Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  At that I glanced out the big front window, and the jig was up. Here was my mother, low-heeled shoes and gigantic brown purse, coming up the sidewalk like a plow truck clearing snow. The clock read four minutes to one. Lunch had ended early.

  Charlie didn’t seem to mind that I had trailed off in midsentence. He followed my eyes and retreated from the organ, clasping his hands behind his back.

  “—though you would hardly think a bowl of pudding would cause such a fuss,” my mother complained, unpinning her hat as she barreled through the door. She had a habit of starting conversations right in the middle, whether you were there for the beginning or not, and would bristle like a porcupine if you asked what she was talking about. I learned it was best just to play along.

  “Did someone spill?” I prompted.

  She was tucking her huge purse behind the register. “What? Of course no one spilled. But Elise insisted on having seconds, which is its own house on fire, with all the weight she’s carrying these days, hips like a whale—although come to think of it, whales don’t actually have hips, do they?—and meanwhile Nancy Burgoyne had not had firsts, and merely said no thank you to be polite.”

  Only then did Charlie come into her sight, over by the baby grand. “Brenda,” she purred, not taking her eyes off him. “Why didn’t you tell me we have a customer?”

  “You hadn’t taken half a breath so that I could.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I forgive you.”

  It has long been my belief that after a child is of a certain age, the parents’ primary role is to cause embarrassment. To prove that point, my mother clapped her hands together and, with an expression as authentic as a bouquet of plastic flowers, minced over to Charlie. He wore a grin the size of the front grille on an Oldsmobile.

  “How do you do, Mrs. Dubie?” He held out that strong hand. “I’m Charlie Fish.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Charlie,” my mother chirped, shaking hands while eyeing him all over. “Are you in the market for a piano today?”

  “Nooo, ma’am,” he said, wagging his head like some old Lincoln Park bluesman testifying a song. “I’m here because Mr. Dubie is out of town, as I understand it, or I would be speaking with him myself.”

  “I see,” she said. “This is a business matter of some kind, then?”

  “Nooo, ma’am,” he repeated. “I am here in Chicago, far from my home back east, for an assignment with the war effort. I haven’t been able to make many friends due to my responsibilities. But I have been lucky enough to make the acquaintance of your charming daughter, Brenda.”

  They both turned and looked at me. I felt like a goldfish in a round bowl, exposed to any and all.

  Charlie pressed on. “I’ve come today to ask, though I have no family nearby who can vouch for me as a decent young man, if I might take Brenda out to a show on one of my evenings off from the war effort. Would that be acceptable to you?”

  All at once I was peeved. How about asking me? First things first, mister.

  “Charlie, you seem like a good, polite boy,” my mother announced. “And I’m of a mind that manners still matter a great deal in this madhouse world.”

  Charlie nodded. “Maybe more than ever.”

  She sighed. “I suppose it would be all right, if you weren’t out too late.”

  “Nooo, ma’am,” he declared for a third time. “Not a chance of that. My work starts very early in the morning.”

  “Do you drive, Charlie?”

  He shook his head. “It would be strictly walking or cabs for us.”

  “Good. I’ve always maintained that driving was a job for husbands. You people are too young.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Charlie said.

  “Very good,” she said, preening like a mother hen. “I approve.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work now.” He strode by me, a skip in his step, pausing to tip his hat. “See you soon, Brenda.”

  “Yes, soon.” And he was gone.

  “What a nice young man,” my mother said. Which was a wonder, since she had never acknowledged any boy I’d dated before enough to have any opinion of him at all.

  “He won’t buy an organ,” I said, “but he has many good qualities.”

  She stood beside me, looking out at the street where Charlie had paused to wave before hurrying off. She hooked her arm in my elbow. “Oh, he’ll buy an organ, all right.”

  4.

  That afternoon in the math room, Mather did not come back after lunch. Charlie returned from the organ store to see Mather’s chair empty, the normally tidy desk a messy splay of papers. Mather’s photo of his sister was gone too.

  Santangelo stood by the front windows, dancing a little jig. “Gentlemen, a great pimple in the world has now been popped.”

  Laughter rang through the room.

  “Back to work, you lazy dogs,” Cohen snapped, hurrying in from the hall. “You especially, Steel Wool.” Setting a cardboard box on the desk, he swept Mather’s papers in unceremoniously.

  Charlie bent to his calculations. Because he’d spent the better part of the morning imagining where he might take Brenda on their date, he’d made little progress on his assignment. The real question was which Brenda he would be taking out: the cagey girl who masked her insecurity with sass, or the sweetheart whose face went soft when she switched on the organ. One of these Brendas was entertaining, but the other was lovely.

  Meanwhile Santangelo could only watch Mather’s things disappear into Cohen’s box for so long before sauntering over to Charlie. “Quite the going-away party.”

  “He got promoted,” Cohen snapped, grabbing all of Mather’s pencils in his fist, and tossing them into the box. “If you must know. Reassigned to New Mexico.”

  “What could there possibly be in New Mexico?” Santangelo asked.

  “Sand, I think,” Charlie ventured. “Mountains?”

  Cohen was opening drawers one by one, dumping the contents into his box, but he paused to sneer. “Every time I think you boys could not be any more stupid—”

  Santangelo wagged a finger at him. “Stupid is not the same thing as being deliberately kept uninformed.”

  “New Mexico . . .” Cohen began, but he checked himself. “You don’t need to worry about New Mexico.” He addressed the whole room. “Probably none of you do. Let’s accept that it’s important military strategy. If it works.” He slammed the last drawer. “Mather jumped past all of us to get there, leap-frogged our whole business. Even me.”

  “Is that why you’re peeved?” Charlie asked. “Because he was promoted instead of you?”

  Cohen tipped Mather’s in-box tray into the cardboard box, papers tumbling. “Where do I start with you idiots?”

  “I have an idea,” Santangelo said. “When we ask you a question, why don’t you actually answer it?”

  “Because I can’t.” He bustled out of the circle of desks toward the door. “I’m not allowed, and you’re too stupid to figure it out for yourselves.”

  “Mather was right,” Santangelo said. “You’re a power-hungry jackass.”

  It hit him like an arrow between the shoulder blades. Cohen dropped the box on the floor, pencils flying up, and Charlie considered that several boys in that room could probably describe in great detail the effect that happens when a falling object lands, and the force causes pieces to rise in the opposite direction.

  Cohen turned slowly, like a gunfighter. For the first time, they realized that he was physically fit, lean and muscled.

  “Steel Wool, I would really enjoy teaching you a lesson based on four years of boxing at Columbia,” Cohen growled. “But it wouldn’t be worth the inquisition I’d face afterward. You’re too numbskulled to learn anyway.”

  “Maybe we wouldn’t call you names,” Santangelo said, “if you showed us some respect.”

  “I would if you deserved it. You could know everything you want, if you used your thick heads.” Cohen scanned the room. “Fish
. What are you calculating right now?”

  “The arc of an object launched at three hundred and fifty-seven miles per hour.”

  “Right. And is there anything that actually goes that speed?”

  One of the far-desk boys raised his hand. “The Flying Fortress?”

  “Bingo. The B-29. What you’re calculating, you dunce, is aerial trajectories.”

  “Fine,” Charlie said. “But why are we fiddling with all of these different drop altitudes? It’s not like we’re going to fly over Tokyo at eleven thousand feet, and expect to be welcomed with roses.”

  Cohen stood still, waiting, watching them sort it out.

  “It can’t be a bomb,” Santangelo offered. “It must be some other kind of weapon, like a tank, and they want to drop it from lower so it doesn’t smash on landing.”

  “Eleven thousand feet wouldn’t change anything,” Charlie said. “A tank only needs fifteen hundred feet to reach terminal velocity.”

  “Point proven.” Cohen bent and picked up the box. “Stupid as a box of bricks.”

  “We’re asking reasonable questions,” Santangelo insisted.

  “Not for me to answer.” He swaggered to the doorway. “But I will tell you this.”

  They waited, and Cohen took his time.

  “First, the name calling ends now, right now, or I will put you in the hospital, inquisition be damned. Second, if you all don’t finish those trajectories today, I won’t be the one who drops you out of a bomber.”

  Cohen slammed the door behind him. The boys were quiet. Charlie ambled back to his desk. “Maybe . . . ,” he said eventually. “Maybe they’d do the run at night, so it would be safer to fly at eleven thousand.”

  “Could it be like our version of a kamikaze?” asked the boy at the back. “Would we stoop that low?”

  “This is war,” Santangelo answered. “There’s no such thing as low.”

  5.

  He was late, which in my book was not the way to impress a girl. It was Saturday night, I’d given him my home address, and we were going to grab a bite before seeing a picture. I was ready on time, maybe a bit early to be honest, but the kitchen clock cuckooed six times and there was no knock at the door. I flipped through a magazine, went to the john to check my teeth in the mirror, fortified my lipstick. I perched on the piano bench facing out, my leg jiggling.

  “Brenda,” my mother said, smoking a cigarette at the dinner table. “For the love of Pete, will you relax?”

  Easy for her to say, sitting pretty as if we were playing hearts and she’d just won the jack of diamonds. Yet I knew she was right. I wanted the interest of boys, it was important to my self-image, so I kept my makeup fresh and my dating calendar full. Jerks were rare, and despite the war—maybe even to spite it—life was a lark. There was plenty of time before I’d need to get serious. Till then any fella would do, so long as he behaved himself and was nice to my girlfriends.

  But Charlie Fish? Deny it all I might, that boy gave me ants in my blood. Today I like to think I knew already that he was something special, but that would be rewriting history. I didn’t yet see the strength that was deep inside, waiting for its time. I also didn’t see the strength he would call forth in me, and how it would make my innocent years seem trivial as jigsaw puzzles.

  At six thirty I went into the kitchen. Bad idea, because I couldn’t resist the bowl of pistachios my mother left on the table. I started cracking them open, popping one after another in my mouth without thinking. By the time Charlie arrived, I’d gobbled half the bowl, leaving me salt-mouthed and with a lump in my belly.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I heard him tell my mother in the front room, while I poured a glass of water from the pitcher in the fridge. “With the snow dumping down like that, there were no cabs.”

  I peered from the kitchen. My mother was crushing out her cigarette. “You walked from Ellis Avenue?”

  “And Fifty-Ninth, yes, ma’am. They’re housing us in the university’s empty dorms.”

  She rose from the table. “Well, let’s get you dried off.”

  Just like that, my mother had found out where he lived, information I hadn’t been able to pry loose in ten Mondays of conversation. She raised her eyebrows at me as she bustled by.

  “What?” I said to her. “What?”

  “Hi, Brenda,” Charlie said. “Sorry I’m late. And soggy.”

  His hair was soaked, the shoulders of his coat drooping. Appealing as a wet cat. “I didn’t know it was snowing,” I said, looking away so as not to embarrass him further.

  My mother scurried back with two towels. “Charlie, how about we don’t let you catch a chill and ruin your evening?” She handed him one towel and used the other to rough up his hair.

  “Thanks so much, Mrs. Dubie.” His voice was muffled by the towel.

  “You can leave that coat here to dry while you’re out,” she continued. “I’ll lend you one of Frank’s.”

  “Frank?”

  My mother froze. “You don’t know about Frank?”

  Charlie ducked out from under the towel. “Should I?”

  “Of course you know about Frank,” I sang out, while my mother gave me a look made of daggers. “My brother in the service. Who is overseas now.”

  “Of course,” Charlie said. He turned to my mother. “Of course.” He smiled, and it was so quick I wondered if he had winked at me. “Brenda has always called him Francis.”

  My mother’s expression softened. “She has?”

  “Out of respect, I guess,” Charlie said.

  That was the first time I suspected he and I might make good coconspirators.

  “Well,” my mother conceded, “I suppose that is more respectful.” Then she reverted to her busy self. “His coat won’t fit, but it’ll do till you get Brenda home—at a reasonable hour, by the way.”

  “Which reminds me.” Charlie gave me a wink. “We ought to skedaddle if we don’t want to miss the newsreels.”

  “You should.” My mother dug in the hall closet for Frank’s winter coat.

  There’s no nice way to say it. Charlie looked ridiculous. The coat’s shoulders were so broad, its sleeves did not begin till almost his elbows. Which meant he had to roll them up, never a good look with the lining showing. Also it smelled a bit of mothballs. We had a quiet walk to the diner, snow falling in tiny flakes. My fingers were cold because I hadn’t been able to find my gloves from last winter. I stuffed my hands in my pockets, fingers curled over thumbs. In memory, I see us from a distance, strolling a snowy sidewalk without speaking, friendly as the one and ten bowling pins. At the diner, we slid into opposite sides of a booth and the awkward silence stretched longer.

  Finally Charlie cleared his throat. “Would you like to tell me about Frank?”

  I fidgeted with the pepper shaker. “My older brother. He enlisted two years ago.”

  “You have a brother.” He folded his hands like a judge. “Funny how that never came up.”

  “You haven’t exactly volunteered an encyclopedia about your family either.”

  Charlie made that surprised face of his. Maybe he wasn’t used to a girl giving him backtalk. “I told you I’m from Boston. I have a younger brother and two sisters I’d gladly tell you about later. What’s Frank doing?”

  “Running a motor pool in England. He could get bombed, but he’s not in battle.”

  “I never realized before how many people in a war are not actually fighting.”

  “But he’s still far from home, and my father is gone too. That’s what makes my mother such a wreck.”

  “Your mother is a wreck? She seems fine to me.”

  “Well, what would you know?”

  Charlie looked surprised again. “That’s true. I barely know her.”

  Why was I peevish? I don’t know. Maybe I thought it was like being coy. The chemistry I had with Charlie felt like the first time every winter that I went skating on Lake Michigan. The ice could be a foot thick, trucks out by the fishing shacks, my girlfr
iends already charging ahead. But for me those initial steps out onto the ice still felt dangerous. I might fall through. I might pass over the one weak spot in the entire frozen bay, and drown before anyone noticed. So, every year, I was peevish with my friends that first day, tentative. Then I was over it, skating as confidently as they did till March came and the thaws put our skates away till next year.

  Maybe I felt with Charlie, for the first time, that something was at risk with a guy. Maybe, too, the other boys had made me the littlest bit spoiled.

  The diner did not help. The menus had coffee spill marks on them. The food did not come for ages. I was still stuffed with pistachios. I was not trying to be a prima donna when I asked for more water, but the waitress never brought it. Charlie asked nicely twice, but still no water. I could have demanded it for myself, I suppose, but nobody wanted to be that kind of girl in 1943.

  Charlie apologized, he paid, and afterward he put back on the coat that made him look eleven years old. The walk to the theater was only three blocks, but in fresh snow it was a trudge. He sang a bit of some Italian song that sounded like a march. Which was funny, though I didn’t laugh. My hands were freezing, and somehow I blamed Charlie. No good-night kiss for this fella.

  Then the theater saved the night. There was no line at the ticket counter, no one waiting for popcorn, and when we ambled into the half-lit rows of seats, we saw that we were alone. It must have been the snow. There was no one else in the whole place.

  “I hope you don’t mind that I arranged a private viewing,” Charlie said with a big smile, his arms wide like a showman.

  “So expensive,” I marveled. “You shouldn’t have.”

  And we were friends again. For the newsreel, we sat right in the middle. It opened with the usual marching-band music, and the image of an eagle in an attack pose. The horns sounded flat, F notes bending sourly down toward E, but I blamed that on the projector. The news began with a launching of two new navy ships, which were gigantic. One of them, the announcer said, was the most heavily armed cruiser ever. Next we saw Red Cross volunteers packing boxes of food, medicine, and cigarettes for Allied prisoners of war. Gary Cooper, last year’s winner, awarded the 1943 Academy Award for best actor to Jimmy Cagney for his role in Yankee Doodle Dandy.