“Really?” he said. “I was hoping to treat you to something fancy.”
“This place has been good luck for me.”
Chris laughed, easy as flying a kite. “When we’re married you can pick the movies, but I’ll choose the restaurants.”
“When we’re married, I’ll change the diapers but you will wash them.”
He laughed again, maybe one degree less, then held the door and in we went.
The diner was crowded, and smelled of eggs. We took the one open booth. The poor guy had jitters all over him. Sewing machine leg, reading the menu front and back, then front again. He lit a cigarette, put it in the ashtray, and half a minute later started to light another one.
“Easy, Chris.” I put a hand on his arm. “It’s just me.”
“Well, that’s the thing of it,” he replied. “Because nothing about you, Brenda, is ‘just you.’ Everything is special.”
I shook my head. “Half a minute at Dubie’s Music would change your mind.”
“I don’t think so,” he insisted. “This week with you has been the greatest of my life, everything upside down since I saw you at that dance.” He paused for a deep breath.
“Chris,” I said. “Why are you so nervous? Is it your arm? Your family? Going back tomorrow?”
He flared his eyebrows up and down. “Something bigger.”
“Bigger than all that?” I took his hand. “Tell me.”
“Can I talk it through for a second, and you won’t chime in?”
I nodded. “No chiming.” And when you are done, I thought, I will tell you to call me when the war is over and we will see how everything looks, but until then, stay safe and fight hard and come home in one piece.
“Like I was saying.” He reached for his water glass, and I saw that it was empty.
There, right there, I reached the pinnacle terrible moment. Because, of course, I remembered the night at that diner with Charlie, my belly full of pistachios I’d eaten out of nervousness, and when I wanted water the waitress would not bring it. He’d asked nicely, twice, but it never came.
Now Chris held his glass out as a waitress hurried by. “Miss, could you please—”
But she kept her pace right on past. He licked his lips, and I could see his nerves had turned his mouth into a Sahara. Another waitress passed the other way, plates balanced on both arms, and Chris raised a finger. “Excuse me?”
She bustled on to deliver those plates. He winked at me, stretching his good arm out into the aisle beside our booth. There was no missing it. In a second the waitress was hustling back, walking right through his outstretched arm, not masking her annoyance.
Chris stood up, uniform and all. “Goddamnit,” he said, way too loud. “What does a United States airman home on leave for one more day have to do to get a drink of water in this lousy place?”
The room went still, silent, not a fork hitting a plate. A big man with gray hair emerged from behind the counter with a pitcher. He filled Chris’s glass in one motion.
“Asking nicely never hurts,” the man said. He looked me over, which felt comfortable as a searchlight, then set the pitcher down. “How about I leave this here, soldier, and you don’t bother my other customers anymore.”
“That’d be perfect.” Chris sat back down. “Just perfect.”
I watched the man return to behind the counter, impressed by Chris’s forcefulness, and also embarrassed by it. Certainly he’d had a better result than Charlie. To my relief, the conversations started up around us again, the clink of silverware.
Then I turned to see Chris drinking—and the truth is, he looked amazing: his strong jaw, his muscular throat, the poise of his hand holding the glass. I had never known a boy could be so handsome just drinking water.
“Ahhh.” He gave himself a refill from the pitcher. “Hits the spot.”
“You were saying, Chris?” I prompted. Calm as a pond, all I had to do was wait out whatever he wanted to say. Then I could deliver my little rehearsed speech, and everything would be fine. “About being upside down?”
“Right,” he snapped his fingers. “Also what you said last night, about how I barely know you. I said I would find a perfect answer and today I did.”
“Then your day was better than mine,” I said. It broke his stride a little, and I could see him weighing whether to ask about my day. Instead he charged ahead.
“I need to be right side up, Brenda. Especially until the war ends, and we bury Hitler and his boys under good American bombs. I need to know you better, too, is my point, I need all the time it takes to know a person as well as you possibly can. There is one thing we can do that would take care of both necessities, both at the same time, which is why it is the perfect answer. If I ask the perfect question.”
He dug in a pocket. “And then, princess, if you give me the perfect answer.”
On the table in front of me, Chris placed a little box. It was velvet and blue.
“Wait.” I held up both hands. Now I understood his nervousness. I should have seen this coming five blocks away. “This is not going to happen, mister.”
He smiled, suddenly calm. “It is already happening.”
“No it’s not.” I stood. “You are not asking me. You can’t.”
He came forward, as if onto one knee. “I am about to, if you’d—”
“I have to go,” I said, grabbing my things. Maybe I was a fool, maybe this was the only time a guy would ever ask me, maybe the war would take Chris, would ruin Charlie, would crush my selfish little heart. But I could not stay in that place one second longer.
“Brenda, don’t be silly. This is our moment.”
I moved away from the table, backing toward the door. “I hope you are all right over there. Truly I do. And come home in one piece. I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
I ran from that diner at top speed. As far as I know, he did not follow. If he had, I suspect the big man behind the counter would have tackled him.
The sidewalk felt like a running track, hard and straight. I heard only the slap of my shoes and the sound of my breathing. Before I knew it I was home, panting by the front steps. Gone half an hour, but everything had changed. The lights were on inside. My mother knew nothing about what I’d been through, what trouble I’d invited onto myself, what hurt I had probably done to a decent guy who wanted to go back to the war confident that a girl would be waiting for him—even if he didn’t know her—to have another reason to stay alive.
Some part of me also feared that Chris would chase me, would try to talk me into it. Out of weakness I might say yes just to keep from breaking his heart twice in one hour. So I hurried up the steps and into the house and shut the door tight.
“In here,” my mother called from the kitchen.
“Oh, Mama,” I said, hurrying in to her.
“Mama?” She turned from the sink. “Since when do you call me that?”
“Since now.” I rushed into her arms. And when she put them around me, I thought I would burst into tears. But I didn’t. Instead I felt the most immense liberation. Gigantic. What kind of a monster was I, to cut a suitor cold like that, and feel only relief?