Shining Sea (2 page)

Oh, Barbara! Every night he relives that magical first kiss by the water. Her small vibrant body never loses its warmth and mystery.

She laughs. “It takes more than a baby to stop me. Here: drink.”

How cold the glass feels in his hand. Gingerly he lifts it to his lips and lets the cool, bitterly sweet liquid trickle down his throat. In an instant, the hair on his arms—not on his chest, for some reason he's never grown hair there—and legs stands up. His skull prickles. Fingertips of ice crawl up his body, prying into his every pore and crevice.

He sets the glass down on the lawn. But the chill has lodged; an icicle has made it to his right ventricle. His heart freezes up around it.

Is this it? Is it—

1933.
Snow squeezes under his feet. White flakes scatter down from the trees and sneak under his collar. His feet slide as he tries to pull Jeanne on the sled up the hill; at twelve, his younger sister is already almost as tall as he is at fifteen.

But there's the house, peeking through the barren oaks over the hillside. Just ten minutes more. He needs to get Jeanne home before she catches pneumonia.

Let me walk, Michael.

No, no, Jeanne. We'll patch up the soles of your boots again this evening. For now, you stay put.

I can warm my feet up once we get home. It's all right.
Jeanne jumps off the sled this time, not waiting for him to answer. Her frost-covered mittens reach for the sled's rope.
How about this? I'll pull the sled with our pails on it the rest of the way. You run ahead to start the fire.

Jeanne!

Come on, Michael
.
It won't take me any longer than it would for you to pull me on the sled, so if you run ahead and get the fire going my feet will be able to start warming up sooner. They're
already
soaked.

There's no point in arguing. Jeanne is right. Mother goes on Father's rounds with him now that they have the car, which means the kitchen will be cold and empty, and it'll be up to him to get the fire going and supper started. Mother's the one who learned how to drive the car; she says their father became a different man after going off to the Great War—eight months before they became first-time parents, before they even knew he was going to be born—so she has had to become a different woman. But Father still attends to patients all day. Even though the first months of 1933 have been even worse than 1932 and most people have no cash to pay for his services.

He slip-slides the rest of his way up the hill. He'll have Jeanne read her lessons aloud while he starts on supper. He's going to be a physician, like his father; that's set in stone. Jeanne—she could be anything. She's a genius.

His arms stacked with wood, he uses an elbow to unlatch the kitchen door. Someone has left a basket of beets in lieu of payment on the kitchen table; before going to bed, his mother will carefully mark the beets down in her ledger, and that will be that. The beets are fine. He'll make beet-and-potato soup for dinner. But if only someone would leave some boots for Jeanne instead of leaving beets. Not even new boots, just better old ones than the hand-me-downs from him she's now wearing, their worn soles lined with cardboard. At almost six feet tall, Jeanne is outgrowing her shoes too fast to keep up with.

Stamp up and down,
he tells her when she busts in the door, carrying their snow-covered lunch pails and satchels.
I'll have the room warm in a jiffy.

He leaves the beets, kneels by the woodstove, and blows hard. Slowly the lick of flame grows. He draws the bench close and, just for a moment, sits on it beside his big little sister, savoring the warmth of the fire.

A bead of sweat runs down his forehead. The chill is gone from his arms and chest. In its place, a ball of heat, rising from his abdomen.

“That cloud's coming this way,” Luke says. “Look—if you watch long enough, you can see it moving.”

“Daddy says it won't rain.” Francis's voice is so soft it's barely audible.

Francis—such a beautiful baby and now such a beautiful boy, always a little apart from his older brothers and sister although only sixteen months younger than eleven-year-old Luke, nearly as close in age to Luke as Luke is to Mike Jr. Last night, he found Francis sitting alone in the half-dark of the garden shed, the book of Greek myths open on his lap.
What are you doing in here?
he asked.

Francis looked up at him and said sadly,
I could never be brave like you, Daddy.
Save people
.

You mean be a doctor?

No.
I mean brave like you were…over there.

Maybe they've been talking about the war in school. Or maybe it was just that book, sent to them at Christmas by Jeanne. All the bows and arrows, battles in it. Like Jeanne, the author, a man named Robert Graves, is a classicist.

You can be brave.

Francis shook his delicate head.
I want to be like you, Daddy, but I could never be a hero.

Son,
he said,
you never know how you'll be until you are tested.

Blood rushes from his heart. Whoosh. And then, snap. The pain is back, this time a blow of thunder in his chest cavity.

“If your father says it won't rain, it won't rain.” Barbara's voice sounds far, far away. “That tiny little cloud, Luke? You're worrying over that?”

The world grows dark, very dark. His head hits the lawn, knocking the glass of lemonade all over.

The oak trees on campus while he walks to the science laboratory, books in his arms, friends on either side of him. The breeze that flies through, shattering the leaves.

The rain, cold and alive and green.

“Stay with us, Michael! Stay with us!” Barbara is on her knees, beside him. The bulge of her abdomen hits his chest; still, her arms circle his neck and draw him toward her. “Call an ambulance, Patty Ann!”

His heart is pounding, too loud, too jagged.

A cool breeze. Then calm. He is not sure where he is. He is no longer walking along a body-strewn road in the Philippines. He is no longer passing through winter, autumn, one season after another. He lays his whole body down flat; the breeze brushes over him. The ground beneath him feels soft and mossy. Rain begins to fall, and it is tender, warm, it is the sound of his sister's voice whispering to him to wake up on a school morning with the dawn just cracking through the windowpanes. It is Barbara. Her bright eyes wide-set and lustrous, her swift, light, determined steps, her way of clasping her hands together when laughing.

He is home. He is home.

A
BROWN-SUGARED HAM
is waiting in the fridge. Two dozen white eggs are lined up in two long cardboard cartons for the kids to dye for Easter.

It's not as though you wake up Good Friday morning and think:
When I go to bed tonight, my energetic forty-three-year-old husband will no longer be living.

“Well,” she says, tucking her handkerchief inside her shirtsleeve and using both hands to propel her belly-heavy body up from the sofa. “The wake will begin in an hour. I better start making sandwiches.”

“You don't have to do that,” Jeanne says, her voice wobbling toward the end of her sentence. Her sister-in-law's tears are like raindrops hanging off the end of a branch, waiting to fall. The anticipation is exhausting. “We could put out the things brought by your neighbors last evening.”

“It makes her feel better to do something,” Luke says. He's switched the television on, and filmy images of hundreds of British people halfway across the world in a Ban the Bomb march flit across the screen.

She lights a cigarette. She's going to make sandwiches. She'll use that damn ham for them. “Can't you watch
Bullwinkle
or something that normal eleven-year-old boys watch, Luke? Where are your brothers and sister? Go find Patty Ann and tell her to help you dye the Easter eggs.”

“No one wants to dye eggs, Mom.”

If Michael were here, he would tell Luke off for speaking to her like that. She draws on her cigarette so hard the smoke hurts her lungs. But Michael isn't here.

“Okay, Luke,” she says. “It was just a suggestion.”

In the kitchen, she ties on an apron and hoists the ham out of the fridge. Normally, Michael would be carving this up. They'd be just back from church, the table would be all set, and they would be sitting down together to Easter dinner. One of the kids would give a blessing. Another of the kids would crack an Easter egg on an unsuspecting brother's head—probably Luke on Mike Jr.'s. Michael would gently reprimand Luke while she tried not to laugh, and then they'd inspect the remaining Easter eggs, admiring their bright colors and prettiness.

That's how it would be. That's how it
should
be.

“Here—let me do that,” Jeanne says, following her into the kitchen.

But that's
not
how it is. Because Michael is not here.

But the kids are. And Michael's sister, Jeanne, and their eight-year-old niece, Molly, who have flown across the country to join them, are, too. Her parents, who have never been more than fifty miles outside of San Francisco before, will arrive by overnight bus tomorrow in time for the funeral. Father O'Malley, their neighbors and friends, Michael's colleagues from the hospital, possibly the milkman and newspaper delivery boy, perhaps someone from the Veterans Administration, although she declined to request a space for Michael in the already overcrowded Los Angeles National Cemetery. They will all soon arrive to share their condolences.

And then there will be the day after. And then the day after that. And after that, until the day she joins Michael six feet under.

Jeanne's husband, Paul, walked out a few years ago and never came back, but Jeanne's only got the one kid and has a good job teaching Greek and Latin at a fancy girls' college on the East Coast. She, on the other hand, is almost thirty-seven with almost five kids and not even a college diploma. What does she know how to do, other than be a wife to Michael and a mother to their children? God in heaven, at least let there be a decent pension or whatever it is that goes to a widow. Somehow she has to keep this family going.

The baby pokes her gut, hard. She pats the solid knob that is either the baby's head or the butt. Butt, fingers crossed—by now the baby should be in position for entering the world.

Time isn't going to stand still while she figures things out.

“Is he moving?” Jeanne says, her long pale face an artless blend of concern and envy. At forty-one, there's no chance of Jeanne having a second child now. Not with her lousy husband MIA. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, he's gotten too big to move. Just an elbow or knee every now and then.”
She she she,
she thinks. She and Michael have both been hoping for a second girl.

“Far along as you are, Barbara, you still look so light.”

Light? She feels so heavy she could fall right through to the other side of the world and come out in China. Maybe light to Jeanne—Jeanne, Lord bless her, is as tall as a man. Taller than most men, actually. Taller than Jeanne's husband, Paul, was. “Thank you, I guess.”

But she would not come out in China. Nowhere on that side of the Pacific. She'd sooner burn up at the center of the earth.

While Jeanne hacks at the ham, she lines up slices of white bread, opens jars of Kraft mayonnaise and French's mustard, tears off big crinkly leaves of lettuce. It feels good to do something manageable. With four kids, plus Francis's friend Eugene always around, and any other of the kids' friends who may happen to be over at any given time, she's used to feeding the troops. She picks up the cigarette she set down in the seashell ashtray Luke made for her in second grade and inhales slowly then exhales, letting the smoke stream out her nostrils.

The baby grinds down hard against her pelvis.

She stabs the butt of the cigarette into the ashtray and takes out the Melmac serving platter, white with a spray of spindly blue, green, and pink flowers around the edge. She and Michael bought a full dinner set when they moved down from San Francisco. So young, so inexperienced. So proud to be picking out housewares with her handsome new husband.
How many plates should I get?
she asked.
The entire set,
Michael told her. And in this way it was agreed they would fill their home together with children and life, and everything that had happened over the last years would be left behind them. That was the plan, anyhow.

She whacks the platter down on the counter. “They got him in the end. The Japs.”

Jeanne sighs. “Oh, Barbara.”

If she didn't have the kids around, if her sister-in-law hadn't flown across the country to stand beside her in her kitchen, if a river of well-meaning well-wishers wouldn't soon begin to stream through their home, she would throw the platter across the room.

Although it wouldn't break.
Melmac.

“I guess I should cut the crusts off the bread. Make them look nicer.” But she doesn't; after all these years, she still can't bring herself to waste food. After what he went through in the Pacific, Michael couldn't throw food away, either. They were completely in tune about this. They were in tune about everything.

She uses a spoon to air-drop mayonnaise across half of the slices of bread, then slaps a piece of ham and a leaf of lettuce on top of each.

A perfect, perfect man. A perfect husband.

Last evening, one of the neighbors brought over a tentlike black dress for her.
I don't mean to intrude, dear. But I thought it might be handy.

I'm not going to wear black on Monday. I'm going to wear yellow.

Be reasonable, dear. You can't wear yellow to your husband's funeral.

Michael.

She
loved
him. God almighty, how she loved him.

She smashes the other half of the slices of bread on top, then picks up the meat cleaver, because it's the closest to her, and quarters the sandwiches. The cleaver leaves fissures on the cutting board. She's wearing the yellow maternity dress now. She bought it to wear for Easter, and she's going to wear it today, on Easter. She'll wear it again tomorrow for the funeral, too, if she wants.

“Can I help, Mom?” Mike Jr. keeps a careful distance from her. “I've put away everything from…outside.”

Poor Mike Jr. He doesn't want to talk about the sun on their backs, the lemonade tinkling in the pitcher, everyone so happy. The last moments of life as it was. Mike Jr. went out as the sun was going down yesterday and finished the painting, without a word to anyone as to what he was doing.

“That's a good boy,” she says, laying the knife down and ruffling his short tawny hair. “Where are your sister and brothers?”

“I told Luke to help me clean up, but he said he was thinking. Patty Ann is in her bedroom with the door shut. I guess Francis is over at Eugene's.”

“Well, go tell Patty Ann to come give me a hand.”

“Molly, too,” Jeanne says. “Your cousin can help, too.”

“Molly went with Francis,” Mike says.

“Who is Eugene?” Jeanne asks, looking up. “Is he that curly-haired boy?”

She picks up the cleaver again. A few months ago at lunch, two ladies started talking about how having Eugene's parents in the neighborhood is an embarrassment
. I hear the husband takes a shotgun up into the hills to hunt rabbits toward the end of the month,
one of the ladies said.
Kick a fella when he's down, why don't you? They're decent people,
she said, standing up from the table. It's no one's fault the father lost his right thumb and, with it, his job as a plumber. In a way, Eugene's parents remind her of her own, struggling all those years just to keep food on the table. Her father still works in the cigar-box factory; during the worst years, he couldn't even get that. The kids make a funny pair—Francis, fair and quiet, and Eugene, with his mother's black ringlets and a mouth that won't stop—but it's good Francis has a best friend to keep him company through this.

She's just not gentle enough for Francis. Michael could be so patient.

“Yes,” she says, wielding the cleaver on the last of the sandwiches. “A good kid. Look, let's boil up those eggs also. We'll devil them.”

She doesn't want to have to see them in there later, all lined up and ready for a family life that now will never be lived.

Oh, Michael!

At three on the dot, the doorbell rings. Father O'Malley with his shadow, Mrs. Dawson, the woman who runs catechism for the parish.

“My dear child,” Father O'Malley says, taking her hand into his soft one. “We can only be glad our Michael has gone to a better place.”

Something inside her rises up. A better place? Than here with her and their children? She has to refrain from kicking him.

“Thank you, Father,” she says, leading him into the living room. She has to pull herself together. In the end, this awful day isn't about her. It's about Michael. Michael, who struggled so hard to survive and ended up like this. “Patty Ann will get you tea. This is Michael's sister, Jeanne. She has come out from New York.”

“New York City?” Mrs. Dawson says, frowning.

“Poughkeepsie,” Jeanne says. “It's about an hour and a half north by train.”

Father installs himself on the brown leather recliner, where Michael liked to sit and read the paper after dinner. Mrs. Dawson roosts on the sofa next to Father and sets in on Jeanne. Mrs. Dawson is the congregation's most insufferable gossip, never far from Father O'Malley's ear—so devoted, but with a heart like a hollow chocolate. It's hard to know whom Mrs. Dawson tormented more, Patty Ann or Luke, during the two years of First Communion preparation. Or Francis, for that matter, although Francis never said a word about it—apparently, he never said a word during the classes, either.
Does he ever talk?
Mrs. Dawson stopped them after church to ask once.
Of course he talks,
Michael said.
When there's someone who is actually listening.

How is Francis going to manage without his father to defend him? To show him how to be a man? Of the three boys, Francis will need Michael the most.

The doorbell again.

The living room begins to fill. Everyone seems to have heard and come out, even on an Easter afternoon, to pay his or her respects. Everyone who ever meets Michael remembers and likes him.

Met.

Liked.

Patty Ann and Mike Jr.'s homeroom teachers arrive together. Patty Ann's teacher says, “Such a smart, popular girl. I am sure she will be all right.”

Mike Jr.'s teacher nods. “Such a solid, responsible boy. Mike will be fine.”

“Thank you so much,” she says. “They're good kids.”

Luke's teacher isn't with them—probably too embarrassed to show up after giving Luke a D in comportment. Michael thought they should consider switching Luke to a private school next year, where there would be fewer students and more time for teachers to talk with them.

But private schools are expensive. How is she going to do that now?

Eugene's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kozma, hesitate just outside the front door. Molly and Eugene stand behind them, whispering something, maybe encouraging them to step in. It can't be easy for the Kozmas to come today, knowing that so many people in the neighborhood who look down on them will be here. The kids at school probably pick on Eugene also.

But that's right. Francis's teacher hasn't shown up, either. Maybe Francis is so quiet at school his teacher has forgotten he's in her class.

“Please come in,” she says, making her way around a group of guests to shake the Kozmas' hands. “Where's Francis?” she asks Eugene.

Eugene pushes up on his glasses. “He's not here?”

“We were playing marbles,” Molly says. “He suddenly walked away.”

“We figured he'd come home, Mrs. Gannon.” Eugene lifts the cloth bag. “I brought his marbles for him.”

Is she losing control so swiftly? She could have sworn Francis hasn't come in. “How long ago?”

Molly and Eugene look at each other.

“Maybe three hours?” Eugene says.

Molly nods. At eight, Molly is the image of her mother, already taller than Eugene, although he's a year older. Not taller than Francis, though—those Gannon genes. Such a nice girl, too. Even under this visit's terrible circumstance, she and Francis fell right back in together. And Francis doesn't usually fall right in with anyone, other than Eugene. He gets invited onto the teams and to all the other kids' birthday parties, but it doesn't seem to mean much to him. Michael says it's just the way Francis is. Some people like to be part of a crowd. Francis doesn't.