“I’m willing to do my part and then some, Uncle John.”
“Of course you are,” he said. “But you’ve become the one thing that neither I nor this country has time for right now.” He held his hand out.
Charlie, realizing he was being dismissed, shook that hand. “What is that, sir?”
“A problem.”
9.
The being-late part I grew accustomed to, though not without a struggle. Ever since boys first started paying attention to me, in tenth grade when I developed, I always had punctuality rules. Ten minutes late on the first date and there would never be a second one. Fifteen minutes on a subsequent date and he’d better have an explanation that defied gravity. Plus an apology that included candy, flowers, or both. Twenty minutes late and his mother better have died.
Partly it was a matter of supply and demand. There were many fewer guys during the war, while I still did my socializing with the same five gals, and my best friend Greta leading the charge. You would think that made the boys choosers and the girls beggars, but the way I figured, scarcity meant a girl had to value herself more highly, so boys would respect her.
Partly, too, it came from my mother. My father was the breadwinner and provider, but that didn’t mean she lacked for power. Dinner was at seven, for example. Sharp. If he was down in the basement fiddling with radios, and didn’t hear when she called from the top of the stairs at five minutes till, too bad. We’d sit and eat anyhow, in a terrible silence that Frank and I would lie low under, like cows waiting out a thunderstorm under a tree—feeling bad for Daddy and what was waiting for him once he realized the time. We’d hear his tread on the stairs, see his sheepish face peek around the corner, and my mother would greet him with a visage of ice.
Oh, the pleas for mercy we’d hear that night. Frank and I would wolf down our food and rush our dishes into the kitchen, while Daddy tried to regain Mother’s good graces. All she would do was point at her ear so he knew where to aim his apology. Say what you will about the severity of basic training, that woman would have made an excellent drill instructor.
The thing about my punctuality rules with the boys is that they worked. Holding myself high made them line right up. But the first time Charlie Fish was tardy, it was that night of the snowstorm, and he’d been drenched. With my mother drying him off, there’d been no chance for me to set the ground rules. The next time, he was even later.
“Oooh,” I fumed, pacing as the minutes passed. “If he stands me up, I will fry that boy.”
“It’s wartime,” my mother replied, not bothering to look up from the crossword puzzle she was doing in pen. “Boys are not in charge of their schedules anymore. Why don’t you practice your scales?”
I sat at the piano sure enough, but all het up. After a clumsy start, I began running through the majors and minors in every key. It did help to pass the time, and my mood softened as I worked up and down the notes, but I resented her anyhow for being right.
When Charlie finally arrived, it was a solid hour past our arranged time. “I had a last-minute meeting,” he explained, nose running and breathless. “It couldn’t wait.”
To his credit, he’d brought flowers, no easy thing in wintry Chicago. I put them in a vase, then went ahead and had dinner with him anyhow. I might be self-important, but I wasn’t the kind of girl to stay home and pout. Charlie found a Polish place with steamed-up windows and amazing sausages. Pretty soon he had me laughing about what the clues would be in my mother’s ideal crossword puzzle. Seven-letter word for proper gentleman? Yesmaam. Twelve letter word for heaven? Cleankitchen. I forgot all about that hour of fretting.
Date by date, I grew accustomed to his tardiness. Always ready on time, just in case, I adjusted my rules to accommodate his unpredictable schedule. I’d sit with my mother while she puffed away on one cigarette after another, triple the amount she’d smoked before Daddy left, reading a gossip magazine or helping her with the occasional crossword clue. If Charlie was late, I’d let him buss me on the cheek and out we’d go without a fuss. Somehow he wore me down.
But Valentine’s Day is different. Particularly in your nineteenth year, when events having to do with romance begin to matter in new ways. By then I’d stopped dating other boys, unless it was in a big group for the movies or some such. No one was getting smooches from me either. That had stopped on Christmas Eve, thank you very much. I hadn’t exactly announced these things, because I didn’t want Charlie making assumptions. But we were close enough in our conversations that by February he must have known. Granted, I pecked that sailor from Indiana home on an eight-day leave, the one who was such a dazzling dance partner. But when our lips touched, I thought of Charlie. Like a beach ball with the nozzle left open, all the fun went out of it.
Whether I admitted it or not, out loud or in my secret heart, Charlie had become my fella. The skinny math kid. It didn’t feel like I was settling, though, for all my airs. More like choosing something out of the ordinary. My girlfriends might not have understood, except Greta, who wanted us all to have serious fellas. Frank would have squinted one eye at me and said, “Really?” My mother revealed as much of her opinions as a sphinx. Not one word for or against. That was as out of character as if she’d come down to breakfast one morning having grown wings.
I hardly noticed. I was busy getting excited about Valentine’s. The Monday before, Charlie had stopped in at the store like he used to before his work got so busy. He brought a deli sandwich for me, roast beef on rye with tomatoes and Thousand Island dressing. Nothing for himself, though, he couldn’t stay. While I ate, he explained that his assignment was changing again, he was sorry not to have been around more, and he wanted to make it up to me. So: Six o’clock sharp on Valentine’s Day. We’d go out for a fancy dinner. We’d hold hands the whole time.
“I promise,” he said, and to the young girl I once was, those two words were more delicious than any sandwich ever. I answered that I would dress to the nines for him. And secretly told myself that I would kiss him every chance I got.
Charlie rushed in at almost seven thirty. He had no flowers, because the store closed before he could get there. He wore his usual work clothes, drab as a sidewalk, because he didn’t want to run back to the dorms to change and then arrive even later. He claimed he’d bought some chocolate for me, but that was in the dorms too.
Charlie looked pale, like a person kept too long inside. There was perspiration on his brow, though it was mid-February. He wrung his hands and apologized and asked if we could sort it all out on the way to the restaurant before we lost our reservation.
I took a page from my mother. I mean, I was wearing my best blue dress, which I had altered for the occasion. Also I was good enough to get into a conservatory. Also he had promised. So I held myself tall and aloof, and tapped one finger against my ear.
But that backfired, because he leaned close and said, “Brenda I am as sorry as I could be,” and he was still breathing hard from running, which I felt in my ear like an electric charge, down my neck about to my toes. I shivered from it.
If my mother saw, she hid it well. Her nose was buried in a new book, about a boy in Boston who was an apprentice at Paul Revere’s silversmith shop. All she did was lower the book and say, “Charlie, how nice to see you. I hope you and Brenda have a fine evening.” Then back up with the book, a ribbon of cigarette smoke rising from behind it.