by K. L. Cook
“Europeans do not believe in ice,” she said in another letter and depicted a week-long expedition to get a simple cube for her tea. And then suddenly, in the middle of this riff, she wrote, “Often I find myself imagining Jerome crashing or being shot down. At night when he’s gone, I sometimes go outside and study the sky. The shooting stars fill me with dread. I dream of him in flames. I sometimes don’t believe it when I hear that he’s arrived safely back to base. I hold my breath until I see him upright, smiling. I know we’re not at war, but it doesn’t feel that way in West Germany.”
Gloria wrote letters to each of them at first, but a year and a half ago, she had taken to writing one letter every month, addressed to their father, although the salutation read, “Dear Everybody.” Mr. Tate would read the letter slowly or have Manny or Laura read it aloud, as they sat in the living room or at the kitchen table, and then afterward everybody could read the letter again, privately. Gloria would single out each person for a paragraph, asking questions:
“Manny, are you still dating Joannie? Keep that girl. You’re lucky she puts up with you.”
“Have you lost a tooth, Rich?”
“Gene, are you making Rich give you half the bed?”
“Does Sam Compson’s little brother still have a crush on you, Laura?”
When their father finally wrote and told her about the disappearance of their mother, almost a year after it happened and when it seemed clear that she really had left them for good, Gloria didn’t write back for several months. When at last they got a letter, it was full of listless details about where they had been restationed, but at the end of the letter, in a postscript, she wrote, “Is she really gone???”
After that, Gloria didn’t mention it very often, but in the middle of another letter, she wrote, “It doesn’t seem real to me that Momma left. You speak of it as a fact that you’re used to in your letters, but I can’t imagine it, not really.” In another she wrote, “Sometimes I look up while I’m out walking, and I will hear an American voice, a woman’s voice, and I swear it’s Momma’s. But it’s not. Just some trick. A tourist or another military wife. But it feels real. I might cry for the rest of the day then.”
She and Jerome had moved three times in as many months. The Tates would get postcards with strange, riddling thoughts on them. “Dresden is a city of ghosts,” said one. A letter she wrote when she was pregnant with Carroll ended with this: “Jerome flying over Austria. The days gray and short and always full of drizzle or this strange ashy snow. Julie has mumps and blames me, shoots me looks that say, ‘I hate you.’ I vomited four times today. I understand now why Momma left.”
When she visited Berlin, she had been walking down the street early one morning. There was fog, and she had seen a man climbing the drain-pipe on a tenement wall. The man looked at her. “Shots rang out,” she wrote, “and I swear the man’s eyes went dead before me. I was the last thing on this earth that he saw. Me, a pregnant American woman in the fog. What do I do with that?”
Mr. Tate was strangely quiet after these letters and postcards, never once talking about their mother. Afterward he either left for a while or busied himself in the backyard.
Just after Easter, they got a long, chatty letter that was brimming with details about her pregnancy: “medicine-ball belly,” “eating like a horse,” “the base doctor has the bedside manner of a drill sergeant.” The tone was cheerier. It was spring. She had more energy. They were still stationed in West Germany, where she had more friends in similar circumstances: “The base is full of pregnant women. The joke (not a very funny one) is that they’ve herded us here like prisoners of war. They pretend to be happy for us, but a couple of the women are spooked about taking a shower! Afraid they’ll be gassed. Can you believe it? Me, I prefer a bath anyway. Lets me float the medicine ball. I despise gravity! If Isaac Newton were on this base with all these pregnant women, there’d be a lynching!”
Later in the letter, she wrote, “This election has people buzzing. All the older pilots and officers are pulling for Dick Nixon. They believe the Democrats are soft eggheads like Stevenson. (They use worse language, but I won’t repeat it since I’m a lady.) They all love Ike and call Nixon ‘Baby Ike.’ There’s a staff sergeant who roots openly for Lyndon Johnson, and he can get away with it because he’s from Texas, though we all know that Johnson looks about as soft as a crocodile. I suppose I’d root for him, too, if he ever gets around to getting officially in the race. It would be good to have a Texan in the White House. But those ears have got to go! (Sorry, Daddy, but they look like cooked cauliflower attached to the sides of his head!) All the wives nod in agreement in front of their husbands, pretend to adore that lovable pooch Checkers, but when they’re alone, they all moon over the bootlegger’s son from Massachusetts. He is awful cute (right, Laura!), even if he served in the navy, goes to Sunday mass, and pronounces his Rs like a Chinaman.”
She mentioned that she and the kids might get to come home this summer. She hoped so. “With the military, though, you don’t hold your breath.”
But then they received another letter in May. “It looks good for the trip home. Maybe early July. Cross your fingers. Will write when I know.”
And now Gloria was coming for the Fourth of July. And all of them, too, even Jerome. One week with his family in Wichita Falls, the other in Charnelle.
Laura shared with John her excitement about Gloria’s visit, reading aloud some of her letters, telling him about how her sister had eloped with Jerome and how much she missed her, how glad they all were that she was coming home again.
“You can’t tell her,” he said. “You know that?”
“Yes, I know that.”
Since school let out for summer, John and Laura met twice a week, usually at lunch. He did what he called “fix-it runs” in Charnelle or nearby towns on Mondays and Thursdays and could take lunch on his own. He tried to work fast, and then he’d pick Laura up behind the old abandoned warehouse on Whipple Street, five blocks east of her house, at noon or a little before, and they would drive to his uncle’s barn just outside of town until one o’clock, sometimes almost two if they were lucky. In the summer, it was pretty easy for Laura to get away during lunch, easier than in the evening; Mrs. Ambling was happy to let Rich and Gene play in her yard during the day.
He’d fixed up a corner of the barn nicely, with a layer of soft blue carpet, a thin mattress with a gold bedspread that looked like it had been around for a while, and a splintery end table. They’d take turns bringing something for lunch—sandwiches, cheese and crackers, or fruit.
Back in May, about a week after she recovered from the flu, she called to thank him and Mrs. Letig for the food and the sculpture of the hummingbird. He answered the phone, said that he was dying to see her, that he needed to meet her the next day. He took her to the barn, and he gave her a box of chocolates, which they ate together, and he told her how badly he felt about what had happened, that he’d been thinking about her ever since he’d dropped her off that day after Lake Meredith, hoping he’d have a chance to tell her again how sorry he was and that he wanted to keep seeing her. She asked him if they should keep seeing each other, if it was worth it.
“Yes,” he said urgently, “you’re worth it.”
It didn’t take much to convince her, even though she wondered briefly but uneasily at her inability to say no to him. He kissed her and held her for a while, and then they had to go. He asked if they could meet for lunch in a couple of days, and by then he had cleaned out the barn and fixed it up. There was an ice bucket with some root beer in it and fruit, crackers, and cheese. He’d even set out some flowers in a vase and turned on a transistor radio, so that Patsy Cline crooned softly in the background.
He was very tender with her at first—nervous, almost—slowly touching her, kissing her, his lips softly on her neck and breasts and stomach. And then, when they made love again, it wasn’t like before. He was gentle, didn’t rush her, slow, controlled.
Her favori
te part was afterward when he would sometimes fall asleep. “Just let me rest my eyes for a minute,” he’d say, and he’d lie there, heavy and vulnerable. She’d examine his body, his arm crooked over his face. She’d trace her fingers along his jawline, over his mustache and his red, cracked lips, slightly parted, his two middle teeth slightly overlapping, as if hugging. She’d kiss him softly and trace her fingers over the stubble of his neck and into the blond-brown hair of his chest, a light fuzz covering his skin, his nipples small and round and smooth like a child’s, and over his rib cage, and down his stomach to the thick brown nest at the crook of his legs, where his penis lay limp and wrinkled, a skein of dried semen over it. She was surprised that her hand could cover it. Sometimes it would grow in her cupped palm, and she’d look up and he’d have that goofy, boyish grin on his face.
“Come here,” he’d say, and she would.
And then they would leave, her on the floorboard, talking, telling stupid jokes to make him laugh. He’d drop her off behind the warehouse, bending over to kiss her good-bye, and then he’d be gone, and she’d wait several minutes and then walk home in the bright summer heat, or to the Charnelle pool, where she’d swim and hang out with Debbie and Marlene, playing Ping-Pong or Foosball, yearning sometimes to tell them what she was up to, to see their stunned faces when she made her confession. She felt loyal to them, felt in fact a vague need to repay them for their compassion after her mother disappeared (she had cried one long night at Debbie’s house while Marlene rocked her like a child), and to show them as well that she’d gotten over that grief, that she could navigate through an adult world they could only dimly imagine. But she kept her mouth shut about John, as she knew she must, smiling as she swam through the chlorinated water with her friends, laughing confidently as she beat them at Ping-Pong, shouting as she spun the little painted Foosball men, gunning the ball triumphantly in the hole. At the end of those afternoons, she would head home, get the boys from Mrs. Ambling’s, make supper and clean up—moving in a light-spirited haze.
“What are you so happy about?” her father asked her one of these evenings, pleased by her good humor.
She simply shrugged her shoulders, smiled innocently.
The family drove to the Greyhound station in Mr. Tate’s truck, Manny following in the Ford. Gloria and her family were supposed to arrive on the four-thirty bus from Dallas, but it didn’t get in until almost six-thirty. Everyone was hungry, but they didn’t eat, because the plan was to take everybody to the Ding Dong Daddy Diner. Finally the bus arrived, and the five of them got up from the outside bench. They could see Gloria in the window. She waved and smiled and turned away for a minute, and then a little blond-haired girl appeared next to her, peering out. Gloria spoke to her, pointed toward the family, and they all jumped up and down and blew kisses.
And then they were off the bus. First Jerome, wearing his air force uniform, carrying the baby in one arm, a suitcase in another. He was tall and thin-faced, with a dark complexion. He set the suitcase down, smiled uncomfortably, and then turned back and held out his hand to the little girl, who wore a yellow dress and tights. Even though Mr. Tate knelt and called to her, she clung to Jerome. Gloria followed them, carrying a bag. Her dress matched her daughter’s and was buckled at the waist with a black belt.
Although only twenty, Gloria seemed like she’d aged. The baby fat from her teen years was gone, and her cheeks were hollow, too thin, a little severe. Her hair was done up in a beehive, held together precariously by hair spray and bobby pins. There was a moment of silence, as Gloria and her family stood by the bus and the rest of the Tates stood at the railing. They studied each other as family members who haven’t seen each other in a while will do, trying to align the person standing before them with the image in their memories—the little girl, the father, the sister, the brother—and the realignment sometimes takes only a few seconds, sometimes much longer, but that period of adjustment is always there, always a little disturbing, as if time itself were abruptly declaring its passage.
Gloria’s family made their way past the railing, where they could be properly greeted, hugged, squeezed, and kissed. There was a moment of polite solemnity as Mr. Tate shook Jerome’s hand, held it longer than normal. Mr. Tate nodded and smiled grimly to let the young man know that, though the pilot had stolen his daughter, all was forgiven—though not forgotten—and now that the pilot had provided him grandchildren, he could be counted as a bona fide member of the family. The uniform gave Jerome a regal bearing, and all the kids and even Mr. Tate looked at him with respect. They knew, from Gloria’s letters, that though he’d never fought in a war, he’d risked his life many times.
Gloria wrapped her arms around Gene and Rich and Manny and Laura, kissing and hugging them tight.
“Laura? My God,” she said, holding her at arm’s length and then twirling her. “Look how you’ve filled out. I keep thinking of you as this skinny little stick. But you’re not anymore, are you, Miss Monroe?”
“And Manny. I remember you as this runt I could beat up,” she continued. “Good thing I got a soldier to protect me.”
“He’s just an air force man.”
Jerome cocked an eyebrow. “Those are fightin’ words, buddy.”
“Rich. Can you talk now?”
“Yes,” he said shyly.
“I knew that. You come here, you little booger.” She knelt down, and he wrapped his arms tightly around her neck, and she kissed both his cheeks, and he hugged her again and wouldn’t let go. Gloria lolled her tongue out and crossed her eyes. “He’s strangling me, he’s strangling me!” she said, and Rich laughed and let go of her.
“And Genie. Oh, Genie. The only sweet one in the bunch.”
“You haven’t seen the tire tracks in his underwear,” Manny said.
“Shut up!” Gene squealed.
“Well, I’ll skip that part,” she said, mussing his hair. “I have enough diapers to tend to.”
Jerome and Manny gathered the suitcases that were in the luggage compartment and returned to the rest of them cooing over the baby, Mr. Tate holding him in his arms and crouching down to his knees, smiling at the girl who now clung to her mother.
Mr. Tate said, “Come here, darling. Give Grampa some sugar.”
“Go on, honey,” Jerome said.
“It’s okay,” Gloria urged.
She wouldn’t budge. Mr. Tate said, “Come tell me who this little guy is.”
“Cawo,” she muttered.
“Your big brother?”
“Nooooo!” she protested. “Itto brudder.”
“Am I holding him right?”
“No,” she said and pointed to her grandfather’s other arm.
They all laughed.
“Just like your mother,” he said, handing the baby to Laura. “You think you know the right way to do everything.” He reached out for her. “Come here and give me some sweet sugar.”
Julie finally obliged him.
Then there was the moment that had been delayed, by design perhaps, maybe anxiety, but there it was, the reunion of father and daughter. The prodigal returning to the forgiving parent’s arms, the runaway come home. Everyone sensed the decorum appropriate to a ceremony. Gloria’s eyes moistened. The rest cleared a path for them, and in the silence that followed, they all could feel the absence of their mother. Laura closed her eyes and could see her clearly, as in that fever dream in May, in her blue-and-red-flowered dress, the sheer red scarf, her mother kissing her and then turning away, disappearing through the tattered cobwebs. At homecomings, Laura thought, the dead or missing always hover like ghosts.
“Welcome home, morning glory,” Mr. Tate said. His old name for her.
She walked slowly to her father and put her face against his chest. And they could see her shoulders relax into a sob. He put his arms around her back, and neither of them said a word. Laura’s eyes clouded over. She had trouble swallowing. She placed her lips against Carroll’s head and smelled baby shampoo.
�
�Who’s hungry?” Mr. Tate said, smiling. Even his eyes seemed misty.
Gloria pulled away and laughed as she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I’m starving,” said Jerome. “Hungry, sweetie?” he asked Julie.
“Uh-huh.”
“Hope you haven’t been spoiled by all that European cuisine,” Mr. Tate said as he leaned over and grabbed one of the suitcases.
“Ha!” Jerome laughed.
“I don’t know, Dad,” Gloria said. “I may have to ask Ike to ship me a couple of boxes of U.S. Certified Beans and Wienies while I’m here. Can’t go a whole week without ’em.”
Mr. Tate smiled. “Well, we’ll see what we can do, honey. But right now La Palace de la Ding Dong awaits our dinner party.”
Laura figured he’d been working on that line all day.
18
Women in the House
Her father relinquished his room to Gloria and Jerome. Julie was to sleep on a small portable cot by their bed, unless Gloria and Jerome wanted her to sleep with Laura. A week earlier, her father and Manny pulled Rich’s crib out of the cellar. It had been through five children and twenty years of use. They repaired the legs. The mattress was ripped and stained, and when they slapped it, a cloud of dust rose from it and choked them so badly that they had to climb from the storm cellar, gagging, coughing, red-faced. Her father sanded the crib, repainted it bright blue, and bought a brand-new mattress, which stunned all of them. The expense! He never would’ve done it just for them. Rich, who hadn’t been out of his crib for very long, now wanted to return to his refurbished bed.
They had vacuumed, dusted, and aired the house. Old boxes of magazines and newspapers were thrown out. Slipcovers were placed over the cigarette scorches and stains and tattered holes in the couch and the recliner. They cut fresh flowers and placed them in vases. The house had not been this clean in…well, not since her mother had lived with them, even though Laura worked hard to keep the house relatively tidy. It was really the first time they’d had visitors come and stay with them in she couldn’t remember how long, at least since Aunt Velma stopped coming, and that was several years back. There was her father’s poker game last spring, but that didn’t really count, because the men didn’t give a damn what the house looked like, nor did her father care if they cared.