Riding the bus was a sign that I was healing. The system was different from Chicago’s straight lines, instead following a web of crossing routes. While Charlie was gone all day, though, I ventured out—each time a bit farther from our love cottage. Things had not been as passionate as in New Mexico. Which I blamed on Charlie’s blues. Each day that passed without lovemaking, without even a casual caress, gave more mass to the weight between us. This was not about my lust, this was about finding our way back to each other.
One night in the shower, it became too much and I began to cry. I longed for his touch, his closeness, our bond. With me, though, sadness and anger are close as thumb and forefinger. Yanking back the curtain, I called out, “Hey, Charlie? Charlie Fish?”
After a moment, he poked his head in the doorway. “What is it?”
I gave him the same look as I had on the roads outside Santa Fe, and said what I always said. “I want you to come with me.”
He undressed slowly, while I watched, and ducked in under the steamy stream. We touched tenderly, as if we might break. He knelt to press his face against the scar on my belly. I soaped the numbers tattooed by his shoulders. Then he straightened and kissed me on the mouth. Instantly the atmosphere changed. I handed Charlie the soap, and we were off and running. We stayed in that shower till the hot water ran out. Afterward I joked that I must have the cleanest breasts in all of California.
We were lovers again, yet still I had not told him that I loved him. There was an obstacle of some kind, an impediment—not to the feeling, but to the saying of it. I knew it was an unkindness, and I knew it was entirely my problem.
Each day after he’d dashed off to morning class, I did my push-ups. I’d lost strength in the hospital, and each push tugged at my scar, but I was back to nine already. As I dressed, I thought about how Charlie felt responsible for all those dead Japanese people. My belief that it had been necessary didn’t change the fact that I had pushed him to do it, I had made him contradict his conscience. In a way, I was guiltier than he was. And the longer he took to recover, the more I regretted being mistaken.
Yes, the superior girl was realizing that maybe she did not have all the answers. If he’d refused to build the detonator, someone else might have. But the bomb would not be on his conscience.
I am still wrestling with this idea in my head, all these years later. There have been plenty of wars and battles since 1945, but I feel the restlessness of culpability. It pushes me out of my recliner, to the dresser, where I see that photo of us, standing in front of the Morrises’ Hudson on our wedding day. It works every time. It reminds me that I did do one thing right. I did love him—even if I hadn’t told him yet.
So, on those California mornings, it was out of the house for this girl. I’d hop on a bus, ride it a random number of stops, then climb down and investigate a new part of town. Streets were safe and people were friendly.
We’d had some hard good-byes in Santa Fe, of course. The Morrises offered us a ride to the depot in Lamy, and Charlie arrived late.
“Quite the valedictory from Giles,” he said. “But I couldn’t find the cat anywhere.”
Mrs. Morris, with a hug that smelled of lily of the valley, thanked me for getting her playing music again. Reverend Morris said a blessing in a soft voice. As for Lizzie Hinks, we’d long made up by then, and after an awkward moment she tumbled tearfully into my arms.
“I hope Tim is home soon,” I said, “and you make babies by the dozen.”
“But first I have to ride back with Mrs. M,” she whispered.
“She’s not so bad,” I said.
Lizzie grinned at me. “Yes she is.”
The conductor called all aboard, Charlie hoisted our bags, I took the picnic basket, and we boarded the train to Denver—the first leg in our long journey west.
Charlie kept his promise, and persuaded Professor Simmons to find me a place in Stanford’s freshman class—but the following fall, when the faculty would be back. My postsurgical energy sometimes flagged at odd times anyway, so waiting seemed wise.
I healed quickly, though, as young people do, and my mood lifted too. My father would be in Chicago by Halloween. Frank accepted a post in Nuremberg, maintaining prosecutors’ cars until the trials were over, then he’d come home too. My mother’s letters were giddy.
That was the tempo around us. Of course there was sorrow, deep as a canyon. One morning a woman on the bus wept from the time I got on till I stepped off in Redwood City. But the world allowed optimism now. The sun was coming out.
That day I saw the sign for Peale’s Organs, a modest store, a few blocks from the water. Outside, three trucks bore the company name, beside the outline of a console with pipes. I hadn’t touched an instrument since we boarded that train in Lamy. The idea of playing tugged on my heart like the moon pulls the sea. I marched right in.
A bearded man on the phone glanced at me and held up one finger. “Of course,” he said. “We can fix that before Sunday.”
I peered around, and there was no showroom. No display of Hammonds waiting for my fingers. The shop was a long narrow space with workbenches along both walls, a hammering noise coming from the back. I smelled sawdust. One man was carving a small block of reddish wood, while another was hand-buffing a pipe taller than he was.
“Can I help you?” The man on the phone had hung up. He held a pair of pliers. A square pencil was tucked behind his ear.
“I gather you do not sell organs here.”
“No, ma’am. We repair them.”
That idea held me in place for a moment. The two times that I’d seen Charlie working and happy, he was repairing the organ at Reverend Morris’s church. Quieting the ciphers before that wedding, voicing the whole instrument a week later. I could picture him, crawling out from under the console, smiling and covered with dust. Not to mention the pipes he fixed with my father’s basement soldering equipment. He was happy that morning too. “Do you have a lot of work these days?”
“Pretty much any church in the Bay Area has a problem, they call us. And with the war over, we’ve got a whale of a backlog.” He used the pliers to scratch his beard. “For an organ store, ma’am, I’d guess the nearest one’s in Palo Alto.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll give it a look.”
But that was not what I had in mind. On the bus home I hoped that Charlie would be there already. I’d rush him right into bed, make him forget all about the bomb. Instead the house was quiet, as if waiting for me.
I went into the kitchen to see what I might make for dinner. There on the table was the manila folder, which held the letter Charlie had been writing.
“Brenda,” I told myself, “don’t you dare.”
Then I sat right down and turned the pages over.
My brilliant Giles:
I am sitting in my kitchen, afflicted by rubatosis. I’m sure you already know that this is the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat.
Where is your whiskey when I need it most? Where is your fine companionship?
I suspect that coming here was a grievous error. The war followed me. What we did followed me. It rubs salt in my wounds day and night. There is no peace.
Probably you have a million-dollar word to describe my emotions exactly. Do you also have a word for its cure?