Whose Waves These Are

by Amanda Dykes

  He’s the first to break the hold, fixing his eyes back over his shoulder. “I’ve got to get these to the boathouse,” he says, but he lingers, as if torn.

  “Yes,” Annie says. “I won’t keep you.”

  He pauses. She’s learning that this guy is never in a hurry. Whatever he’s thinking, he gives it time to be thought. She tries not to squirm under his gaze. “Come with me,” he says. “You haven’t seen inside the boathouse yet. This visit, I mean.”

  “Actually . . . I never have.”

  “Never?”

  She shakes her head. “It was always locked. The padlock looked like it had been there for decades. I used to imagine what was inside.”

  “Like what?” Jeremiah starts walking, and she beside him.

  “Well, you have to remember, I was ten.”

  “Okay. So what did ten-year-old Annie conjure up to live in the boathouse?”

  She feels heat creeping up her neck. “A dragon.”

  “Huh.”

  “What? What would you have thought, with the place always locked, and a whole corner of the roof missing, and a light glowing inside some nights?”

  “I guess in some ways you weren’t too far off,” he says.

  “Oh?”

  “There is something larger than life in there that I’ve never been able to make sense of.”

  “What is it?”

  “Here.” Jeremiah pulls a key from his pocket and hands it to her. For a moment, her pulse hammers. It looks like the one from the envelope at the diner. Same tarnished metal, though this one looks significantly more scratched up. Were they duplicates? Had Bob been granting her access to the boathouse when he left her an unexplained key? She digs into her pocket and pulls her version out, handing Jeremiah’s back to him.

  “I think this might work,” she says, holding her key up, a thrill coming over her.

  “Where did you get that?”

  She remembers Jeremiah wasn’t in the diner when she opened her envelope.

  “This was in the envelope Bob left for me on our table—nothing else, no explanation.”

  She can see Jeremiah’s mind sorting through the possibilities, but he just nods and says, “See if it fits.”

  The boathouse appears as they round the corner, its brown shingled sides and flaked-white trim lending it an air of timelessness, its tracks to the sea underused and overgrown.

  One corner is in ruins at the roof, just as it had been when she was a kid. But someone’s been working on it—a ladder is propped against the shingled side, and a blue tarp flaps over the opening in the roof.

  “Are you fixing this?”

  He tips his head to the side. “In a way. Bob was doing it. I tried to talk him out of it, but . . .” He narrows his eyes at the building, regret on his face. “This is where I found him after he fell.”

  Oh. Annie’s stomach sinks, thinking of it.

  “I aim to get it fixed before he wakes up. Like I should have done before.”

  “Jeremiah, I’m sure it wasn’t—”

  “It was my fault,” he says. And the set of his jaw says the conversation is over. He strides toward the door, and Annie follows. She knows the weight of this regret and has thought more than once the very same—that this is her fault. If she’d been here . . .

  Jeremiah gestures toward the door. There, hanging on the metal latch, is the same rusted padlock, greeting her like a long-lost partner in adventure.

  She slips the key in.

  Nothing.

  A second try is met with a hard wall of failure, lock not budging.

  Jeremiah holds his key up again, and she takes it, hope blistering as she sticks her own back in her pocket. Its mystery will need to wait a little longer.

  Jeremiah’s key slips right in. She holds her breath, the vivid picture of that childhood dragon breathing into her memory. The metal clicks . . . and releases.

  ten

  BOSTON

  DECEMBER 1944

  Thousand-ton metal shrieks, slowing the train as it pulls into Boston’s South Station. Robert’s gaze wanders from the old copy of The Count of Monte Cristo in his lap, past Jenny, and on through the window. Outside, soldiers in navy blue uniforms and white caps mill about with those in army green. Lieutenants and privates, corporals and captains, paths intersecting in this tangle before they head off to their next assignments, furloughs, trainings, missions.

  Robert sits a little straighter, watching them. So this is Boston. Two flags wave high above the station’s massive columns, carvings, and clock tower. Red, white, and blue moving in the wind, the flags remind him why they’ve come.

  Jenny is fidgeting in the seat next to him. She rummages in her handbag and pulls out the telegram—the one she’s read at least ten times since they left Ansel. Robert has nearly committed it to memory, too.

  JENNY. ON LEAVE TWO DAYS STARTING NEXT MONDAY. BOSTON. SHIP OUT AFTER THAT. MEET ME FOR USO DANCE IF YOU CAN. WILL SEND DETAILS SOON. 21 FATHOMS—ROY.

  She smiles at that last part. It was their code, those fathoms. Each time a letter passed between them, they added one more to the number. Another letter passed, another bit of life experienced together. For a boat builder like Roy, whose thoughts were fixed on nautical miles—fathoms—beneath a boat, this was a story of the growing depths of life and love beneath their vessel. It grew and grew, fathom by fathom, letter by letter.

  In the six weeks he’d been away, the distance hadn’t hindered their fathoms in the least. By now all of Ansel knew of it, and they’d ask her in the street, “How many fathoms now, Jenny?” It did them all good to see her lovestruck face beam back the answer, even in her heartache at missing her husband.

  “Two days,” she murmurs now. “Two days until he’s away.”

  Roy had hoped to come home from his training before he left. But with such short leave surprising them all, it made more sense for them to come to Boston, else he spend the whole of it on the train.

  Her hand rests on her stomach, a reminder that there is another present in this row.

  “I won’t be like all the other girls at the dance,” she murmurs. Her voice is lined with sobriety and wonder all at once. The life within her is changing her in more ways than just the small bump that’s barely beginning to show. Changing who she is, how she grapples with this world. She’s both stronger and softer, somehow.

  Passengers around them start bustling, preparing to exit the train. “I hate to break it to you, Jenny,” he says, “but you never had a chance of being like all the other girls.”

  Her head jerks up, dark hair curled into the style of the day around her face. “Why, Robert Bliss!”

  “Ask Roy,” he says. “He’ll tell you you’re fathoms more than the others.”

  She laughs. “That’s kind. But don’t put those other girls down too quickly. Roy and I have schemes of setting you up at the dance, you know.”

  Robert cringes. Not if he can help it. He wants as little to do with dances, people, and this city as possible. The last thing he wants is to spend the evening spinning girls he’ll never see again, as if somehow that’ll help the war.

  He’ll make sure Jenny gets safely to her aunt Millicent’s house and home. And that will be that.

  But once they meet up with Roy outside the station, Robert learns his brother has other plans, starting with dinner at Jenny’s aunt’s house—a beef roast and biscuits, exorbitant in times like these and attained only by the whole neighborhood’s donated meat rations when they heard a soldier was being sent off to war. Jenny and Roy are awful companions for table conversation, staring starry-eyed at each other the whole time, but afterward, they insist on dragging him along to the dance. He resists at every step, but Roy’s “I dare you, little brother” tips the scales.

  It’s dark when they exit the subway at Symphony Station and make their way toward the Roseland-State Ballroom. Big band music jigs out into the air, ushering them into the lobby. The USO has reserved the whole hall for the night. Smiling
faces beam from pretty girls all in a row, hands clasped behind backs or taking the offered arms of soldiers, stepping through the inner doors and into the dance. Light reflects from a mirrored spinning globe above them, sprinkling them with beams as they move in and out of the light, the dark, the light.

  “Come on.” Roy steps up to the front table, where a lady sits with clipboard in hand. Roy, looking smart and proud in his uniform, pulls a paper from his jacket pocket, slides it her way.

  The Boston USO formally invites

  Seaman Roy A. Bliss

  to

  An Evening Beneath the Stars

  The woman flips through her papers, and as she does, Robert’s attention drifts past the junior hostesses lined up and beaming in their party frocks, over to where a woman in a dark red dress hesitates in the doorway to the ballroom, watching the couples inside.

  His gaze lingers there—not the way other men in the room do, though she is certainly beautiful, but because there’s a story written on her face, a sadness etched deep there as she watches something or someone on the dance floor. And as the music crescendos, she stands taller. Her blond-crowned head gives a small shake, and her jaw sets. He recognizes that look—that of a battle raging inside a human soul. She turns and, with head held high and not a glance toward anyone in the room, strides out the front doors and into the night.

  “Ah, but can’t you make an exception?” Roy is leaning on the table, flashing his biggest grin at the clipboard lady. “He’s my brother. And he’s doing as much for this country as anyone in uniform—”

  “I’m sorry, Seaman Bliss.” Her voice is like molasses, thick and too sweet, melodic as she says, “Rules are rules. And the USO is, after all, for our soldiers.”

  “But look at that mug!” Roy straightens, cups Robert’s chin, and squishes his cheeks crookedly. The kid wasn’t doing his argument any favors.

  “Yes, very handsome indeed, but—” She stops, looks between them as puzzlement, then delight, plays across her face. “Why, you’re identical!”

  “That’s right.” Roy bounces his eyebrows up and down, as if they have an inside secret. “Wouldn’t you like your dance to have twins? We’re quite an act.”

  Speak for yourself, Robert wants to say, but he bites his tongue.

  The line behind them is growing, the fellas in it growing impatient.

  “No,” Robert says. He feels the appraising once-over of the lady as she takes in his brown slacks and white shirt, his worn wool coat devoid of military insignia, and the humble newsie cap he holds between his hands, a relic from Dad’s youth. He takes a step back. “It’s all right. I’ll meet up with you later.”

  Jenny steps forward, bedecked in finery that’s a patchwork of loans from the ladies of Ansel—Mrs. Crockett’s blue gloves, a silver silk dress of his mother’s that she shortened for the occasion, and what Jenny called “slippers” from Liza Montgomery. The whole town had gone into a tizzy, readying Jenny for this dance when Roy’s telegram came. The town square had looked like an explosion of someone’s attic, with dresses and shoes and all the women draping Jenny in what they were sure would still be the finest wear. Jenny had just laughed—her first genuine smile since Roy had gone. When she’d turned those blue eyes on Robert and asked, “Would you take me there?” there had been only one possible answer.

  She leans toward the matron and whispers something, eyes dancing. She slips her hand into Roy’s and points in a conspiratorial way between Robert and the lined-up girls.

  Would that the floor might open up and swallow him whole.

  The lady turns her head to the side, looking the three of them over as a smile tickles at the corners of her stained-red mouth. But just as Robert is afraid she’s about to assent and throw him to the lions, she releases her pent-up breath from behind pursed lips and says in defeat, “I’m sorry. Rules are rules.”

  Robert’s nerves release and propel him forward until he’s picked up the woman’s hand, pen and all, and kisses it. “Thank you,” he says.

  “Young man,” she says, pulling her hand back, “I said no, you may not enter. I’m sorry, but—”

  “I know,” Robert says, sticking his cap back on his head and making for the door. “Thanks!” He turns to the astounded Roy and Jenny and points. “I’ll meet up with you tomorrow.” And the blast of cold air as he exits, parting a crowd of soldiers filtering in, is freedom itself.

  Outside, it’s lightly snowing. Robert walks toward the corner of Huntington Avenue, where his room at the YMCA awaits him. Just a few minutes more, and he’ll be safe from all this socializing, alone in his room for the night.

  But his feet carry him the opposite way. He knows this feeling. The pull of the ocean, the only familiar thing in this bustling city—and the only thing wide enough to break free of this closed-in cell the buildings create.

  He wanders several blocks, through the Boston Common and Public Garden, where a lit tree and a cluster of carolers remind him that tomorrow is Christmas. The falling snow melts on contact and forms rivulets on brick sidewalks, and like the water, all he knows to do is follow the slope. Down and down until the ocean will appear.

  Gas lamps hiss, strains of music from the dance are only a memory now. Another sound rings. His footsteps fall in sync with metal on metal, pounding, so much more music to his ears than the strains of Glenn Miller back at the dance. These are surely the sounds of the harbor. Someone at work. Doing something. This is a dance he can understand.

  The clink of metal grows louder. Whatever it is, he can help. Someone building a shed, maybe. He looks around at the reaching white-stone mansions and laughs. Okay, this isn’t Maine. So maybe it won’t be a metal shed. But still . . . he’d give just about anything to set his hand to something, help a guy out, get the patronizing look of that USO lady out of his head.

  He turns the corner . . . and a crowbar nearly slices into his face. His elbow flies up to protect it as he ducks away. The figure in front of him—shadow shrouded, with back to him—brings the crowbar down upon its mark: the bumper of a Buick Roadmaster gleaming in the gaslight. Its grille—surely not more than a year old—is dented, misshapen from this assault.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Robert says, straightening and turning to face the figure full on for the first time.

  And he takes a step back. The “guy” isn’t a guy at all. He . . . she—for she steps from the shadows, and there’s no mistaking her distinctly feminine figure—is in a dress of deep crimson and a coat of richest fur. Her dark eyes flash, hair like very tangled gold falling into her face. The same face he’d just watched leave the USO, envious of her escape.

  eleven

  “It most certainly is a good idea.” The woman plants her fists on her hips, crowbar leaving a smudge across her skirt.

  “You might not want to—”

  She jabs the crowbar in his general direction, and he steps back. “I’ll tell you something, mister. It’s the first good idea I’ve had in a good long time. Tell that to the Misses Hampstead and their ladies college.” Another crowbar jab, for emphasis. If this keeps up, someone’s liable to happen along, figure he’s cornered her, toss him into jail.

  He should leave.

  But he looks at her, standing there like Zorro with sword extended, and he can’t leave. Some magnetism keeps his eyes glued to her.

  “I don’t know the Misses Hampstead.”

  “Oh? Well, you’re lucky. They’d have you speaking the ‘four languages of the Romantics’—their words, not mine, thank you very much—in no time.” She ticks her fingers off on the crowbar. “French. Latin. German. Italian. Ha! One of those is dead, and two will get you labeled a traitor these days. They’ve crossed German and Italian off their list now, like proper wartime citizens, but—”

  “Seems they’d be more useful now than ever,” Robert ventured. “In a war job somewhere.”

  She was becoming more conversational, less tyrannical. He imagined she might be the sort of creature
Shakespeare invented when he wrote of a shrew to be tamed.

  “Tell that to my father,” her rant continues. “‘Go to the dance,’ he said. ‘Do your part to help our soldiers,’ he said. ‘Be a hostess.’ As if spinning around all night will end the war.”

  Maybe she wasn’t as crazy as she’d seemed at first.

  “But will he let me actually help? Take a war job? Become a nurse? Anything at all? No!” She turns to the car again, hits the bumper hard. “He”—clank—“will”—clank—“not!”

  She slowly lets out a deep breath and turns to face him. “Do you know what the widow in the Good Book did when she had only two mites to give?”

  “She . . . gave it.” He’s caught her eyes for the first time, and he keeps them, hopes maybe holding this stare will help steady her.

  “That’s right. And do you know what I have to my name?”

  “I don’t even know your name.”

  “Names.” She waves an arm. “Quite the most unnecessary contrivances that ever were. But for argument’s sake—do you know what I have to my name?”

  He doesn’t like to judge, but by the fine dress and coat, the satin gloves and gleaming shoes, it might be a good bit.

  “This car—that’s what. It’s the only thing of value I’ve ever had to call my own. And only because it was a gift from my grandmother. She was never one to stand by and let life roll over her, so I figure I’ve got her blessing.”

  He eyes the car. “Her . . . blessing to pound holes into your car?”

  She rolled her eyes. “To give my fender to the war effort.”

  It’s the bumper she’s attacking, but he doesn’t correct her as she continues. “Let them melt it down and make ships out of it or whatever it is they do with all the donated metal. Maybe it’ll help save some soldier’s life someday. Even if I can’t.” She looks away at that last part, voice quieter.

  Ah. Now, this is a spirit he understands. He steps forward, thinking to help.

  “You can’t stop me.” She brushes her hair out of her face, leaving a streak of grime behind. It becomes her.