The Magic of Ordinary Days (23 page)

He wanted to meet me downtown, so I dressed in my favorite dress, spent a ridiculous amount of time styling my hair, then I took the streetcar down to the shopping district. He was waiting for me outside the five-and-dime, and when he saw me, he straightened up, stamped out his cigarette on the sidewalk, and took me inside for lunch at the snack counter.

We sat across from each other at the booth. For a few minutes, I couldn't think of anything to say, but strangely, the lack of conversation didn't seem to disturb him, and therefore it didn't disturb me, either. Instead, I studied his face, the smooth skin across his forehead, the barely discernible shadow line where beard would begin had he not shaved, a gleaming set of teeth. As he placed his order with the waitress, I noticed the way his smile rose just a tiny bit higher on the right side of his face.

Every time I found myself looking too closely at him or gazing for too long a period of time, I turned my eyes down into my plate and kept on eating, amazed that I could eat at all.

He fell into talking about himself. “When I was about twelve, my folks sold the ranch outside of Durango. They bought a hotel in Estes Park that they still operate to this day.” He told me about the famous people who had visited their hotel, including governmental leaders, baseball players, and even a few actors and ac tresses out of Hollywood.

“Will you return to Estes Park after the war?” I asked.

“I think not.” He crossed his arms into his lap after he finished eating. “I have other plans. I want to strike out on my own, make something new happen with my own ideas.”

“That's exactly the way I feel, too.” Then I told him about my particular interests in Egypt, about Akh-en-aten, his wife Nefer titi, and their six daughters.

Later, we rode the streetcar to the Museum of Natural History, where we walked through the exhibits. At each one, we paused to study the display and read the information. And at each one, we finished and turned to walk away at exactly the same moment. As we strolled about, he rested his hand on the small of my back and guided me through the doorways and up the stairs between floors. And something about that light touch on the back of my dress filled me with a body of pride I'd never felt before. We ended up riding the streetcar to Civic Center Park, where we spent the rest of the day talking and meandering about. Everywhere lilies were blooming. Lilies, the flower of weddings.

Even as the afternoon sun began to sink down low in the sky, we remained together. He told me that his infantry division, at Camp Hale high in the mountains, was in survival training for the coldest of temperatures and the harshest of conditions. They were honing their mountaineering and skiing skills in preparation for secret campaigns against the Germans, for war in Southern Europe.

He stopped. “The land up there.” He gestured west, toward the mountains. “It's the best terrain for skiing any of us has ever seen. When this war is over, some of us plan to come back.”

In many regards, he was much like the other soldiers I'd met. Mostly they were lonely; they wanted a friend, a dance partner, someone to listen to their dreams and plans, someone to care if they came back dead or alive. Most of them were small-town boys away from home for the first time. They all had ideas and hopes for the future that they wanted to share with someone. But there the similarities ended; everything else about Edward was different. The confidence in his smile, the way he hung his hands easily and relaxed at his sides, the way he moved in closer as he spoke to me. That smile that pulled me in like ice cream melting down a cone.

I wanted to know everything about him, all the minute details of his past, his present-day thoughts and dreams, and everything that had come in between. Had he had many girlfriends?

As we walked onward, he continued to think out loud to me. “We'll come back here and buy up the property, develop the ski runs, and construct a base lodge, build places for equipment and restaurants. We'll turn it into a resort for skiing. Have you ever tried it?”

“Yes,” I answered. “I can make my way down the mountain, although not with much finesse. I fall into the snow more often than I care to remember.”

“But you get back up,” he said.

“Yes, sometimes I have to force myself, but I do try again.”

He took my hand then. He entwined each of his wide fingers between each of mine, and he looked at me with such intensity I had to turn away. And later, when we parted, when he raised my face up to his, I couldn't look at him then, either. I felt the soft warmth of lips upon mine, and that was all. I fell into a cave of stillness, and for that brief moment, nothing else on earth mattered. Not the war. For the moment, even my mother's death feathered away.

A woman shoved me aside. She knocked me away from Edward's lips and out of my daze. I said goodbye to Edward, turned away, and mounted the steps to the streetcar. But as it pulled away, clanging up the curving street, I watched him until he disappeared from my sight. He hadn't moved, and I touched my lips. It had been the best day, the perfect day, even better than dreaming, because it had been real.

That night, I tried listening to the radio but soon clicked it off. A book on Pueblo Indian religion that had earlier held my fascination could no longer hold me still. I couldn't read about others' lives when my own life had taken such an unexpected turn, when my own life held more promise than anything to be found on mere paper. I was experiencing the mixture of emotions others in love had felt for centuries. I had moments of fear, then reservation, and finally a sudden thrill knocked all the rest away until the cycle started over again. At night, I tossed and turned until I worked the sheets off the corners of my mattress. At home and by myself, I turned the radio volume high and danced with an imaginary Edward, and other times, I walked around with china plates balanced on the palms of my hands.

Twenty-three

The night after I'd spent another full day at Camp Amache, Ray came up beside me as I was washing the dinner dishes. I was tired. At the camp, I'd stood on my feet watching Rose help out in one of the junior high school English classes. She was so proud to finally be able to teach English, as had always been her dream. For two hours, I had listened and watched as she taught a segment on grammar and then led her pupils through an exercise. I was hoping she'd have time to break away and talk to me, to tell me what she had been so worried about the last time I'd seen her. But she was so enjoying herself, proud of every rule of grammar she knew so well. I didn't want to ruin her day, and besides, she never left the classroom anyway. Later I'd found Itsu, who taught me another lesson in
ikebana.

Ray searched out a cup towel and started drying off the dishes one by one. I knew he wanted to speak to me about something that was bothering him, so I waited until he built up the words to say it.

“You were gone a long time today.”

“I'm learning how to arrange flowers, Japanese-style.”

“What for?”

I smiled. “Just to learn something new.”

He looked back at the plate he was drying. “I still don't know why”

“Ray, I like to do new things, to go to different places.”

“So you were at the camp all day?”

“Yes.”

He looked damaged.

I turned off the faucet. “Ray, there isn't enough for me to do around here.” I sighed. “No, that's not exactly true. I'm sure other farm wives are very busy. I just don't know what else to do, how to help around here. At the camp, it seems there's so much going on, and I'm learning new things. It makes me feel useful again.”

“You're useful here.”

I turned back to the sink, wiped a circle of suds around on a plate, rinsed it, and passed it over to Ray. “Not very.”

He dried the plate. “You could do more on the farm.”

“Like what?”

He waited for a minute. “Let me think on it a bit.”

By the next morning, he had come up with something. Ray found me on the porch, where I was standing around sipping on my coffee. “Come along with me today,” he said.

“For what?”

“I got to get the dead branches that's come off the elm trees.”

“Am I helping?”

He nodded, and a few minutes later we were heading out in the truck, driving toward the tall elm trees, now standing silently, bare branches making a spiderweb against the sky. At the grove, we piled out of the truck. Since the last snowfall, the ground and everything above it had dried out during sunny afternoons. The land was again spiked with crackling weeds, and the dead leaves beneath our feet were as stiff as hairbrush bristles, snapping as we walked over them. Ray retrieved a large handsaw from the truck bed, walked to the trees, then started lifting dead branches off the ground and sawing off smaller limbs so he could fit them into the bed of the truck.

Ray told me I could pick up the smaller branches and stems and carry them to the truck. And even though my abdomen now stuck out before me as a hard mound, I could still easily enough reach over and pick up small tree limbs off the ground. As I gathered and carried my collected stacks back to the truck, I felt my heart and breathing speed up a bit, felt the brisk air down deep inside my lungs. Ray and I piled the bed high, and when it was full, we took a load back toward the house, where we stored the wood in a stack Ray would later burn for mulch. We made several trips back and forth from the woodpile to the elm grove. The sun traveled overhead across cloudless blue sky without a hint of wind.

Moving about and working alongside Ray felt much as it had felt to work outside in the garden with my mother. After a few hours, the ground between trees was no longer tangled with branches, but instead was a dry carpet of curling leaves. These we raked up and pitched into the truck bed, too, as Ray said they posed a fire hazard. To my amazement, I found that close to the ground, having been sheltered by the layer of leaves, some patches of green grass still grew. After we finished, Ray parked the truck back out in the sunlight at the edge of the grove, facing it. I rolled down my window and breathed in the smells of fall, the crispness in the air, sweet as cider on your tongue.

“This was a great idea, Ray.”

“Thought you might like it.”

“But why is the grove so far from the house?”

“My grandfather started this orchard. I don't rightly know for sure why he put it so far away, but probably this was the worst soil he could find. Once you figure out the right trees, you can plant a grove like this one on the poorest soil of the farm, in land that isn't good for anything else.”

“Now it's lovely”

“Thanks.”

“And thank you for bringing me here and letting me help.”

“You're sure welcome.”

The next day, I wanted to catch up with Abby or Bea, but when I drove to the pay telephone in Wilson, I kept on driving past it. I went to Camp Amache instead, uninvited, yet Rose and Lorelei looked pleased to see me. They were working again in the silkscreen shop, however, and therefore I spent more time with Itsu learning to arrange flowers than I spent with either of them. They did manage to get away for lunch, which we ate together in the mess hall. It was typical mass-produced food, not even as good as the stuff that had been served in the hospital cafeteria the last time Mother was kept as an inpatient, and not nearly as good as the food served on campus.

I remembered the last time I'd seen them together, the tension between them, and Rose's worried face. Even though they seemed better now, I wanted to ask Lorelei about it, to reassure myself that whatever the trouble was, it was over. I wanted to know what was happening between her and Rose and the men with whom they'd been corresponding. If only I could get her off to herself, Lorelei would talk to me, I knew it. Instead, Itsu and Masaji joined us at the table, so we couldn't talk about anything personal for the rest of the meal.

I ate quickly and hoped Rose and Lorelei would, too. Then I followed them out. We walked full face into a wind blowing cold air straight through our clothes. Their short hair was whipping about their heads like ribbons caught in a fan. Rose wrapped herself in her sweater and hugged her arms around her body as she ducked into the door of their quarters. Rose's ability to read ideas off my face continued to amaze me. Lorelei and I followed her through the door.

We stood inside, rubbing our hands together and shivering.

Lorelei fluffed her hair with her fingers. “It's dreadful out there.”

Rose checked her watch. “We've only a few minutes left.”

I was still shaking despite the relative warmth inside their room. “I just want to know.” I looked directly at Lorelei. “Is everything okay?”