While He Was Away (13 page)

Dear Mrs. Weaver,

I think we might be related. I think I might be your granddaughter. I think I live in your old house in Killdeer now and sleep under your quilt and look at your picture. I think we have other things in common too. I would very much like to talk with you. Will you email me or write me back if you have any connection to Killdeer, Oklahoma? I’ll write my phone number below, should you prefer to call.

Sincerely,

Penelope Weaver

I copy this over and over, until I’ve copied enough letters for every Justine on my list. Then I print them all.

Linda is home. She made the right choice and didn’t interrupt me. She ate and showered, watched a little TV. I can hear her now, faintly snoring beneath her covers. It’s nearly two in the morning, after all, and she wants to be rested for tomorrow.

As should I.

I think of the tender way the figure in David’s drawing bowed over those little plants.

I stick all the letters in envelopes and address them.

Only when I’m sealing the last envelope do I remember the envelope beneath the attic floor.

Even David would say, “Enough already,” I tell myself. And I fall into bed.

•••

Penelope,

You were sleeping so hard, I didn’t want to wake you. I’ll come and pick you up at 3:30. Things will go better tonight. I promise.

Mom

I discover her note—and her previously unsung ability to read the future—on the kitchen table when I grab my breakfast or lunch or brunch, I guess it is, of old, cold pizza.

Chomping on the last of the crust, I look out the window and spot the clockwork lady passing by. She’s got more energy than I do this morning, that’s for sure. The attic seems a long way up—the Mount Everest of Killdeer, Oklahoma. I watch the old lady disappear around the corner. Guess I’ll take my inspiration from her. From David.

I go back into my bedroom and check my email. Nothing. Facebook. Nothing new there. Cell phone. Ditto.

Moving on.

Still wearing my pajamas, I tug on a pair of thick socks, go into the hallway, pull the cord to the attic’s trapdoor, jump out of the way as the attic ladder descends, and climb up.

Linda must have been up here in the past few days, because she’s taped thick plastic over the hole in the broken window. Now there’s barely enough dusty light to see by. My socks snag on the wood planks as I hunch around, looking for the loose floorboard.

When I find it, I lift the board aside and, quick as I can, plunge my hand into the hole and draw out the envelope. No scorpions or spiders on the attack, but I sneeze at the dust. Holding the envelope close, I scuttle across the attic, climb back down the ladder, and go back to my room.

If it’s nothing more than some old tax document or bill of sale, I don’t know what I’m going to do. It has to be more.

Turns out it is.

•••

January 10, 1945

Sweet Justine—

Thank you for the gloves! They sure help, these winter nights. Remember how we once thought Europe would be like something out of a fairy tale? Well, it’s a bitter cold fairy tale. I’ll say that for it.

I think about our honeymoon all the time now.

Remember that souvenir shop in the Badlands, and the funny plaster airplane, how I got you to climb into it with me? You climbed right up in that ticky-tacky thing. You slid right down in front of me, closer than life. I can feel you against me now.

All the other tourists stared. Remember? We might as well have had tin cans dangling from our waists and Just Married painted across our backsides. We were that much of a sight to see—a real treat, right up there with Yellow Rock Drug’s claim to fame: free ice water, fresh donuts, and bottomless cups of coffee, and all those wooden Indians and totem poles.

I tickled you and I wouldn’t stop, not even when you begged.

I think it was in the Badlands when we started saying we were dropping in on George, Tom, Abe, and Teddy.

And then at Mount Rushmore, we left our old Ford parked in the little bit of scrub-pine shade that we could find. (How’s the radiator doing, by the way? Remember it gets thirsty. Give it a drink.) It was a long hike into the park, but you never complained. Just like you don’t complain now about my being gone now. Brave girl.

First thing I want to do when I get home? First real thing? I want to go back to Yellow Rock. I want to have our honeymoon all over again without knowing we’ll have to leave each other so soon after.

Take care of our little house, brave girl. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Always yours, as you are always mine—

Owen

•••

Always
yours, as you are always mine—

Owen.

For
you, because of you
.

David.

I have to find Justine.

I look again at the envelope. It’s addressed to a
Mrs. Justine Delmore
. She lived at this address then too. Owen must have lived here before he went to war.

So this was
their
house first. Hers. Not my grandpa’s. The house must have been hers when he married her. Not that it matters really, but still.

I go to my computer and find Justine Delmore. Not Justine Blue or Justine Weaver. Justine Delmore. When she left my grandpa, she left him this house and took back Owen’s name.

Justine Delmore lives in Yellow Rock, South Dakota. She has an address and a phone number. A newspaper article pops up too, a feature in the
Yellow
Rock
Times
.

Turns out she is a librarian in Yellow Rock, a member of the local chapter of the GSW (whatever that is). And an artist. The brief article celebrates Justine’s retirement from the library. She has donated a painting for the entryway. The article includes a tiny, fuzzy photograph of the woman who must be Justine standing next to the painting. She looks bird-like. In any strong wind, it looks like, she could just blow away.

My heart starts thudding in my chest. I can feel my pulse in my throat. A white cloud of hair frames her aged face. But the girl in her painting—I recognize that blue dress from the photograph on my desk. The girl balances on the rails of the train tracks that divide the canvas, her arms stretched wide. With her left hand, the girl reaches toward a steep bank of jagged yellow rock. With her right, she reaches toward red clay plains and the little gray house there that is Linda’s and mine now.

“What are you doing?”

From behind me I hear Linda’s voice, sharp with frustration.

In a flash I put my computer to sleep. I spin around in my chair.

“It’s time to go, and you’re still in your pajamas.” Linda folds her arms, juts a hip. “Snap to it.”

When I say that I’ll be ready before Linda knows it, she turns on her heel and storms off. I hear her in the kitchen, stuffing things she thinks she doesn’t want or need into the recycling and garbage. When she gets in a fury like this, she thinks everything is junk. She throws important stuff away.

I don’t try to stop her. I get ready as quickly as I can, almost before she knows it. This seems to satisfy her. At least she doesn’t say a word all the way to Red Earth. She doesn’t ask me about the painting on my computer screen of a girl balanced on train tracks, reaching between here and there.

Linda was wrong. It may be my second day working, but I’m still the worst thing to hit this joint since the waiter two years ago who hid vodka in his OJ and served food with the shakes, only to finally pass out cold on top of the elementary-school principal’s order of home fries.

This according to Caitlin, who is covering my butt again.

“You need help,” Caitlin says, ringing her tray with glass after glass of Long Island iced teas. “I mean, this is so not your calling. I’m either going to strangle you or we are going to let loose after work. I think we’d better let loose, don’t you?”

She strides off, delivering the drinks to her table and going to one of my tables to take the order I would be taking if I were a better waitress.

Tom watches me from across the bar. He is
staring
at me. I chew at my lip, waiting for the slow burn of fury to rise in his eyes. But instead he just shakes his head.

“Like that—” Tom clears his throat huskily. “Standing there like that—”

Behind Tom the TV blasts another war clip—this one from Afghanistan. “The real hot spot,” the reporter proclaims as the camera pans a barren cliff, then zeros in on the mouth of a cave and the group of bearded men huddled there, machine guns clutched to their chests.

“All worn out like that,” Tom finally says. “Well, you look so much like her, young.”

“Like who?” Though, of course, I can guess. I just want to hear him say it, that’s all. Do I look like Linda or Justine, or both of them finally meeting in me?

I expect Tom to turn back to his sink full of dirty glasses or the footage that’s spinning now about Iran.

But he keeps looking at me. He says, “Like a person who might let bad things get the best of her if she’s not careful. That’s who.”

Only then, when he’s delivered a sharp blow to my ego, does he turn back to the sink.

•••

Linda is running herself ragged, trying to do all of her job and most of mine, trying to prove that she’s right: we can do this, together, again.

Isaac finally hunts me down and stops me in my tracks. He takes the jumble of menus I’m holding. I’m supposed to be seating the little crowd that is waiting with increasing irritation at the front door. But given the fact that I’m also supposed to be clearing tables, I haven’t gotten around to it yet.

“You’re sweating,” Isaac says, “which is not terribly appealing to our clientele, I’m sure.”

“Oh well.” I try to sound like I don’t give a rip. I don’t pull it off.

Isaac deftly taps the menus into a neat stack. “Last night’s break helped? That little siesta you took in the ladies’ room?”

I try to remember. “Kind of.”

“Disappear for a while.” Isaac flicks his fingers at me. “Go on. Scoot. Scat.”

I scurry back to the bathroom. I find my special stall and lock myself inside. I perch on the toilet. For the heck of it, I pull out my pen and graffiti a tiny killdeer flying over the toilet-paper holder, and then a nest beneath the bird, and me and David sitting inside. The killdeer will watch over us, if only here in a bathroom stall. This makes me feel a little better for a moment. Then I realize that when Linda gets a load of my little doodle, she’ll really have my hide.

I bury my head in my arms.

Minutes later my black apron rings brightly. I nearly fall to the stall floor. I scrounge through my apron pocket with my left hand and pull my cell from the rumpled pages of my check pad. It rings again. Clumsily, I flip it open.

“Penna?”

My heart thuds in my throat. There is the little nest I drew and us inside. Here we are.

“David?”

He laughs. He still sounds tense, but he also sounds giddy with relief. It’s him again. It’s me again.

“You can hear me better this time?”

“Yes!” There’s no static. He’s coming through loud and clear. I close my eyes so I can focus on the sound of his voice.

“It’s noisy here, though. Talk as loud as you can, okay?”

I wait, eyes closed, but now David is silent.

Finally he says, “Where are you?”

“Oh, I’m at this wild party.” I laugh. “This guy’s parents are out of town and—”

“Which guy?” His tone has turned hard and unfamiliar.

I open my eyes. “
Kidding!
” There is that little nest I drew. It’s still there. “I’m at Red Earth, waiting tables like I wrote you. Didn’t you get my emails yet? I thought they’d be waiting for you. I’ve written letters too. Lots of them. Guess they haven’t arrived yet either, huh? Stupid army.”

“Hey. I’m in that stupid army.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” I swallow hard. Why does this feel like a first date—one I’ve had with other guys, but never with David, because from the beginning David and I were completely comfortable together? “I’ll be waitressing for the rest of the summer and for the school year too, I guess. Linda’s idea.”

“Oh.”

I wait for more. The silence gets long. This is the guy who draws hearts in the dust, I remind myself. This is the guy who tends a garden. Maybe he just needs to remember that the world is bigger than where he is. He just needs to remember our plan.