Dodging and Burning Page 6

  It was a photo taken by a lover, but all I saw was a handsome boy, offering a gorgeous smile to the camera, to me.

  Mother and Father insisted I go to Robbie’s funeral. I hadn’t wanted to attend, but there I was, carefully made up and dressed in a black wool suit and pearls. It was a chilly March day, 1945.

  Three pews in front of me, Bob Bliss stood as stiff and blank as a slab of limestone, his eyes fixed on an invisible point at the front of the church and his jaw set against tears. Every time his wife reached for him, he shrank from her, as if her touch might send him to the floor in sobs. Her eyes moved from the empty pine coffin draped with the American flag to her open hymnal then to her husband. She wanted to know why her son had died and why she had been denied his body. She seemed to demand it from the service, from the congregation, even from God Almighty Himself.

  Ceola stood apart from her parents. She wore a dark blue dress with a twisted white collar. (I wanted to reach across the pews and straighten it.) She sang loud and off-key, her long brunette pigtails swinging like twin pendulums as she aimed at the high notes. During the sermon, she bowed her head and clutched the ends of her pigtails together over her breastbone. When she released them, I realized she was reading the prayer book, gently flipping its pages as if she were reading a magazine in a doctor’s office. After a while, Margery made her close it and sit up straight.

  As I exited the church with my parents, bracing myself against the cold wind, I saw Jay with his grandmother on his arm. I had heard he had been wounded and he was coming home, but I didn’t know when. I was genuinely happy to see him.

  When he looked my way, I waved and smiled. He nodded and excused himself from Letitia, who, buried in a shambling sable coat, was preoccupied with the minister, registering some officious complaint, I imagined. As Jay limped toward me, he smiled. He looked older and thinner. His dark blazer no longer fit him; it was roomy at the shoulders and chest. His skin was pale, and his eyes were brighter but less focused.

  “Hello, Jay. How are you? I didn’t see you come in.” I offered my hand to him, and he gave it a weak shake.

  “I didn’t want the Blisses to see me. They don’t want me here.”

  “I’m so sorry about Robbie.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course.”

  “You should be sorry for his kid sister. She’s a good kid.”

  We were silent for a second, watching our breath escape in the cold air.

  “How are you, Jay? I mean, are you okay?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  He didn’t respond at first, but he smiled a little.

  “Have you …” He paused. “Met anyone?”

  “No, I’ve been too busy working in the plant. My mind has been on the war, not on boys. Are you home for good?”

  “I’m taking the train back to Washington this afternoon, but I’m moving home again in April or May. My grandmother needs me to help her around the house, and I need a little time to think.” He looked directly at me, the silver fog in his eyes lifting. “The things I’ve seen, Bunny,” he said softly, and I withdrew, a little afraid of him.

  “Jay Greenwood!” I heard Mother call out. She immediately took him in her arms and hugged him. Standing back from him and giving him an admiring once-over, she said, “Are you back with us? Please, tell me you are. Tell me you’ve had enough of this war, and this war has had enough of you.”

  “I have, and it has,” he said.

  “That’s wonderful. We should celebrate. I hear you’re quite the hero.”

  “No, I’m not,” he said firmly.

  “You’ve been so brave, and that should be celebrated.”

  “It’s not necessary.”

  “Jason!” his grandmother brayed. “It’s time.” She hooked her arm in his and tugged on him like a child, loose sable fur drifting away from her, caught by the icy breeze. She glared at my mother and me.

  Mother frowned and said to him, “When you move back, come and see us.”

  “Yes,” I added. “Please do.”

  Once Jay returned to Royal Oak, we began cobbling our friendship back together. We made a habit of rendezvousing for picnics down by the creek and going on photo expeditions around the countryside. We usually met in a small, secluded clearing in the middle of a wooded area on the edge of his family’s property.

  I remember one picnic in particular, not long before he showed us the photos of Lily. After we had finished eating (he had just gobbled up a piece of Mother’s rich chocolate cake), he leaned back on the blanket and put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. His chest spread wide, revealing the thickness of muscle underneath. He had gained weight and was looking much healthier.

  “What are you thinking about?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you napping?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s not very polite, if you are.”

  “I’m trying not to think. I want it to be blank.”

  “Tabula rasa.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it working?”

  “Not if you’re talking to me.”

  I tried to lie down and nap, but I was restless. So I watched him sleep and listened to the whine of the cicadas and the breeze shifting through the trees. From his milky skin to his soft blond hair to his red lips, he had an almost feminine beauty I found deeply moving. He seemed like a ghostly vision, a Keatsian evocation:

  Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

  Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

  Though winning near the goal …

  I touched his shoulder and, punching positive energy into my voice, said, “Take my picture. You haven’t taken my picture since before you went away.”

  He rose slowly, went to his case, retrieved his camera, and assembled it. He circled me with his head bowed over the viewfinder, stepping sideways and crouching, as if I were the game and he the hunter. Being a target made me nervous. He noticed and dropped the camera from his face.

  “Don’t be so stiff,” he said.

  “Just take my picture and stop creeping around.”

  “I’m trying to find the best light. You want it to be flattering, don’t you?”

  “Flattering or perverse?” I said.

  “Perverse … You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

  I laughed. I arched my back and thrust my breasts out a little, exaggerating my posture, hamming it up. He snapped a photograph and then several more, changing the film between each shot with an exuberant frenzy. Feeling particularly private in the woods, I gave in to the moment and flaunted myself a bit. When I was younger, I was shy about my body, but by this time, I had begun wearing tighter dresses and higher heels. I had received compliments on my good figure and my dark, curly hair—a Gene Tierney look-alike, or so I was told.

  Jay stopped, lowered his camera, closed the viewfinder, and tossed it on the blanket like an alcoholic shoving away a drink.

  “Did I do something?” I asked.

  “No. It’s not you.”

  His eyes clouded over like the translucent film of cataracts, and he dropped his head forward. I wanted to comfort him—but something in his body language told me not to. He was still in shock from the war, and I was ill-equipped to help him.

  He lay down again, with his right arm over his eyes. I watched his chest rise and fall and his feathery hair flare in the breeze. I studied the shifting shadows from the trees on the blanket and on his shirtsleeve.

  “Look,” I said. “I wish you would talk to me. I don’t bite.”

  He sat up, searched my eyes, then flopped back down and said, “I’ve been reading this book. An American Tragedy. Have you heard of it?”

  “Dreiser, right? Didn’t he base it on a true crime?”

  “Yeah, but the story is more about the chip on his shoulder. He’s really writing about himsel
f growing up poor.”

  “I started to read Sister Carrie once but put it down. It was dreadful.”

  “Writing about someone else’s tragedy was his way of saying something about himself. Writers do that all the time.”

  “I suppose. So, why are you telling me this?”

  “Just trying to make conversation, as requested.” He shrugged and smiled, but his smile was ever so slightly smug.

  “What are you really thinking about?” He turned away from me. “The war?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Can’t you tell me? Can’t you try? I haven’t forgotten about what happened between us, before you went away—”

  “Bunny,” he said, his tone a little sharp. “That was a long time ago. At least it feels that way.” His voice softened. “We’re different people now.”

  “I know. Of course. I just—I care about you. That hasn’t changed. I can’t change that.”

  “I know you can’t.” He stood up, brushing off his pants, and strapped his camera over his shoulder. “I should go, or Grandma will wonder where I am.”

  “Ooooh, not yet,” I said, standing. “Please don’t run off.”

  I reached to grab his arm, and in a surge of violence, he caught my wrist and twisted it. “Bunny! Just leave it alone.” His fingers were digging into the flesh on the inside of my wrist.

  “Let go!” I demanded, wresting my arm away from him.

  He glared at me, his cheeks flushed; then he lowered his chin and whispered, “Sorry. You’re really pushing my buttons.”

  Before I could respond, he disappeared into the woods. The underbrush swallowed him whole.

  I stood there for a few moments, listening to my own breathing and the gentle flap of the leaves high in the trees. Then, like an automaton, I began to clean up the picnic. After I scraped the uneaten food into the woods, neatly stacked the plates and cups, wrapped the utensils in the dirty napkins, and packed it all up, I stared at my work, that stupidly quaint wicker basket painted with primroses and lined with pink and white gingham Mother had bought for us, and I rushed to it, snatched it up by its handles, and with a little scream, like a tennis player hitting a serve, flung it at the nearest tree.

  2

  A DATE WITH

  DEATH

  An Unpleasant Encounter

  Sheila had first met Kenneth on the elevator. They both worked in the same building; he on the twelfth floor, she on the eighth. He cut a figure with his wide shoulders, close-cropped hair, and coppery brown eyes. He also knew how to dress—he wore a sharp blue Brooks Brothers suit, powder blue tie and matching pocket square, buffed Italian leather shoes, and a gold college ring set with a garnet. Glad rags, indeed. He had gloss, real polish, like those Wall Street sorts, nothing like the rough, muddy looks of the only other man she was close to, her father the farmer.

  So one day, she smiled at him. She had a good smile. She practiced it in her mirror often, tilting her head at different angles in search of the most flattering position. Her mother’s advice. From a certain viewpoint, she looked a bit like Jean Harlow; from another, like Barbara Stanwyck.

  He nodded in return, but no smile. She tried again the next day, but still, no smile. Just his handsome mug. This went on for a week, until finally, she said, “Are you going to flirt with me or not, mister?”

  “I will if you want me to,” he said.

  “I do want you to, I do.”

  “Well, then. Let’s see …” He looked her up and down. “You look swell in that skirt. And those shoes do your gams justice.” He whistled lightly.

  She was wearing a green wool suit she’d made from a Woolworths pattern. She raised the hem by an inch; a little more leg didn’t hurt. And her green pumps she’d bought on sale at L & T. What a find!

  “Oh, so you are good at flirting. I thought you might be.”

  “I didn’t know I was being tested.”

  “I’ve been testing you for the past two weeks.”

  “Have I passed?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What did I do wrong?”

  “You haven’t asked me for a cup of coffee.”

  He smiled again and asked her to dinner. She liked his smile, his teeth so bright and even.

  She said yes.

  Today, however, she was dream-ing of dollar signs and her new life, not Kenneth Addison, so when the elevator door opened, she was surprised to see him standing there.

  He wore a gray suit and a vermillion tie. His face was grim, even tarnished, but still handsome. Sheila glared at him and, holding her blond head high, entered the elevator. The doors closed. She glanced over at him. His black shoes shone like mirrors, and his trousers were pressed. Was the cheap sequined canary taking care of him? A woman like that didn’t know how to look after a man.

  She cleared her throat and said, “I received a bit of good news today.” He didn’t respond. “I received a letter. I’ve inherited my great-aunt’s estate.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  She didn’t answer. Then, she said, “Are you still with that harlot?”

  “She’s not a harlot.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “You need to move on, Sheila.”

  “I have. I am.”

  “We were a mistake—”

  “I’m a woman of means now.”

  “Well, good for you.”

  “I don’t need you. At all.”

  “You don’t have me. At all.”

  The elevator door opened and several birds got on, squawking and cooing over one another. The car went a few floors, and the women got off. Kenneth gave Sheila a hard look, his irises cool as steel, and followed them out. Before the elevator door slid closed, he turned and said, “And another thing: Stop ringing me in the middle of the night. I know it’s you.”

  5

  CEOLA

  I couldn’t be late for our trip to Jitters Gap, so I cooked up a plan to sneak out. I decided I’d do my best impression of a sad little girl with a tummy ache and tell Mama and Papa I had to go to bed. Once they thought I was dead to the world, I would stuff the bed with a spare quilt and slip out one of the windows in your room, Robbie.

  I hoped and prayed Papa wouldn’t decide to go out in the yard after dinner. A month or two after word came about you, he threw himself into planting trees along the driveway as a kind of tribute. Maples, evergreens—it’s a goddamned forest now. He said he wanted to plant a tree for every day you were a part of this godforsaken world. I’m not sure what he was really hoping to accomplish. Just down the road in Bedford, they’d lost more boys during D-Day than any other town in America, and you didn’t see them running around tearing up their yards like crazy people. It was some sort of self-imposed punishment, digging holes like he was a member of an invisible chain gang.

  Anyway, it wouldn’t be dark by the time I needed to leave. I’d be visible when I climbed down the trellis by the edge of the porch, so I needed Papa to stay inside. Luckily, he poured himself a whiskey and settled in to listen to Bob Hope on the radio. I heard the comedian’s familiar voice from the living room—“What rugged guys these marines are! Today, one of them pulled off his shirt and handed me a tattoo needle and said, ‘Okay, make with the autograph, boy.’”

  By the time I came to the edge of the woods behind the Prescott house, the sun had dipped below a bank of clouds and the air felt cooler. I was a little nervous. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the danger. In fact, I thought it was exciting, and it was keeping me from being blue about you. But I was worried about your journal. Jay didn’t want Mama and Papa to discover it, which believe you me, I understood. But even if I found it first, I wasn’t sure I wanted to give it to Jay. He’d made me feel uneasy by asking for it. For the time being, though, I chose to ignore my gut for the sake of our adventure. When I arrived at Mrs. Prescott’s dusty Olds parked beside the house, I gave Jay a timid wave.

  “Hey, sleuth,” he said. “These are for you.” He handed me binoculars. “Get in t
he passenger’s side, but keep your head down. Mrs. Prescott wouldn’t approve of you going to the movie with us, much less doing what we’re actually going to do.”

  I slid over the slick leather seat and tilted my head to the side. Bunny was in the driver’s seat, dressed from neck to knees in midnight blue. She kept her head still, her glossy lips pressed together like they had been painted shut. Jay dropped into the back seat, propping up his damaged leg. It was irritating him. Bunny adjusted the rearview mirror, gave her reflection a self-satisfied glance, and started the car.

  Once out of the neighborhood, I sat up. But Jay gestured for me to stay down and said, “This town is full of gossips. We don’t want them to see you. Just wait until we get out of the city limits.”

  I slid to the floor quick, catching a whiff of Bunny’s perfume. It smelled heavy, like gaudy gold jewelry. She’d probably worn it for Jay. I got comfortable and watched the shadows move across the ceiling of the Olds, my imagination wandering, as it tended to do in those days. I made up a B detective movie called A Drive into Darkness to entertain myself, casting Bunny as the desperate vamp—she’d get it in the end. I cast yours truly as the sly private eye, C. C. Steele. Just as I was working out the plot, something about a car trunk full of stolen money, Jay said, “Okay. You can sit up. We’re out of town.”

  Jitters Gap was—and still is—a gloomy place. The Basin Coal Company opened Kildare and Gaylord Mines and established the town in the 1890s. The company kept the town running until the mid-1980s, closing its doors due to the Clean Air Act’s requirement for low-sulfur coal, which, of course, Basin couldn’t supply.

  It’s now a ghost town, Robbie, but in ’45 it wasn’t much better. Along its streets were rows of whitewashed clapboard company homes made grimy and rotten by the damp winters and, because the steep Appalachians clipped the day short at both ends, a lack of sunlight. The downtown, just a block or two long, wasn’t much to see. Besides a general store, a butcher, a gas station, a doctor’s office, and the company bank (the best-looking building in town), its storefronts were empty shells, selling nothing but dust and vermin.