Through the long, cold night, they held each other, wordless. There was the insistence of desire; the ache of guilt for feeling it; the fear that they might lose what they’d found, even as they knew there would be so many greater, less personal losses in the time to come. Joe knew the president would ask Congress to declare war. But as long as he stayed in this room with Nora, there was still peace, however private a peace.
3
ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL
1941
In 1941, the largest room in New York City was the grand ballroom of the Commodore Hotel. The place was so big that back in 1922 it had been the site of a one-night circus, when horses, camels, an elephant, and a lady riding a motorcycle inside a steel cage had all been brought in to entertain hotel workers from around the country. On this morning, December 8, it was the only room large enough to hold the employees of the New York Central System, and nothing glittered.
The velvet ballroom chairs had been arranged in hundreds of rows, with benches and chairs from other rooms lined up behind them. Most of the seats were already taken when Joe arrived on time at eight, and it was strange to see such a fancy room filled with so many men from all parts of the terminal—Red Caps and ticket takers, engineers and executives, levermen and plumbers. Though sitting, they already appeared to be at attention. Neither Joe nor the men around him looked inclined to talk to anyone. Their only interactions were the kind of tight smiles people exchanged at funerals. Joe thought about Damian, knowing he would have relished the prospect of the United States finally stepping in.
The president of the New York Central System—an owl-faced and always impeccable man—stepped up to the podium at the front of the room and adjusted his glasses. A loudspeaker had been placed before him, and it crackled from time to time, which didn’t matter at all, because his message could not have been clearer.
“As we all know,” he began, “the United States was brutally attacked yesterday, with absolutely no warning. President Roosevelt will be making his speech at twelve-thirty today. He is going to declare war against the Japanese Empire. And I want us to be ready, because all hell is about to break loose for the Central.” The president went on to say what anyone in the room with half a brain already knew and no one wanted to hear: that with virtually no exceptions, every trainman—working in, on, or around the New York Central System—had just been deemed “essential personnel.” Enlisting would not be an option. Even the young and less skilled would be discouraged from joining up.
“Think of it this way,” he said. “All of you men—from our conductors to our Red Caps to our signalmen to our guys who clean the floors—if you leave, you’ll just have to be replaced by a new man. And why shouldn’t Uncle Sam be able to count on you doing the job you’ve already been trained for?”
“Aw, bullshit!” someone a few chairs away from Joe shouted.
That lone voice almost immediately became a duet, then a quartet, then a chorus of shouts and curses. “Not fair!” “Screw that!” “Damn the Japs to hell!”
Joe looked up at the men calling down from the ballroom’s balconies, which were decorated with delicate carvings of garlands and birds. Despite himself, he thought of the lace that trimmed the hem of Nora’s peach-colored slip, and he felt grateful for the New York Central’s orders. Still—in the midst of the hullabaloo—he was also ashamed of his gratitude.
“Men! Men!” the president kept shouting, and eventually his authority won out. “You will all still be soldiers! You will all still be soldiers and marines and sailors and pilots! You’ll be just as damned important as any of the fighting men.” He paused, rotating his owl head like a searchlight, trying to address every part of the room. “You just won’t be wearing khaki,” he said.
* * *
—
The shifts were shortened in length but tripled in number. The volume in the first week alone made it seem as if the heavy traffic for the World’s Fair had been a mere dress rehearsal. Grand Central went from being a bustling destination for tourists, commuters, goods, and services to being all that plus a vital hub for the war effort. The New York Central System moved raw materials bound for munitions plants, food bound for training camps, weapons bound for ships, and, above all, men bound for basic training and likely battle. In the first seven weeks after Pearl Harbor, more than half a million men would cross the country by train, along with their uniforms, duffel bags, books, and sundries. And in the months to come, Grand Central Terminal would become a legendary place from which men would leave, looking young, scared, and fierce, and to which hospital trains and morgue trains would inevitably return many of the very same men.
* * *
—
At mid-morning on December 9, an enormous American flag was hung from the north balcony. Mary Lee Read kept playing patriotic songs, but since her first few renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” she’d been forbidden to play the national anthem again. It was clear to the stationmaster that Americans were unable to hear it without stopping traffic on the Main Concourse to sing along, their hands on their hearts. Amid these shows of patriotism, starting on the morning of the ninth, all the terminal’s windows—like those in the most obvious bomb targets all over the city—were being coated with paint and tar.
“Wait, that’s my window!” Nora whispered as she and Joe stood watching as the east windows’ panes were being blackened, oddly enough, by window washers. There were more than a dozen men on each of the three windows, silhouetted against the light.
“What?”
“Isn’t that my window they’re blacking out? You know, the one you drew the lipstick through? The one Manhattanhenge light comes through?”
Other than a few brisk circuits of the Biltmore’s Palm Court, this was the first time Nora had ventured out of the room since her arrival four days before. Today she had insisted that it was time for her to stretch her legs, see some strangers, buy a sketchpad, and find better clothes at the Lost and Found.
“You just want to go flirt with Mr. Brennan, don’t you?” Joe had said.
“Of course.”
Now Joe stared at Nora’s window, which was being turned into a heavy, dark door.
“Aw,” Nora said when she saw his face, “don’t worry, Joe. It’s only a problem if I leave.”
He shook his head, doubting.
She touched his elbow. “I think,” she said with mock solemnity, “that somebody needs some pancakes.”
* * *
—
But next, as if the black tar on the east windows was not enough, there came the Farm Security Administration mural, creating another barrier to Nora’s return, should she disappear again. For months a group in Washington had been assembling a mammoth photomontage of American scenes designed to cover the entire east wall of the terminal with an urgent appeal:
BUY DEFENSE BONDS AND STAMPS NOW!
In short order, the word DEFENSE was emphatically replaced by the word WAR, and throughout the week, people stopped to look up as the enormous panels were affixed to a special scaffold. On Sunday, exactly a week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the head of the Treasury Department’s defense bonds committee presided over the dedication ceremony, urging the crowds to buy. An actor read a poem. A schoolgirl said a prayer. A public school chorus and a Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union glee club sang. Nothing felt normal, sounded normal, looked normal. No one had yet learned how to laugh again, or smile.
Nora and Joe, standing at the west end of the Main Concourse, shared in the universal feeling, the almost palpable mixture of shock and resolve. But they also clung to each other for a different reason.
“As long as it’s up, it’ll be like there is no December fifth,” Joe said. “Manhattanhenge will happen, but the light won’t be able to get in here.”
“Joe,” Nora said. She straightened the collar on his blue cotton shirt and lightly kissed his
shoulder. “I have no intention of leaving. So you don’t have to worry about how I’m going to get back.”
Nora meant it. Even beyond the effects of Manhattanhenge, she felt spellbound. Joe was a Catholic working guy from Queens who owned one coat and one scarf and took his tie off over his head. But he was strong and straight, and from the start he had seen her—not just her predicament—as no one before him ever had. She had never known it was possible to feel both safe and excited at the same time, and that was how she felt with Joe.
A dozen days after Nora’s arrival, Joe moved his things over from the Y and gave Nora her old diary. Reading it only confirmed her feelings. How different it had been with Christopher Jenkins—Jenks—the object of her high school crush. Or with Sebastian, who had introduced her to sex, however perfunctorily. Not even counting the frolics of her last night in Paris, there had been one or two expat friends with whom she had necked and sometimes done more. But with every one of them, a part of her had always been watching, comparing, thinking. With Joe, everything was a feeling—exquisite, almost painful, a sense of some deep thing being unfolded that needed to be unfolded again. Even in their brief time together, Nora had come to understand the difference between infatuation and love. Infatuation was weather. Love was climate.
In that climate—bizarre though it was at the outset of a war—Joe had made Nora feel at peace. She was here. She had died. By an extraordinary confluence of events, she’d been granted more life. Now what she needed was to understand its limits, and the sooner she did, the sooner she could experience all its pleasures. Already she’d learned that—not even counting the exquisite delights of sex—there would be clean sheets, sleep, and dreams. There would be magazines and newspapers, books and art supplies. There would be food: the powdered sugar on the doughnuts from Bond’s; the sour cold beer she and Joe drank from bottles he nabbed from the Oyster Bar; the best coffee, from the Biltmore’s kitchen.
“But Joe,” she said as they lay close to each other one night. “I’m going to have to learn how far I can go, or how long I can be outside.”
He kissed her. “Why do you need to go outside?” he said, and he kissed her again.
“Joe,” she said, breaking off the kiss. “I’m going to have to learn what’s keeping me here.”
His hands on her wrists, he pulled her up forcefully to lie on top of him, and he kissed her deeply, straining his neck to reach up to her.
“Me,” he said to Nora. “Me. I’m keeping you here.”
* * *
—
Whatever thoughts they had of solving the puzzle were in any case halted a few days before Christmas, when Faye and her mother finally learned that Junie was safe at Pearl Harbor. It had taken nearly three weeks for his letter to reach home. It would take longer than that before many families found out what had happened to their sons, husbands, and brothers on December 7.
At St. Anthony’s, the members of the congregation, several of whom had brothers or sons in the Pacific, were naturally more somber than usual, though what Joe sensed wasn’t mourning, at least not yet. What he sensed was more like a bewildered anger. In every pew, the parishioners looked like passengers who’d missed their train and were wondering if there was something or someone to blame. Meanwhile, Father Gregory, now gnomelike, tried in his sermon to inspire the courage and faith that his parish would need. “Make us strong, O God, in our hearts and bodies,” he prayed.
“Amen,” the congregation seemed almost to whisper.
“God of all goodness, look with love on those who wait for the safe return of their loved ones.”
“Amen,” they all whispered again.
Outside the church, Faye seemed in no mood to whisper, and she didn’t seem somber as much as gamely determined. Usually after a Sunday service, it would take nearly an hour to pry her from the church steps, where she would stand, collecting and dispensing gossip like coins, kids tugging at her sleeves. Today there was none of that. Faye grabbed Alice’s hand and briskly pulled her down the steps.
“Mama!” Alice shouted as her blue beret dropped behind her.
“Saints alive!” Faye groaned as she lunged back up the steps to grab the hat.
During the long days of waiting to hear about her brother, Faye’s worry had turned into anger at the Japanese, and now that she knew Junie was alive, her anger had turned into rage. She had already told Finn that she no longer had a single objection to his signing up. But police were needed now more than ever, they’d been told: The harbors, the airfields, the train terminals, the subways, the great buildings of New York—all would need extra protection. In the past two weeks, there had already been air raid drills, the rounding up of Japanese people in and around the city, and word that there were enemy ships in the waters off both coasts. Nightly blackouts and brownouts were creating ever more shadows in the city, and a sense of menace and lawlessness seemed to darken them further.
“There are cops three deep just guarding the terminal,” Joe said as he and Finn walked up the front steps of the house. “Everyone’s saying you’re more important now than ever. Same as us on the job.”
Faye swept the children past the men. “Not in front of the kids,” she hissed. Mike, who was fifteen now, bitter and brusque, said: “Guess what, Ma? I’ve got two ears, and they both work.”
Lunch was cold leftover meatloaf sandwiches bleeding ketchup through Wonder Bread. Faye popped open cans of potato sticks and distractedly shook them, like seasoning, onto the plates. Then she unfolded the kitchen stepstool, sat on it, lit a Lucky Strike, and tugged her orange cardigan to crisscross her thin frame.
“Not hungry?” Joe asked her.
Faye shook her head.
“Mike, turn on the radio,” she said with a forced smile that everyone knew was for Alice’s benefit. “Let’s see if we can’t get some Christmas music.”
Grimacing, Mike pushed and then tilted his chair far back, reaching the kitchen radio with one long arm. The twisting noise of the signal came in, and then some lilting dance music.
“Jimmy Dorsey,” Faye said appreciatively.
“I want to find the news,” Mike said, turning the knob again.
“Later,” Finn said firmly, with a glance at Alice. “We don’t need to hear the news now.”
“Turn back to that music,” Faye said, and Mike sulkily obeyed.
Faye took a drag of her cigarette and, exhaling, said: “Sit up straight, Mike. And eat up, both of you.”
“Ma! We just started!” Alice said.
“The grown-ups need to talk in private.”
Alice, now nine, with the days of her childhood numbered, looked suspicious. “What do the grown-ups need to talk about?” she asked.
With perfect older brother coordination, Mike swiped some of the potato sticks from Alice’s plate, popped them into his mouth, crunched them noisily in front of her, and said, “They have to talk about Santa, nitwit.”
“Don’t call your sister ‘nitwit,’ ” Finn and Faye said in unison.
“You know I don’t believe in Santa anymore!” Alice exclaimed.
“Well, you weren’t so sure last year!” Mike said.
“Ma!”
“Well, she wasn’t!” Mike said.
Faye stubbed out her cigarette in an old Highland Queen ashtray.
“Go eat in the dining room, kids.”
They each took a silent bite of sandwich.
“I mean it!” Faye said, and that was that.
Reluctantly, they left the kitchen with their plates, the door swinging shut behind them.
Joe waited until the creaking of the hinge stopped. He leaned forward. “You can’t just quit the force,” he said to Finn.
“The hell he can’t,” Faye said.
“The hell I can’t,” Finn said. “I heard about a couple of guys in Jersey who already did. You know it
’s what Pa would have expected me to do.”
“You’re essential personnel,” Joe said. “Just like me.”
Finn shrugged. “Not like you, Joe. Took what, three or four years to train you?” Finn said. “Took just a year for me.”
“You’re too old,” Joe said. “Christ, Finny. You’re going to have to lie about your age. And about your kids.”
“You think any of that would have stopped Pa?”
To utter the next sentence, Joe had to will Nora out of his mind—pushing her, pushing her, as if trying to shut the door on the sun. “If either of us should sign up,” he finally said, “you know it should be me.”
“I’m the one who knows how to use a gun,” Finn said.
“You’re the one with the family.”
“So you’re the one who’ll look after them.”
* * *
—
It was only a little past four when Joe walked to the subway to go back to the city, but the sun was already about to set. With clouds and snow moving in, the sky was pea green and the river was violet.
The train was crowded with holiday shoppers, and Joe found it comforting to see that whatever their thoughts and fears, people were going to continue to give each other gifts; they were not going to deny themselves the possibility of joy. For the first time since that morning, Joe let himself linger on his thoughts about Nora. He relished the way she’d been neatening things up when he’d left, and he loved the thought that she would be waiting for him in their room. Nora’s presence had turned that room into more of a home than any he’d had as a grown man.
The tunnel under the East River flew by, with only a few dim lights along the way. Lulled by the rhythm of the train, Joe closed his eyes, remembering all the war games he and Finn had played as kids. In those days, the backyard had seemed enormous: sometimes a battlefield, sometimes a bunker. As the older brother, Finn had almost always gotten to choose the scene and cast it, and he was almost always the German, because that meant he got to die the most gruesome deaths. Joe remembered that those games had seemed to delight Damian as much as they had upset Katherine.
Time After Time Page 17