The Magic Of Ordinary Days Part 12

I smiled and thanked him, but I still a.s.sumed he was just trying to get closer to Dot. But even after she edged her way into the conversation, he didn't show any interest in her. He kept talking to me.

He wore the silver bars of a first lieutenant, and he had suntanned skin, blond-streaked hair, a broad jaw, and deep-set eyes. The suntan, he told us, came from spending days in the high alt.i.tude, training out in the sun and snow up at Camp Hale near Leadville. Part of the Army's Tenth Mountain Division, he was preparing troops for the campaign in Italy, and his name was Edward. We talked all through the intermission, and when the show finally started up again, he invited me, not Dot, down front to sit with him.

Throughout the rest of the show, I couldn't concentrate on the entertainment going on just a few feet before me. Instead, I noticed the way he kept his arms loosely draped across his thighs, and how he laughed-long rolling flaps of laughter coming out of him like birds set free from a cage. After the show ended, he took me out on the sidewalk in the cool air, and we talked again. He had a manner of speaking that was a bit hesitant, as if he waited for just a second to think over his words before he spoke. But he held a gaze with calm confidence and smiled as if he knew it was dazzling.

Outside in the night and alone with him, I felt the intense draw of his looks. I had observed it for years-this power emitted by those with natural beauty. Abby and Bea had had it, even as young girls. But beauty had never before exerted a pull on me. I had always thought I could easily resist handsome looks if ever confronted by them in a man. But as I found out, I was no hardier than others were. I concentrated on keeping my voice steady and unbroken, but with each breath, I felt a crochet hook catching in my chest. Without even realizing it, I had taken another step closer to him. And I smiled, as I hadn't done, since when? Bea's wedding day, perhaps. With Edward, I smiled and laughed until my lips went dry.

When I told him I had been studying history before leaving school for family business, he asked, "And what part of history most interests you?"

"I'm fascinated by Egypt's history. But closer by, I love the history of our own country, especially the West."

"I grew up on a ranch outside of Durango. My brothers and I spent the whole summer exploring the canyons and ravines. We'd find pottery shards and obsidian flints and arrowheads."

"From the Anasazi?"

"Yes." His face broke into a smile. "You know about them?"

I said, "All it took for me was one trip to Mesa Verde. Ever since then, I've been hooked."

"Once my brother and I found an intact Anasazi cooking pot." He gave a short laugh. "We should have held on to it, but we sold it so my brother could buy a car, and now it's on display in a museum somewhere."

"That's not a bad thing." I smiled. "Now many people can enjoy it."

From the doorway, Dot appeared. "We need your help for the cleanup," she called out to me, and for the first time, I saw in her eyes an emotion that wasn't often directed at me. In her eyes, I could see envy.

"They're so small," Ray was saying.

"Yes." My voice cracked like pieces of ancient pottery. "Some people are small."

I looked into Ray's face.

"I was talking about your hands, Livvy. Your hands are so small."

Twenty-one.

I pulled my hand away from Ray's, and then I couldn't look at the hurt I had caused him. After silence so heavy I could hear the walls groan, I shoved the cards together, stacked them, and put them away in the cupboard. Back at the table, I sat again. Ray simply sat, too, until the strain of it apparently grew too much for him, and he had to get up and leave the room.

That night, I tried to read in bed, but the words on the printed page kept swirling into leafy patterns before my eyes. This life, this life of isolation and more plants than people, was strangling me. The memories I couldn't bear to relive came to life as the substance of plants and crops living within me, their sharp stems and tangled roots growing and prodding me internally to let them come out.

By the next day, I couldn't stay in the house. I asked Ray to leave me the truck so I could drive over to Camp Amache to visit Rose and Lorelei and take one of those cla.s.ses in ikebana from their mother. Before I left, however, I heard the newscasters on the radio announce the latest travel warnings. The government had decided to ban all holiday travel by civilians because troop movement would be particularly heavy during the coming season. All pleasure travel for Christmas was seriously discouraged. I clicked off the radio and headed on my way.

Forward movement had always set my mind into motion, sometimes against my will. As I drove, again the stems of past memories started spreading and poking their points within me, and I had to force them back into the ground pockets where they belonged. I had to concentrate on my driving. I tried to remember the lyrics to favorite songs, and I sang them aloud, or else I might end up choked by those emerging vines and pushy shoots.

At Camp Amache, the same guard remembered me, welcomed me in, and sent for Lorelei and Rose. When they came walking forward to meet me, Lorelei smiled and embraced me as was typical, but Rose held herself back. Eventually, she greeted me with a hug. But in her eyes I saw tension I'd never seen before, even worse than what I'd seen at the gas station in Swink. She forced a smile. "We've only a few minutes to visit."

I couldn't hide my disappointment. "I thought you two would come along and watch my lesson."

"We're helping in the shop."

Lorelei flicked her hair. "Making posters."

"Ah," I answered.

Camp Amache was home to a large silkscreen shop that produced hundreds of thousands of posters for the Navy. Since the beginning of the war, posters could be seen everywhere, most of them for recruitment and support of our troops, but others encouraging increased factory production and war jobs, even for women. Rosie the Riveter was mythical, but posters had made her famous nonetheless. I was reminded of a poster I'd seen at the train station in La Junta. It read, "Is Your Trip Necessary? Needless Travel Interferes with the War Effort."

Lorelei took my arm. "Pay no attention to Rose. We're so happy to see you." She steered me inside the camp. "At least we can walk you over and chat for a bit."

Rose fell into step with us, but haltingly. "We should return, Lorelei."

The skin on Lorelei's arm flinched. "Don't fret so much," she snapped at her sister. She continued to walk down the dusty row between barracks. "We can take a walk, after all."

Rose and Lorelei had always teased each other and disagreed, but this was different. These were bulleted words, the first truly angry words I'd ever heard from them, and Rose's face was twisted with worry.

I stopped walking. "What is it, Rose?"

Again, she tried to smile. "Nothing," she said. "We should return, that's all."

"You go back, then," said Lorelei. "I'm going to walk with Livvy."

Rose stopped, looked down at her shoes, then turned on a heel and left us.

Lorelei held tighter to my arm and kept us walking. "I warned you once about Rose. Always she must follow the rules."

We pa.s.sed a group of older men working together. I stopped to look at their handiwork-vases, boxes, and toys made of tiny stones, the same ones that covered miles of open desert beyond the camp. Again they had created works of art out of this empty desert land. It reminded me of fireweed overtaking areas of forest burns, transforming charred wastelands into swaying red seas.

Lorelei urged me onward. "This is a hobby for the Issei." She glanced up at me with a sly smile and kept walking. "I have more important things to ponder."

I squeezed her arm. "Do you have something to tell me?"

Lorelei put a hand on her chest in a dramatic gesture. "I wish I could."

"Of course you can."

Lorelei then slowed her pace. Finally, she stopped walking altogether. She turned to me with a movie star smile and seemed to search for words. As I waited for her to tell me, I noticed a tiny gold chain that hung around her neck, one I'd never seen her wear before. "What's this?" I asked.

Lorelei pulled her collar in tighter around the neck. She lowered her voice. "Rose and I are involved with some men." After looking about, she fished the chain out from its hiding place inside her s.h.i.+rt. Hanging on the chain was a cameo pendant. "One of them gave it to me."

"It's quite lovely."

"It was his mother's."

She tucked the pendant back into her blouse. We locked arms again and strolled behind one of the large barrack buildings. How I missed conversations like this one, chatting on the telephone with my sisters, going to the diner with my girlfriends. This was a bond men couldn't understand, this sharing between women.

"He gave you something that belonged to his mother? You must be very special to him."

"I believe so." She beamed. "He tells me I am."

"Soldiers?" I asked her.

"Yes." She hesitated. "We met them on one of the farms we worked, just after we left your place. They were guarding the German POWs also working there."

I tried to picture their first meeting. Lorelei had probably flirted away shamelessly, while Rose had probably held herself back. Lorelei had most likely picked her man on the spot, whereas Rose had probably spent her time slowly getting to know hers. But even as I tried, I was having a hard time picturing it. The last time I'd pa.s.sed through La Junta with Rose and Lorelei, they had acted as if the sight of soldiers was near to unbearable. The news of the kamikaze had even caused Lorelei to shy away. But perhaps something special had transpired between these two soldiers and the girls.

"How did you meet?"

Lorelei smiled. "I told you. On one of the farms."

I sounded like a drill sergeant but couldn't stop myself. "Did you get to go out with them?"

Lorelei stopped walking. "Not exactly. But now they're writing little notes to us."

"Love notes?"

"Sort of. But I really can't tell you anything else. It's a secret."

"Why must it be kept a secret?"

She took a deep breath. "It's complicated."

How foolish of me. Of course it would be.

"If I speak more about them, Rose will despise me. Please don't ask me another thing." She hugged my arm and picked up the pace again. "Just know that we are both very happy."

But Rose didn't seem happy.

"And don't worry for us."

"Why should I worry?"

Lorelei laughed. "No more questions, remember?"

I longed to know more, but I wouldn't press her. "Then take me for my lesson."

Before we moved on, Lorelei took me for a peek inside the silkscreen shop, but I didn't spot Rose among the workers. She dropped me off at their quarters before Lorelei said she, too, should return to the shop.

Itsu met me just inside the door. She led me in and began quietly talking as she pulled out two vases, some stems in a box, and an a.s.sortment of paper flowers for practicing.

"In ikebana, we do not use layer and layer of flowers as American florists do. Instead, we use only a few stems, leaves, and blooms, only as many as it takes to compose, along with the s.p.a.ces in between, the perfect balance among them all."

She said we would begin with rikka, or standing flowers, appropriate for arrangement in bowl-shaped vases. She explained that it took years to perfect any of the styles, and that I would best learn by watching for the first of our lessons. I observed her select one of the vases, then begin to arrange the stems in exact positions using clippers to cut them and crosspieces to secure them. She used a kenzan, a holder with many sharp points about a half inch high, to firmly hold the flowers in their places.

As she continued to work, I heard the door open. Lorelei came back into the apartment. Itsu looked up briefly, then continued with our lesson. I looked at Lorelei and shot her a question with my eyes, What are you doing? Lorelei quickly got my meaning, but just shrugged, sat down beside me, and pretended to watch her mother. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see her gazing out the window and picking at her nails. Occasionally she would get up from the chair beside me, pace the floor back and forth once, then sit down again.

Now I was having a hard time concentrating, too. What trouble was coming between her and Rose? Why was Rose so tense? And why was Lorelei, who longed for a boyfriend so badly, being so secretive about the one she now had?

When I drove away, it was almost dusk. I looked back at the camp in my rearview mirror until the dust cloud behind the truck obscured my sight. On the long drive back, once I thought I heard their laughter, in unison, coming from out of the seat cus.h.i.+on beside me. And although the season was long over, once I thought I saw a b.u.t.terfly floating along the road. As I drew nearer, however, I could see it was only a bit of newspaper picked up by a breeze.

I stopped at the telephone booth in Wilson to call Abby. I wanted to hear her voice, and the question of restricted travel over the holidays was needling me. I wanted to visit my family for the holidays, but I was a patriot, after all. Perhaps Abby could help. As the telephone began to ring, I silently prayed for her to answer. Even before I had left Denver, she had been taking over Mother's charitable projects and could easily have been away, working somewhere in the city. When she picked up, I found myself almost speechless again, just as had happened before with Bea. Abby, my closest sister in age, was also the one whose mood often matched mine.

"Livvy. It's been so long. How are you?" she asked softly.

I put a hand on the spot where the baby had been kicking. I was five months along, over halfway there. "Huge."

She paused. "You couldn't be huge already. You must be exaggerating."

"Somewhat, I suppose."

I could hear Abby let out a low laugh. "I'm trying to picture you."

"Don't."

She laughed again. Then after a moment, she said, "Bea told you about Kent. He leaves next week. He'll be stationed at a military hospital somewhere in France."

"Abby, I'm so sorry."

"He'll be fine." I could feel her change faces right through the receiver. "I know he'll come back to me. Listen," she said. "This could work out well for us."

I had to laugh. "How can anything work out well from this?"

"What's happened? Is something wrong?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Has someone mistreated you?"

"No, Abby I'm just having a tough time of it these days."

"Listen up, Livvy. When Kent leaves, I'll be living in our house all alone. You could come for the holidays, then simply remain for the rest of your term. It makes perfect sense that you would want to deliver in the city, near your own family."

We were so good at plausible explanations. "I don't know."

"Why?" she asked. "You can't stay out there forever."

I gazed out at the emptiness around me, and for a minute, I remembered the city. Memories of so many things-eating movie house popcorn in paper bags alongside Dot at the theater, being served by white-clad waiters in steak house restaurants, riding the streetcars full of people rus.h.i.+ng about on business. I remembered running with my girlfriends, late for cla.s.s, across parks of gra.s.s laid out like green wrapping paper rolled on the floor. And spending hours in the library studying up on all the places full of history that someday I would see in person. Then I looked down at my bulging abdomen. For me, it could never come back to that.

"Have you made many friends?" Abby was asking.

"Not many," I answered, thinking only of Rose and Lorelei. "But Ray and his family. They're so kind to me, Abby. I don't know if I can do it."

"Do what?" Abby sounded pained. "You don't mean you could stay out there, do you? Look ..." She stopped. "You're having a spell of trouble, bad luck, really bad luck, but you don't have to ruin your entire life because of it. I have another idea. After the baby comes, if you want to go back to school, I'll baby-sit for you.

When I didn't respond, she went on. "You were so close to finis.h.i.+ng your education. You must complete that master's degree. Then after that, you can do anything you want." She paused. "Well, maybe not the travel, but certainly you could teach. Listen to me. No one deserves to stay married to someone they don't love. Especially not you."