his first, a big slice. I get the ice cream too. And Granma asks if he wants coffee and he does. I wouldn’t have even known to ask him that. Only old people drink coffee. But I’m listening and I’m learning and next time I’ll ask him that and I’ll get that for him, but first I have to learn how to make it.

  So I bring him the first piece and Ricky says he wants some too, but I don’t even look. Abigail May jumps up to get more. I sit that there and he says, “All that?” and I just stand there smiling like a fool because I’d bring him the whole pie in a minute.

  “Thank you Georgia,” he says and we are looking at one another and Granma brings the coffee and sets it there and she asks if he takes milk and he says no, looking from her to me. “I like it black,” he says and he fiddles with the chair Abigail May vacated like I should sit there and I do.

  I’d left a chair between us before, but I sit there now and it’s warm from Abigail’s skinny behind.

  Abigail May and Ricky have their pie. They lean against the counter with Abigail making enough noise you’d think she never had pie before, singing, “Can she make a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy.”

  Abigail is smiling while she takes the tiny bites she’s known for. But she won’t look at me or the middle finger I hold against my cheek. Ricky sees it, so I move my eyebrows to let him know he can have it.

  Granma, God love her, brags on me for making such a good pie and Ricky is licking his fork while he stares right at me and he’s so disgusting, just like Easy said boys are, he was right. But I look at Easy and put my elbows on the table and tuck my hands in my arms. It’s just so satisfying to see him eat something I made myself and like it so much.

  “You made this?” he says between bites.

  I just nod. “Glad to see you don’t put ketchup on it.”

  He laughs then and Granma smiles. He really is home. And just as soon as I think it a dread fills me. It wants to speak to me, but I push it away. Two weeks is what we have. Two weeks to be with Easy and I’m not going to think about the rest until I have to.

  Darnay Road 48

  Abigail and Ricky can’t stay long. Friday nights are game nights and they both have to be at the gym early. I must admit I am so relieved for Ricky to be gone and if I have to sacrifice Abigail May too, so be it. Before she left, Abigail invited Easy to the game. He said it was up to me. I was proud of that, that he would make me the big deal.

  I wouldn’t say so without talking to him in private. I don’t know if he is still sad about his mom, even though she didn’t take care of him very well when she was alive. She left him on Scutter. Maybe he can overlook that, but it’s harder for me. I remember how hungry he was, how worried he was and how alone.

  I just don’t want people to look at us if we go to that game. And I wonder if I’ll ever get to talk to him without a bunch of people around. But then it’s kind of terrifying too. I’ll probably say dumb stuff. I feel so excited around him, but I remember how it was, the old Easy, and there is an ache in me for that friendship. Not even Abigail May has been able to fill it.

  But I think my Granma will allow us to go to the game. I’m pretty sure. Especially since Abigail volunteered Aunt May to drive us. She wants me to get Easy to ask Cap too. Well I know she is dying to see him. Or more like dying for him to see her doing her twirl in the two-toned skirt.

  “You should bring your brother here so we could meet him,” Granma says to Easy. “Is he as well-behaved as you?”

  “No,” Easy laughs. “But he’s all right. I mean…he behaves.”

  Abigail and I laugh because it’s just funny. Easy makes it sound like he’s Cap’s trainer or something.

  “Oh please bring him to the game,” Abigail whines. How does she know without even seeing Cap that she will be happy to meet him again? He doesn’t look like a jock, not with that hair and he doesn’t wear the right clothes, matter of fact he looks like a hippie and that is certainly not her type at all not that she’s been allowed to have much of a type .

  We’re not allowed to date because Aunt May and my granma have joined forces like Ozzie and Harriet or Ward and June and exchanged their ideas for the rules like they’ll have better luck if they co-ordinate or something. And that’s not even fair cause Abigail May and I have given them no trouble at all, even Abigail May, in love all the time, obeys mostly.

  And speaking of, once Abigail and Ricky are gone, Aunt May comes next, carrying Little Bit. She often takes her over to visit while I’m at school, or to clip her toenails as she is the only one with the nerve to do it. She is all smiles for Easy and that’s saying something because Aunt May doesn’t smile so much since the ‘Father Anthony also known as just Anthony,’ experience.

  It had caused a huge scandal when Father Anthony left the priesthood. Word got around that he’d been keeping time with Aunt May. Aunt May left the church over it too, not that anyone seemed to notice. She went straight to the Lutherans and it caused her and my Granma to get into it some, but this day and age people are searching for truth, or so Aunt May says, and she couldn’t stay where she was condemned without a trial. So now she attends the Lutheran church and Gloria Sue insists she not pull Ricky and Abigail from Bloody Heart, even though Mr. Figley was probably so ready to finally have an excuse to stick them in public and save the tuition. But Aunt May said of course she would never do that, but she had a right to ‘work out her own salvation.’ Now that she reads the bible she quotes it all of the time and the whole thing seems to have been written to support her arguments.

  May also reads about women’s liberation quite a bit. She’s got Granma wearing a short haircut and pretty much living in stretch pants now. I don’t think I ever saw my Granma in pants until the last couple of years. She still won’t wear them to church, and she doesn’t like me to either so of course I do not, but people are starting to here or there.

  And Aunt May had a book called, The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan and another called, The Bitch. I told Abigail May she has to get me the one called, The Bitch, but she keeps forgetting. If it’s half as interesting as, Valley of the Dolls, I’m ready.

  So some of Aunt May’s books Aunt May loans me, and some, Abigail May loans me. Either way I return them so what’s the harm? Americans are meant to be free thinkers. That’s what makes us different from the rest of the world. We can imagine something, then make it actually come true, not that I’m going to make Valley of the Dolls come true, but I can read something and figure it out for myself. That’s why people are trying to end the war in Vietnam. Americans believe in the power of Joe Nobody to change the world.

  Aunt May wants Abigail to finish her education and not get entangled with foolish crushes on boys. She tells Abigail that a boy will only confuse her. They are all after one thing only and if a girl makes a mistake and gives in it can change the course of her entire life and ruin it probably.

  Then she says there is so much more in life for a girl than being a housewife. She believes we girls should get educations and have careers. She believes women haven’t been properly encouraged to reach their full potentials but get scooped up by men too quickly, before they can have fulfilling lives even. It almost soun
ds like she’s saying men are like Martians invading earth and taking us on spaceships before we get to explore our own planet.

  Granma just sighs when May gets going. After May leaves Granma usually says, “May never did marry and Father Anthony, that heretic, did nothing to help her out.”

  Granma has never read a book on women’s lib in her life, and she seems to believe that the best thing that could possibly happen to me is if I fall in love. She seems to think it’s to be expected. She is a romantic crazy lady from reading thousands of romantic stories. I don’t think she knows about boys, how they really are, except for Dennis at school, but especially Easy. I’ve already hugged Easy twice and I feel fine. Fine. Maybe that’s why I am so, so happy around him.

  Of course the two of them, Aunt May and my granma, get to the bottom of every little thing about Easy. The way he seems so open to answering questions takes me back some. He wasn’t like that before. He always seemed to guard a hundred secrets and that drew me then. Now, well this more open Easy works even better for me because I am fourteen and I need to know stuff.

  His mother died of a thing called Pancreatitis, and she went quickly but she had not been well for a very long time, or ever. He said she was always weak and I think of what he said way back, about the babies. Back home he and Cap lived with an uncle and aunt by marriage and another uncle. His mother’s father is still living and he’s there too, the whole bunch in the family home, he says. And it’s a harsh place, he says. He brought Cap to Missouri and Darnay Road to get him away.

  May and Granma want to know if any of the relatives are upset about this. Cap is only fifteen, just a little older than me and Abigail May. They wonder if someone will come looking for him or send the police. “Did you just leave without the family’s blessing?” May says.

  Well I can’t look at the two of them—Granma and May for a minute. They have no idea we’ve done faced the police and the subject of Easy kidnapping Cap never came up.