Time After Time

by Lisa Grunwald

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, I painted a whole group of trees together. A family of trees, you might say.”

  “Yes?”

  “And then, on the other side of the canvas, I painted these two other trees, and, I don’t know. They didn’t look like they belonged.”

  “And you thought the two trees were like us?”

  Nora nodded.

  “Well, you were wrong,” Joe said. “We belong.”

  He brought one of her hands to his lips to kiss, realizing that it was speckled with paint.

  “Nice little rainbow you’re collecting there,” he said.

  “I think you’re missing the point,” Nora said.

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is, we looked out of place. We didn’t look right in that landscape.”

  He kissed her hand again, unwilling to be swayed from his own vision.

  “We’re making our own landscape,” he said.

  10

  LONGING

  1943

  Joe thought he saw Finn. For just a moment, with Mike striding toward him across the concourse, Joe was nearly overwhelmed with joy. Next came the letdown of recognizing Mike as Mike. And after that was fury, because Joe thought that Mike, ignoring all prohibitions, had come down to enlist. Joe started toward him, intending to tackle him to the ground if necessary to keep him from the recruitment center. But as they approached each other, Mike didn’t look at all like a rebel kid; he didn’t look guilty or caught, and so Joe stopped walking and allowed Mike to come to him.

  Their eyes met, and neither of them spoke. Mike reached into his jacket pocket for the telegram. Joe read it through tears. He didn’t have time to look up before Mike flung his arms around him, and Joe realized that each of them needed the other in order to stay upright.

  Moments later, Joe felt himself almost physically grow older and more weighted down by the people he would now need to comfort, the decisions he would now need to make.

  * * *

  —

  The telegram had come on a Tuesday in early August, the kind of day so sultry and oppressive that, everywhere but in the terminal, it seemed that all actions, even all thoughts, might just be crushed by the airless heat. That weather continued all week, which only added to Nora’s sense that Finn’s death had brought the world to a halt.

  And she could not help Joe. She couldn’t help him when he told the news to Alice, or held a sobbing Faye in his arms, or prayed side by side with the family and Father Gregory at St. Anthony’s. She couldn’t help him when he learned that Finn’s body had already been buried in African soil, or when he found out that it might take months before Finn’s personal effects were sent home—assuming they could ever be recovered.

  Above all, Nora couldn’t help Joe absorb the loss.

  It was Friday before he returned to the Biltmore and told her all he’d been doing. Nora had expected him to look haggard and sunken, but though the expression on his face seemed fixed into a grimace, his shoulders were back, and he was standing tall. Some combination of Irish stoicism and family pride, Nora thought. Then, too, this was just Joe: It was hard to imagine him breaking, no matter what the weight.

  Nora put her arms firmly around his waist. His shirt was wrinkled and damp. She wanted him to understand that she had no needs. She wanted him to know that she could simply be a set of arms, unquestioning, untaking. But she could tell from the way he held himself that he didn’t want sympathy.

  She took a step back and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  He sighed. “Just let me sleep, honey,” he said.

  She folded back a corner of the bedcover, making a perfect triangle, as if she were marking a page in a book.

  “Come on,” she said. “Get in.”

  * * *

  —

  Nora gathered her things and went for a walk. The air was motionless, humid, carrying the rancid scent of New York in summer, no different than it had ever been, even in Nora’s privileged youth. She walked a few blocks anyway, noting, as she always had, the colors of the street: the cars, the billboards, the ribbons on women’s hats. Later she would make a sketch of the man who had walked toward her carrying a shadeless lamp in a pack on his back, its tall metal harp seeming to form a halo above him.

  Back in the lounge, she teamed up with Paige to tidy the bookshelves.

  “Is he back yet?” Paige asked.

  “Just now,” Nora said.

  “How is he?”

  “He’s tough,” Nora said.

  “Did he get more time off?”

  Nora nodded. “His sister-in-law really needs him,” she said, “and his niece and nephew too.”

  Paige put down the two thick books she was holding. “You must feel so helpless,” she said, giving Nora the kind of hug that Nora had not been able to give Joe.

  Nora straightened her cap, took a breath, and, with extra respect for the peril the servicemen were facing, went to see what they needed. She offered them coffee, food, books, games. What she wanted to say to them was: “Don’t worry. Even if the worst happens, there might be life after death.” Despite her own situation, though, Nora didn’t think she was proof of that. Even if she wasn’t entirely alive, she had never been entirely dead.

  * * *

  —

  Six hours later, she opened the door to the Biltmore room as quietly as possible but found Joe awake. He was sitting on the couch, still in his shirt and undershorts, his atlas before him on the coffee table. He shut the book quickly, as if he’d been caught at something, then crossed the room to place it at the back of the closet’s top shelf. It seemed to Nora that he was putting the world as far away from himself as he could.

  “Isn’t there anything I can do for you?” Nora asked him.

  He shook his head. “Nothing to do.”

  “How about a shower? A neck rub? A back rub?”

  He shook his head again.

  “But no shift today, right?”

  “Not till next Monday.”

  “When do you go back out?”

  “This evening,” he said.

  “So soon?”

  “Faye’s having some more friends over, and I told her I’d help out.”

  Nora walked over to the dresser drawer where Joe kept his odds and ends and pulled out the deck of Coca-Cola playing cards he’d gotten on his birthday. She tried to mimic the smiling face of the stewardess in front of the winged Coke bottle.

  “Care to play a hand or two?”

  He sighed. “What’s your game?” he asked.

  “My game,” she said, “is gin rummy.”

  Joe looked startled. “You know that’s what I always played with Finn.”

  “That’s sort of the point,” Nora said. “I thought it might make you feel closer to him.”

  Joe stared at the deck of cards, then back at Nora. “I don’t suppose you have some way you could get in touch with Finn and ask if he’d mind?”

  “If you want to talk to Finn,” Nora said, “I think you’ll have to consult Madame Rosalita.”

  He smiled. She had made him smile.

  “I should warn you,” Nora said. “The rummy gods love me.”

  “You’re going to regret this,” Joe said. “I’ve been playing gin rummy since before you were born.”

  “Let me remind you, I was born before you.”

  “Don’t get technical,” Joe said. “I’ve lived a lot longer.”

  She tossed the pack of cards to him. “Shuffle,” she said.

  He chuckled. She had made him chuckle. He sat back on the couch and started to deal the cards, the sweep of each one leaving the deck like the rhythm for a new song.

  * * *

  —

  Though there was rarely anyone else
in the oak-paneled Biltmore library, Nora found it a less lonely place than their hotel room to spend her off hours. Feet tucked under her in one of the deep floral armchairs, she decided to take on Gone with the Wind. Naturally, she had never seen the movie—no movie house existed within 850 feet of M42—but she’d certainly heard about it. The book was 947 pages long. Paige had told her that a friend had fallen asleep while reading it, and that the book had slammed against her face and broken her nose. Nora figured it would keep her busy.

  And it did—not only because of its steaminess and the suspenseful sentence that ended every chapter—but also because Nora couldn’t help finding echoes of her own life in the pages she turned. In Scarlett O’Hara’s background, she found Joe’s stubborn stoicism. In the frivolity of Scarlett and her sisters before the war, Nora recognized herself and her friends from the 1920s. There was something else familiar about Scarlett too. Scarlett had grown up rich and pampered, adored by her father, courted by men. Then the war had come, and she’d had to face reality: death, loss, despair.

  From time to time as she read, Nora would close the book and look up at the library’s domed ceiling, a warm white field embroidered with intricate plaster patterns and brightened by six large, low-hanging chandeliers. Scarlett had been raised amid similar splendors, Nora thought, and so had she.

  Given Scarlett’s circumstances, would Nora have had the gumption to rescue Melanie, fight for Tara, shoot a Yankee soldier? Would she have ridden through the burning of Atlanta to get home? And by the same token, what if Scarlett had been in Nora’s shoes? What if home could never be reached or rebuilt? What would Scarlett have done then? Would she have made a home in Grand Central? Would she have found Joe?

  * * *

  —

  It had been three weeks since they’d learned of Finn’s death, and when Joe came to the Biltmore now, it was only on nights when he’d worked a shift. He spent the rest of his free time in Queens. He was losing weight and looking exhausted, and half the time when he showed up, he was wearing clothes he’d put on two days before—or sometimes unfamiliar clothes that Nora assumed were Finn’s.

  Whenever Nora tried to embrace him, she could feel him struggling to stand still.

  One night he let her curl up next to him in bed, and even though they were lying together, she felt only his absence.

  “Tell me, Joseph,” she said, gently lifting the wayward bangs from his forehead. “Do you think you’ll ever want us to make love again?”

  Joe closed his eyes and needlessly combed his fingers through the hair she’d just touched.

  “I can’t explain it,” he said, his eyes still closed. “I feel like he’s watching.”

  “If there’s a heaven,” Nora said, “I guarantee he’s got better things to do than watch us.”

  Joe opened his eyes. “It’s a feeling,” he said flatly. “I can’t let myself yet.”

  Nora knew that in her youth—her actual youth—she would have been hurt by Joe’s absence. That wasn’t what she felt now. The truth was that she had her art classes, her work at the lounge, her friendship with Paige, and her growing coziness with Big Sal and Mr. Brennan, Alva and Leon. Naturally, she was missing Joe. But what she felt most strongly was the piercing rage of being powerless to help the person she loved.

  * * *

  —

  “Come pray with me,” Ralston Young said to Joe one evening as he was rushing through the terminal on his way to a shift. But Joe didn’t have time for that. Or for drinks with the guys. Or for anything, it seemed, that wasn’t an obligation. In Queens there were closets to be cleaned out, clothes from dresser drawers to be folded into boxes, supposedly awaiting the day when Mike would want them. There was paperwork involved in getting Finn’s veteran’s benefits to Faye, and it would be a while before that pension freed her from depending on Joe and on her own job for money. There were the kids—looking to him more than ever to be reassured that things would be all right, knowing that they never could be. And back in Manhattan, there was Nora. Unlike Faye, whose need was so vast that it seemed to lie in every corner of the house, Nora tried to keep hers hidden, but somehow that was only making it harder for Joe to be with her.

  * * *

  —

  Autumn came in, chilly and bright. Nora bought herself a modest but modern fall coat. Not counting her previous life, she had never had a coat that hadn’t come from the Lost and Found—and, with the collar turned up and the belt fashionably knotted, she set out in early October for a visit to the apartment house. Today she intended to do more than look. At Lexington and Forty-first, it took several rings and at least five minutes before the super came to the front door. He opened it just enough for Nora to see half his face and a large, flesh-colored hearing aid. The device didn’t seem to be much help; with his hand cupped behind it, he kept asking Nora to repeat herself.

  “I’m interested in renting,” Nora said a few times before the man seemed to understand. Eventually he led Nora into an overheated vestibule, the floor of which was a broken checkerboard of old black and white mosaic tiles.

  “I’m interested in renting,” Nora said one more time.

  “I heard you,” the super said.

  “I don’t need anything large,” Nora said. “It’s just my husband and me.”

  He looked her up and down. “Your husband not in the service? Why isn’t he doing the asking?”

  “He’s a leverman at Grand Central,” Nora said proudly.

  “How’s that?” Again, the hand behind his ear. Was he waiting to have his palm greased? Or maybe his hearing was really that bad.

  “I might have something,” he finally said.

  “You might?”

  “In a month or so, maybe.”

  “We don’t need more than one bedroom,” Nora said, still wondering if she was getting through to him.

  He took her hand in his, yanking her forward a bit.

  “Tell you what,” he said, patting her hand condescendingly. “You bring your husband by next time, and we’ll see what we can do.”

  * * *

  —

  “I think he wanted a bribe,” Nora told Joe when they met at Alva’s the next afternoon.

  “Probably,” he said.

  “Apparently, women never rent apartments, at least not women with their husbands stateside. But he said to bring you by and he might have something.”

  Joe looked at her across the table.

  “I can’t now, Nora.”

  “I know. Because of Faye.”

  “Yes.”

  “And the kids.”

  “Yes. And all the things I need to put in order.”

  “But Joe, what if the dream apartment is just waiting for us?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Then it’ll have to keep waiting.”

  Nora felt her eyes fill with tears, and she didn’t want them to show. It was the first time since she’d met Joe that she felt she was causing him pain—not annoyance, not worry, but actual pain.

  * * *

  —

  Two days later Nora saw Faye crossing the concourse. She was wearing the same pink dress she had worn on Brat Day, but today it was mostly covered by a shabby coat. It stood out anyway, as did Faye’s beauty. She was so tall, and her neck was so long and graceful. She reminded Nora of Alice in Wonderland after she’s eaten the cake that makes her grow.

  Nora had no reason to suspect that Faye had come to find her—not that Nora would have hidden if she’d known. She might have been subtler about the way she was sizing Faye up, though. Suddenly, she realized that Faye was staring back at her.

  “You’re the one, aren’t you?” Faye asked, looking up at the balcony. “You’re the one who’s in love with Joey?”

  Joey, Nora thought. That was new.

  Nora could tell Faye was trying to sound warm and sisterly,
but something hard and cold came through, as sharp as a blast of winter.

  Nora wanted to say, No, I’m the one he’s in love with, but she didn’t.

  “There’s a place in back of the coat check,” Nora told Faye. “Come on up.”

  She waved to get Paige’s attention, and by a gesture across the heads of the men, she indicated that she was going to take a break. She led Faye behind the coat-check counter and back to the chairs where Paige and Nora sometimes took their breaks.

  “How did you know it was me?” Nora asked Faye.

  “He’s described you. Red hair. Pretty. Short and perky. Servicemen’s lounge. Also I thought I saw you watching us on Brat Day.”

  “I was.”

  “So, you work here, right? This is where Joey met you?”

  “Well, we met in the terminal, yes.”

  “He said it’s been more than a year.”

  “I imagine that’s true.”

  “You imagine.”

  “Yes. I suppose that’s true.”

  “You suppose.”

  Faye’s repetition was mocking. Nora couldn’t tell whether the target was what Nora was saying or how she was saying it. Nora realized she didn’t want Faye to think she sounded stuck-up. Then she realized she didn’t want to care what Faye thought.

  “And you’re married,” Faye said.

  “I’m what?”

  “You’re married.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because why else would he be keeping you such a secret? Why else hasn’t he brought you out to the house? Since Finn died, we’ve had people there we haven’t seen since we were kids. A couple of Joey’s buddies from the tower even came. But not you. You’ve got to be hiding something.”

  Faye needlessly untied her ponytail, smoothed her hair out, and tied it back again. “Or maybe you think Queens isn’t your kind of place?”