Universe of Two

by Stephen P. Kiernan

  “What letters?”

  “Why, from Charlie.” She paused. I could picture her, probably lighting a cigarette. My father hated when she smoked in bed, but he wasn’t around to object. “There were four here when I got home. One was addressed to me, asking if you were all right because he hadn’t heard from you.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I thought there must be some confusion. Is everything all right down there?”

  “We crossed signals when I got here, that’s all.”

  “But two of the letters were postmarked after you arrived.”

  “Um. He lost the address here and thought they’d be forwarded. It’s all fine now.”

  Lizzie shook my hand off like it was dirty. Scowling, she crossed her arms.

  “Oh good. I’ll send them right away.” In the pause that followed, I could picture my mother pinching a bit of tobacco from her tongue. “How is Charlie?”

  I looked at Lizzie, who I could tell was hearing every word. “He never gets enough to eat. But, Mother, I can’t stay on the line too long. The Morrises—”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll get a pile of change together and call you from a booth soon, okay?”

  “My big girl,” she marveled. “I’m keeping the store closed for now. Call me soon?”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  And I placed the receiver back in its cradle.

  “Everything okay?” Reverend Morris all but shouted.

  “Fine, yes.” I moved into the living room, Lizzie at my heels. I could feel her seething. “Thanks very much.”

  “We can’t make a habit of this expense,” Mrs. Morris told her needlework.

  “Of course not,” I answered, continuing to the stairway. “I’m grateful to you.”

  As I started up, I could hear Lizzie a few steps behind me, heat coming off her like a radiator. When I turned to say good night she had stopped at the top of the stairs.

  “See what I mean about Mrs. Morris hating me?”

  Lizzie opened her mouth, but hesitated. “We gave ourselves quite a scare over a couple of mismailed letters.”

  “Silly, isn’t it?” I said.

  “And you lied to your mother.”

  “It’s too complicated to explain.”

  “Will you write to Charlie now? Since he obviously doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “I’m going to wait till his letters arrive. So I know what he’s thinking before I write back.”

  “He’s thinking ‘What the hell happened to Brenda?’”

  “It’ll all work out fine.”

  “Or is Charlie part of your ‘too complicated to explain’?”

  “No.” Unable to look her in the eye, I fiddled with the doorknob. “It’s all me.”

  She pursed her lips, then moved away to the head of the stairs. “I sure do wonder what you did.”

  Lizzie switched off the lights, and stood unmoving. After giving her eyes a few seconds to adjust, she made way to her room in the dark.

  30.

  The fun was nearly over by the time Charlie arrived. He’d return to the lab later, but the band had been calling to him through the open window since sometime after eight. Now it was past eleven. He’d untangled the mess and found the misfiring culprits.

  On the patio outside Fuller Lodge people stood in groups, chatting and smoking. A few couples had wandered toward Ashley Pond or Bathtub Row, smooching in the shadows. A song pulled him forward, though, into the music and the light.

  People were matched in squares, and the first dance of the new grouping began. So Charlie had missed his chance. But he could still enjoy the atmosphere, and he slid along the side wall to be nearer the band. As always, the caller started with simple steps until the dancers were acquainted, gradually adding more complicated combinations. Maybe he’d been working too much, Charlie thought, because the people weaving in and out of their squares resembled the wiring he’d been grappling with all night. It reminded him, too, of the time he climbed behind the organ at Harvard, and saw all the tracking cables and controls. Was everything on earth a manifestation of a human desire to knot things in clever ways?

  Monroe sidled up. “Keep dancing, kiddies. Keep having your parties. Don’t you fret one second about the silly old war.”

  Charlie turned. “How much have you had tonight, Monroe?”

  “Not a drop.” He shook his head. “Stuff ain’t working no more.”

  “Music does it for me.”

  Monroe scanned the crowded dance floor, couples close along the walls, men drinking steadily at the back. “I see all this”—he waved an arm at the room—“And I think here’s a right nice summer camp, have another drink, everything’s ducky, go make babies, you lovers, and what’s to complain about excepting the milk being sour?”

  Charlie gave him a long look. “You’re sounding a little sour yourself.”

  “Lately I ain’t feeling too chipper about what we’re doing here.”

  Charlie nodded. “I hope we beat Hitler before this project reaches its goal.”

  “You think any of these guys will ease off if that happens? Cause I sure don’t.”

  The caller interrupted to say it was quitting time. Some dancers protested, until he said the bass player had been nursing a sick stomach all night, and needed to quit. The crowd applauded the band, and only seconds later took up a chant: “Will-ly, Will-ly.”

  “Two minutes to midnight,” Monroe marveled. “Can’t miss a hundred and twenty seconds more fun.”

  The whole room joined in, clapping along, “Will-ly, Will-ly,” until a bright-cheeked man emerged from a side room, holding his giant accordion by one strap.

  “Hello there,” Willy Meehan said into the microphone, and although everyone cheered, Charlie could hear the slurring of drink in his voice.

  Sure enough, it took him two tries to swing the fabled Stomach Steinway into place, straps over his shoulders and the instrument wheezing into position. Then he cranked the mike down to point straight at the accordion.

  Charlie inched closer. He loved that miniature organ, its hokey optimism. It reminded him of lunches with Brenda in Dubie’s Music, about a hundred years ago.

  Willy bent to the mike to speak. “Here’s something different,” he said, before straightening, and beginning a tune.

  The melody was familiar, Charlie knew he would place it in half a minute, but the surprise was in the tempo. It was slow. A waltz, sweet and low and easy. Some of the couples took up proper position, and began to dance. Others stood awkwardly—they’d been content with the light contact of square dancing, but were unprepared for the intimacy of actual touch—no longer gliding past each other, but moving together, two by two.

  “Do you know this song?” he asked Monroe.

  “Course I do. ‘Night and Day.’ And this here is the first slow dance I’ve ever seen on The Hill.”

  A sweet sadness had filled the room, almost like nostalgia. Couples paused their canoodling to watch the dancers. The drinkers stopped talking. And the dancers held their partners close, swaying in time.

  “Lord,” Monroe said. “I about could bust out crying.”

  Charlie felt it, too, surprised by the tender melancholy that Willy brought to the song. He was playing it with his eyes closed.

  It was over in minutes. The dancers parted slowly, everyone giving strong but sober applause. Someone came pushing through the crowd, Charlie could not see who.

  “Is that Oppie?” Monroe asked. “Why’s the boss here?”

  They were the only ones close enough to see Oppenheimer grab the musician’s arm and speak through clenched teeth. “What in hell are you doing?”

  Willy blinked a moment. “A slow number, sir. No harm in it.”

  Oppenheimer shook his head hard, as if trying to fling water from his face. “Don’t you ever, ever do that again.”

  Already people had gone for their hats, their jackets, the moonlit walk home. Oppenheimer spun on his hee
l and hurried off. Willy remained onstage with the accordion against his chest. “What did I do?” he asked, but everyone had turned away.

  Monroe muttered to Charlie. “See what I’m talking about?”

  They spoke little on the walk back. It was a quiet night, the air calm beneath a high fat moon. Charlie imagined Brenda in Chicago, under that same moon. Behind the barracks a bonfire burned low, coals glowing and a few boys gathered. They heard Giles’s laugh like a siren call.

  Monroe paused outside the barracks. “Mister Charlie, what if we make this thing, and it works, and it’s like Sebring said in his lecture. The big pop.”

  Charlie held the door open. “Hitler has killed countless innocent people.”

  “But are you and me killers too?”

  “Shut that damn door, will you?” someone yelled from inside. “Mosquitoes.”

  They hurried in, easing the door shut so it did not slam. Most of the barracks was dark, a few guys reading or chatting, writing letters. Not the rowdiest Saturday night.

  “Have you been going to the debates?” Charlie said in a hush.

  “All of ’em. You?”

  “No.” He rubbed his face. “It may seem hypocritical. But I feel like my job is to build one small part of this incredibly complicated Gadget, and hope the war ends before the rest is ready.”

  “But what if it don’t end?” Monroe leaned closer, his voice urgent. “What if old Hitler keeps on fighting? And here we have this great big thing, and we up and use it—Munich, bang, Berlin, bang—and slaughter lord only knows how many souls. What are we then? Seems a hell of a lot worse than plain old soldiers, taking plain old orders.”

  Charlie brushed his hair back with both hands. “I don’t have an answer.”

  “You and me both.”

  They ambled down the aisle between the beds, reaching Charlie’s first. They both stopped when they saw the envelope on his cot.

  “That from your girl?”

  Charlie picked it up. His name in Brenda’s handwriting. “It certainly is.”

  “Been a while.”

  Charlie nodded. He sat on the bunk and stared at the envelope.

  “Ain’t you gonna open it?”

  “Not quite yet. Not tonight.”

  “You been pining on her for months now. Why in the world would you wait?”

  “Because.” He lay back, the envelope on his chest. “We don’t know what it says.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s the harm in being hopeful for one more night?”

  “No harm in hoping,” Monroe answered. “G’nite, Mister Charlie.”

  He ambled down the row to his bunk, and sat on it, thinking for a while. He heard the thunk of Charlie’s shoes hitting the floor, then the purr of the cat that had joined him on the cot. Boys drifted off all around, while Monroe lay there, open-eyed in the dark, until Charlie had fallen asleep.

  31.

  The last time I felt that nervous, Charlie was late for our first date. This time I was awake before the sun. There was no point in dressing yet, or doing my hair. I lay in bed, listening to girls across the back lot getting ready for work. My stomach felt like a beehive, but the clock was in no hurry. At around seven, Lizzie poked her head in.

  “Hey, kid. What time’s his bus?”

  “Ten. He wrote me ten.”

  “I’m fetching my paycheck at the hospital. Do you need anything?”

  “For three hours to pass?”

  “They will.” Lizzie finished buttoning her shirt. By then I’d seen her undergarments many times, she was casual about skin and lace. For me, those things made me shy as a dormouse. “Do you think you’ll tell the boy?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “Tell him what?” she chirped. “Whatever your secret is, kid.”

  My stomach tightened its knot. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Which hurts more? Being honest or deceiving?”

  “He has to suspect anyhow,” I said. “I’ve been here for months, and this is the first we’re seeing each other. I am terrible.”

  “Everyone is terrible,” Lizzie said. “Also, everyone is trying their best.”

  “Is there anything you’ll need to tell your husband when he gets home?”

  Lizzie checked her lowest button. “Only the naughty thoughts I have about him all the time.”

  I smiled. “You have a dirty mind.”

  She smoothed down her shirt front. “Every chance I get.”

  At breakfast I waited till Reverend Morris finished grace before drinking any coffee. Mrs. Morris marched in and out of the kitchen.

  “Did you see the mail?” he asked her. “I’m amazed it keeps up after all these months.” He was loud as a bullhorn, and his neck did that odd tic of stretching his chin. Though I had no idea what he was talking about, he shook a stack of envelopes at me. “Pleasantly amazed, of course.”

  Mrs. Morris returned with eggs and bread for me, and I thanked her profusely. Which made her pause by my chair. “You’re welcome, Miss Dubie.”

  So, my new demotion: I was no longer Brenda. Any other day, I would have been offended. Or wondered what I did wrong. Not that day. I needed to clean up, choose the right dress, prepare myself for Charlie. Silly old wimpy Charlie Fish. I was terrified.

  He’d sent me an address to meet on East Palace Avenue, between the plaza and the cathedral. Even with dawdling I arrived early, so I meandered over to the big, two-steepled church. I was thinking I might sneak in to see its organ, but a funeral was beginning. Mourners in black lined the walk. Pallbearers carried a wooden casket up the steps. Not an omen, I told myself, just coincidence. In Cathedral Park I sat on a bench, good posture and my ankles crossed, until ten o’clock rang in the steeple.

  At East Palace, a drab green bus was belching black smoke as it pulled away. A crowd of local Latinos clustered by an iron gate, people in bright-colored ponchos murmuring adios before dispersing. They parted almost like a curtain, and there he stood, his back to me as his eyes searched the street.

  Until they came to rest on me. It was sunlight. In that instant of recognition, his eyes brightening, I felt like a complete fool. How could I have made him wait? How had I allowed myself to wait? Rooted in place, I shook my head like I did not believe.

  “Oh my goodness, Brenda.” Charlie stopped an arm’s length away. “Oh my.”

  For once I was the shy one, holding back because the pull of him was so strong.

  “Let me look at you,” I said, though I was already doing it. He had developed some, muscled out in his chest, his arms like ropes. Though his forehead was even more prominent with the buzzed haircut, and a healthy tan that had lightened the color of his hair. Charlie in all his goofy glory, and I felt a thrill flutter through me like wings.

  He set something at my feet. My parents’ picnic basket. I laughed. “I can’t believe you brought that here today.”

  “I took good care of it,” he said. And the fear came over me: Had he returned the basket because this was the only time we would see each other, and then he would be swallowed back into his secret war job in the hinterlands, and I would return to playing hymns and sleeping in a boardinghouse, and this morning might be all we would ever have?

  “Of course you did.” I moved forward, to hug him, and doing so made me step into a shadow. Was that Chris, like a devil on my shoulder? No, I looked up and the sidewalk there had a roof over it, like a porch, to shield pedestrians from the sun. But I felt the darkness of my transgression as though it was the dress I wore.

  There was only one way forward. I put my arms around Charlie and pulled him close. His back felt stronger under my hands, firmer. At first he did not hold me back, but I stayed right there.

  After a while, who knows how long when your desire is that keen, his hands rose to my waist, thumbs on my hip bones as though I were naked. I did not flinch or pull away. At last he succumbed, wrapping his arms around my waist and drawing me against him, pressed together the length of our bo
dies. I felt the world falling away, a rush of relief and a sharpness of want. What had I ever been thinking?

  I remember that day with Charlie as clearly as the day we met. Our childhoods had ended, blunt as a cinder-block wall. We did not yet know each other as adults.

  I was the one who released the hug first. I wish I could take it back. But guilt about Chris still shadowed me, and the secret of it came momentarily between us. “Come on for a walk,” I said. “You don’t know this town.”

  Why couldn’t I have been kinder? How did I forget that life is short, and we ought to be our best in every moment? Charlie scooped up the picnic basket, offered his arm, and we promenaded. Or no: I led and he followed. Despite my conscience, in some deep, awful way, I still thought I was better than he was.

  Lizzie was reading on the bench when we approached, feet tucked under her rump. “Hello, lovebirds,” she called.

  “This is Lizzie,” I said to Charlie, as she stood and shook his hand, giving him a once-over and not hiding it.

  “So Prince Charming is real after all? I was beginning to worry.”

  “I’m feeling pretty real today.” Charlie gave his arm a pinch. “Great to meet you.”

  “What do you do for work, Charlie? Where do you live?”

  He ducked his head, a gesture of shyness that had irritated me back in Chicago, but that now I saw differently. Modesty, maybe. The opposite of bragging.

  “Oh, this and that,” he said. “I live outside of town.”

  “Oh.” She nodded. “You’re one of those Los Alamos guys.”

  “I, um—”

  “Don’t worry,” she laughed. “I’m not a spy.”

  “That makes three of us,” I said. “We’re only here to drop off a picnic basket.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Lizzie said. “Just be sure to smooch each other all the time.”

  Charlie blushed, and I did too. “Are all married women this brazen?” I asked.

  “I like to think I’m special,” she answered. “Leave the basket. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. And I don’t know why, but I gave her a hug, quick and fierce.