The Green Glass Sea (11 page)

“Oh. I see, ” said her mother. She tapped her fingers on the table. “Well, tell you what, sweetie. Why don't you come along with me to Jimmy's place. Then when we get home, you and I can sit down and I'll write that whole alphabet out for you. ” She touched Suze's face with the back of her hand and smiled. “That way if Daddy gets some time, you can surprise him with how much you already know. ” She winked and stood up. “Deal?”

“Deal, ” said Suze, and was glad, for once, that her mother was a scientist too.

"YOU KNOW
, ”
SAID
Suze's mother as they walked out of the Lodge, “I haven't taken my day off this month. What do you say the two of us go down to Santa Fe Wednesday afternoon? School starts the week after, and you'll need supplies. ”

“Okay, ” Suze said, smiling. Her grandfather owned a stationery store in Berkeley, and she loved getting new pencils and paper—loved the smell of pencil shavings curling down from the sharpener and the way a needle-sharp new point made black lines as thin as thread on a blank white page.

“We'll make a day of it, you and I. Lunch at the Woolworth's counter, shopping, the whole shebang. ”

“Okay!” said Suze, with even more enthusiasm. The Woolworth's here served chili over an opened-up bag of Fritos, which she thought was even better than steak.

At the end of Bathtub Row, Suze turned left and started across the road to the row of apartment buildings. Her mother reached out and tapped her on the arm. “This way, ” she said, pointing off to the right.

“Your friend lives in
Morgan
ville?” Suze asked.

“Unfortunately. He was in the men's dorm when he first got here. Then his daughter came from back east, sometime last winter. He said they spent two months in a trailer while the Morgans were being built. So I guess a duplex is a step up. ”

“Maybe, ” Suze said skeptically. Everyone knew which places to live were the best. Bathtub Row, of course, and then the Sundts, the apartments where they lived. There were a lot of Sundts, but not enough, because more people kept moving to the Hill. So the army had built the Morgans, which nobody liked. But even
they
beat living in a trailer.

“Ick, ” Suze said a minute later. The Sundts had been built among a few trees, against the slope of the hillside, but in Morganville the one-story, barracks-like buildings were lined up in straight rows on the bare, flat ground. And they were just boxes, with no porches or balconies or anything. It looked like a prison camp, she thought.

Her mother made a face. “Yep. Makes our place seem like a palace, doesn't it?” She dropped her cigarette in the dirt and ground it out with the toe of her moccasin. “Third row, second building, ” she said. They walked over, and she stopped in front of one of the identical boxes. One doorstep was surrounded by cactus plants in colorful clay pots. The door to the other was open, and through the screen Suze could hear a man laugh, and then a child's giggle.

“Jimmy?” her mother called. The laughter continued for a moment, then faded, and half a minute later a dark-haired man came to the door. He was barefoot, in a T-shirt tucked into a pair of khaki shorts with lots of pockets, like Boy Scout shorts. He held a red-striped dishcloth in one hand.

“Hey, Terry, ” he said with a big smile. “We just finished supper. It's my night for the dishes. ” He opened the door.

“Your cactus garden?” she asked.

“Nope. The neighbors'. Juanita Sandoval's got a green thumb. Nice to have some color around here too, let me tell you. Come on in. ”

The kitchen was tiny, barely big enough for them to all stand in at once. The table was a wide counter with a bench, built into the wall, and a corner cupboard displayed bright-colored dishes and white china mugs. At the side of the sink, a wooden dish rack held two plates, two forks, and a glass tumbler, all neatly aligned.

He folded the dishcloth and laid it next to the rack. “We don't get company very often. Let's go into the living room. ” He motioned them through a doorway with no door.

The living room was not much bigger. It was less than half the size of theirs, Suze thought, with no fireplace. All the furniture was army-issue, except for some bright watercolor paintings on the wall. Across a low coffee table covered with some papers and a slide rule, two identical wooden chairs with leather seats faced a couch with green-striped cushions. She was glad her parents had shipped their real furniture out here.

The man named Jimmy leaned against the doorframe. “Have a seat. Do you want a Coke? Or a real drink? I heard you had a major snafu with the IBMs today. ”

Suze's mother smiled. “Maybe just a little one. We can't stay long. ” She sat down on the couch. “You want a Coke, Suze?”

Suze shrugged. “I guess so. ”

“
Susan,
” her mother said, in her “young lady” tone of voice.

“What?” Suze slumped down on the other end of the couch. “Oh. I mean, yes, please. ”

“Be right back, ” said Jimmy. He returned in a minute with a bottle of Coke and two squat glasses with ice and an inch of brown liquid. He handed them their drinks, then perched on the arm of the chair across from them. Suze thought he looked kind of like an elf.

Her mother took a sip of the drink. “Oh god, Jimmy. It's Bushmills. How heavenly. ”

“I brought it back from Albuquerque, ” he said with a grin. “I just can't stand rum, and that's all the Santa Fe store seems to be able to get. ” He swirled his glass, and the ice cubes rattled. “So what brings you to my neighborhood?”

“Kay had to reschedule tomorrow's rehearsal. An hour earlier, just as soon as the siren sounds, ” Terry Gordon said.

“No problem. I'll just take my good shirt to the lab in the morning. Saves me the trouble of coming all the way back over here to change. ”

Suze drank her Coke and tried to read what was on the papers on the coffee table. They were upside down from where she was sitting, covered with drawings and penciled numbers and words, but big, like a kid's writing, so she was pretty sure they weren't top secret. She leaned over a little more and tilted her head.

“Easier to read if you just turn them around, ” said Jimmy. He reached over and rotated the stack of papers so it faced Suze.

“Suze, ” said her mother. “It's not polite to—”

“That's okay, ” Jimmy said, holding up his hand. “The army won't let me keep a diary, and any eyes-only documents are back in my office. It's just a little bit of calculus. My daughter's taking apart a broken clock, and I thought it'd help her understand the gear ratios. She's picking it up pretty fast too. ” He turned to Suze. “Do you like math?”

Suze shook her head. “Not really, ” she said. “But I learned about pie tonight. I like drawing circles. They—” She heard a door open down the short hallway to the right of Jimmy's chair.

“Papa!” said an excited voice, coming closer, “I think I figured it out. When the biggest gear—” A small curly-haired girl appeared in the doorway, wearing a sleeveless army-green G. I. undershirt that came down below her knees. She stopped in mid-sentence when she saw there were other people in the room. “Oh. I'm sorry, ” she said.

“It's okay, Dews. ” Jimmy Kerrigan reached over and put his arm around his daughter's waist. “This is my friend Terry Gordon, and her daughter Susan. Suze. Terry's in the chorus with me. ”

“Hello, ” Dewey said to Suze's mother. A brief pause. “Hi, Suze. ”

“Hi. ” A longer pause. “Dewey. ”

“You girls know each other?” asked Suze's mother.

The two girls exchanged glances. Neither spoke. Finally Dewey said, “Sort of. ” She stepped in closer to her father.

Suze sat there with her mouth open. This was Dewey Kerrigan's house? She'd been sitting on Screwy
Dewey's
couch? She squirmed and moved her bare legs so that only the fabric of her shorts was actually touching the cushions.

“So what did you figure out, Dews?” asked Jimmy after a few moments, breaking the silence that now seemed to fill the room.

“Just the gears, ” Dewey said. “I'll show you after your company's gone. ” She slipped out of his arm. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Gordon, ” she said. She turned and walked the few steps down the hallway and back into an unseen bedroom. Suze heard the door shut with a soft click.

“Oh dear, ” said Suze's mother. She looked at her watch. “I guess we ought to get going. ” She drained the last bit of her drink and stood up. “Thanks for the whiskey, Jimmy. I'll see you tomorrow night. ” She took two steps across the room and rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. “Looks like someone else needs you right now. Gear ratios, huh?” She shook her head, but was smiling.

“You should see her room, ” he said. “It looks like Rube Goldberg set up an engineering lab in there. ” He lowered his voice. “I'm getting her an Erector set for her birthday. It'll be fun to see what she does with motors. ”

“My guess is you'll have your hands full. ”

“Probably. ” Jimmy Kerrigan looked fondly toward the bedroom. “It hasn't been easy, just the two of us. I've been away so much, and she's such a smart kid, a smart girl kid to boot. Always asking questions. I'm afraid not many of her teachers could handle that. So this is heaven for her. Everywhere we go, there's one of the best science minds in the world. Nobel Prize winners, just walking down the street. The other night we stopped to chat and she and Fermi spent fifteen minutes talking about why candle flames are blue. Enrico Fermi. ” He took the glass from Terry's hand. “I've never seen her happier. ”

“I think a lot of that is having you around too, ” Suze's mother said with a smile. “And speaking of curious girls, I promised to introduce mine to some Greek, right?” She looked over at Suze and raised an eyebrow.

“I'm coming. ” Suze put down her Coke bottle and stood up quickly. “Thank you for the Coke, Mr. Kerrigan,” she said, without being asked.

“Jimmy, please, ” he said. “And any time. ” He opened the screen door, holding it for them as they walked out into the late-summer twilight. The western sky was wiped with wisps of orange and the mountains were dusky gray silhouettes. Suze could smell spices from someone's dinner through an open window.

“Dewey seems like an interesting girl, ” said her mother as they walked past the houses of Bathtub Row. Lamps in the windows cast rectangles of yellow light onto the dirt at their feet.

Suze couldn't think of anything safe to say, so she nodded to show she was listening.

“Maybe you could ask her to come over and play some afternoon. Or do homework, ” her mother said. “Once school starts, I mean. ”

“Maybe I will, ” Suze said, lying. She kicked a pebble with her foot, skittering it off into some pine needles.

And maybe pigs will learn to fly.

DEWEY SAT AT
the kitchen table, eating a bowl of Kix. She didn't like it much, but it was the only cereal the PX had in stock that week. She was chasing the last little beige ball around in the pool of milk when Papa came in from the hall, knotting his tie.

“Why are you all dressed up?” she asked. When he'd taught at Harvard, when she was a little girl, he'd worn a jacket and tie to class, but except for his singing concerts, she hadn't seen him in anything that fancy since they'd come to the Hill.

“General Groves is here with some committee from Washington. Oppie asked if I'd meet with them, I guess to fill them in on what my section's been doing. ” He poured a cup of coffee from the glass Chemex carafe on the stove and sat down at the table next to her.

“That sounds important, ” Dewey said. “More important than usual, I mean. ” Everything about the war was important these days.

He made a face. “I'd rather be working. I don't have time to stop and talk to bureaucrats who won't understand half of what I'm saying. But I guess since we're living on government money, they've got a right to ask what we're doing with it. ”

“Will you be home for dinner?”

“I don't think so, Dews. ” He shook his head. “This meeting could take up most of the day, and there are a couple of folders on my desk that
have
to get done. I'll probably be pretty late. Do you want to go over to the Sandovals' for dinner?”

Dewey thought about it. The Sandovals lived next door. Mr. Sandoval was a machinist, and his wife Juanita made very good enchiladas. But she shook her head. “No, that's okay. I'll cook macaroni and cheese. There's one more box in the cupboard. ” She looked out their little window. The late spring snow had melted, except for a few patches in the shadows, and thin, pale sunlight was peeking through the clouds. “If it stays nice, are we still going to Frijoles Canyon tomorrow?”

He smiled. “Absolutely. Sunday with my girl. Not even Washington is going to interfere with that. I used my coupons to gas up the car yesterday, so we're all set. I'll ask the Lodge to make us up a box lunch. ”

“Okay. ” Dewey smiled back. Sundays were her favorite day of the week, the only day that Papa didn't go to his lab. No one did. If it rained, people read, or went to the Lodge and talked and played cards. But mostly they went outside and rode horses up into the mountains and fished, or hiked in one of the canyons. Dewey couldn't hike very far, because her leg began to ache after an hour or so. But there were a dozen canyons that Papa could drive to, where they could have a picnic or build a campfire or collect rocks and even arrowheads.