“Tim.” She triangled a hand over her face. “It’s practically this big. I have to lean my head to the side when we kiss.”
“You are hilarious,” I said.
“But you know what?” She leaned forward and whispered, “It’s sexy.”
“Do you never quit with the sex stuff?” I said, swatting the air.
“Wait till you’re twenty-seven and married, kid.”
I was about to protest as usual. But thoughts entered my head from the night before, and I kept quiet.
“He loves the smell of my hair,” Lizzie continued. “When we hug, he always burrows that big old schnozz in my noggin, and I can hear him sniffing. Taking it all in.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
She undid the braid and shook her hair down. Raising the glass, she threw back the shot in one gulp, chomped on the lime with her eyes squinted shut, and shuddered the length of her body. After a second, she opened her eyes again. “This war is not over till that man is home, and his face is buried in my hair, and I can hear him breathing through that fabulous big nose of his.”
Lizzie held up the glass, and I knocked my knuckles against it. “Here’s to big noses,” I said. “And big love.”
Lizzie poured me another shot, and sliced another wedge of lime.
Eventually I needed to use the john. When I stood, the tequila pounced on me, bending the walls, tilting the floor, interrupting my line of thought so much I stopped, and sat back down on the bed.
Lizzie laughed uproariously, and after a second I did too. Though if Mrs. Morris had come in right then and asked what was so funny, I doubt either of us could have begun to explain. After that, it was only a matter of time before Lizzie challenged me to a push-up contest.
“Now that the damn war is almost done, you need to be ready.”
“I have things to tell you though,” I said. “Big things.”
“The end of the war is a big thing, kid.”
“About Charlie, though.”
Bottle in hand, she pointed at the floor. “No stalling.”
Well, Lizzie didn’t know it, but I’d been diligent. Push-ups every morning before I dressed, at the church during the day, and before bedtime. I’d made progress in secret. Also the tequila gave me confidence. I knelt, planked forward, and set out to tie my record: sixteen. But I hadn’t slept much the night before, thanks to Charlie, nor eaten much breakfast, thanks to the Morrises. I began to slow at eleven.
“Not good enough,” Lizzie said, squatting by my face. “Push it. Push it.”
Twelve, thirteen. My arms burned. Fourteen.
“Don’t you want your man to want you?” Her face was nearly as red as mine.
Fifteen. Sixteen. Slower than ice melting.
“Do it,” Lizzie yelled. “Push it, Brenda.”
Seventeen. I collapsed onto the floor, panting and spent. But Lizzie’s face remained stern as ever.
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not, I can tell.” Dizzily, I sat up. “What is it, Lizzie?”
“A superstition I’ve had.” She sucked on a used lime wedge, then winced. “Long as I did push-ups, Tim would stay alive. No matter what happened, if I kept at it, he would keep breathing. Now Germany is finished with. Maybe—” Her face softened, one pearly drop raced down her cheek. “Maybe he’ll actually come home.”
“No time for tears,” Mrs. Morris said. Startled, we both whirled. She’d come up the stairs without our noticing. “Lizzie, your husband is on the phone.”
“Timmy.” She jumped up, grabbing the bedpost for balance, then hustled down the stairs. As Mrs. Morris looked after her, I tucked the tequila bottle out of sight.
“And you.” She scowled from the doorway.
Did she know about Charlie? Was I about to get evicted? “Ma’am?”
Instead she nodded once, sharply, like her chin was cutting something in the air. “Good work today. The choir was on pitch.” She hesitated. “Your playing also was fine.”
A compliment? I was too surprised to reply. She turned and trundled down the stairs as well. I worked myself upright and staggered to the landing. “Thank you, ma’am,” I called down, but she had already closed the door below.
With that, I was alone. Before the war, that was almost never so—home crowded with family, classes at school, fun with girlfriends, dates with boys. Since then I’d grown accustomed to solitude. I was changing. Even drunk in the middle of the day, I knew it. The European battles were over. I had slept all night beside Charlie. I was twenty-one, and so far from home it might as well be another planet.
The giddiness drained out of me as if I’d exhaled it. I collected the limes, washed the glass, put the bottle in Lizzie’s room. Then I went back into my little monkish cell, and sat on the bed, and wondered what immense thing was going to happen next.
Charlie stepped off the bus the following Saturday into my open arms. I hadn’t planned it, but I didn’t care who saw. I suppose we’d both been expecting our usual awkward hello and gradual reacquaintance. Not this time. When the olive drab bus pulled into view, instead of my weekly butterflies, I felt lust. As he hugged me I planted a kiss right on his lips. And felt my hips tilt in a way they never had before, involuntarily toward him. Some boys stepping off the bus gave a cheer.
“Nice work, Trigger,” one of them called.
I felt Charlie flinch, and I stepped back. “I’m sorry. Was that too much?”
He shook his head. “It was the name he called me. I hate it.”
“What? Trigger?”
He seized both of my hands. “Do me a favor, Brenda? Never call me that. Not when you’re angry, not as a joke, never.”
“I promise, Charlie Fish.” I kissed his neck. “I like your real name, anyway. It’s like a big nose.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the things Lizzie likes most about her husband is his nose.”
“Oh.” He scanned the courtyard, people heading here and there from the bus, new arrivals climbing aboard with suitcases and travel papers. Then he put the world aside and looked at my face. “Hi.”
“Hello.” I snuggled against him.
“How are our organ repairs holding up?”
“Well, it’s the strangest thing.” I led him away from the name callers. “Not all the pipes sound the same volume anymore. Some are much louder.”
Charlie nodded. “We need to do a voicing. Do you mind if I take a look at it?”
“I was hoping you would.”
So, instead of the lunch I’d expected, or the smooching and caressing I’d dreamed of, we went to the church. Charlie tossed his coat over the back of a pew. Rolling up his sleeves, he came and kissed me long on the mouth. One second more and I would have glommed onto him for the rest of the day. But he turned his attention to the organ.
“What is a voicing?” I asked.
Climbing onto the wood molding behind the pulpit, Charlie peered into the pipes. “I don’t know nearly enough to perform a full one. But it’s a process of making the instrument fit the room, and making its parts work with one another. Giving the pipes the same volume is a basic start.”