With a certain small satisfaction he thought about Alaine’s record collection. The records and player would have earned her a position of eminence in the high fidelity crowd if she hadn’t been ten years ahead of her time. In those days, he thought, people listened to music on their equipment instead of test-records filled with the sounds of tinging triangles and clacking woodblocks.
He had always liked that apartment. Feminine, without being frothy, it was the sort of place he imagined Allie Wylie might have had. Alaine had taste and money and the place showed both. After a long flight, or a day with General Kirbee, it was like another, less trying world.
The rent, he remembered, was high. How high, Alaine wouldn’t say. “You’ll think me extravagant,” she would tease, “and then you’ll never make an honest woman of me.” And in the end, when they married, she gave the place up to live in an apartment Miguel could afford on junior officer’s pay.
It had seemed precipitous, their establishing a so-domestic situation on such short acquaintance. But the thing you lost sight of, Miguel thought, staring out at the sea just now touched with a bluish, predawn light, was the rush of the war years. What happened to our generation was that we lost the last years of youth and the first years of manhood to the war. The forties now seemed as though they had never been.
Their affair had angered Billy, Miguel remembered, and pleased Tom. Once married, Tom turned his attention to getting Miguel to “settle down.” It didn’t take long, Miguel thought. He had known almost from the first that Alaine Winters must marry him.
Alaine’s twenty-second birthday fell on the last Sunday in April in 1943. Miguel had flown General Kirbee and his staff to a meeting with the Mexican Corps Area Commander in El Paso the preceding Wednesday, and he returned from Juarez with an extravagantly large bottle of L’Heure Bleu for her present.
They had cocktails at the Top o’ the Mark because Allie liked the view, and then dinner at the Blue Fox. It was a fine night, clear and brilliantly lit by a full moon, and after dinner they walked along the Marina, where the yachts lay gray and still in their warpaint and the dim-out surrendered to the moonlight.
There was a tender quality to their lovemaking that night, a warmth and gentleness that was new.
Miguel lay quite still, listening to the regular sound of Allies breathing beside him. In the far distance he could hear the foghorns blowing on the bridge caissons. The fog must be coming through the Gate now, he thought, and he could see it in his mind, thick and white in the moonlight.
He turned his head and saw that Allie was watching him.
“I thought you were asleep,” he said.
“No.” She brushed his cheek with the back of her hand.
“I love you, Allie,” he said.
A half-smile touched her lips. “Are you feeling that guilty?”
“Don’t joke,” he said. “It isn’t easy for me to tell you.”
“I know,” she said softly. “Oh, I know.”
“Happy birthday,” he said, and ran his hand up the long curve of her thigh, over her hip and the roundness of her belly.
“Mike—”
“Yes?”
“Thank you for everything.”
He smiled and asked, “For what, Allie?”
“For a wonderful day. For dinner. For the perfume. And for saying you love me.”
“Believe it, Allie. Believe it with all your heart.”
“I wonder.”
“It’s true.”
“Do you have any idea what you’re letting yourself in for?” she asked.
“I’m the one who should ask that,” he said.
“No,” she said. She sat up suddenly, crossing her legs so that her feet touched his side. Watching her, he felt a rebirth of desire.
She caught his searching hand and said, “No, listen to me. I’m serious.”
He grinned. “So am I.” But she looked so intent and determined that he lay back and lit a cigarette, liking what the flare of the lighter did for the deep gray of her eyes. “All right,” he said. “I’m listening.”
“I’m a oneman woman, Mike,” she said thoughtfully. “I know how trite that sounds. I have all the bourgeois virtues, believe it or not. I’m a House and Garden woman. I think that’s something you ought to know.” She took a cigarette of her own and lit it from his. He let his hand linger on hers until she moved it away. “I’m out of date, I guess. I should have been born a hundred years ago.”
“Is it all right for me to say I’m glad you weren’t?”
“Mike,” she said soberly. “What I’m trying to tell you, maybe, is that I’m in love with you.” She stopped, frowning.
Miguel lay quite still, waiting. Presently, he asked, “Well, Allie?”
“Tom told me about Aldyth Wylie. He thought maybe I should know.”
Miguel smoked in silence. It was as though some sharp object had suddenly pierced his vitals. “I was sixteen years old then,” he said slowly.
“Oh, Mike, please. I understand. And I know you loved her very much and this isn’t the same sort of thing at all because—because, well, you aren’t sixteen any more. I know all that.” She went on in a rush of words now, as though she had only just found the courage to say something that had been on her mind for a long while. “What I want you to understand about me is that I want—no, that isn’t right—I need to be wanted because I’m me. Not because I’m like someone you once cared very much for.” She pushed her cigarette into an ash tray and said unsteadily, “I’m saying this all wrong.”
When Miguel didn’t help her, she slipped down beside him and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “Mike, if this is just an affair, tell me. Please. I won’t turn you away. Girls have loved soldiers like this before. But if an affair is all it is, don’t he to me. Don’t tell me you love me. Don’t make it—cheap.” Miguel felt numb. “I hadn’t thought about Aldyth for years until you brought her up,” he said slowly.
“Mike. Please don’t.”
“You think I’m lying?”
“I know you are.”
He kissed her, pulling her against him hard. “And is that a he, too?”
“God help me,” Alaine said unsteadily. “What have I gotten myself into?”
“Marry me, Allie,” he said desperately.
“Loving a man like you won’t be easy.”
“Did you hear what I said? I asked you to marry me.”
She began to laugh helplessly, holding herself tightly against him.
“What’s funny?”
“Oh, love,” she said clinging to him. “Please, Mike, yes.”
“I love you, Allie,” he said firmly now. “I love you and I want you to marry me.”
“And what will we tell our children, darling, when they ask where you proposed to me?” He could feel her shoulders shaking, though whether with tears or laughter he couldn’t be sure.
“We’ll tell them the truth,” he said, searching for her mouth with his lips. “The truth, Allie, Allie. .
They awoke in the dawn. Miguel could see the dark shape of his blouse draped over a chair, the metal insignia gleaming dully. He stretched and said, “Can we have some music? Softly—the neighbors won’t hear.”
She got out of bed and walked through the cool blue stillness. It was the Brahms Second Piano Concerto. She stood, bent over the machine, listening to the opening themes and then straightened and walked slowly, graceful in her nudity, back to the bed. He bunched the pillows against the headboard and made room for her beside him. He put his mouth against her hair and said, “I like your music, Allie.”
“We like a lot of the same things,” Alaine said.
“Yes,” Miguel said, “we do.”
Alaine sighed and closed her eyes, resting against him. “Do you have to fly tomorrow—today, I mean?”
Miguel shook his head.
“Good. Let’s sleep late.”
“Paradise for the soldier,” Miguel said.
Allie was silent for a time an
d then she said, “Mike—tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Everything. Everything about yourself. All the things you’ve thought and dreamed about—”
“My God. Do you have plenty of time?”
“The rest of my life.”
“There isn’t much, Allie.”
“Will you really write a book, Mike?”
“After the war. I think so. I know the world is full of people who are always going to write books, but I’m really going to do it. It’s important to me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever seriously wanted to do.”
“Then you’ll do it.”
“I will. If you stand over me with a whip.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t do that, darling.”
He rubbed his cheek against her thick blond hair. “It’s like silk, like flax in the sun. Like all the beautiful clichés in the world, Allie.” He laughed a little to himself. “We always complain about things being trite. But they’re trite because they’re so obviously so. I’ll have to remember that.”
“Talk to me,” she said drowsily. “Keep talking to me. I want to hear your voice.”
“I’m going to write a best seller and make a million dollars for us and we’ll get on a boat and travel around the world forever. We’ll keep going and never come back.”
Alaine brushed his shoulder with a lass. “How much do you weigh?”
He looked at her in amused perplexity and said, “A hundred and sixty. Why?”
She ran her hand over his chest and replied, “I like what you weigh. I like the way you look. I guess I like everything about you.”
“You’re sweeping me off my feet, you know.”
“You’re joking, but I am. I want to.”
They lay silently listening to the Brahms. Presently Alaine said, in a different tone, “Will you have to go overseas, Mike?” He could not keep the bitterness out of his voice as he replied, “I doubt it.”
“Because General Kirbee is a friend of your fathers?”
“Who told you that?”
“Billy.”
“God damn him. No, I don’t mean Billy and I don’t mean Kirbee.”
“I don’t care, Mike. I’m selfish enough to be glad if you don’t have to go.”
“Well, I’m not glad, Allie. The greatest war in history and I’m fighting it by being a bus driver for General Kirbee. I’ve got my father to thank for that.”
“Will you tell me about your family, Mike?” Alaine asked. “I really ought to know, shouldn’t I?”
“There isn’t much to tell. My mother was Spanish. My father was born in Mexico, but he’s mostly German. His father was Jewish. I should have told you that, maybe. You might have ideas about Jews.”
“I haven’t,” Alaine said.
“I don’t mean to be nasty about it, but I hear a great many of those smart cracks about kikes in the Army. People don’t know I’m part Jewish. The funny part of it is that I didn’t know it was a big thing until I went to Roslyn. They had a quota. The school had forty students, but there was still a quota. For people professing the Jewish faith, you understand. Not for people with one Jewish grandfather and enough money to pay full tuition. I never have figured where I stand—in the ghetto or out.”
Alaine touched the medallion Miguel wore on a chain around his neck. “Your family, though. You were Catholic at home?”
“Mother was. But she met Dad somehow and they ran off together. Her parents never forgave her. It was bad enough to run away with someone they considered a social inferior, but to have him be half a Jew as well—you just don’t do things like that in Spanish families. She had to give up her religion.”
Allie shivered. “It sounds medieval.”
“It is, in a way. But maybe giving up the Church wasn’t such a chore for Maria. She was a woman of considerable intelligence. It was never fashionable for women of her background. She was also a lady. You might say the combination was fatal. She was a oneman woman, too.” He fell silent. After some time, he asked, “Are you sure you want to hear this? It isn’t pretty, Allie.”
“I’d like to know, Mike. If you want to tell me.”
“I don’t really like to talk about it. What good can it do?”
“If you’d rather not—”
He reached for a cigarette pack and lit two. He handed one to Alaine. “Turn off the Brahms, then. It isn’t the right music for this.”
When she was back in bed, he said, “Mother was older than Raoul. About ten or eleven years older. It was one of those big loves, the land that leave nothing but raw edges when they’re over.” His voice was tinged with bitterness. “They left Mexico and came to San Francisco. Luis was born that first year. Times were tough, money was scarce, but they were happy enough. Then Essie came along. They were doing better financially by then and maybe some of the stardust was out of their eyes. Raoul’s, anyway. Then, after a long while, I came along. They were living in a big house on Rockridge Terrace in Berkeley then. You might say I was the result of a last try at getting along together. It didn’t work. Dad moved out of the house by the time I was five years old. He had a redheaded mistress.” He paused and then said, “Not long after that, Maria died. Essie couldn’t take it. She became a nun. That’s about it. I went to live with my father, spent a year at Encina, had to go home because he was sick—he’s been sick for a long while now—and in 19421 quit Stanford and enlisted. Period. That’s the story of my life to date.”
“And Luis?”
“In the Navy.” He inhaled deeply and blew smoke at the dawn-lit window. “I told you there wasn’t too much to it.”
“Who was Concha?”
“Tom must have told you about her.” He laughed softly. “He and Billy used to think there was something wrong with me because of Concha. She was my nurse, my nana. She was like a mother, only more so. I didn’t know Maria very well, really.”
“What happened to her? Concha, I mean?”
“My father sent her back to Mexico after Mother died and Essie went into the convent. I still get letters from her. On my birthday and my name day, and on Christmas and Easter. Devout Catholic, of course. Like all her people.”
“You must have been very lonely after she went away.”
“I was.”
“What made your sister decide, well—what do you suppose made her choose a life like that?”
So many things, he thought. And yet so few, really. With Maria gone, and Anson as well, where could she turn but to her faith?
Yet Essie must always have known that Anson would have stayed with her forever if she had only asked him. If, Miguel thought, that perfidious word. If Essie had had enough love in her to make that mawkish boy into a man. But Anson never reached a man’s estate, unless he achieved it in the single, immolative act of dying for an ideal.
“There was a fellow Essie used to go with,” Miguel said. “His name was Anson Wilbur.”
“The boy who went to Spain.”
“He was killed.”
“Oh, Mike.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” Miguel said, “but you may as well have it right. You probably have the cart before the horse. Essie didn’t go into the convent because Anson died. She had already been a nun for more than two years when he left the States.” He could sense her perplexity. “As soon as she took her first vows he left Berkeley. He was in a CCC camp for a while and after that he was just on the bum. He was all over. Chicago, the Middle West, in the South, too. Georgia and Alabama. He was beaten up by the Klan, pitched into a dozen or so jails, run out of towns—”
“How awful, Mike.”
“He was working as a union organizer—or agitator, if you will. Finally, he went to Spain. In 1936. I hadn’t seen him for years, but I missed him. The odd thing is that he always used to write to me. Post cards. I even received a couple from Spain.”
Alaine was still. Miguel lit another cigarette from the coal of the stub in his fingers and went on thoughtfully.
; “The last time I actually saw him was the day of Christmas Eve in 1932. He was working for Maria then, doing odd jobs, mowing lawns, things like that. We were going to open our Christmas presents that night—we always did that. Instead of waiting until Christmas morning the way it’s done here. I guess we would have had Las Posadas and a piñata, too, if Concha and Maria had had their way. I remember Essie had just finished trimming the tree. It was a big one. Raoul always spent Christmas Eve with us and he liked a big tree.
“Anson was cutting the lawn and I was out on the step watching and talking to him. About four o’clock Raoul’s La Salle drove up. He’d never come that early on Christmas before. He went into the house to talk to Maria. I wanted to go in with him, but he told me to stay outside with Anson. About half an hour later he came out of the house, climbed into his car and drove away without saying good-by. I didn’t know what to make of it, Allie. Then Essie came out of the house and she was crying, almost hysterical. She began to scream at Anson. She said Dad had asked Maria for a divorce and somehow it was Anson’s fault. God was punishing her for the things she’d done with Anson. Going to Communist meetings and God knows what else. I know it had been bothering her, and she’d been to confession several times and probably the priest had frightened her pretty badly. Anyway, she told Anson she never wanted to see him again, that they’d committed mortal sins and now she was being punished. Raoul wanted a divorce from Maria.
“She was in a terrible state. I think maybe she had always thought Raoul and Maria would patch things up. And now, the way she saw it, it was her own sinfulness that wrote finis to the whole thing—what was left of a home.
“Concha came out and tried to help but there wasn’t anything anyone could say to Essie to make her calm down. Finally Concha told Anson he’d better go and leave Essie alone for a little while—until she got hold of herself.”
Miguel drew a deep breath into his lungs. Talking was bringing it back, with all its ghastly clarity.
“That,” he said presently, “was the last I saw of Anson Wilbur.”
Night of Fire and Snow Page 10