The First Desire

by Nancy Reisman

  Even with the sweating and the threat of bombs, it seemed easier to be Irving in England than it was in the States. Purely Irving, he thought. Here he was more expansive, he felt more linked to New York City’s grandeur, which could as easily belong to Irving as to anyone else. He imagined a life in New York after the war, imagined himself in Times Square theaters, in jazz clubs and posh hotels. He was relieved, he told Leyton, that his family was safe in America.

  “God yes,” Leyton said. “It’s hell for the Brits.”

  IN THE WINTER of ’44 Leyton told him transfer orders would be coming through soon, but offered no details, and Irving waited. More and more troops arrived, the streets and pubs overflowing with them, and Irving found he did not want to be near them: this more than anything kept him silent and listening. Sometimes men assumed he had been to the front and returned, and asked him, and he would wave a hand and shake his head, suggesting he’d rather not talk about it and ruin a perfectly good pint.

  But there were moments during the day when he would inexplicably break into a sweat, and the panic would come over him, and a coldness, and then it would pass and he would return to whatever he’d been doing. He wondered if epileptics felt this way, the day speckled with instants when the body took control. He sweated until his orders finally came through: he was to move to southeast England to help set up an evacuation hospital. He would not be sent to France, not yet anyway. It seemed his luck was holding.

  Don’t get into the medicine cabinet, Leo had said, though now it seemed a joke, another way of thinking about the nurses. Meg was teary about him leaving, though he’d still be in England. She carried on as if he were going to the front—he wasn’t, was he? This was just sentiment, he told himself, her attachment overdramatized. But she was passionate and in passion they returned to her bed. He would miss her, he said, and he felt he would: a wave of sadness came over him and he buried his face in her hair and made fervent promises of letters and fidelity and a speedy return.

  IN THE SOUTHEAST, he quickly learned to avoid conversation about his assignment, as it spooked the troops stationed nearby: they did not want to hear about preparations for predicted casualties. The troops were everywhere and you could see in their eyes an unsettledness, and he thought of the racehorses, how dramatically they could register panic. He carried a lucky charm in his pocket, a polished amethyst Lillian Schumacher had given him, and several times a day he held it in his fist.

  In June when the first wave of troops went out, there was an odd quiet. He’d begun talking up a nurse named Laura—he was no officer, but why shouldn’t he try? On the seventh he had been close enough to her to kiss her, and her mouth was slightly open, smiling, as if she wanted to be kissed. He considered asking her to take a walk. She was from Chicago, she told him. She was only twenty-four. He was talking about visiting New York, and a passing nurse called Laura’s name, and then a general call went up: the casualties were arriving. Irving’s sweating began, and Laura matter-of-factly gathered herself, her mouth now sealed, her attention elsewhere. In a minute she was halfway to a hospital tent.

  He hurried to the harbor to help carry men in: there were dozens of soldiers half gone but still alive and he felt then a dizziness and a roaring in his ears, the light splintering. Even now the litters were slick with blood, and between trips to the hospital tents he ran behind a truck and was sick. Then he felt a sour distance, and continued carrying the men who were missing parts. It seemed not to stop, this carrying of men. Many of them had been given morphine, but sometimes the morphine had worn off. A bloody, brown-eyed kid who seemed torn up in the middle tried to talk to Irving, his sounds a muddled begging—maybe for water, though it sounded like wa, or war. Irving felt the glassiness of motion and the man’s begging as if it were far away, a persistent call Irving could not answer. He wanted the voice to stop, but the man continued, and Irving could feel a jolt in his arm, a muscular twitch, as if he might strike this man who was bleeding and wanting something and watching Irving. The watching terrified Irving the most. His father would not have been terrified: his father would have found a way to quiet the man, the right word or gesture. Perhaps it was a question of will. But it seemed the most Irving could do was get the man’s gurney into the ward and avoid hitting him. Irving could see the man’s eyes widening as he left the gurney in the ward and drew back, more eyes on him—a nurse, a young one named Maxwell, watching as he turned away. And in his peripheral vision he saw Nurse Maxwell shift fast between patients, leaning toward the man and reaching for a tray with syringes and cups of ice chips.

  Irving felt in himself the same splintering he’d seen in the light, and was sick again. Then the twitching in his arm finally ceased. The man’s wounds were not Irving’s fault: none of it was Irving’s fault. The world seemed far away, like a staticky late-night radio broadcast. A faint breeze passed, and he noticed again that it was June, but June through a telescope.

  HE WOULD GO AWOL rather than go to France, risk court-martial. He would feign mental defect. Anything. For a few weeks the casualties arrived, though sometimes he transported hospital supplies instead of men. He felt himself no longer Irving, simply a body in motion. But after a few weeks, when the evacuation hospital decamped and crossed the Channel, he was ordered back to Somerset. It had become July. Here was Meg who at first seemed a dream of Meg, and whose body seemed a lifeline; her attic apartment, with its slanted ceilings and drafts and bad plumbing an oasis. And yet even with Meg, the nightmares took hold—ghastly scenes of dismemberment—and from then on he kept a flask with him always, regardless of regulations. For a time he seemed far from the ground, and everything but sex seemed an imitation of itself. At first he did not gamble, his luck surely having ebbed. The prospect of losing money melded with a possible transfer to France: anything could happen. Anything. By August the days evened out, though his luck seemed provisional, a matter of the moment. Sadie wrote him letters about her trips to Crystal Beach: Crystal Beach still existed, the dance hall and the girls in bathing suits and the cool water under hot sun still existed, somewhere. He thought of Sadie’s living room, and the guest room in her house, where he would like to sleep for weeks, where Sadie could bring him trays of pastry and hot coffee and soup while Bill and the girls lived their lives elsewhere. At the PX, recuperating men would appear, and Irving tried to think of them as customers without histories connected to his, simply customers.

  Meg told him they needed to remember the good in their lives. “It’s still there,” she said. “You just have to look.” She could imagine being with him forever, and during sex forever was exactly the word for his desire: this exact immersion forever. She said she could imagine his children, and though he did not picture children at all, he smiled at her and returned to the sensation of forever. He could stay in her body forever and never return to hospitals and never wash other men’s blood off and never feel himself splintering. He told Meg he loved her, and he meant it as much as he had meant anything.

  “I can picture you in New York City,” he said, though what he pictured were women he sometimes watched on the street in downtown Buffalo, slightly altered. “But maybe you’d prefer London, after the war?”

  “I’ve always thought about America.” But Meg doubted her parents would approve, given the distance and, she admitted, her mother’s views on religion. “She’ll have worries,” Meg said.

  “Sure,” Irving said. “Why wouldn’t she?” There had been uneasiness in his family too, he told her, what with his late mother being a Lutheran.

  “She doesn’t mind Lutherans.”

  And so when he met her parents—her mother plump, with the same oval face, a deeper air of worry, Meg’s thin, downcast father— they made no mention of religion. The dress uniform helped him, the gifts from the PX. He was careful to drink only one beer before meeting them, and he talked expansively about his prospects in New York City, which would be a good place for Meg, after they were married.

  The meeting left him with a euph
oric hope that lasted a day and then gave way to the more immediate problems of liquor and card money, and the persistent nightmares, and the need to sell a few things from the PX on the black market. There was no thinking, really, beyond immediate need.

  Don’t go crazy, Leo wrote, I’ve got a girl in mind for you. It seemed a voice from a different life. What could Leo know? Irving did not write back for a long while, though Leo persisted. It was Leo who met him at the port when he reached the States again, and Leo at the harbor, the city rising up, the war dropping away: all seemed like proof of grace. For that day in New York, Leo watched over him, almost carrying him. Leo paid for a hotel and dinner and Irving’s ticket to Buffalo, and traveled with him home, all the while telling Irving he looked good, that Buffalo hadn’t been the same without him. Leo felt very, very lucky, to have Irving home. “Buffalo is hopping now,” Leo said. “You’ll see. We’ll go out on the town. Wear the uniform; girls love the uniforms.”

  Leo did not ask much about England, or anyone there, or about Normandy, which seemed to Irving a personal tornado. Irving could only offer an occasional solemn nod and murmur about the high price of liberty, a phrase he’d picked up from Leyton. Leyton, who toward the end of Irving’s tour noticed PX stock was missing, and wearily told Irving he’d need to investigate soon. The sky that day had been a sheet of pale gray above a pinkish horizon. Irving offered Leyton a cigarette, and they stood quietly smoking and watching the narrow band of light, and Leyton gave him his transport papers. It had seemed to Irving that Normandy hovered beside them, ubiquitous still, despite all his efforts; and when Leyton walked away, Normandy remained, almost incarnate. He suspected it would follow him to Buffalo. Better to tell Leo nothing, let Normandy stand for victory without dwelling on the price. France had been liberated; Europe had been liberated; the war was over. And yet, if it hadn’t been for Normandy, Irving never would have lifted so much from the PX, or barely avoided court-martial; never would have promised so much to Meg; never would have told her he’d be gone for a day in Bristol, and left for home so stealthily.

  PART FOUR

  Harbor Walks

  Late 1940s

  CHAPTER 21

  Jo

  1945–47

  And then the war ended, and Irving reap-peared and played the returning hero for months. For a time he seemed to have his own money, he avoided the store, and her father said nothing. In spring he began to show up for work, to stay the better part of the day. This was, Jo realized, no relief: the office was too small, and when she handled money Irving would hover, and when Lillian Schumacher visited he’d station himself at the counter and tell jokes. In summer he took long lunch hours, leaving her to mind the store while their father sat in temple or dozed in the back office. And Irving would return, stupidly cheerful, and pretend to be attentive.

  The second October after Irving’s return, her father called Jo into the parlor to talk. A Sunday evening. He stirred sugar into his tea, poured a cup for Jo, lit his pipe and asked her if she would care to smoke one of her cigarettes.

  “You work hard at the store,” he said. “You’re a good worker. Thank you.” He spoke quietly: he had not raised his voice, it seemed, for years. “Thank God,” he said, “the war is over. Thank God we have Irving home.” He would be grateful if she would go through the accounts once a month, something she could easily do right here, in the parlor. There was no need for her to continue to come to the store. He used no endearments, but he said this kindly, as if he were releasing her from pain.

  “It’s a relief Irving’s safe,” she said, though Irving had been safe for over a year now.

  Her father smiled briefly. There would be, of course, the regular household money and then some, he said. He took up the Sunday paper, and Jo excused herself and went to her room and undressed and lay in bed leafing through the Sears catalogue.

  She’d wanted Irving to be safe, she’d been afraid for him, but it was too bad that death had to be permanent; she’d prefer to will him dead, then resurrect him for her father’s sake, as the occasion required. When he’d first returned from Europe she’d confronted him about Goldie: he’d offered her whiskey, shrugged at her refusal, and said, “You think she forgot the address? She didn’t write to you—that’s not my fault.”

  “But you said nothing.” Her voice was sharp, rising. “We didn’t know what happened.”

  And Irving remained calm, faraway though he stood beside her in the parlor. “Now you know.”

  She called him a liar. She wanted to smack him.

  “What do you hear from her lately?” he said. And she left the parlor and did not speak to him until a day later, when he brought home a half-pound of chocolate.

  She could tell her father none of this; and either way she would lose her job. The morning after her father’s announcement, Jo did not return to the store, even though Irving overslept—further proof that the war had done little to change him. He had been spending most of his evenings downtown, the city now more brilliantly lit, exuding a fast energy she did not recognize. He went to hear club acts, he’d told her. He’d imitated a trumpeter and sung into his spoon a song she’d heard on the radio. Despite her outrage that he’d kept Goldie secret, she found it hard to resist the tunefulness of his voice, hard not to laugh when he’d puffed out his cheeks. And yet she’d seen these waves of enthusiasm before and did not trust them: they were built on guile and air. He was bound to be lying about something. Whether her father could recognize the underlying faultiness, she could not say, but his recent, preferred view of Irving—an honorable Irving—was no secret. When the insurance man, Marvin Brodsky, came to the store, she’d seen her father introduce Irving as my dear son, back from the war in Europe.

  Marvin Brodsky grasped Irving’s hand and shook it and patted him on the shoulder. “It’s good to have you back,” Marvin Brodsky said.

  “Thank you.”

  Her father and Marvin shared then a solemn nodding: Irving had saved Marvin from Hitler. The fact that he had done so from a PX in England was a matter left unexplored.

  The first Monday of Jo’s unemployment, Irving eventually rose and shaved and left for the store carrying a small bowl of coffee, and Celia continued to sleep, and the house was quiet and cold. Jo brewed more coffee and baked a quick bread, then dusted the parlor and the dining room and the light fixtures in the hallway, and noon still seemed a distant shore.

  Celia woke late, pleased to find Jo home, pleased to find the sweet bread waiting, the hot coffee. Light snow fell, just enough to cover the lawn, and Celia turned on the radio and brought her coffee from room to room, as she watched Jo clean the house. This seemed a continuation of the weekend, of Jo’s ordinary Saturdays and Sundays, Celia’s mood easygoing and mild. Celia even suggested a matinee. The week unfurled with the same pattern: housecleaning in the mornings, a film or a trip to a shop in the afternoon. Not once did Jo wear her stiff wool suits or tight heels; not once did the house threaten to collapse. The first week seemed, if anything, pleasant. Yet when the next weekend arrived, Jo’s housekeeping was already done, and a sharp cold front came through, the wind too strong for walking. And it seemed every time she glanced up, there was Celia; and when she did not glance up, there was Celia. Jo had watched over Celia for years, but she now understood that the work week—despite its drudgeries and resentments—had offered a narrow respite. By Sunday it seemed that she had no moments without Celia, except those in which she bathed or slept.

  The following days felt like glue, but Jo herself felt less cohesive, as if what held her together was the thick air between her and Celia and nothing else, and she could be disassembled simply by listening to the radio in Celia’s company, day after day. She laundered all of Celia’s clothes, as Celia’s aversion to bathing flared again: Celia feared drowning, feared the water would infect her. She was especially skittish about washing her hair; Jo gave her headscarves, which Celia some days wore and some days did not.

  When the novelty of Jo’s pres
ence wore off, Celia’s winter self—more quarrelsome, more agitated—began to emerge. Jo could not tell if her own agitation was because of Celia or because of winter and the shapelessness of their days. Reprieve would be in sleep, and she found herself in the morning staying in bed, burrowing, hiding from Celia and from the day, until Celia or Irving or her father called to her, and then she let the day begin. She could feel herself fading, the fear of dissolution coming in on her at random hours.

  In late December, in a fit of panic, Jo dressed in a wool skirt suit and pumps, picked her way across the icy streets to the bus stop and caught a bus downtown to Moshe Schumacher’s office. The law offices were in the same building as they had been for years, but they had been expanded and recently painted. You could still smell the residue of the creamy paint; the floors had been covered with soft gray carpet, and the secretarial pool was twice the size she remembered. A nicer place to work. She had forgotten little, had learned more accounting. In the gold-stenciled letters of Schumacher, Stein, Dobkin & Feigenbaum there seemed a glimmer of hope, though beside the secretarial pool’s one window she could see Schumacher’s cousin Gert, iron-haired, unsmiling and strange. Closer to the reception desk sat a cluster of young Lucia-like secretaries, four or five of them in modest, stylish dresses and swept-up hair, red lipstick and tiny pearl earrings, a kind of secretarial chorus line. Gert typed assiduously, as if she did not see Jo.

  A dark-haired young woman said, “May I help you?”

  “I wonder,” Jo said, “if Attorney Schumacher is in.”

  “Have you got an appointment?”

  “No,” Jo told her. “No appointment.” But then she stopped, a fizzing seeming to wash through her, a pressure wave beginning behind her eyes. She looked at Gert, prehistoric in the corner. The five Lucias. It seemed that the old office, the one she had worked in, had never existed, that such an office could not exist. “My father is a client, a friend. Abe Cohen?” Jo said.