“Hardly,” I laughed. “It’s just what my father does for his radio friends.”
“Believe me.” He started to pull the bench over, but stopped himself. “Thank you, Brenda. You have no idea.”
And he kissed me. It wasn’t slow and smoldering, like our lovey smooches from before. But it wasn’t all brotherly quick-on-the-cheek either. Somewhere in the middle.
I’m not sure he gave as much thought before kissing me as I gave it after. I still think about that kiss now, all these decades later. How authentic it was. How sincere. Often I wish my young self had seen this unguardedness as a strength, rather than a weakness. But wartime culture does not prize vulnerability. I had a lot to learn.
He plopped himself down and started a new board. Using Daddy’s technique, and humming some sweet melody, he finished in about ten minutes. “What do you know.”
“Are you going to get sore if I tell you another thing of Daddy’s?”
“Sore? Hardly.”
I leaned past him to switch on the light that hung over the table. It reminded me of the day we met, when he had reached to clean up the spots of blood. Then I climbed the stairs and turned off the overhead.
“Daddy says a light behind you casts a shadow on your work. That’s why organs have lamps right over the sheet music. If the church is dark, you can still see the notes.”
“Boy.” He smiled, his face open as a dictionary. “There are going to be some changes at work tomorrow.”
Well. I could have eaten half a pie. Charlie Fish might be a whiz, but I was helping him. Maybe my sense of superiority wasn’t entirely imagined. Maybe I was good for more than selling organs and accordions.
He set up another design. Again, ten minutes. I think he was humming Peter’s theme from “Peter and the Wolf.” Bah-bum barump-bump-bum. After that he tried harder ones, tighter ones. Along with the melody, he bounced a little on the bench. I wrapped myself in my grandmother’s quilt and watched, third step from the bottom.
When the kitchen clock made its cuckoo call, it broke my reverie and I stood. “Time for Brenda to get to bed.”
Charlie did not lift his head from the worktable. “Is that ten o’clock already?”
“Try eleven.”
He jumped up. “It’s already eleven?”
“Ten was an hour ago. Twelve is an hour from now. It’s amazing how it works that way.”
“You don’t understand.” Charlie switched off the iron, tossing the little pieces back into their drawers. “They lock the dorms at eleven. I’m going to be late.”
“I’d say you already are.”
He stopped, deflating, shoulders dropping. “I guess I am.”
“Go ahead and keep working, Charlie. I’ll leave my quilt. You can sleep on the couch.”
“Is that okay? Will your mother mind?”
I folded the quilt, putting it down to one side. Then I came down the steps, leaned over, and gave him a proper kiss—no hurry, no pretending it wasn’t happening. When I pulled away, his eyes were scanning my face, like he was searching for something.
“G’nite, Charlie,” I said.
He was still sitting there, taking it all in, as I made my way back upstairs.
I woke before my alarm. With a boy sleeping in the house? Who was not a member of my family? Of course I did. Putting on my robe, I tiptoed downstairs. There was no one on the couch. The basement door creaked, and I’d only descended halfway when I saw him.
Charlie was sound asleep at the workbench. Near his hands lay things he had soldered, wires and pieces and who knows what. But also, leaning against the shelves, on the floor, all around him, there were organ pipes. Some were knee high, others taller than me, surrounding Charlie as if he were part of an organ himself. And wrapped around his shoulders? My grandmother’s red and blue quilt.
Charlie Fish might be sheepish, not strong enough for a world at war. But he was a decent guy, and I felt something inside me melt a little. Then a hand stroked my lower back, and it was my mother with a finger to her lips. She motioned me back upstairs.
“Why don’t you get started on your day, and I’ll bring him some coffee?”
I wanted to be the one bringing coffee, but accepted that my mother had it right. In the kitchen she gave me a hug like I’d given her the night before. What in the world? I went upstairs and turned on the shower, and while I waited for the water to get hot I thought about Charlie, and how he had brought some kindness to our house.
By the time I came back downstairs, one red swipe of lipstick for courage, he was seated at the table chowing through a mountain of bacon and eggs, plus gulps of coffee whenever business got slow.
“Good morning,” he sang out, bright as a cheerleader. His hair was cowlicked in back, like a nine-year-old. But Charlie gave me such a long, direct gaze, I had to turn away. The quilt was heaped on my chair; I folded it on the way to the stairs. It smelled differently, not like the basement. I held it to my face, then realized what the scent was.
I returned, pouring myself some coffee as I sat, and hoping he hadn’t been watching. “You fixed the organ pipes, didn’t you?”
“They were all seam problems.” He drew a line in the air with his knife. “I used the sweating technique and they sealed right up. Easy.”
The thought occurred to me: My father would gobble this guy up. Someone who liked soldering, and could fix organs? I could imagine him winking. “Baby girl, where’d you find this one?”
“Easy or hard, it was helpful of you,” my mother said. “That church will be so pleased.” She started to open the morning paper, but as I sat down she paused. “You know what, Charlie?”
“What’s that?” he said between forkfuls.
“It was nice to have a little noise in the house last night.” My mother glanced at me then, oh it was quick, but as complete an assessment as if she had measured my pulse, temperature, and blood pressure. “I’ve missed you hanging around the store too,” she continued. “I hope now that you can come by more often.”
“Well, I hope so too,” he said, blushing ever so slightly. He brought the coffee cup up to his lips, then put it back down without taking any. All my life since, I’ve remembered that moment, when he put the coffee cup back down. Because you never quite notice as it’s happening when a door in your life is opening, but sometimes, later you can look back and think: then.
“Provided . . .” Charlie cleared his throat. “Provided all parties feel that I am welcome.”
I lowered my head, despite all my swagger unable to say a word. I mean, his scent was on my childhood quilt.
Before that day, what I’d wanted was for boys to pursue me, to pay for dinner, to confer a status on me. The bigger a deal they were, the bigger a deal I was. But this time, with this guy? What I wanted was him. His calm, his intelligence, his humility.
I sat like a lump, turning all of this over in my mind. My mother waited another few seconds before opening the paper, raising it in front of her face. “Charlie, I think I can safely say that is how all parties feel.”
It was my turn to blush.
16.
Charlie ambled into Beasley’s Dungeon at twenty to ten, as relaxed as a gambler holding aces. Beasley finished some flourish on a piece he was making, before speaking at the bin of components he was poking through.