Of Time and Memory

by Don J. Snyder

  In the window of Lauchman’s the weekly newspaper was opened to the front page. A headline about that young man they said was a communist. His wife, Mrs. Hiss, was in court now, pleading her husband’s innocence.

  Peggy walked through the cold to the back of the brick building and stood at the loading dock. Its planked floor trembled through the soles of her feet as the last Linotype press shuddered to a stop. In the silence she could hear the men’s voices. All she had to do was walk back to the front door, say hello to Mr. Lauchman, and pass through the swinging door into the shop and smile at everyone. But the longer she stood outside, the more daunting this was, until it seemed like the most difficult thing in the world to do. Why did she want to walk away? What was there for her to be afraid of? And why was she so sad and distant? Was it that she saw something in this life that others didn’t see? What was it she saw from the time she was a little girl? Did she see that we are alone? Each of us, despite the busy life swirling around us, is alone. Even a husband couldn’t change this.

  And what else? What else was she certain of that cold winter day as dusk fell over the afternoon? Just this perhaps, that she was unworthy of anything better than loneliness.

  Some of the men had already put on their coats to go home by the time she finally went inside the print shop. Here she is, someone called from the back room. Mr. Lauchman with his wavy hair was already taking her hand. Peggy floated behind him, it was like she was in a dream.

  Then she was standing next to Dick, afraid that she would say the wrong thing. Or worse, that she would say nothing at all and that her silence would be misinterpreted. That these men who were her father’s friends wouldn’t approve of her. And that this boy—this husband—would be disappointed with her.

  Her father had brought a bottle of beer for each man, to make a toast. A toast and wish of good luck to this girl, and to this boy who would become her husband. Husband, a new word for her to say, each time with the weight of a coin on her tongue.

  A kiss on her cheek from Dick’s good friend Bill Crockett, whose boyish grin she liked so much. Her life was moving quickly now and Bill would be waiting up ahead at two moments when death surrounded her. Could she tell? Could she see something in his eyes?

  He joked that day that he had spent the afternoon setting the obituary notices for the weekly newspaper, while Dick, standing at the Linotype press beside him, had set the wedding announcements. You’ve got all the luck, he says to Dick.

  And there she is, her photograph is looking out from the page. It is her high school graduation picture, the one she never liked because her hair was frizzy.

  Dick holds the page up in the air. The sound of applause fills the room. And after everyone has wished them the best of everything, Peggy is looking down at the newspaper, reading the words that Dick has set in type one letter at a time. The words that make it all seem suddenly more real than she had imagined it. The words that tell her, Here is your life, Peggy. A new life from which you can no longer disappear.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  In the photograph of Peggy’s wedding shower, her face is less animated than the other girls’. The other girls are opening themselves to the warmth of life; it is her wedding shower, but she is still holding something back. What was it? Was she unsure of her decision to marry Dick? Everyone would remember how completely she fell in love with him. How she spoke of wanting six children with him. Cheaper by the half dozen.

  She was unsure of herself, but not of the decision she had made to marry him. He is with her in the photograph of the wedding shower; they are both coming down the basement stairs. He is a little behind her. The girls helped Jenny decorate the room. Paper streamers wrapped around the water pipes. A big cardboard heart taped to the wall. Their names are printed neatly inside the heart—Dick and Peggy.

  Jenny gave me the photograph when I went to her house in New Jersey to meet her. I had the picture for several months before I realized that the printing in the cardboard heart matched the printing on the cardboard sign taped below the rear window of the wedding car outside Grace Lutheran Church. It’s just a small coincidence, but I wanted to answer as many questions as I could.

  I look at this photograph of Peggy with her girlfriends. I have met each of them now, elderly women who must be careful walking in the ice and snow. Two of them lost young husbands in car crashes. One spends the winter in Florida. Their faces barely resemble the faces in the photograph. Peggy is the only one who has escaped the destruction of time. She, who cared so much about her beauty, managed to preserve it in her friends’ memories of her.

  At the wedding shower they all talked happily about the next decade and the new inventions it was supposed to bring. Electric can openers. Electric typewriters. The whole world plugged in and running on electricity. And colored everything. Colored televisions. Cameras that took colored photographs. Dishwashers. Peggy wanted to know if it would wash pots too. I’ve never cooked anything without burning the pot, she told the others. And airplanes that went so fast, you could fly to Paris for the weekend. Paris for the weekend!

  Someone mentioned that all of them would be turning thirty by the end of this marvelous new decade. Thirty? Yes, thirty, with varicose veins and gray hair.

  In the photograph, Peggy’s face radiates knowledge; it is as if she is seeing past all of this. Is she thinking that none of this seems real? The future. Maybe this was why she had already made up her mind to have children; she needed children to connect her to the future.

  The girls gave her little things for her hope chest. Washcloths and dish towels. Some lipstick for her honeymoon. A record of Don Cornell singing the lyrics she loved so much. Tomorrow may never come for all we know.

  . . .

  She marked the beginning of summer that year by asking Dick if he would drive them somewhere. Anywhere. Their first trip together. Maybe they would even spend the night. Shock everyone. Why not? She was feeling on top of the world!

  Somehow they decided on Lancaster, and Peggy sewed a pale yellow sundress with a bow in back at the waist. It was a hot, sunny day. The upholstered front seat of Dick’s car was warm against the backs of her thighs when she got in and she had to sit on her hands until the breeze coming through the opened windows cooled the seat. Dick had a surprise: Mr. Lauchman had spoken with him on payday. He was raising his pay by five cents an hour and he offered to loan Dick whatever he needed to buy furniture and set up housekeeping after the wedding. This meant Peggy would be able to buy the mahogany bedroom set she had seen in the window of Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia.

  The bedroom set. The kitchen table. The record player. Whatever you want, I’ll buy it for you, Dick says.

  She is holding his arm with both hands as he drives along. The sunlight is flashing across his face. He fiddles with the radio dial until a baseball game comes on. Something is settling inside her today, some new sense of herself and what she desires most deeply. It makes her feel as if she can see straight through to the rest of her life. It distinguishes her from the people she passes along the highway. They look tired, hurried. Unaware of the world’s brightness.

  Lancaster is a sea of farmland. Horse-drawn plows turning up the brown soil. In the roads more horses pulling black carriages. On the village green there is a farmer’s market. Peggy is still holding Dick’s arm with both hands as they pass the displays of needlepoint, the woven baskets. The women’s shapeless dresses fall to the grass. The men in black are expressionless. Peggy wonders if they are happy, what is holding them here? She wonders if she could live with nothing as they do. Nothing but love and faith. All of life’s material things pouring through her hands. The children are looking up at them. Their faces are white and they stand perfectly still. Peggy wants to take them with her into the excitement and promise of her life.

  Dick wants to visit a church. He parks the car and she follows him inside. It is a wooden box filled with summer light. The floorboards are worn through their varnish. Bibles set along the benches like b
ricks. Dick opens one. The sound of him turning the pages echoes in the emptiness. He wants to read something to her. His favorite passage from the New Testament. So much that he does and says to her is unexpected. Even the sound of his voice at different times can still surprise her. Here it is, he says. He begins to read, but she tells him to stand in front, at the altar. He’s reluctant at first but she pushes him on. Then she takes a seat in the front row and looks up at him. Read, go on and read it to me, Dick.

  It is the story where one of Christ’s followers asks him what it is a good person is supposed to do with his life. Feed my sheep. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Peggy has heard this before, of course. All the years of Sundays are in her someplace. She is overwhelmed with a feeling of contentment. She could live in this sunstruck room. Her life doesn’t need to go any farther than this.

  Here’s my sermon for the day, he calls to her in a rising voice. I love you and will always love you, until the end of time! Amen, he says.

  On the ride home she cannot seem to get close enough to him. She is pressed against his arm like a little child. He tells her that when he was in the army in the Philippines, one of his duties was to bury the food left over after each meal. He thought nothing of it until one day he saw some people digging up the garbage. They were hunched down in the dirt like animals, putting every scrap of rotten food into their mouths. After that he dug very shallow holes in the ground to make it easier for them. It was against orders but he did it anyway.

  He raises his arm and puts it around Peggy to draw her closer. She lays her head on his shoulder. He asks if she liked Lancaster, then tells her that he wants to go to college someday. Maybe to the seminary in Lancaster. He asks how that would be for her and she tells him that as long as they are together, nothing else matters. It surprises her how completely she has given herself away to his ideas. That she could lose herself in him so quickly is a little frightening to her. This is the beginning of their first summer together but already it is getting difficult to remember clearly what her life was like before he entered it. This boy next to her is the boy she saw that day on his uncle’s porch, helping his cousin Frances walk in her leg braces. He was a stranger to her then. Though not completely.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The hope chest is in her room like a trunk she is packing for some great voyage across the sea. And she is busy sewing right through the summer. The sewing machine is moved up to her bedroom and she is up all hours of the night making dresses. Not just the dresses for the bridesmaids in her wedding, but the dresses she will need as a married woman. She is determined to finish a whole new wardrobe before the wedding. She tells her cousin that she needs to make these dresses now while she is still working at the telephone company, making money to pay for the material. Once she is married she is going to try to have a baby and then she won’t have the time or the extra money to sew. She tells her cousin Jean that she’s sure she will get pregnant right away, like all the other women on her mother’s side of the family, many of whom had twins. Her aunt Edna had three sets of twins!

  Peggy’s neighbor, Grace Bower, was five years younger but she used to play house with her when they were kids. Grace will remember all her life how her mother told her that Peggy’s light was on late, night after night, because she was busy sewing the bridesmaids’ dresses for her wedding. Her mother pointed Peggy out to her on three different occasions, three nights when Peggy was sitting at the sewing machine. The first time, Mrs. Bower told her daughter, Peggy is busy making wedding dresses. Then, Peggy is busy making maternity clothes. And, Peggy is sewing baby clothes now.

  This marvelous progression in Peggy’s life was satisfying to her. There was something up ahead to draw her through the dull hours, something to look forward to. The pale green crinoline dress for her honeymoon is something she can touch, something real that she can believe in. And the long woolen skirt she will wear when company comes to visit her in her first home over the Christmas holidays. She will have people over for dessert, she tells her mother; until she learns to cook, dessert will be fine, and if she needs her mother to bake something for her, she’ll be glad to help.

  If she has time. Another month and she will have her new baby to care for. It is amazing to Peggy to think that her mother is going to have a baby. Some mornings when she awakens before anyone else in the house, she stands at the threshold of her parents’ bedroom and watches her mother turning in her sleep. Each time the baby rolls over inside her, she rolls in her sleep and her hand moves to her belly. It is as if they are going through the steps of a slow dance, learning the timing of each other’s moves. In the morning when her mother awakens she will say, I heard you singing again last night while you were sewing, Peggy. I fell asleep again to the sound of you sewing and singing.

  Peggy is making the world smaller. In the months before her wedding, her love for Dick is so complete that she doesn’t need to go anywhere. He comes to take her dancing and they end up sitting on the couch in her father’s house, talking until they can’t keep their eyes open any longer. She makes him a cup of coffee before he drives home. While the water is coming to a boil she holds him in her arms. Whatever is happening in the large world outside his embrace doesn’t matter at moments like this. All the bad things, all the things that frighten her, are beyond the orbit of her love with Dick.

  If she goes anywhere at all it is to baby-sit for her uncle Howard and aunt Muriel. The minute they leave the house with Peggy and Dick in charge of their three small boys, it feels like it all belongs to her. The white lace tablecloth on the dining-room table. The blue ceramic teapot on the kitchen counter. The house. The little boys in their footed pajamas.

  All they want to do is wrestle on the living-room floor with Dick. The littlest one is just learning to walk. He wobbles on his feet like a town drunk. He goes through Dick’s pockets while his brothers are charging and diving on him. Not so hard, Peggy calls to the boys. Don’t pull Dick’s hair!

  Here is when she falls in love with him as a father. Could there possibly be anything better in life than this? No, nothing. They put all three in the tub together, then read them stories. Tonight Dick is reading to them while Peggy is in the kitchen making him a sandwich from some leftovers in the refrigerator. It’s just a sandwich, but before she knows it she has practically every utensil out on the counter. Lettuce everywhere. Dick comes up behind her and kisses the back of her neck. When she turns to look into his eyes the thought that fills her mind is how she will never be able to give him in return what he gives her. What can I give you in return? she asks him.

  A sandwich, he says.

  No, I’m serious. I don’t have anything to offer you.

  This is how she feels; next to his goodness, his light, and his childlike faith in her, what can she possibly give him in return.

  Yourself, he tells her.

  This is all that he wants in the world.

  Yes, she tells him, yes, of course he can have all of her; in a moment like this it is easy for her to say it. Easy for her to hold nothing back.

  They are silly that night. It is so late when Muriel and Howard come home that Peggy and Dick spend the night there. He sleeps on the couch. At two o’clock in the morning she kisses him goodnight. She has never kissed him this late at night, she tells him. Or this early in the morning.

  She lies in bed and makes herself stay awake until three. Then she goes back into the living room and wakes him so he can kiss her again.

  This crazy happiness that she is feeling is the happiness that often comes when life is in transition. She is taking a journey to a new destination. Her trunk is nearly packed. It is possible for her to believe that when she reaches this new place, her new life, things will be better there, the darkness won’t find her there. It is being nowhere, neither the place where she is nor the place she is going to, that allows her the luxury of hope.

  In the morning they are off to Atlantic City. It is Labor Day. Already a chill of fall in the air along the shore
. The last of summer. Seagulls huddled in the wind. Peggy rides the blue-green waves, her hair in a pale pink bathing cap. She swims straight out from shore, past all the other swimmers, until Dick calls to her to come back. He looks so skinny in his bathing trunks. She can count each of his ribs.

  In sweaters they walk the boardwalk. Holding hands. The shopkeepers notice them the way the world notices lovers. They can see their glances linger. And Peggy and Dick can feel the world’s interest in them. It is as if the two of them are giving off a light and a heat that remind others of what they once felt.

  In front of an old hotel a long line of wheelchairs made of wicker, painted white. Dick tells her about the wounded soldiers who were brought here during the war. Several of the hotels had been requisitioned by the army. The nurses pushed the sad, broken soldiers up and down the boardwalk in the wheelchairs. Imagine their families coming here to visit them, to see their wounds for the first time. And what about their lovers? Will the wounded soldiers still be loved in their brokenness? Who will love them through a long life?

  They leave early with the plan of stopping by the furniture store to take one more look at the bedroom set. But then Peggy decides that she wants him to see the farm where her mother grew up.

  It is dusk when they arrive. Coming over the last hill they can see lights on in the farmhouse. Something falls inside her. The bank has sold her mother’s farm. It is gone. Somehow she had allowed herself to believe that it would be theirs someday. That they would raise their children here. People would drive by and see her in the tire swing with a small child on her lap. People would envy her life.

  At that moment when she is beginning to disappear inside this new disappointment, Dick takes her picture. I have seen this photograph of her. The car is parked along the side of the highway, the fields spreading wide behind it. Peggy wouldn’t get out of the car for him. He tried everything but she had decided that because she didn’t want to have her picture taken, she was not going to cooperate. Even after such a nice day together at the beach. She has a stern expression on her face. In the day’s last slanting sunlight Dick’s reflection is caught in the gleaming hubcaps. He is looking down into his box camera. She is glaring past him. A few moments earlier she was pressed against him on the front seat of the car, but now she is a million miles away. His voice is calling to her from another continent, telling her to smile. Smile, Peggy. Please smile. Why won’t she give in this one time?