The Magic of Ordinary Days (28 page)

Overnight, new snow had fallen, every inch of earth iced with dropped scales of angel wings. Even the grooves left by Ray's tires were pure white impressions of tread. I found that his tracks headed toward town. Back inside and in the bunkroom, I found the lower bunk unmade. A rumpled pillow hung off one side of the mattress, and the sheets and blankets were wadded up into a punching bag. I opened his closet, half expecting to find it empty, but his few articles of clothing still sagged off the hangers just as before.

I let myself take a deep breath and, telling myself to relax, I also told myself not to be ridiculous. This was Ray's family home, after all. He wouldn't be the one leaving it.

Now I sat at the table and folded the same napkin over and over. If I had a car, I would go after him. But where would he go when he suffered? Would he go to Martha or to visit Daniel's grave? Would he perhaps talk to Reverend Case? I tried to picture him sharing his pain with someone, but I couldn't shake visions of the most likely scenario: that he would suffer alone.

By afternoon, I couldn't stand my own company any longer. The sun blazed in a cloudless sky, making it warm enough for a walk outside. I threw on my overcoat and headed down the road toward the bridge, my feet making squeaking noises with each step on the snow. Just past the bridge, I saw the truck coming in my direction. Ray was at the wheel driving slowly, and I was so relieved to see him that I waved to him like a schoolgirl. He slowed down so the tires wouldn't spray me with snow, but then he kept on creeping by without acknowledging me at all.

I found him inside, sitting at the table with his back to the door. The sight of his rounded-over shoulders made me remember exactly this lovesickness. At that moment, I wished with everything in my body that things could be different. I wished I could pluck out the threads of him that I didn't care for and keep the ones I liked. But then again, I knew that people couldn't be pulled apart in that way. Those severed threads would just cause the whole of him to unravel. I came up behind him and put my hand at the back of his neck. “You haven't eaten anything all day, have you?”

I felt him take a deep breath, but he didn't answer me.

“Let me make something for you.”

He shook his head. “No need.”

I made him a plate of food anyway, and finally, he started eating. As Ray chewed the pot roast, I could hear his jaw working. When he ate the carrots, he stabbed the slices with his fork as if he were spearfishing, and he slurped up his coffee with such force it sounded like a storm wind. When he chewed, he looked as if he had dice in his mouth. How powerfully Ray's pain had turned into anger.

I watched him eating and sat still. “Ray, I made a mistake.”

For a moment, he didn't move. His cheek quivered, and at one edge of his parched lips, I saw raw pink skin. “Which one?” he asked in a voice so roughly trembling it surprised me. “Which mistake are you speaking of? Being with him or marrying me?”

He surprised me. “I was speaking of a mistake I made last night. Getting so near to each other wasn't a good idea.”

“For me, it was no mistake. Sorry you don't feel the same way.” He stabbed a chunk of potato on his plate. “If you think you can run me away, you're wrong. I said I'll wait and I mean it.”

He would wait; I had no doubt he did mean it. And that meant it would be up to me to end this thing, this awful, hurtful thing my father had sent me to bear.

Now he stared at me. “Aren't you used to people meaning what they say?”

Did he expect an answer? I wanted to shout, No! People don't mean
what
they say. But as I continued to look at him, I no longer felt like shouting. Instead I had the strange urge to help smooth out his hair, to comb it down over the bald spots, to touch the veins that were standing out on his temples.

I answered, “Some people mean what they say. Others don't.”

Now his voice was gentle, and his shoulders sagged into his chest. “When you figure out which kind I am, please let me know.”

When I said these words, I could hear the bones in my skull snapping. “Would it be easier if I left?”

His head jerked up. He put down the fork and then covered his eyes with both palms. “No!” he cried out with such force it could've split the sky, and all my lists of his faults, all my anger at what he wasn't and could probably never be, disappeared like chalk powder blown by a breeze. He put down his hands. It was the closest he'd come to tears, but the restraint of men never ceased to amaze me. Although the barrels of his eyes filled to their brim, he wouldn't allow one drop to fall.

I said, “Then I won't go back to Denver for the holidays.”

He shrugged and looked away, still fighting for his composure.

“I'll stay here.”

He started jabbing at the food on his plate again.

“I'm staying because I want to.”

Again he shrugged and kept on eating.

The next day, when I heard Ray up early in the morning making his own breakfast, I decided to stay in bed. I couldn't stand to sit and share another angry meal. Instead, as soon as I heard him close the door behind him, I arose and readied myself for a day of driving and shopping.

I had held off on Christmas buying in hopes that I might be able to shop in Denver with Abby and Bea or with Dot. The best I could do here was to head out for JC Penney and Montgomery Ward in La Junta. For my sisters, nothing ordinary would do. After I walked the aisles of the stores several times over, I picked up a bottle of cologne for Bea and a flowered china dish filled with scented soaps for Abby I was heading for the checkout counter when I passed by some leather goods. A wallet caught my eye. Made of unusually soft leather, it had a scene of mountains hand-engraved on the front. It was the most unusual item I'd ever seen in one of these stores. Father would like this, I said to myself. But would he want to receive it from me?

I held that wallet in my hand for so long I caught the smart of others' stares on my skin. Finally I took it with the other items to the cash register, paid, and left. Before I faced going back home, I stopped at the pay telephone to call Abby. Once she picked up, I let her relate to me the details of Kent's leaving, then I asked without Mother and without you and Kent, too, but we made the best of it. How was your day?“

“Fine,” I told her. Then I had to get it out. “Look, Abby, I can't come for Christmas after all.” I could hear her sigh. “With all these travel restrictions, I don't see how I could justify the trip.”

Abby said, “You need your family.”

I leaned my forehead against the wall of the booth. “I can't.”

I could hear Abby breathing into the receiver. At last, she said, “If you feel so strongly about it, then I'm sure you're doing the right thing.”

“It's not that I don't miss you and Bea.”

“I know.”

“And Father.”

Again, I could hear her sigh. “It's still hard to believe everything that's happened over the past year. I used to think we were one of the lucky families, that nothing really bad would ever happen to us.”

“Me, too,” I told her. I could feel the baby buckling a knee under my rib cage, and I stood up straight. “The baby moves all the time now.”

“Oh, my gosh. Sometimes I forget. Have you seen a doctor? Is all well?”

“As well as can be expected.”

“Do you think often about what you'll do?”

“Only when I'm not still pretending it didn't happen.”

I thought I heard her sniffle.

“At least Mother didn't have to see this.”

Abby reined herself in. “Mother would never have bound you to marriage.”

But that's exactly what she had done to herself. “Let's not talk about Mother anymore.”

“I agree,” said Abby. “Tell me about him.”

I stood still and thought, how could I explain Ray? “He's a good man. Honest. Loyal.” I didn't say angry.

“Livvy,” Abby said. “That's all well and good. But do you love him?”

Again, I leaned my head against the wall. “Truthfully, Abby, I can't say. I'm not sure what it feels like to really love.”

“You loved Edward.”

“I thought so, but the truth is—I never knew Edward.”

Abby waited. “You doubt yourself now, and that's understandable. I think you should come back to your family as soon as possible. We can help you figure this all out.”

Funny how I'd planned to always figure things out on my own. But perhaps I'd been strong because I did have them. “I'll call again soon,” I told her.

“Just hold on and don't make any decisions until we can talk in person. Come as soon as the restrictions are lifted. You're welcome anytime.”

The next morning, Ray disappeared in the truck for all of the daylight hours. When he strode in that evening, he handed me a letter. I had recently received letters from both Abby and Bea, so I was immediately curious. The return address was a box at Camp Amache. I tore open the envelope and read a note penned by Lorelei on the palest of pink stationery. She was asking me to meet them and go for a drive the following week. I held that letter in my hands the way the organist at my father's church once held her new sheet music. Finally we would have time alone. Finally we could catch up. And I could find out what was really happening in their lives. I continued to read. But the other lines contained only a meeting place, well-wishes, and a goodbye.

That night, Ray started speaking to me again, but only in the most perfunctory tones, nothing beyond necessities. And the next day, he left me alone again. I stared out the kitchen window while I listened to more gloomy radio news reports of war in the Pacific. On the island of Leyte, the land battle was progressing, but not without huge casualties. The high numbers were especially tragic because one of the main objectives of the operation wouldn't be met. The Americans had planned to build airfields to launch future missions, but found that the monsoons and the topography of the island, mainly the swampy ground, would make it impossible.

Ray and I went on for two more days in a similar manner. I found myself living in silence again, exactly as I'd done in the weeks following Mother's death. One afternoon, as I was putting away Ray's clean undershirts, I noticed his calendar lying open on the dresser top. The month of December lay out before me in small squares, and one day stood out at me and screamed. December seventh, Pearl Harbor Day, and the date of Daniel's death. I picked up the calendar, then sat on the edge of the bed with it opened in my lap. Today was December 2. In just five days, our country would acknowledge the third anniversary of the day that would live in infamy. For the rest of us in this country, it marked U.S. entrance into the war and numbers of casualties too high to fathom, but for Ray, the pain would be more personal.

Ray used his calendar to keep track of bills and orders, deliveries and other such needs for running the farm. I looked at the days before me and studied his rough scrawl, which tried to fit into the small squares of one day on paper. I turned back one page, to the month of November. On the thirtieth, just two days ago, Ray had written inside the square, “Livvy, 3 months together.”

Ray's handwriting in those few words differed from his scrawl on the rest of the page. The lead markings were paler, more faint, as if he had written with a soft touch as he formed the letters of my name. I put my fingers on the pencil markings made by his hand and looked about the room.

Three months and I wondered, how much longer? Every time I asked myself if I could rein back my dreams and live my life as a farmer's wife, if I could just give up on what I'd once wanted so badly, if I could settle for something simpler like teaching history instead of rewriting it, something inside me screamed, No! But I couldn't picture myself walking out on Ray, either. I looked back at the calendar. At the end of 1944, I could never have imagined I'd end up here.

Already, I knew much about him: that he awakened early before dawn, and nearly every morning he made up his bed. He read the Bible more than any other book, he could do card tricks, of all things, and this family farm was his life, his life's commitment. I put the calendar back where I had found it, and then continued to put away Ray's clean clothes. Now I knew the plaid shirt he favored for work on warmer days, the heavier flannel shirt for chilly ones. I knew the herringbone pattern woven into the wool of his one suit, and the two dress shirts he alternated wearing on Sundays. I could fold socks in the way he liked them, wrapped one inside the other and flattened out. He had accepted me into his home without asking questions, had loved me despite the way I'd come to him. Once I'd thought such a simple love could only come from simple people, or from those who didn't know better.