Blue Skies Tomorrow (6 page)

Ray sighed. Too bad he didn’t share the man’s positive attitude.

Shuster’s gaze skittered over the crates. He probably knew the contents and destination of each one. “This is good, orderly work,” Shuster said. “When I do my job right, the boys on the front get what they need to fight.”

“Yeah.” Why did Ray let an avalanche of forms bury that truth? These supplies helped his brother Jack in England, his friend Bill Ferguson in the Pacific, and all the men on the front.

He stepped outside into the cool morning sunshine. Throbs of airplane engines filled the air. A C-47 cargo plane pointed its snub nose into the sky while another turned onto the downwind leg of the landing approach. Pain built in Ray’s chest, and his fingers curled, missing the feel of the control wheel.

Ray had inquired into a position with the Air Transport Command, but ATC also served as a reward for returning combat pilots. For heroes.

“Lieutenant?” With a strained smile, Corporal Shuster held out a clipboard. How long had he been waiting?

“Sorry. Where do I sign?”

Shuster led him to a truck and pointed out crates and boxes and labels, and had Ray sign here and here and there, and initial here and here and—no, over here. Ray served as an officer’s rubber stamp, a bureaucratic hurdle for Shuster, who could roll out shipments a lot faster without him.

“Ready to go, sir?” Shuster asked.

Ray chuckled. “You tell me.”

Shuster flagged down the driver and pitched an imaginary fastball. “Move on out.”

The truck rumbled away and revealed a clear view over the flat Sacramento Valley to Mount Diablo some fifty miles south. The Diablo hills slouched like lazy students in their desks, but Mount Diablo stood several thousand feet above the others, the only one in class who knew the answers.

Antioch snuggled at the base of the foothills, and somewhere in Antioch, Helen bustled around.

The weekend glimmered in his memory. He’d gotten his Friday shipment out on time, caught his bus, and whisked Helen and her son to his parents’ for dinner and piano playing. When Jay-Jay fell asleep on the sofa, Ray and Helen danced to the radio.

Saturday she invited him to join George and Betty Anello at her place. After many long looks over dinner and too few dances, Ray tried to leave, but the Anellos left first. Ray and Helen talked past midnight on her porch swing under the rustling branches of a cherry tree. Every time he said he should go, a new wave of conversation carried them away.

He held her hand under the pretense of examining the fine scars from cooking accidents. He could have kissed those scars and those on her face, and he could have kissed her, but he had to be careful.

Jay-Jay needed stability. Before Ray crossed that threshold, he wanted to be rock-solid certain. Granite, not pumice.

“Lieutenant, where’d you want this pallet?”

Ray blinked at the forklift operator. He pointed to an open spot inside the door. “Park it there while I find out.”

Shuster jogged up to the forklift and examined the invoice. “Nice fellow, the lieutenant,” he said to the operator in a not-low-enough voice. “Real bright too, but his head’s in the clouds.”

All his life. Ray returned to his office and those mind-numbing forms. At least with his head in the clouds he could see that golden lining.

Antioch
Friday, March 31, 1944

“Excellent job, ladies.” Helen smiled at the members of the Junior Red Cross in the classroom at Antioch High. The children’s pageant, “Vaudeville for Victory,” had energized them far more than preparing surgical dressings or collecting funds. However, the Antioch Branch had surpassed its goal in the War Fund Campaign—over twelve thousand dollars—thanks in part to a sizable donation from Carlisle’s Furniture and Upholstery and Della’s Dress Shop.

“Let’s go over this again. Be at El Campanil Theatre no later than . . . ?”

“Nine o’clock,” the girls chimed.

“Right.” Helen scanned the list in Mary Jane Anello’s rounded handwriting. “Nancy Jo, Rita, Anne, and Peggy will take tickets then pass clipboards and collection cups. Evelyn, Margie, Carol, and Gina will put the children in order, check costumes, and keep the children occupied backstage—quietly occupied—while Mary Jane and I run the program.”

Evelyn Kramer raised her hand. Her strawberry-blonde pompadour rose higher than anything the Andrews Sisters attempted. “Mrs. Carlisle, may I bring a game?”

“Yes. Anything to keep them quiet.”

“I know what I’m bringing,” Margie Peters said. “Handcuffs and gags.”

When the giggles died down, Helen turned to the president of the Junior Red Cross. “Thank you, Mary Jane. Excellent work.”

Her round face lit up under her black curls tied back with a pink bow.

Helen dismissed the girls and checked her watch. An hour at the dress shop, a visit with Jim’s sister, Dorothy Wayne, and her new baby girl, and then dinner with Ray and his parents.

Bubbles tickled her insides. She hadn’t felt this way since the early years with Jim, but this felt different, a continual escalation without jagged peaks and valleys. Something steady in Ray gave her a sense of inevitability and rightness. This relationship wouldn’t be passionate, but it also wouldn’t have the undercurrent of desperation, the constant fear that if she messed up she’d lose him forever.

Helen headed down the hallway she’d walked four years ago as a senior agonizing over her decision. The acceptance letter from Mills College had hung on her bulletin board, but Jim’s face grew darker each day. Mills might be a women’s college, Jim said, but they had socials with men’s colleges. Why should he wait for her, when he knew she wouldn’t wait for him?

Helen opened the door, drank in cool air, turned the page in her memory book to where it belonged, and pictured handsome blond Jim Carlisle stopping her on these steps and asking her to the Winter Ball.

“You’re kidding. Not our Mrs. Carlisle. She’s old.” Evelyn Kramer’s voice floated around the corner of the building.

Old? Helen stood still. She’d never yet been called old.

“You ninny,” Margie Peters said. “She’s not old. My brother went to school with her.”

“But she’s a widow and a mother.”

“So what?” Mary Jane Anello’s laughter rang out. “I’m glad to see her happy for a change. Didn’t she look radiant?”

Helen touched her cheek. Did she apply too much rouge?

“My brother George says they’re sweet on each other,” Mary Jane said. “And Pop says Ray Novak’s a fine man. It’s so romantic.”

People were talking about them? Already? Gossip made it more real somehow. The bubbles inside rose to her head, and she grasped the staircase handrail. She wanted this relationship, didn’t she?

So why did her hands shake?

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Jeffries.” Helen nodded and smiled to her next-door neighbor as she walked up G Street.

Two posters hung in the window of Molander Repairs. One showed a pilot gazing skyward—“Keep ’Em Flying.” The second read “Vaudeville for Victory.” Young Donald Ferguson’s crayon writing started bold, shrunk, and the T-O-R-Y dripped down the right side of the poster. Darling.

The next block boasted a neatly lettered sign for the pageant on the lawn of Holy Rosary, and a bit farther up, Antioch Tire and Electric displayed little Linda Jeffries’s sign proclaiming “Vauddeville for Victory” with a big
X
through the extra
D
. Helen smiled. The children’s errors made the signs more winsome, just the angle she wanted.

“There you are, Helen.” Victor Llewellyn ran across G Street on scissor legs like a quail. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Boy, you look swell.”

“Thank you.” She hoped Ray would agree. She loved her new caramel-colored suit with its asymmetric jacket and swingy box pleats in the skirt. One of the benefits of being a Carlisle.

“I like your hair up like that,” Vic said. “It’s perfect for tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“We have reservations at Milan’s at seven.”

“What?” Helen stopped in front of the Women’s Club, and a hard knot formed behind her sternum. “You can’t make plans without asking me.”

“I couldn’t get hold of you. I decided to act first and ask later.”

Typical Llewellyn arrogance. She strode down the street. “I’m sorry, but I have plans.”

“What kind of plans?” His voice had an edge.

Helen crossed Fifth Street with the careful footing an edge required. “Mrs. Novak invited me for dinner. The children’s pageant is two weeks from tomorrow.”

“Will Ray be there?”

Her left foot caught on the curb. “I suppose so,” she said in a light tone. “If he gets away from the Air Depot on time.”

“You’ve been seeing a lot of each other, I’ve heard.”

He’d heard? From his mother, no doubt. Why did the Carlisles buy Jim a house across the street from the town busybody? Too bad she never noticed anything that mattered.

“I thought you weren’t ready to date.”

“I’m not dating Ray. We’re just friends.” Helen shoved open the door to Della’s.

“Good. Go out with me tonight. I know you like to dance.”

“It’s about time you two went out.” Mr. Carlisle appeared from behind a dress rack.

Helen froze, too close to Vic, her breath trapped beneath a heavy load of expectations. Everyone expected her to pay homage to her fallen warrior husband and kiss his portrait. Mr. Carlisle expected her to be thrilled at Vic’s overture. Ray would expect her to back away from Vic out of loyalty to him and the hope of a romance.

Vic grinned. “We have reservations at Milan’s tonight.”

“Very nice,” Mr. Carlisle said.

Helen could play only one role with honesty. “I told you. I have plans.”

“With the Novaks.”

“Yes, for the pageant.” Helen escaped behind the cash register.

Mr. Carlisle harrumphed and straightened the rack of spring blouses. “You spend too much time with them.”

“I’m president of the Ladies’ Circle.”

Vic crossed his arms over his blue uniform jacket. “Ray Novak has his eyes on her.”

Helen gasped. How childish of him.

Mr. Carlisle laughed and rearranged the blouses. “Don’t let him get any ideas. I’d never let a Novak raise my grandson. Especially Ray. There’s something soft about that boy. Weak.”

Jim also talked like that about Ray, called him a coward. Helen fumbled with the stack of dollar bills and tried to laugh. “Goodness. All this fuss for nothing.”

“Good. He’ll end up like his father, you know. All boys do.”

She couldn’t count the bills. Why—why did boys have to end up like their fathers?

He slipped a blouse off a hanger, frowned at it, and slung it over his shoulder. “The Carlisles have belonged to our denomination for generations, and I won’t let one meddlesome pastor drive me away, but the man needs to keep his nose out of people’s business.” He marched to the back room with the discarded blouse.

Helen stared at the swinging burgundy curtain. Pastor Novak meddlesome? What on earth had he said to Mr. Carlisle? And didn’t Mr. Carlisle see the irony of pressuring her to date the son of the most meddlesome woman in town?

“It’d be a lot easier if you went out with me.” Vic smiled and winked.

Helen set her jaw and bowed her head over the cash. “Good-bye, Vic.”

6

Saturday, April 1, 1944

Ray leaned back against the fuselage of the Jenny biplane in his grandparents’ barn and smiled. Grandpa and Grandma Novak knelt on a blanket with Helen and Jay-Jay while kittens scampered around with exclamation point tails.

“That’s it, sweetie. Gently.” Helen held an orange tabby and guided her son’s hand over the fur. The night before, she’d seemed tired and jumpy over dinner, although she’d relaxed dancing in Ray’s arms. Today she wore a yellow peasant blouse with a yellow and white checked skirt, and she glowed in the sunshine that slanted through the barn door. This day at the farm seemed to be what she needed after a long week.

Jay-Jay shrieked in delight, and a gray kitten made three stiff hops to the side. Jay-Jay lunged for her. “Kitty.”

“Gently,” Helen said. “She’ll come if you’re gentle.”