The Magic of Ordinary Days (25 page)

And when he slipped his arms about my waist, I found myself no longer nervous. Instead, waters of calm and confidence came coursing through me. My feet were fluid on the dance floor. Not much later, that newfound sense of pride visited me again, and I danced high in Edward's arms, a sailing ship rising high out of the waves. If only my sisters could see me now. And wouldn't Mother, too, have been proud? Not to speak of Aunt Eloise and Aunt Pearl. There I was, floating over the dance floor in the arms of a handsome man. Me, Livvy.

After we grew tired of dancing, he took me to a bar. We sat leaning close to each other on our barstools in a place that played jazz, where hazy cigarette smoke drifted in the air, and where laughter became contagious. Nearby, the bartender splashed honey hued liquor over ice cubes in small glasses, pouring with both hands at once to keep up with orders.

I cupped a hand to my face and said over the sound of the music and the other voices, “I've never been to one of these places before.”

He cocked his head my way. “Why is that?”

I shrugged. “My father is a minister. He doesn't believe in alcohol.”

A look of reservation came over Edward's face.

“It's okay. I've always made my own decisions, and I want to try it.”

He thought for a minute, then seemed to relax again. “Better start off easy, then. Try orange juice and gin. It's a fairly mild one”.

Edward drank heartily and with confidence, downing two small tumblers of whiskey while I sipped on my drink. I found it not bad at all—orange juice with an aftertaste of white fire. He hummed along with the music and occasionally glanced over at me with a smile. The bartender served me just as he did everyone else, without a falter. I must have looked as if I belonged, and when I finished the first drink, Edward ordered me another.

I thought the alcohol was having no effect on me until I rose to leave. Then I found myself woozy on my feet as Edward steered me outside into the cool night air. I walked onward, but I could have sworn my legs had been sliced away at the thigh. I put one foot before the other, but it seemed to be happening by some other's will, not my own.

I would have followed him anywhere he wished to take me.

Even now, however, I don't use the alcohol as an excuse for what I later did. I went to his room willingly. My body was reacting quickly, instinctively, subliminally, before rational thought had a chance to compete in the race. I fell so deeply in love that night, and since I had so little to give, I gave it all.

He didn't seem to mind my inexperience. In a hotel room lit by a yellow light, he undressed me tenderly. The act itself began painfully, and at first I found his weight on me a bit frightening, but I loved it anyway. I took in every thrust of the way he desired me so. How hungry and desperate he seemed to be for my body, and how new and unexpected it all was—the feeling of our chests pressed together, sounds that came involuntarily from the back of his throat, the happy exhaustion that came after. Never had I felt wanted in this way, never had I felt the power a woman possesses to give a man pleasure.

Afterward, we lay together on top of the covers. Murmuring words of love, he kissed my neck and face and nose and ears, and of course my lips, too many times to recall. His touch on my skin was eloquent; he wrote words on my body never uttered before. And when he entered me again, this time his love was given slowly. After long moments with my eyes sealed shut, I opened them to look at the molding on the ceiling, breathe in the damp air of his neck, and remind myself that this was actually happening to me.

In the early hours of morning, I slipped back into my father's house, praying that he would not be up waiting for me. But instead I found that I probably could have remained out the entire night, could have spent even more time in Edward's arms. Father was sleeping soundly in his room, his snores so loud that I could hear them in the hallway as I tiptoed by.

In only a few hours, Edward would be arriving alone at the bus station to return to Camp Hale. I had wanted badly to see him off, but he had insisted that our last memories come from our night together, in the yellow-lit hotel room, that he would take that memory away with him instead of one of us having to say goodbye.

“Don't be sad. And don't worry for me,” he had said as he kissed my face for the last time outside of the hotel.

“When will I see you again?”

He kissed me again. “A soldier never knows.”

“But you can let me know. Keep in touch with letters.”

He smiled and smoothed back my hair on either side of my face. “I'm not much of a writer, but for you, I'll make an exception.”

“Oh, please do,” I said and clung to his shoulders. “Write to me every day.”

He kissed me for the last time, then took a step away. “For the next few weeks, we'll be in the last of our backcountry training. But as soon as I get back to base, before I ship out, I'll write. Okay?”

At the breakfast table the following morning, Father ripped off his glasses and stared me down over the top of his newspaper. “Olivia. What has gotten into you?” he demanded.

I shook myself. In front of me, I held a large spoonful of oatmeal. I had no idea how long the spoon had been hanging up there in the air, dripping globs of oatmeal onto a lace tablecloth that had been Mother's favorite.

I laughed at myself and set the spoon down in my bowl. “Just daydreaming, I guess.”

Father grumbled as he turned back to his newspaper. “Daydreaming ? Folly for Abigail and Beatrice. But never before for you.”

I laughed again. Yes, how dull my days had been before this joyous creature had come to sit beside me, to ride with me. “True enough, Father. Never before for me.”

Twenty-six

The night after Ray kissed me found me rolling and turning in bed like potatoes boiling in water, and I slept little. I tried flicking on the light and reading but couldn't keep my eyes focused on the page. I kept thinking about leaving the farm, going back and finishing my graduate work, as Abby had suggested.

As a divorced woman with a baby, I wouldn't be allowed on an expedition to Egypt, but probably I could teach at any of several colleges. And maybe I could work at an excavation site nearby. I'd once visited the center of the world of the Anasazi, Chaco Canyon, and found it magnificent. Much work still needed to be done there. Or I could take the baby and work at Mesa Verde. Those Indians who lived on and around Mesa Verde had been Colorado's first farmers. And perhaps I'd feel closer to Edward there. I remembered the first time he and I had talked out on the sidewalk in front of the USO, and how he had smiled when he realized we shared an interest in the Anasazi. Edward had smiled, that crooked smile.

But now I lay still. Which side rose up higher? Already I was forgetting his face. The father of my unborn child. I'd never had a chance to take a snapshot of him, so it would be up to me to remember. I closed my eyes and tried to picture sitting across from him at the snack counter in the bright artificial light. I took myself back to those precious hours when his face lingered just above mine, kissing me. But still, hard as I tried to recall, I couldn't remember the details. The memory of his face was starting to fade away from me. Instead, I kept seeing Ray's face, demanding an answer.

I made mental lists of Ray's faults, so I wouldn't forget. He had few interests beyond this farm and no good friends beyond his family. He was inexperienced, but his lack of exposure to women didn't bother me as much as his lack of interest in the larger world. He was prejudiced or ignorant; either way, he didn't see people like Rose and Lorelei as true Americans.

The next evening, I drove over to the camp again. Rose and Lorelei had invited me to help chaperone a high school dance in the mess hall, a themed “barn dance,” and to bring some bales of hay out with me to be used for decoration. I arrived in time to help move tables and chairs out of the way after dinner, then we decorated the room with the bales of hay I'd brought out, some pumpkins and gourds and Indian corn, and finally with orange, red, and yellow crepe paper and balloons.

I was surprised to find that the tension between Rose and Lorelei had returned. They had dressed for the dance—Lorelei in denims cut off just below her knees and Rose in men's overalls over a plaid shirt. But they seemed uncomfortable every time they moved near each other, and therefore we worked together in silence until the dance began. When the music started, we sat in chairs pushed up against the wall and tapped our toes to the beat of the four-boy band, named the Jive Bombers. The mess hall soon filled with high school boys and girls all dressed in their cotton shirts and rolled-up jeans, some of them wearing straw hats and freckles painted on their cheeks. The musicians were quite good. After we had listened and watched for an hour or so, Rose and Lorelei looked more relaxed. Lorelei looked over at Rose and me. “Come on,” she said. “We can't just sit here listening all night. Let's try some steps.”

At first Rose and I didn't move. Then Lorelei looked at me again, pleadingly. When I told her I knew how to do the jitterbug, Lorelei sprang off the chair. “Oh, please show us,” she pleaded.

Rose jumped to her feet, too.

“This should be interesting.” I half laughed. “I feel much too heavy for dancing.”

Even Rose was begging me now. “Oh, come on. Please try”

I pushed to my feet and we danced together, the three of us. We practiced the fast steps and swings, bops and twists, taking turns in the lead. I stood back as Rose swung Lorelei behind her back, and Lorelei slid Rose in between her legs. Dust came puffing out of the wood floor beneath our feet. I found myself laughing and saw them smile and laugh, too. I hoped things would be better between the girls after this. When we finished trying some Lindy Hop steps, they were panting and brushing the hair off their foreheads. And when they smiled at each other again, I laughed like no war ever existed.

It made me remember past New Year's Eve parties. Our family had listened to the countdown in Times Square on the radio, passing the time by dancing to all the previous year's best tunes. Mother would let us girls sip apple juice out of wineglasses and pretend to be grown-ups. It was the only time we were allowed to stay up until midnight. And how my mother could sing. She never played the piano or organ, musical skills almost expected of a minister's wife, but she could sing along with the music so well, it would be hard to distinguish her voice from that of the professional. Father was usually in one of his better moods for this occasion, and always he took turns with each of us girls, letting us dance on the toes of his polished shoes, moving us about in the dance steps that Mother said once he had practiced with her for hours. I remembered how Abby, Bea, and I would fight for our turns, and how sophisticated I felt swaying about in his arms.

After the dance ended, I couldn't face driving back alone to the farm, not yet. The girls and I found the Umahara quarters empty, and there we sprawled out together across one of the lower beds. I flipped through the butterfly notebook, the same one they'd carried with them when we had taken our drives during the harvest. Rose stretched out beside me and glanced over at the butterfly drawings before me. She pushed the curls away from her forehead. “If you could be a butterfly, what kind would you be?”

I turned another page. “Oh, probably one with very large, false eyes.”

Rose looked me over and shifted forward on the bed so her face was close. In a whisper, she asked, “Livvy, why would you say that?”

I still don't know why I told them. It was unplanned, escaped from me before I knew it. “The baby isn't Ray's.”

Lorelei was right beside me now, too. She and Rose looked helpless, confused.

“I got in trouble. My father arranged this marriage.”

Now they looked wounded.

Rose waited for a moment, then said, “You don't love him. Your husband.”

I shook my head.

Lorelei barely nodded, then breathed out her words. “You married him for the honor of your family.”

I took in a deep breath, trying to get the weight to lift off my chest. “Yes. I guess so.”

I looked back at the butterfly drawings Rose had long ago sketched in the book.

“It shouldn't have happened to you,” said Lorelei, a bit louder now.

“I caused it.”

When I looked at her, I saw tears in the hollows of Lorelei's beautiful, almond-shaped eyes. I couldn't believe it. Lorelei, tough Lorelei. Now I was consoling her. “It's okay,” I whispered.

“No, it isn‘t,” Lorelei said and wiped her tears away. “It isn't fair.” Then she met my gaze. “But no one ever said that life was fair.”