Leah's Journey (40 page)

Having submitted yourself to a local board composed of your neighbors for the purpose of determining your availability for training and service in the land or naval forces of the United States, you are hereby notified that you have been selected for training and service therein…

“Selected.” He liked the sound of the word, smiled, and once more opened the little leather box. In the dark bus, the small diamond glinted like a distant star.

It was late when the bus reached Bennington and although he had planned on seeing Rebecca at once, he went instead to the Bennington Inn and phoned her dormitory. She was not there but he was given a phone number where she could be reached.

He dialed, feeling a sudden uneasiness which evaporated when he heard Rebecca’s familiar voice on the phone. As always her tone was high and sweet, her greeting enthusiastic, expectant, as though everyone who called Rebecca Goldfeder had something pleasant and exciting to impart to her.

“Becca. It’s Josh. I’m here in Bennington.”

“Josh! That’s marvelous. Are you here to see Eleanor?”

He remembered then that Eleanor Greenstein had undertaken production of a Hart contract. Of course, he would call Eleanor and maybe even go over to see her operation. It might be interesting to start up on his own in a small town after the war, especially since Becca seemed to have gotten used to that sort of life. On her visits to New York she was impatient to get back to Vermont, often cutting her vacation short by several days. It was highly possible, with S. Hart expanding so rapidly, that after the war Seymour might be interested in establishing a rural plant. Maybe a subsidiary company. Hart and Ellenberg. He doodled the name, then crossed out the Hart and wrote instead “J. Ellenberg Inc.”

“Well, I’ll get over to see Eleanor. But I came to see you. I’ve got some news for you,” he said. He reached into his pocket and touched the small jeweler’s box. The ring within it was bigger than the diamond Annie Hart’s flyboy had given her.

“News? About Aaron?” Her voice trembled with fear and he was briefly irrationally, jealous of her brother, his friend whose loss hung over their days in a lingering miasmic mist.

“No. Sorry. This news is about me.”

“Oh? Give me a hint. Is it good news?”

“That depends. Listen, it’s sort of late but since you’re out anyhow, suppose I take a cab to wherever you are and walk you back to your dorm and we can talk,” he suggested.

“No. That is—I’m studying for a big prelim—with a friend. I’m staying the night here. But I’ll meet you first thing in the morning. For breakfast. Okay?”

“Here at the Inn,” he said. “Nine. Is that too early?”

She laughed. “Nine-thirty. And Josh?”

“Yes, Becca?”

“Sleep well.”

“Good night, baby.”

But he did not sleep well. The curious uneasiness returned and he awakened twice in the night. Instinctively he reached for the small jeweler’s box and looked to that starlike diamond for reassurance.

Rebecca surprised him by being on time, and when he saw her in her plaid skirt and duffel coat, her long black hair glossy beneath a red knit beret, he wished he had thought to change to sport clothes. He felt out of place in his wide-lapeled suit, white-on-white shirt, and narrow silk tie in the sunny dining room where the other men wore tweed jackets and V-necked sweaters with slacks that were too baggy yet looked somehow just right.

“Josh! Oh, Josh! How marvelous to see you here.”

She hugged him and his arms closed about the soft curves of her body, that sweet body he had watched shed its small-girl fat and flesh out into the graceful form that moved so sweetly within his outstretched arms. His Becca. His baby.

They had breakfast and he watched with amusement as Rebecca smothered her pancakes with golden maple syrup, and primed him for news of the family. During their childhood together, in the apartment on Eldridge Street, it had been his job to cut her food to her liking and he remembered how she had coated her toast with sugar, her cereal with blankets of butter. She had not changed. All of life’s sweetness and richness were due her and she claimed them without embarrassment or hesitation. Patiently he gave her news of the family.

Her mother was in Washington just now. There was talk of rationing clothing and the Office of Price Administration wanted Leah’s opinion. David and Michael might join her there on the weekend, taking the train with Mrs. Schreiber, who spent every weekend in the capital with her husband. Peter Cosgrove had volunteered for a special military psychological unit and Bonnie was once again working at S. Hart. Carefully, they avoided talking about the news that had brought him to Bennington. She told him about her work as a Red Cross volunteer. She was, she said laughing, the slowest bandage-roller on campus. During a silence as they sipped their coffee, he remembered to tell her that he had heard that her old friend Lisa Frawley had been married in California. An older man, they said.

“Yes. Lisa sent me a marriage announcement and I wrote her a note. But she didn’t answer. I wonder why.”

He shrugged and when he did not answer she slipped on her coat.

“Let’s walk,” she said. “I’ll show you my favorite places.”

Arm in arm, they strolled the hill-bound campus. They passed groups of laughing, chatting girls, their heads bent close, their long hair swirling about windswept faces, eyes very bright, wool scarves trailing after them in woven streaks of color. The red and white of Harvard. The orange and black of Princeton. It was January, 1944. In Casablanca, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt talked of the future of Europe, and across North Africa boys from Spokane and Duluth cleaned their rifles and mended uniforms shredded by jungle thorns. But in Bennington, Vermont, sharp wintry winds kissed the air and young women in plaid skirts and loose mohair sweaters allowed themselves to forget the war and speak instead of Matisse and Mahler, of Kant and Weber.

A light snow had fallen during the night and was now stretched across the earth in a crusty lacelike frost that crackled beneath their feet.

“Do you remember how you used to pull me along the street in a wooden box when it snowed?” Rebecca asked.

“Sure. We had the runners that Aaron pried off a rotting sled someone had thrown in the garbage. Up and down Hester Street we went on snowy days. I was selling scarves that winter. That little guy who boarded with us, Morris Morgenstern—he married Pearlie—got me a gross somewhere. You held them in the carton while I pulled you and hollered about what a bargain they were. You know what the other peddlers called you? The shmatte angel.” He smiled and looked at Rebecca, his “angel of rags” grown to this beautiful, laughing young woman.

She laughed now, a rich throaty sound that made his blood tingle.

“I’ll have to remember to tell that to Joe. I’ll bet I’m the only girl at Bennington who ever helped sell shmattes.”

“Oh yeah. Joe. Joe Stevenson.” Joshua pulled up the collar of his coat. He had forgotten Rebecca’s sculptor friend, or perhaps, he acknowledged reluctantly, he had not wanted to remember him. The uneasiness he had felt the previous evening washed over him and he took Rebecca’s gloved hand, pressed it tightly within his own, and put both hands in his pocket.

They had left the campus now and were walking across a field where a copse of slender birch trees formed a natural windbreak. As they passed beneath the trees, a cushion of snow trembled on a low-hanging branch and fell, grazing Rebecca’s cheek. He took out his handkerchief and gently wiped the powdery crystals from her skin, then passed his finger across her face. Her skin was soft as velvet beneath his touch and she waited patiently, submissively, for him to minister to her, as he always had.

“Joshua,” she asked softly now, as they stood beneath the snow-laden trees, listening to the wind whistle in mournful threnody through the branches, “what was the news that made you come here?”

For answer, he reached into his pocket and took out the letter from the draft board. She held the crisp official paper and read it carefully.

“You too, then. First Aaron and now you. You have to report in a week. That’s not much time, Joshua.” Her voice was heavy and all laughter had fled from her eyes.

“Time enough. Time for us to get things squared away. Becca, baby, I wanted to wait until you finished college—I wanted you to have your fun, but like you said, now there’s not much time. So I want you to wear this now.”

His hand trembled slightly as he reached into his pocket for the blue velvet box. He passed it to her and she held it hesitantly, then fumbled with the catch, her fingers made clumsy by her thick red wool gloves. She opened it at last and stared down at the ring, holding it a distance from her body, like a child handling a bewildering and unpredictable toy.

“Do you like it?” he asked shyly.

She had never heard Joshua’s voice so soft and uncertain before. She took her glove off and lifted the ring from its blue velvet bed, holding it so that the sunlight sparkled on the glinting ice of the perfectly cut stone.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “But Joshua—it’s an engagement ring.”

“Of course it’s an engagement ring. Becca, baby, you must have known that’s what I always wanted, always worked for. I love you Becca. I’ve always taken care of you. I always want to take care of you.”

As she struggled for an answer, three fighter planes from a nearby air force training field flew in formation overhead, winging in low and then soaring upward in swift and graceful corps, their noise drowning out her words.

“What did you say?” He shouted to make himself heard above the noise of the planes, but they had disappeared so suddenly that now his loud voice ripped through the strange heavy silence they left in their wake.

“I said ‘I love you, Joshua,’” she replied slowly, shyly.

A large smile spread across his face. Doubt, uncertainty, vanished. Of course she loved him. Of course. She was his Becca, his baby.

“Sure you do. So put the ring on already.”

There was so much to do. Maybe Rebecca would come back to New York with him today. They had to tell her parents, his parents. Maybe they could even get married when his basic training was over. A small wedding, like Annie Hart’s but indoors. And then perhaps a brief honeymoon. He knew an inn in Connecticut. His body pulsed and strengthened, shivered with anticipatory delight.

“I can’t put the ring on. I love you, but not that way. I love you the way I love Aaron. Like a friend, like a brother. Oh Joshua, Joshua, why did you have to spoil it?” Her voice broke and she was crying now, the tears spilling down her cheeks, one of them splashing across the blue box and staining the bright velvet.

He stared at her in pained disbelief. His heart sank and his limbs grew light with sudden weakness. Her hand was outstretched and he took the ring box from her, snapped it shut, and put it back in his pocket. On the tree nearest them, a fragile, snow-laden branch snapped and soft mounds of snow slid silently to the frozen earth. She continued to cry, her face contorted into that familiar knot of misery which tears had brought her to since babyhood. Her full lower lip jutted out and her nose grew red. With the habit of years, he took out his handkerchief, still damp with snow, and wiped her tears. He took off her red beret and smoothed her long dark hair. When she still sobbed, he pulled her to him and holding her gently, he rocked her into a slow calm. He soothed her with weary patience, warding away her sorrow at the terrible hurt she had inflicted upon him. A harsh wind rose and whistled wildly through the copse, breathing coldly upon their upturned faces, but still they stood there swaying, clinging to each other for comfort, her red beret tightly grasped between his fingers, ungloved and raw with cold.

*

Six months later Joe Stevenson brought the mail up to the apartment he and Rebecca had shared for almost a year. Among the circulars was a tissue-thin V-letter covered with Joshua’s broad uneven handwriting. He was “somewhere in Europe.” Things were pretty hectic. His unit was a terrific bunch of guys. His best buddy was a Choctaw Indian who had taught Joshua some great curse words. They were really giving those Fascist bastards a run for their money. He hoped things were going all right at home. “Good night Becca baby. Take care.” That was all.

It was the first letter she had had from him since they had stood on the crusty hillside sheltered by a fragile wall of birch trees. She read it over and her face crumbled. Quickly she went into the small bathroom and locked the door so that Joe Stevenson, who was embarrassed by tears, would not see her cry.

THE NIGHT BEFORE he left Vermont to report to the New Jersey army base for basic training, Joe Stevenson awoke in the unquiet dark, felt the familiar, comforting pressure of Rebecca’s head upon his arm, and saw the silver moonlight splash briefly and wondrously across her face. That was the way he would remember her always—lying there across love-rumpled bedclothes, her face lost in sleep as a slender shaft of argentous light drifted across her cheek and rested briefly on the thick dark hair that fanned out across the pillow.

He carried a picture of Rebecca in his wallet, one taken in the Vermont hills they loved so well. In the snapshot she stood against a tree wearing a light-colored turtleneck sweater and dark slacks. Her head was tossed back and a stray maple leaf clung to her dark hair. She had been laughing; a half-smile was frozen on her full lips and laugh lines creased the corners of her large eyes. The picture wore thin as the war progressed. He stared at it lying across a three-decker bunk in a Texas training camp and held it in his hand as he leaned across the rail of the troopship which carried him into the European Theater of Operations. The Europe he had known as an exchange scholar had vanished and now, like other soldiers, he talked of the ETO, the Second Front, the French line.

On leave in London, he huddled in a shelter as bombs sounded dully on the concrete shield of pavement above him. He took the picture out then too, and showed it to a young mother who clutched a fair-haired baby. The white-haired child laughed wildly, improbably, at the sound of the muffled rocket blast.