Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  “I loved that picture,” Charlie whispered to me.

  “Me too,” I whispered back. Then, I don’t know where the impulse came from, but I jumped up, running to the far right-hand side of the room and the back row. After a bewildered second, Charlie saw the game in it and trotted after me.

  The movie was about a military ship that might be haunted, because the captain kept doing odd things. The first officer was supposed to be heroic, because he was handsome, but he kept striking poses in profile that made him look like a mannequin. At one point Charlie stood in the aisle and imitated one of the poses, his chest puffed out and chin pointed up, and when I laughed—as loud as I pleased—he ran across the center seats and sat on the far-left side, down front. Oh, I came skipping after him.

  If that picture was actually suspenseful, we were having too much fun to notice. We sat in probably ten places, each time making more of a racket, each location tumbling into each other a bit more as we sat. As fun a date as I can remember.

  At last the credits rolled, the end, and it was perfect, perfect. We sat in our front-row seats, not going anywhere.

  “That is the best movie I have ever seen,” Charlie said.

  “That is the best movie I have ever not seen,” I replied.

  We stayed till the lights came up, and then a minute more. “Let’s wait till the crowd thins out,” he said. I was so pleased I could have pinched him.

  Now, all these years later, I wish I could recall the name of that movie. I would gladly watch it, from the recliner in my little assisted-living apartment. Would it all come back to me? There is the moment I ran to the back. Here is when Charlie posed in the aisle. This is when our hands touched on the armrest between our seats. Could the silly scenes and weak dialogue replay that night? Or better, bring Charlie’s presence back to me? I would watch every movie made in 1943, no matter how boring, to have my hand accidentally brush against his for half a second one more time.

  At last we idled up the aisle and he helped me on with my coat. As Charlie put on Frank’s, I realized he didn’t like it either. He was being a good sport. Outside, the snow had stopped, a plow truck came through tossing the mess to the curb.

  I took his arm. “Sorry I was a pill at dinner.”

  “They should have brought you more water,” he said. “I will never go back there.”

  “Oh, had you been to that diner before?”

  “No.” He laughed. “But I’m still not going back.”

  We stopped for coffee, and made small talk, mostly about movies we liked. He checked his watch and suggested we mosey if we wanted to avoid the wrath of mother. Outside, the trees were draped with white. A man stood singing on a street corner, he wore a long tweed coat and Charlie dropped a coin in his hat.

  We had crossed the street when the man began his next song.

  Oh Danny boy, the pipes the pipes are calling

  From glen to glen, and down the mountainside.

  It was a sentimental old tune but he had a good steady tenor, and the lilt of an Irish brogue. “That man has excellent pitch,” I said.

  “Fine vibrato too,” Charlie replied.

  Which caused me to pause in my walking and listen.

  But come ye back when summer’s in the meadow,

  Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow.

  Tis I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow,

  Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy I love you so.

  I thought of my father, stationed in Southern California, his letters giving no hint of when he might come home. And my mother, no wonder she was bossy, without his ever-patient ear for her concerns. And Frank, not in the line of fire but not safe from bombs either, and far from Chicago. Sure, I wished I’d gone off to Oberlin to study the organ. But all these people were suffering in some way, and I was a silly, selfish girl. All I wanted was for us to be together, busy and arguing and talking about everything easily and casually like we did before the war.

  All that time the man was singing, his breath rising like each note was a cloud, while Charlie had moved his arm up to around my shoulders.

  You’ll come and find the place where I am lying,

  And kneel and say an “Ave” there for me.

  However blue I might sometimes be, I still had boys and movies and home, girlfriends to gossip with. How much greater Daddy’s and Frank’s loneliness must be. It broke my heart a little, and on that snowy sidewalk I started to cry.

  That’s when Charlie opened that stupid giant coat like the flaps were wings, and pulled me inside to his chest. I burrowed right against him. The sadness I’d been feeling for months, but telling myself over and over that I didn’t feel, all came pouring out of me, and I became a weepy, runny-nosed, sobbing mess.

  Charlie put his skinny arms around me and held me close. “It’s okay,” he said, which was silly because he didn’t know what I was crying about. But my head fit right exactly in under his chin, while he wrapped all that extra coat around me, and kept saying it anyhow. “It’s okay, Brenda. It’s all going to be okay.”

  6.

  Late in the day, Santangelo shuffled through the gap in the desks with a manila folder under one arm. Charlie was not so much solving a trajectory problem as wrestling with it, his body curled around the papers, which made their own arc across his desk.

  “Charlie,” Santangelo whispered. “Take a look.”

  “An interruption,” Charlie sighed, sitting straight. “Short but sweet, I hope.”

  After glancing over his shoulder—two newer boys labored with a Marchant calculator, a cumbersome but useful device—Santangelo opened the folder to reveal a map. Unfolding it end over end, he spread the sheet atop Charlie’s work.

  “I have to finish this pile today,” Charlie protested, tapping his pencil on the gray metal in-box.

  “Half a minute.” Santangelo pointed to the top of the map: New Mexico.

  Charlie sighed. “Are you chasing Mather, so he can annoy us one last time?”

  “That’s the whole thing.” Santangelo was still whispering. “I’ve gone over this map twenty times. I can’t figure out where they sent him.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s one university physics program, in Albuquerque, but it’s all astronomy. A guy on my high school’s national science fair team, two years ahead of me? He’s in the graduate program there. I phoned him, and they have no math boys there. Not one.”

  “So?”

  “So look at this map. There’s Holloman Air Force Base. Opened last year.”

  “In the middle of nowhere.”

  “Yup. No town nearby, nothing on the map but blank space. I doubt there’s electricity out there, much less physics labs.”

  Charlie raised one corner of the map, eyeing his unfinished work beneath. “What’s your point, Santangelo?”

  “Don’t be thick. Something enormously secret is going on down there. It all lines up, see? Mather—smartest guy here, I hate to admit it—gets promoted to a place that is practically invisible, on the same day we become top secret, on the same day we become military guys. We are in the war now.”

  “We have always been in the war.”

  “No, I mean in it.” Santangelo checked on the far-desk boys again, then leaned closer. “This New Mexico deal is so big it’s entirely secret. Either they told Mather, or he figured it out like Cohen was trying to help us do—”

  “Cohen wouldn’t help a cat out of a tree if its fur was on fire.”

  “Except for all those hints he gave. If we shared the problems we’re solving, we’d be able to piece this together.”

  Charlie tilted his chair back. “Uncle John said we’d learn what’s up soon enough.”

  “Yes, and wish we hadn’t. But Mather knows now.”

  “No offense, Steel Wool. But I really need to get today’s arcs sorted out.”

  “Fine.” He snatched up the map, trying to fold it brusquely but finding the creases uncooperative. “Somewhere in the
middle of all that nowhere, our boy Mather is living the high life, thanks to our drudgery right here.”

  “What makes you think it’s the high life? Two days ago, you were saying it was some place horrible.”

  Santangelo paused in his folding. “Didn’t you see how furious Cohen was not to be picked? He knows what’s out there, he wants a piece of it. Frankly, Fish, so do I.”

  “You are letting your imagination run way ahead of you. Blank space on a map, if it means anything, certainly does not signal a luxury resort.”

  “After this December Chicago weather, I would be happy with a dose of sun and the rest would be gravy.” The map accordioned into itself at last, closing neatly. “I’ll tell you what else.” He poked Charlie’s papers with one finger. “The answer to every arc question is the same. Sooner or later, everything falls down.” He tucked the map back into his folder. “Then it goes boom.”

  “I’m not interrupting anything here, am I?”

  Both boys whirled to see Professor Simmons in the doorway, a smile on his face.

  “No, sir,” Charlie said. “Only a bit of collaborating.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He hooked a thumb at the air over his shoulder. “Say, Charlie, when you’re all done collaborating, would you stop by my office?”

  Charlie gave Santangelo a look of fire. “Be right there, sir.”

  Simmons swept away down the hall.

  “Collaborating?” Santangelo snickered, but Charlie ignored him. He had evening plans with Brenda, and work had made him late way too many times. He would rather arrive in her good graces, and not have to spend the evening apologizing. But any chat with the boss was bound to eat time. As Cohen had trained him, he turned the pages on his desk facedown, then hurried after his uncle.

  The metallurgy program was spread all over the university. The math building was not fancy: drab walls, bulletin boards with little on them but thumbtacks—evidence of announcements for students before the war all but emptied the campus. Charlie hustled down the hall, humming to keep his courage up. All the classrooms he passed were dark. In fact, the only light came from the department chair’s office at the end of the hall.

  There was no secretary at that hour, so Charlie knocked on the outer door.

  “Come,” Professor Simmons said. He waved a hand in welcome.

  “Hi, Uncle John,” Charlie said. “Sir.”

  “Hello, son.” The professor gestured to a chair and Charlie sat. “Let’s get right to brass tacks, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir.” He thought the office smelled of bay rum cologne.

  Simmons lifted a sheaf of papers, a thick folder of problems worked and solved. “Your work here has been careful and accurate, Charlie, with very few errors.”

  “Thank you, sir. I—”

  “But slow. It’s too . . . you’re too slow.”

  “That’s my strength though, Uncle John. No matter how hard a problem is, I keep at it, keep plugging away.”

  “But our work is urgent. And when I see you lollygagging, chatting away—”

  “He came over to my desk uninvited, sir—”

  “Please.” The professor held up a hand for silence. “I want to keep you here, Charlie. You’re a good boy, and I don’t see you as much of a fighting man . . .”

  “Probably not, sir.”

  “I promised my baby sister I would look out for you. But your work? It has to get speedier, or you’ll have to go.”

  Charlie nodded, his mouth gone dry. He’d turned eighteen six weeks ago. Army or navy, he could guess what a future outside of the math team would be. The war took what it needed, and didn’t care what opinions an eighteen-year-old boy had on the topic.

  “May I ask one question, sir?”

  Simmons folded his hands on the desk. “Of course.”

  “Well, pardon me if it sounds impudent, but everyone else is dealing with rational numbers. I have all these complicated fractions of curves.”

  “Yes. I’ve been quietly making sure you get the work that matters.”

  “But arcs, Uncle John? They’re impossible. What makes them so all-fired important?”

  At this the professor smiled. “Charlie, Charlie.”

  “Like I said, no disrespect meant.”

  “You need a bit of history.” Simmons stood, and went to the blackboard. “Trajectories have been a concern of war makers since . . . well, since the Middle Ages.” He drew a primitive catapult, with a dotted line that ran from its bucket, over a wall, to the ground on the other side. “If you have to dig up your ammunition, heave it onto a cart, haul it to the battlefield, and only after all that work can you fire it at your enemy—knowing that if you miss, he’ll fling it right back at you—well, pretty soon you realize that trajectory is one of the most important concepts in warfare.”

  He ambled back to his seat. “Now imagine that the rock you are planning to throw costs millions of dollars. And to catapult it, you must risk the lives of thousands of men. You’d want to make sure that rock hits exactly where it is supposed to, destroying exactly what it is intended to destroy. Otherwise you’ve squandered all that money and wasted all those men.”

  Simmons lowered his hands and sat forward. “You follow me, Charlie? You’d want to make goddamn steel-trap iron-clad sure.”

  Charlie nodded. “I follow you, sir.”

  “Like it or not, son, modern warfare has become a race. Hitler has his panzers and rockets, the Japs have their fleet and their fighter planes. Right now we are in a mad dash to catch up. I landed you this assignment as a favor to your mother. But to put it plainly, you are doing a mediocre job. It will not do, you hear me, Charlie? In a race to victory, mediocre will not do.”

  Charlie stood. “Loud and clear, Uncle John. I hear you loud and clear.”

  The professor also rose from his chair, the smile back on his face. “See? I knew this talk would be good for us both, Charlie.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Of course.” He held out his hand.

  Charlie shook it, and left the office at a run.

  7.

  He had never tasted eggnog before. When my mother poured Charlie that nice big glass of it, and clinked her glass against his, cheers, and he took the big, gulping, enthusiastic swallow you’d expect of a polite boy, thank goodness she didn’t see the expression on his face three seconds later. While she turned to check the oven, he looked like a gargoyle who’d just drunk gasoline.

  “Wow,” he managed to say, shuddering, “that is really something.”

  I caught his eye, and handed him my glass of water. Charlie nodded gratefully, filled his mouth and swished it around.

  By then my mother had straightened. “Give that casserole five more minutes, and then we’ll eat,” she said, taking a decent gulp herself.

  The three of us stood in that tiny kitchen, smiling for three different reasons. Who would have predicted that my mother would have a helpful role in our romance by giving Charlie and me secrets to share together? In retrospect, perhaps she could have. Maybe we were amateurs, and she knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Come on,” she called, charging into the living room. “Let’s watch the snow.”

  My mother had turned off the table lamps but left the front steps’ light on. Great fat flakes fell past as I stood at her elbow watching. A gust of wind made them all change direction at once, like a school of tropical fish.

  “Sure is pretty,” Charlie said, joining us. His glass was nearly empty, and I imagined he’d made a stop at the sink along the way.

  “Do you get much snow where you come from?” my mother asked.

  “We do,” he said. “I’d say Boston gets buried twice a winter.”

  “Sing something,” I blurted. “Some Christmas song.”

  Charlie made his surprised expression. “Really?”

  “Great idea,” my mother cheered, dropping into a chair. She raised her glass to him. “Knock yourself out, kiddo.”

  Charlie gave us both a look
, then leaned to the piano and played an E. I already knew—from his humming beside me while I played the organ, from snippets of songs here and there—that he could sing on pitch. Plus he’d told me stories from his years in the choir. Still, maybe my favorite thing he had done up to that moment was playing that note, so he would be on key for us. And then he began.

  O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie

  Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.

  Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.

  The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

  We clapped, he blushed, it was adorable as kittens.

  “Let’s open gifts,” my mother cried out. Sometimes she could be worse than a kid.

  “Honestly, Mother. It’s not Christmas yet.”

  “Charlie has work tomorrow.” She made a face. “Just one won’t spoil anything.”‘

  There was no point in arguing. My mother was flexible as a brick. We’d skipped a tree that year, to save money, and the old fireplace hadn’t been safe to burn things in for years, so our presents lay in their wrapping on the hearth. Meager, to tell the truth, what with the holiday packages for Frank and Daddy mailed weeks ago.

  “Charlie first,” my mother insisted, lighting a cigarette. “Pick that big box.”

  Now when it comes to unwrapping, I am a shredder. So is my mother. We believe in getting to the goods as quick as we can. Not Charlie. He found the taped places, and slid a finger under them to open the paper without tearing. By the time he was done we could have used the wrapping paper all over again. I wanted to give him a shake.