The Night Singers (7 page)

Prill pictures the nineteenth century farm, notices the dirt under Leo's fingernails, the scents of basil and tomato mingling sharply in his sweaty palms.

She closes her eyes in prayer. Surely Tony is just stuck in post-game traffic. Her worry for him is like a thin trail of blood. Of course he'll be fine. Of course one day he will abandon the frail, pretty men, will marry and fill this old family house with children. She just wishes he were here now to share the view. Umbrellas of pink and purple sail over her head. Green rockets. Plumes of chartreuse. All these sparklers and pinwheels and flares climbing high, high toward the stars before tumbling safely into the Bay.

The Sense of Distant Touch

Jennifer shifted from one foot to the other as she stood in line before a window decorated with small American flags. While the décor might put some people at home, she was severely dislocated. After four days in Germany, this public affairs office seemed almost too American. What did she expect from an Army base? she could hear her brother asking. A colour photo of their dubious President hung on one wall. An oil painting of the Rocky Mountains on another. A beautiful Navajo rug over the door. Oddly, she longed for the pastoral paintings and prim furniture in Frau Muller's
gast haus
.

A short man in front of her was reading
The Daily Register
, the same English language newspaper that Frau Muller had been so pleased to provide. Jennifer had said
Danke
, of course, and had skimmed the headlines about wars in Africa. About fires in the American Southwest. (She was fairly confident her apartment in Phoenix was safe, but people in Tucson were obviously in danger.) And about some vague trouble at the base: soldiers misbehaving after a night on the town. None of it settled clearly in her brain. Could she still be jet-lagged after four days?

Baby screams from the back of the room startled her. Jennifer turned to see a boy—maybe two years old—squirming irritably on his mother's lap. Her breath caught at his black hair and precise little features, a handsome boy and such a contrast to the fair-haired plain woman who held him.

The woman glanced at Jennifer. Dignity, pain, anger, resignation, resolve. All of that in those young blue-green eyes. Young, Jennifer felt peculiarly protective of the stranger, although she at 29 was probably only six or seven years older. Perhaps it was the child that drew her sympathy. More than the woman could handle. Despite Manfred's earnest lessons, Jennifer's
Deutsch
was nominal, but she could tell simply from the woman's tone, that she was beyond exasperation with the child. Was she a nanny? No, a nanny wouldn't bring children to a military waiting room. Nannies took kids to parks, to lakes, to ice cream parlours. Clearly she was a burdened mother. Jennifer nodded in a sympathetic unobtrusive manner, but the woman turned away. Perhaps she was being too American. Manfred had advised her that Germans were more reserved.

She hadn't anticipated waiting in line. Upon leaving Phoenix, she had no clear set of expectations; she simply knew it was time to get on the plane and visit the base. She smoothed away the wrinkles from the skirt of her blue cotton dress to dispel her irritation. (Brandon had always loved this dress, said it brought out the blue in her eyes and made her red hair even brighter. Of course she knew he was just talking through his love. Her husband was not a fashion-conscious man.
Talking through my love
, is how Brandon responded when she deflected any of his compliments.)

The sergeant knew she was coming today. He'd helped her find Frau Muller's
gast haus
via email. Perhaps he thought it had taken her too long to get here. Just about three years. As long as she didn't come, she could still pretend in some small part of her that Brandon was alive. Of course they'd sent the body back home and they'd had a proper closed casket funeral, with a much larger flag. Thus it was possible they had misidentified the accident victim. She felt that visiting the site of the crash would make everything final somehow. So she had been postponing.

“Closure,” her therapist recommended. Her brother had advised, “You should get back into circulation while you're still young and pretty.” She didn't want closure or circulation. She wanted Brandon and their adventurous life and their two beautiful children. From behind, she heard the young woman release a long sigh. Apparently there was even more waiting once you registered at the flaggy window.

Naturally you remember when you hear something like this. Jennifer was in the middle of one of her favourite biology lessons—about how fish keep track of each other swimming in schools. “The Sense of Distant Touch”—and the kids were marvelling that the fish swam in synchronisation, without the aid of sight or sound.

“I wish you were that well-behaved,” she teased. “Maybe what you need is a school of fish rather than an elementary school?”

Marlene, in the third row, made a guppy face.

Next to her, Arthur raised and lowered his elbows as if they were gills.

Then Mr Thompson was knocking on the glass door. Something told her to ignore him. Ignore the principal, not usually a good idea. The children were all laughing and learning. You'd think that would be enough for him. But she saw his official face through the glass. Maybe Tommy Lacey's mother had been picked up again. Or maybe Taylor had forgotten to report to the school nurse for her insulin shot that morning. Whatever it was, she did wish Mr Thompson would disappear—at least until she finished this fascinating lesson on the sense of distant touch.

Her hands went cold from Mr Thompson's persistent knocking.

She had barely gripped the doorknob when she noticed Eileen Kaysen behind him.

“You'll want to step out of class, Ms Petrie. Mrs Kaysen can take over your lesson for you.”

She nodded cordially to Eileen, a competent teacher, a mentor, in fact.

Her older friend smiled wanly.

“Perhaps I could just finish this lesson on the sense of distant touch?” she asked.

“The what?” Eileen asked.

She knew Eileen wouldn't be able to handle it. Basically she was language arts. And while those with science majors could substitute in English classes, the language arts people were hopeless at biology and chemistry and physics.

Mr Thompson actually took her arm. “Ms Petrie, there's bad news.”

She knew then.

Knew it was Brandon.

That he had died.

Somehow on his safe base in Germany.

She didn't scream or cry. She nodded and followed him to his sterile little office. He introduced her to a soldier, who gave her the news and expressed formal condolences.

After the soldier departed, Mr Thompson invited her to sit.

He chatted with her across his large mahogany desk.

She kept staring at a photo of the Thompson kids, four of them at the beach. Probably taken five years before. Cute kids. One of his daughters had the same name as Jennifer's daughter—Amelia. Her own Amelia hadn't been born yet. Did Mr Thompson, did anyone, understand how unfair this was?

Just one more person in front of her. He offered Jennifer the newspaper and she declined, happy to be speaking a little uncomplicated English. She had a powerful feeling now that she shouldn't have come. She
could
turn around. Return to Frau Muller's and pack, use up her credit card on a very expensive flight back to Arizona. This way, she couldn't possibly betray him. She'd return to her job, continue visiting the embryos in the clinic, start the implantation procedures for Amelia and Brandon Junior. That way, when he came home, they'd all be waiting, just as in Mr Thompson's picture.

“Mrs Tobin?”

She rummaged around her purse for the credit card with free travel insurance. She had several cards, but wanted the platinum one with the high credit line.

“Or, rather, Ms Petrie?”

She did come when called, a flaw of proper upbringing. The Military often forgot that she kept her single name. Brandon supported her. He was like that—sympathetic to women's liberation. Flexible about what she wanted to do. In fact he took the assignment in Germany to please her.

“Yes sir,” she spoke to a bald black man in his forties.

“I'm Sergeant Mackie. It's good to finally meet you, Ma'am.” He held out his palm.

His handshake was firm, as she expected, but also warm.

She smiled for the first time since arriving in Germany.

“Frau Muller says you've settled in.”

“Oh, yes, a very nice place. Thank you for the recommendation.”

“You're very welcome. It's the least we could do.”

That's what her brother thought, the least they could offer. He wanted the Army to bring her over First Class. However, Jennifer knew a lot of people died in the service. All you had to do was look around at all those white crosses in the military cemetery three years ago. They couldn't be flying widows around the globe to visit their husbands' last stations.

“I'll be ready to escort you around in about five minutes, if you don't mind waiting.” He glanced out at the room.

She followed his glance to the young woman with the boy.

“On second thought, why don't you come back here? I have a comfortable chair in my office and I can get you a cup of coffee? Tea? A soda?”

Soda, she thought, he must be from the East Coast.

In spite of herself, Jennifer looked back. She found the woman staring through her.

Sergeant Mackie led Jennifer out the back door and showed her Brandon's barracks. They took in the sick bay, the shooting range, the laundry.

“If you don't mind,” she said tentatively. “I'd like to see exactly where Brandon died, where the truck hit him.”

“He was a hero, your husband,” Sergeant Mackie declared. “You know that, I'm sure. You would have read the documents about how he pushed another soldier to safety, risking—and losing—his own life in the process. There are all kinds of bravery, Mrs Tobin, I mean, Ms Petrie. And Brandon was a certified hero.”

She looked into the kind, dark eyes of this stranger. “Brandon wrote about you,” she whispered, taken aback by tears in her throat. “He said you were a very ‘fair' sergeant.”

Mackie's deep, loud chuckle startled her.

“Well, I'm honoured to know that Ma'am. But I doubt he felt that 24/7. We did have our run-ins when he first arrived.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Well, he was pretty good on discipline—following orders, keeping his kit right, polishing his shoes. But he had a touchy side, too, you know.”

“I know,” she bowed her head, smiling thinly.

“He got into a couple of fights about the strangest things.”

“Like what?” She pulled the brim of her straw hat lower on her already too freckled forehead. Somehow she hadn't expected such heat in Germany. A mild climate, she always taught in her geography segment.

“Well, James Dean.”

“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed. “He was a real fan.”

“In as much as fan is related to fanatic,” Mackie was shaking his head. Sweat rings had appeared under the starched sleeves of his uniform.

“How do you mean?” Her voice was strained. Because of the heat. She thought about their retriever Woody back home and how he panted even on the coolest mornings in South Mountain Park. Jennifer wished she'd brought water. Then again, carrying a sports bottle probably wasn't military code.

“Why don't you rest here on this shady bench?”

They sat together a moment before she asked again, “How do you mean, ‘fanatic?'”

“Oh, that's too harsh. He kept a few photos of Jimmy Dean in his locker,” he recalled. “And several of you, of course.”

“So?”

“Well, it wasn't really his fault. Another soldier made an insinuation.”

“An insinuation?” She glanced at the flat countryside beyond the base. Brandon used to write that he missed the colours and contours of Arizona, the colours and contours of Jennifer, herself. Even in letters, he could turn her on. She thought he might have been a writer in a different life, a longer life.

“You know we have a ‘don't ask; don't tell' policy.”

“Sergeant Mackie,” she pushed back her brim and regarded him closely. “I can assure you that Brandon wasn't gay.”

He laughed. “No, Ma'am, I'm certain of that. But one of the young soldiers teased him about the Jimmy Dean pictures. Then another guy picked up the ball and before you knew it, there was a fist fight.”

“That doesn't sound like Brandon.”

“Well, he hardly got into it on his own.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Not on the first occasion.”

“The first occasion! How long did it go on?” This wasn't the Brandon she knew. Well, she remembered something he'd said about fights at the orphanage, but he was a teenager then.

“We had to break things up a couple of times. In the last scuffle a soldier suffered a broken nose. I tried to suggest that Brandon diffuse the situation by taking down the photos, you know, even for a while.”

She shook her head wryly. “I guess you didn't get very far.”

Jennifer had been surprised to return from her first day of teaching to find he had hung a photo of James Dean in the living room. In another corner, he had framed a sonnet by John Donne which they recited together at their wedding. She didn't object to either thing. She did wish he had consulted her.

Jennifer was an enthralled young bride, to the surprise of close friends who knew her as independent and opinionated. But she loved Brandon, was grateful every day for his presence in her life. This hot, hot, hot afternoon, she was upset about the hangings because she'd imagined long conversations about decorating the bare, tranquil walls of their first home. The Petrie-Tobin nest, she would smile to herself. They'd agreed on the modestly priced, neutral toned Sears furniture. A starter set, she considered it, until their life, their family grew larger, their ambitions more specific. They wouldn't live in Phoenix forever, that's for sure. Meanwhile, these chairs and couch were comfortable and would be easy to re-sell. The cool, tiled floors were scattered with imitation Indian rugs which they had chosen together for their colour and design. All very pleasant and homey.