The Magic of Ordinary Days (14 page)

“I have some used equipment coming in and no place to put it up for winter.”

Now I tried eating again. “Well, it was an accident.”

He was still just sitting. “How much of that old stuff do you want to keep?”

I stared blankly ahead. I honestly didn't know.

For a long stretch of minutes, we continued to sit without moving. The air in between us grew as thick as the low fog that rises out of a night plain. I could feel it pressing in on my skin, wrapping me up. When it started to push down on my chest, too, finally I made myself look over at him. I saw his eyes barely well up, the tears men seldom cry just held back in check.

He said, “I'd do anything to make you happy.”

I breathed out then. “I know.”

Thirteen

The next Sunday, we left church shortly after the service ended. Ray drove us away in silence, not once glancing over at me as he usually did. After passing through the town, he pulled to a stop in front of a graveyard run over with grama grass, then he got out and walked inside the rusty iron gate without me. I didn't know if I was supposed to follow him or leave him alone, so for a few minutes I lingered in the car until I couldn't sit still any longer.

I found him standing over a grave, hat off and held in both hands, staring at the headstone of his brother, Daniel Singleton, born 1919, died 1941. Ray stood in the same way without moving for what was at least a half hour, and all I could guess was that in this way, he grieved. Only once did his eyes mist over, only once did he barely pass beyond the emotional boundaries of men, so self-imposed.

He grieved for his brother and I for my mother. We both suffered from the loss of someone we loved. Wasn't this a common thread so strong it should pull us together? I should've tried to comfort him, to console him for the pain of losing one so young as Daniel, his only brother. I should do something, I kept saying to myself. As I stood there, I tried to summon up affectionate feelings for him, but the only good memories I could recall were of the afternoon out on the fishing pond. And on the same day, he had rescued me from Mrs. Pratt, had even told a lie for me, something I imagined he rarely did. He had done it to protect me, and I would protect him from this awful sorrow if only I could. But unfortunately, I knew the truth from my own experience. Nothing could pull a person out from under this load.

I stood beside him until the sun started to singe the tiny hairs that grew almost invisibly on my forearms. Finally Ray turned and walked back to the truck. He slumped into the seat and gripped the steering wheel, still staring straight ahead at nothing but empty air.

We drove back to the farm in silence. I spent the rest of the day reading, while Ray disappeared inside the barn. In the evening, he came indoors to hear Walter Winchell on the radio, but we didn't talk over any of the news or the day's events. And for once, I retired to bed earlier than he did.

As the onion and bean harvest was finishing up, the interns spent long days on the Singleton farm. With Rose and Lorelei nearby, we met every day for their midday break and for other snatches of time when they could escape away from their overseer.

One day, on the front porch steps, Rose kept looking me over. “Are you well?” she asked me.

“I'm fine, just fine,” I told her. I touched the strands of hair that lay out over my shoulders. I hadn't bothered cutting or curling my hair lately. Maybe I needed a trip to the beauty shop for a trim.

They glanced at each other. Then Lorelei peered into my face. “Are you certain?”

“Yes, of course.” I was having trouble meeting her gaze. I looked down at my sneakers and saw that I had forgotten to tie the laces. “Why wouldn't I be?”

“You don't look well,” said Lorelei.

“In what way?”

They didn't answer. Instead, Rose said to me, “There's a very old woman in the camp, an Issei who used to help women in your condition back in the old country. She can tell you what to do.”

I shook my head. Maybe it was the extra weight. “Nothing's wrong.”

Lorelei said, “She can make you feel better. And she can predict boy or girl.”

Again, I shook my head. “Not yet.”

That evening, Ray took me out into the elm grove. Those vase-shaped trees had lately changed to their autumn color, making a mesh of floating gold above us. Under our feet, leaves already fallen cushioned the ground as we walked into the shade.

“It's going to be a good harvest.” Ray reached down and picked up a stem fingered out with yellow leaves. He handed it to me. “When the war's over, the price regulations will be lifted. All the farmers I know are thinking that, come soon, we'll be able to get good money for our crops.”

I rolled the stem around in my hand, then passed it back to him. As I caught his eye, he had to look away. Whenever I looked into the heart of his eyes now, he did this. He couldn't hold my gaze. And in the brief second I got a glimpse of his eyes, I saw what lay there—that same look of reservation, of hesitation, of sadness and vulnerability he didn't want to reveal, but which I saw almost every day now.

“This harvest is still one of the best we've ever had in these parts.”

“You're a good farmer, Ray.”

“This is good land. Never let us down. Not once, since I was a boy.”

I looked out to the horizon that always sat at eye level. “Lucky for the world.”

“Lucky for us, too.” He readjusted the hat on his head. “This year'll pull in more money than ever before. We could add onto the house if you like.”

Now I looked back in that direction. “The house is fine.”

“I could add on a room for all those antiques of yours.” He shifted his weight from one foot and then to the other. “Or I could put in a nursery.”

“Please, no. Everything is fine the way it is. Your house,” I said, turning in that direction.

“Our house.”

“It's perfectly fine. And it's probably full of memories of your family just as it sits now.” Already I could feel the weight of the burden I carried. “We don't need to change a thing.”

The following Sunday, when I tried to button the same dress I'd worn just a week earlier to church, I noticed that it was tighter around the waist and through the hips. I tested it by sitting on the edge of the bed and saw that when I sat down, the dress spread open between buttons, revealing my pale and stretching skin. Quickly I tore it off and pulled out the dress that Rose and Lorelei had made for me. I had kept it folded in the drawer, not yet wanting to realize the inevitable. This morning, however, the time had come. I slipped the smocklike, loose dress over my neck and studied myself in the mirror.

People always say that pregnant women are beautiful, and as I've reached into old age, I find that I mostly agree. But back in those days, I could see no beauty in my newfound weight about the middle or in the watery pockets about the eyes. And again, as I looked at myself in the shapeless dress of a mother-to-be, it all came sweeping in over me. I had not anticipated any of it, that nature would surpass my will, that I would find myself in such a state of circumstances, that I would be feeling the war in such a new way through Rose and Lorelei, and least of all that Ray would fall in love.

When I walked out into the main room with my purse in hand, Ray stood up. He looked me over briefly, but said nothing about my new look, only, “Ready now?”

Before the church service began, I posted a notice on the bulletin board. I had finally come to my senses and realized the il logic in keeping valuable artifacts out on a farm where no one could see them. I would give much of it away, if only I could find someone who could appreciate the pieces, restore them to their former utilitarian beauty, and add them to a collection. I would keep only a few precious pieces for myself: the buttonhooks and my fork from the dugout.

In church, Reverend Case spoke of current topics and events instead of the usual rehashing of moral lessons. He discussed leadership and the ability to inspire, comparing General Dwight D. Eisenhower's leadership power to the spiritual power of Jesus Christ. Then he spoke of gratitude, the good fortune we had experienced living in a safe and prosperous country during such times. I had to agree, and occasionally, even I felt lucky. Ray could have been anyone, a cruel man or one who judged me. Instead, he had turned out to be a decent and kind person, one I couldn't imagine being mean ever at all.

We stayed on for the potluck lunch. I had prepared ambrosia salad, one dish so easy even I couldn't ruin it. Throughout lunch and fellowship time, several older women and a few of the men came up to ask me about the artifacts. Exactly what did I have, could I date the pieces, how was their condition? I invited all of them out to the farm for a look. Giving away the collection would have an added benefit I only just then realized. I could count on some visitors for a change.

After the last inquisitor left me alone to eat my lunch, Martha came to sit beside me. She ate off a plate held high in the air and balanced perfectly with one hand. With her other hand she pulled out a yellowed and curling photograph from her handbag and passed it over to me. “This was our grandfather, Horace Singleton, and his wife, Irma. The baby in Irma's arms was our father.”

I looked at the gaunt faces. It struck me as odd that people in old photographs never smiled. Standing gravely and dressed in suit and full-length dress, the baby in Irma's arms completely covered, they looked tired, as if even the small effort required by posing for a picture had been a chore. “Irma wasn't our grandmother. Our grandmother died after giving birth to our father, and Irma is the woman Horace remarried.”

I tried to imagine bringing a baby into this world without medical help, without adequate shelter. Had the baby been born in the dugout?

Martha resumed eating while I studied the photo. “What year was this taken?”

“Turn it over and read the back,” Martha said in between bites. “Someone, I think it was my grandfather, labeled it. What does it say?”

I turned the photo over: “Old homestead, 1879.”

Martha scanned the crowd. A moment later, she shifted in her seat. Then she arose, and after setting her plate down in the chair, she said, “I'll be right back. There's someone I'd like to introduce to you.”

She returned with a white-haired older gentleman on her arm. “This is the finest doctor in all of two counties. Dr. McCutcheon, this is my sister-in-law, Olivia.”

“Livvy, please,” I told him.

“So I see you might be in need of a checkup,” the doctor said with a smile well engraved into his cheeks.

Martha swooped up her plate and gave the old doctor her seat. “Dr. McCutcheon delivered all four of mine. He traveled out from La Junta for the two girls, but by the time I had the boys, I knew the signs. For those two, I traveled to him and enjoyed the luxury of a hospital bed.”

I handed over the photograph. And this was a bit of a conspiracy. If the doctor's office was located in La Junta, why was he attending church services way out here? Obviously he had come on invitation. For a moment, I felt myself an infant with too many parents hovering about the bassinet. But then I relaxed and told myself that surely they only meant well, that it was true—I did need to see a doctor.

“No,” Martha said, refusing the photograph from me. “Seeing as you enjoy history so much, I thought you might like to have it for yourself.”

“I'll frame it and keep it on my dresser. Thank you,” I said before she left me alone with the doctor. Their plan worked well. Before Dr. McCutcheon rose to go off and fix another plate from the selections at the buffet table, I had scheduled an appointment.

Mrs. Pratt soon came to take his place in the seat beside me. Again, she had used her kitchen skills for Ray's benefit. Beet farmers didn't have to ration sugar; therefore she had plenty of it with which to spoil Ray. In the icebox, she had left us a mixed-fruit pie with cream topping. “You'll need to leave it in there until just before you leave church today. Then place it back in your icebox as soon as you've arrived home.”

After I thanked her, we sat in silence. Just when I was starting to eat and enjoy the hum of others' conversations all around me, Mrs. Pratt asked, “And when is the happy arrival to occur?”

I stopped chewing. “We're not certain.”

Of course, it wasn't true. The doctor in Denver had predicted an early March delivery, only five months away and falling short of seven months after my marriage to Ray. I wondered how long it would take Mrs. Pratt and probably many others to start counting backward. How long would it take the party lines to spread the shocking news?

She picked at her food. “So fortunate to be blessed so soon.”