Anything but Still Lives: The Worlds of Edward Hopper

by Anne Gambling

radio:

  She’s making history

  Working for victory

  Rosie the Riveter …

  ‘Angie! Ange …’ Bella ran up behind her with a sack of work clothes held out in front. ‘Can you take these down to the city for me? They’ll just get in the way at the Music Hall, and I can’t afford to lose them …’

  ‘Sure,’ Angie smiled.

  ‘I’ll pick ‘em up in the morning,’ Bella called over her shoulder as she steamed back in through the doors to meet up with others heading to the concert. ‘Bye!’

  ‘Have a great time!’ Angie called, but she was already gone.

  It didn’t matter much that she wasn’t joining them. Only sometimes did she feel the pinprick of nostalgia. For good times and good laughs and being out with a bunch of girls. Or maybe even a boy. But her stomach churned so much these days. So much with worry for Pa and Jim, the not-knowing. Only ever an occasional letter. She felt better at home. Burrowed in a cocoon, with her mother’s knitting needles click-clicking a next pair of socks for boys far away.

  Keeps a sharp lookout for sabotage

  Sitting up there on the fuselage

  That little girl will do more than a male will do …

  Their voices faded but Angie knew the lyrics as well as the next proud Eastern worker. They see-saw-metronomed back and forth in her head as her feet held the beat all the way to the station where she stood on the platform and waited for the train through from Poughkeepsie. A little late coming in, not unusual for a Friday evening. All the factory workers disgorging, all wanting to head home, or down to Manhattan on such a fine summer’s evening for a little fun about Times Square, or on the Mall in Central Park.

  The train pulled in with a crunch and wheeze of brakes. She opened the wooden carriage door, edged her way into the compartment and sat down on the first available seat opposite a pair of enormous knees. Out of her bag came the Saturday Evening Post with Norman Rockwell’s mythical Rosie the Riveter illustration on the cover. She’d wanted to re-read the Memorial Day article ever since Eastern’s own Rosie had set her record. But before she was able to flick the first couple of pages, the enormous knees shifted a mite and brushed against her own, while a voice belonging somewhere above them said: ‘Excuse me Miss, I think I know you.’

  She looked up to meet a pair of earnest blue eyes set in the clean-shaven face and close-cropped hair of a serviceman about her age. As she started to make excuses (flirting? in her coveralls? out of the question!), he persisted: ‘No, really. I’m sure. Weren’t you at Lower Eastern Elementary? Your name is Angie, Angie Johnson – right?’

  That took her aback. ‘Why yes,’ she said, blinking into the memory of an existence in time and place other than a noisy aircraft assembly line, greasy overalls and stout boots. But still she couldn’t connect this face to her school days – until he smiled.

  A crinkled-up kind of smile, wide with lots of teeth and his whole face sort-of lighting up as if every part of it was involved in a singular act of expressing happiness. She saw again childhood freckles on a squidgy nose.

  ‘Oh my,’ she exclaimed. ‘Toby Danner!’ And they laughed and shook hands, shyly like the ten-year-olds their hearts still housed.

  He was on shore leave from the Navy. Coming back from a day trip to the Upper Hudson where he and his Pa used to go fishing. ‘Well,’ he said sheepishly, trying not to bump her knees again, ‘it’s more like leave in between assignments. I’ve requested a transfer to the USS Intrepid – she’s an aircraft carrier they launched back in April but she’s still being commissioned down in Newport, Virginia.

  ‘She’s so big, Angie!’ He barely had time to draw breath. ‘872 feet long, and can take a crew of more than 3,000 men. Can you believe that? That’s bigger than some goddamned towns – Oh, sorry.’ He pulled himself up short in the reportage. ‘Sorry for cussing – you just spend so much of your time with other menfolk, you forget what it’s like being round a lady.’

  She blushed. ‘Well, I think you could be excused when I look like this – it’s not really very ladylike.’

  ‘Oh, Angie,’ he scoffed. ‘That’s silly talk! You’re prettier now than I ever remember at school. Or maybe,’ he reflected, inspecting his knees, ‘it’s just that at school we don’t think much about girls …’ His voice trailed off in a confusion of etiquette. ‘Well, anyhow,’ he regrouped, ‘you’re one swell gal. And I think it’s just great you working up there at Eastern on the planes. Maybe one of yours will land on the Intrepid some day. It can take more than 80 fighters! Can you believe that?’ He was mesmerised by the enormity of the numbers, as well as his place amongst them.

  ‘Well,’ she reflected. ‘I just think about Jim flying in one of them, and it helping bring him safely home …’

  ‘Jim? He’s your big brother, ain’t he? Damn good ball player. Wasn’t he scouted for the Yankees in his senior year?’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah, well, there’s always after the war … maybe.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Each in a reverie of casualty headlines or first-hand witnessing of lives cut short.

  ‘Hey,’ Toby was saying. ‘Maybe I’ll see him out there in Pearl Harbour. That’s where the Intrepid’s headed. We should sail before the summer’s out.’

  The train journey passed quickly. At Grand Central, he offered to walk her home – ‘I mean, we’re going in the same direction after all.’ And at the intersection of Bowery and 3rd, said goodbye. Slowly. Unsurely. ‘Um, do you have plans tomorrow?’ he said. ‘It’d be great to chat some more and maybe have a soda?’

  ‘Sure,’ she smiled, already thinking about washing her hair, doing her legs, wearing something nice …

  Oh to sleep in on such a wonderful lazy summer’s morning! It was like holidays – a special weekend when she even had a date – and instinctively curled a bare leg out and over cool clean sheets at the thought. Each day up before dawn, and now here it was – 8am and sun streaming in through her bedroom window to lick her body all over. She couldn’t help it – a bubble of laughter caught and tugged at the corners of her mouth. A day off, and a date as well. Oh, it was too much joy. Just too too much.

  She rolled over and pulled the sheet again over her leg, the feeling soft, sensuous. What was it like to be touched by a boy – could she remember?

  It had seemed so long ago. She had been younger and a bit shy of her body, what it could do, what it wanted to do. But now? She felt the sheet swish against her. Her hand brushed softly the same place, her other wandered to a breast encased in cotton. Buttons. Buttons. I shouldn’t wear buttons today, she thought, noting how both hands were needed to negotiate the territory. But oh, once free and a nipple twitched? Oh. Please. Oh. To make this one weekend special before going back to boots and overalls and goggles, to thoughts of fear and war and not knowing.

  She reached for the Post with Rockwell’s Rosie and looked at the illustration with annoyance. A pity he’d made her so butch. While she understood the intention – we can do it just like a man – it seemed a shame not to present a more feminine figure who could do things as well as a man. There weren’t many girls Angie knew who looked like this, acted like this.

  She put the magazine aside, decided to get up, her nightdress askew with buttons undone. Not just for Toby, no. But for herself. There was a reason to prepare with care.

  She kissed her mother good morning and slid onto the bench at the breakfast table in the kitchen.

  ‘Nice to have a lie-in?’ she was asked.

  Angie nodded, then marvelled at the coffee pot on the table. ‘Where did this come from? What about the rationing?’

  Her mother smiled. ‘Well, why not,’ she justified to the cupboard above the stove. ‘It’s a special occasion having you here in daylight.’

  Of all the rationing – meat, peanut butter, cheese, even leather shoes – it was coffee that Angie missed most. ‘This is such a treat!’ she enthused. ‘Sniffing it is just enough!’

  Her mother turned on the radio ne
ws – always Edward R. Murrow on CBS first thing. Murrow’s commentary was on the Navy Secretary’s prediction a few days back about the war lasting another three to four years. Would Roosevelt’s address to the nation next day confirm this?

  ‘I don’t know,’ her mother shook her head. ‘Sometimes it’s better not to listen, better not to know. Then we can’t get sad.’

  Soon enough though the weather report was on in its stead – hot, sunny, delightful. ‘As if we didn’t know that already!’ the announcer gaily chortled, lauching straight into a song from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Perfect for a steamy southern-like summer’s day.

  Summertime

  And the livin’ is easy

  Fish are jumpin’

  And the cotton is high

  Your daddy’s rich

  And your mamma’s good lookin’

  So hush little baby

  Don’t you cry

  One of these mornings

  You’re going to rise up singing

  Then you’ll spread your wings

  And you’ll take to the sky …

  So hush little baby

  Don’t you cry

  Angie sipped from her cup in blissful silence. It was as if everything was being sucked into her, the sun, the coffee, the heat, the song. Recharging her with the joy of life. Recharging her desire to be desired. Spreading those wings so she could take to the sky …

  ‘Where are you off to this afternoon with young Toby?’ her mother asked.

  She smiled and shrugged in tandem. ‘I’m not