“That for your Nora, Joseph?” she asked.
“Sister-in-law,” Joe said.
“Is that right? And what’d you get for your Nora?”
“What’s that to you, Sal?”
“Just wondering when you’re planning to put a ring on her finger. She seems to treat you awful nice.”
“Sal? I promise you’ll be the first to know,” Joe said.
Sal chucked him on the arm, hard, but he walked away wondering how Nora would feel about Ralston performing their wedding ceremony in the empty train on Track 13. After they got their own place. There would be no reason why Steady Max and Gus, Shoebox Lou and Butch, Big Sal and Alva—even Nora’s friend Paige—couldn’t attend.
Joe was humming as he headed back to the Main Concourse, where Mary Lee Read seemed to be pummeling the organ with extra enthusiasm. There were wreaths and holly draped across the balconies, and several dozen Christmas stockings hung from the marble railing of the servicemen’s lounge. Behind the railing, three women on tall ladders were decorating a large Christmas tree, draping it with small presents for the men: neckties, pocket combs, handkerchiefs, and chocolate candy canes from Barton’s wrapped in striped foil. Nora’s back was to Joe, but he spotted her right away: She was the shortest, most petite of the women, but she was standing on the tallest of the three ladders, reaching up to the highest branches. Naturally, Joe thought proudly. Naturally she would be on the tallest ladder; that was who she was.
“They canceled my second shift!” he called up to her once he was in the lounge.
“That’s great!” she said, and tossing a few neckties over her shoulder, climbed down the ladder as he held it steady for her.
“Does that mean we get to open Christmas presents before you go?” she asked.
Joe laughed. “Not a chance,” he said. He put his arms around her neck and kissed her, their lips hidden by the flannel-lined collar of his winter coat.
“Presents in the morning,” he said. “Don’t wait up for me.”
* * *
—
Nora watched Joe leave, and for the next two hours she served the boys eggnog, lost to them at pool, and made sure they reached for presents from the tree. At around eight, Paige came by, her arms filled with Christmas packages. “I just wanted to say Merry Christmas,” she said. “I’ve got to get these home. When are you knocking off?”
“Soon.”
“Sorry you can’t be with your sweetie,” Paige said. She leaned over her packages and kissed Nora’s cheek. “You know, this is the price of being a bastard.”
Gradually most of the men left on their trains, and the lounge emptied out and quieted down. By midnight, only a few soldiers were left, sacked out in the armchairs and on the library couches. Nora picked up a sketchpad and a thick black pencil and settled contentedly into one of the leather armchairs, which smelled of rum. There was a soldier sleeping across from her on one of the couches. He was lying on his side with his back to the world. Pad on her lap, pencil in hand, Nora studied him for a long time. Then slowly, gently, she drew the contour of his boots, his legs, his head and neck, pulling her pencil over his shoulder as if covering him with a blanket.
* * *
—
Out in Queens, Joe arrived just before Faye and the kids came home from church. He had to hand it to his sister-in-law: However lonely or sad she was feeling, she had done a swell job in decking out the place. The mantel held branches of juniper and mistletoe as well as the kids’ stockings and bright red candles. The tree, in its customary place, was decorated with the usual cranberries and ornaments, though the kids had hung the glass balls from the ends of the branches; the effect, with the tips drooping, was to make the tree look sparser than it really was. Joe was tempted to adjust the ornaments, but he didn’t want to correct Mike in anything that wasn’t essential, so Joe just put his presents under the tree and slipped a silver dollar into each of the stockings.
He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been alone in the house. Wandering past the living and dining rooms, he swung into the kitchen, which smelled of lemons and was, miraculously, spotless. Joe reached above the cabinets for the bottle of Old Crow that was now kept above Mike’s sightline rather than Damian’s reach. Sitting at the kitchen table, Joe poured himself a drink and silently raised his glass to the absent members of his family.
The noise at the front door was louder than he’d expected. This was not only the kids and Faye coming home from church. It sounded as if she’d brought half the congregation with her. Joe quickly took the last few sips of his drink and poured himself another. He tried to identify the voices, but Faye’s was the only distinct one, instructing Alice and Mike to ask for people’s coats and hats and bring them up to her bed.
When Joe swung open the kitchen door, he was greeted with cries of delight. Within moments he was engulfed in the competing perfumes of perhaps six churchwomen, all of whom were chattering, handing their hats and coats to the kids, talking about the Christmas choir and Father Gregory.
“Folks,” Faye said. “Let’s all settle in the living room. I’ll get us some Christmas cheer.”
Joe was relieved to see not one young single woman. Faye had either run out of candidates for him, or patience. In the living room, two of Damian’s old VFW buddies had already taken one end of the couch. A few others milled near the door. It was nice, Joe thought, to see people who had known his parents, however distant or unexpressed their memories might be. As for men of fighting age, other than Joe there were only two. The first, an old grade school classmate named Aidan Burke, had been classified 4F because he’d been born with a curved spine. The second, a cop from Finn’s precinct named Steve Brady, had been badly wounded in the Solomon Islands a month or so after he’d joined up. One of his legs was still in a cast, and his face was so beaten up from shrapnel that it looked like broken bricks. Joe made sure Brady got a comfortable armchair and asked him if he wanted something stronger than eggnog. It took Joe a moment to realize that the woman who’d followed them into the room and was placing a hand on Brady’s shoulder was Emma. Joe hadn’t seen her since their date at the World’s Fair in 1939. She looked older, she had changed hairstyles, and she was pregnant.
“Congratulations,” he managed to say, looking from Emma to Brady and back. “When did you two—”
“Well,” Emma said with a madonna smile. “More than nine months ago.”
Someone had already put Bing Crosby on the record player, singing the inevitable “White Christmas.”
“Faye didn’t tell me,” Joe said.
Brady spoke for the first time: “She didn’t want you to be jealous.” There was more than a little pride in his voice.
Joe ladled out some eggnog for them. He didn’t feel jealous, exactly. He was happy for Emma, who was still a peach, and happy for Brady, who’d plainly been through hell. It was more that Joe envied the seeming simplicity of what they would get to have: treetops glistening; children listening. Along with his dreams of travel, he had always assumed he would have that someday. Now having it would be meaningless without Nora.
Faye followed Joe into the kitchen with the nearly empty eggnog bowl.
“She looks great, doesn’t she?”
“Who, Emma?”
“No, Joe, Mrs. Claus. Yes, Emma.”
“She does,” he agreed.
Faye put the empty eggnog bowl in the sink and said, “But Emma wasn’t good enough for you.”
“Actually, Faye, she was probably too good for me.”
Faye turned around, her eyes narrowed. “That’s it,” she said. “You’ve got some girl in the city, right?”
Joe had known this question would come at some point, and now he nodded.
“It’s that Laura from Finn’s letter that Mike asked about, right?”
“Not Laura. Nora. I didn’t know you�
��d heard that.”
“Nora what?”
“Nora Lansing.”
“That’s not an Irish name, is it?”
“She’s not an Irish girl.”
Faye opened the refrigerator and bent to get a second bowl of eggnog. “They’re putting this stuff away like water,” she muttered. “Bunch of lushes.”
“Faye,” Joe said. “Emma was great. Emma is great. But Nora’s the one I fell for.”
“In love?”
“In love,” Joe said.
“So why don’t you bring her by?”
“Maybe I will sometime,” he said, wishing he could.
“What are you hiding, Joey?”
“Come on,” he said, taking the bowl of eggnog from Faye. “Let’s get these people their booze.”
Joe left by ten, just as Faye was organizing the crowd to go out caroling. At the front door he called for Faye and the kids to come over, and he hugged all three the way Finn did: an Irish-knot, four-way embrace invented by Damian and Katherine, adopted by Finn and Faye, and now carried out by Joe.
On the train ride back, the rattling of the car was soothing. Joe was glad Finn hadn’t told Faye about Nora, had honored the No-Matter-What. Joe closed his eyes, and much to his surprise he felt Queens lifting away from him like steam. He was going back to Nora.
3
DID SANTA
BRING ME COFFEE?
1942
Nora had stayed late in the lounge, finishing up what the girls now called the owl shift. By the time she got back to the room, Joe was fast asleep and didn’t stir when she washed up and wrapped his present. In the morning he was awake before she was.
“Merry Christmas!” he said.
Nora ducked her head under her pillow. “Too early!” she said.
“Christmas morning!” he said.
She picked up a corner of the pillow and looked at him. “Are you eight years old?” she asked.
“Let’s see if Santa brought you anything.”
“Did Santa bring me coffee?”
“Why, yes he did!”
At that, Nora sat up.
Joe had brought them not only a pot of coffee from the hotel kitchen but a pot of thick, creamy hot chocolate as well.
“Coffee? Chocolate? Or a little of each?” he asked her.
“Oh, well, now it’s Christmas,” she said.
* * *
—
An hour later, they were wearing bathrobes and ready to exchange their presents. Nora’s for Joe had come from the bookshop on the third floor of the Biltmore. She relished his lack of pretense as he unwrapped the package with one bear-paw swipe. She had bought him a Matthews-Northrup Atlas of the World at War. The cover read:
FOLLOW the Global War on These Global Maps
COVER the battle fronts on Dynamic Chronological Maps
REVIEW the entire background of World War II
LEARN to recognize the planes of the Allies and the Axis
Joe held the book, staring at the cover with its orange-and-blue globe and its illustrations of tanks, planes, and ships.
“Hey,” he said, “this is really something.”
“Open it,” Nora said.
“I will, I will. Just give me a minute.”
He stroked the cover.
“This is brand-new,” he said.
“You bet it’s brand-new. And it’s got all the places where we’re fighting.”
He turned at random to a page with a diagram of combat planes silhouetted and stacked in columns. They looked more like toys than war machines.
The last letter Joe had gotten from Finn had been sent from somewhere in North Africa, a region about which Joe knew next to nothing. He found the page with the map of that part of the continent, where incursions and retreats were signified by tangles of arrows.
“I figured this could help you keep up with that big brother of yours,” Nora said.
Joe closed the book and tapped its cover with his fist. “I’ve heard of these books,” he said. “They’re almost up-to-the-minute, right?” She saw his eyes gleam, and she put her hand on top of his fist.
He took a deep breath. “Your turn,” he said. He reached underneath the bed and pulled out a box about the size of a brick.
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
He was smiling so intently now that it looked as if his crooked mouth had been drawn on.
“What is it?” Nora asked.
“You expect me to tell you? Who raised you? Where I come from, that’s why we wrap presents,” he said.
She smiled and looked down at the box, which was covered in lovely Christmas paper: a painted pattern of holly and candles, in many shades of red and green.
“It’s beautiful,” Nora said.
“You still have to open it.”
Smiling, Nora slipped her fingers under one of the end flaps. Careful not to tear the paper, she slid the box out. Inside was a plain business envelope, and inside that a letter on heavy ivory paper:
The Grand Central School of Art
ENROLLMENT
“Joe!” Nora exclaimed.
This is to certify that
Nora Lansing
She didn’t have to read the rest. She jumped up and fell onto Joe’s lap.
“You like?”
“Joe! Joe! Joe!”
“I did good?”
She kissed his cheek, his nose, his chin.
“And it’s for the whole year,” he said.
She stopped and looked down at the contract. It was true. He had paid for an entire year’s tuition. For her. At one of the finest art schools in the country.
Tears in her eyes, she asked, “How did you know how much I’ve wanted to do this?”
“I get around,” he said.
“And you won’t mind—” They both knew the rest: mind that there would be yet another place where she would be going to do something on her own.
His answer was to take her in his arms.
4
VOILÀ
1943
Even though there were female ticket sellers on the Main Concourse now, there were no women in the art school. In fact, most of the students in Intermediate Painting were extremely old, extremely serious men, and they seemed absolutely flummoxed by the prospect of a young woman joining them as an artist.
But the teacher, Alphonse Fournier, took care of that handily. “No, messieurs, she is not here to model,” he said, handing her a long blue smock like the ones he and the other men were wearing. Nora beamed as she put it on, and she felt at home immediately. The studio was warm and cozy and filled with wonderful smells: oil paints and acetone, turpentine and soap, pencil shavings and some sort of sandwich that sat, unwrapped and pungent, on the teacher’s desk. Easels of varying heights and vintages stood in irregular rows, like untrained soldiers.
Mr. Fournier was an artist himself: talented, kind, and direct. He had white hair that was slightly yellow at the temples, and he stood bent a bit to his right. He had an almost comical French accent, and there was a twinkle in his eye that reminded Nora of Ollie.
Pale wood palette in one hand, Nora followed his instructions and squeezed out a dime-sized dot of each color from the several dozen tubes of watercolor paints arranged in a generous rainbow on a center table. He handed her a paintbrush as if it were a sorcerer’s wand.
“You will take good care of that, will you, Miss Lansing?”
She nodded.
“Well, voilà, get to it,” he said.
He walked over to his desk, clapped his hands, and held up his arms like a conductor. “Messieurs, mademoiselle,” he said. “Today we start. Today we paint freely. No fruit. No bottles. No flowers. Today we do not paint what we see. We paint what we know.”
<
br /> The handle of the paintbrush he’d given Nora was cherry red, the bristles soft and, for a moment more, bright white. She dipped the brush into her cup of water, chose the darkest green on her palette, and let herself drive one stroke across the middle of the page from left to right. The color sank into the heavy, rough paper, a single fuzzy stripe across the page that she could turn into anything: the sash of an evening dress, the top of a kitchen table, the surface of a swimming pool—even the rich landscape that a person might have seen, say, on the way back from Stonehenge in 1925.
Walking around the room, Mr. Fournier kept up an intriguing monologue that sometimes sounded like wisdom and sometimes like pure bunk: “Let your pictures be a by-product of your life. Do not expect them to furnish life for you.” “Try to find a motive for your picture that is universal in the hearts of men.” “Love never loses sight of loveliness.”
All that faded as Nora started to work. She remembered the hours after the Stonehenge sunrise, when she and Margaret, in a rented Citroën, had driven west to Bath. They had stopped by the side of the road so Margaret could have a turn at the wheel. The fields around them had been every shade of green, from velvet teal to scratchy yellow. Now Nora recalled those fields and painted them; then the sky and the gray wooden fence that had stumbled along the side of the road. She could smell the air, slightly salty. She could feel the breeze as the white cotton blouse she’d been wearing billowed warmly against her back.
She suddenly realized that Mr. Fournier must have said her name at least twice. She put her brush back into the water and apologized.
“This is nothing to be sorry for,” he said. “This is what art can do.”
“Excuse me?”
“Art,” he said grandly. “It can shut out the war. It can even shut out the world.”
For Nora, art was all the more wonderful because of the world it let in.
Time After Time Page 23