Page 15

Her world had grown small. Well, no, Adele realized, it had just never been big.

When she was a child, the world had been made up of the Clemson ranch, her parents, James and John and Pauline.

Then she married Charles, and they split off, forming a planet all their own.

One that doubled in size the day that George appeared on it.

Her childhood planet became a moon, circling them.

But unlike the real moon, it shrank, year by year. Now it was barely a speck in the sky.

A pale-green mass had cleaved away from that moon when James died in his trench.

Half of what remained splintered to nothing after Pauline passed.

Claude Demmings waited a suitable interval, then remarried.

He took his new wife and his sons to Arkansas, leaving Adele with a single photograph: three boys lined up in the suits they’d worn to their mother’s funeral (now snug at the shoulders and short at the ankles), Pauline’s button nose in the center of each tight-lipped face.

Several years later, her father caught a cough.

First the barking took his voice, then his ability to eat.

His bull’s frame withered. He refused even the smallest sips of broth, speeding himself toward his final choking breath but never managing to outrun his suffering.

Six months later, Adele’s mother complained of a headache, lay down in her bed, and never rose from it again.

The Clemson ranch went to John. He’d been running it anyway, continuing the modernization begun by their father.

He’d built up the herd to several hundred head and had plans for more.

Then the drought hit. The Clemson pastureland was halved, and two years later, halved again, along with the herd.

The remaining cattle choked on dust. He sold the ranch for next to nothing and, like so many others, lit out for California.

His letters, with their descriptions of orange groves and palm canyons and vast stretches of sand along an endless ocean, made her chest ache.

She couldn’t picture John in those places.

She sensed the time coming when she’d no longer be able to picture him at all.

Just as she could no longer easily call up Pauline’s face, or James’s.

In the depths of her memory, her parents walked and talked as their younger selves.

Not the broken-down invalids of their last years, when Adele had been the one bringing marrows and broths and soothing fevered brows.

And now George was leaving, could not wait to go.

To form a world all her own—one much bigger and brighter, one that Adele was destined someday to circle.

The natural order of things, she heard her father say.

No one likes a moper, her mother chimed in.

Adele cleared her throat and straightened her spine.

Tallying her losses would never alter their sum.

George darted past her. “I’m going to see if Helen wants to drive up to Oklahoma City with me. I need a train schedule. Interviews are in Washington, DC.”

She blew out of the house, taking every bit of fresh air with her.

A sniff confirmed it: the room smelled musty, stale.

During the drought, they’d kept the windows shut for months on end—a fruitless attempt to keep out the dust. Enough of that, thought Adele.

She strode from room to room, opening windows, letting in the crisp fall air. She saved Charles’s office for last.

“Come in,” he said to her knock. He was always home these days. She knew he trusted the site foremen, but she also knew it wasn’t wise for the boss to so rarely make himself seen.

“I’m airing out the house,” she said. “And George is off to the city with Helen. The telegram came this morning.” Charles blinked hurt from his eyes, and Adele’s throat tightened.

George should have told him herself about the telegram—the one they’d all been expecting for so long.

But lately, George went out of her way to keep things to herself.

If Adele hadn’t been standing near the door when the message arrived, she’d have been left in the dark too.

She turned toward the windows, fought back tears as she opened them one by one.

The last window stuck. She smacked the butt of her hand hard against its sash until it gave way.

Charles came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her, pressed his chest to her back, his rib cage sharp against her shoulder blades.

“She’ll be okay, Dellie. They won’t send her overseas.”

“We don’t know that. There are American girls flying in England as we speak.”

“That’s not what this ... Women’s Airforce Service Pilot program is recruiting for. You saw the article in the paper. They want girls to transport planes mostly.”

“And train artillery gunners.”

“That too. But I’m sure they have a safe way of doing that. It’s training, after all. They won’t let gunners actually shoot at girls flying planes.”

They let boys die in trenches. They sent the ones who survived home to have nightmares for the rest of their lives. Who could say what else they might allow?

Charles gave her a final squeeze and released her. “I’m thinking about taking out a lease on the Greer property.”

“Haven’t they already drilled that piece of land?” She turned and followed him to the desk.

“Not all of it.” He pointed to the topo map he’d been studying when she came in. “Only the southern half. But look at these depressions up in this quarter. And here.”

Adele only pretended to look. The map didn’t interest her.

What interested her was the topography of Charles’s hand.

The way the skin between his knuckles and wrist matched the dull gray of the map background.

The bulging dark veins traveling over the sunken flesh.

The bony hills of his knuckles, each riven by its own valley.

His face was gray too. Lately when he climbed the stairs, he’d pause at the top and huff.

His ankles swelled over the tops of his shoes.

The cook prepared his favorite meals, but even so, Charles mostly rearranged the food on his plate and then retreated to his study.

Suddenly it occurred to her that he spent all his time at home because driving out to the wells and checking on the crews was too exhausting.

And now he wanted to discuss leasing rights with her.

Lately he wanted to talk over every business notion that crossed his mind.

How had she been so slow to catch on? He was preparing her, making sure she could run things herself.

Or at least understand what properties they held, in case she wanted to sell.

She slapped her hand down on the map, and he jumped.

“Stop it!”

“Stop what?” If he was so innocent, why was he blushing like a little boy caught dipping his finger in cake icing?

“Stop trying to teach me the business. You are not dying!”

He put a gray hand over hers and squeezed. “Dellie. We’re all dying.”

She shook him off. “Not anytime soon. Not without a fight.”

Dr. Lattimer said it was Charles’s heart. He prescribed digitalis and regular elevation of the feet. “And no smoking,” said Dr. Lattimer, stubbing out his own cigarette to emphasize the point.

“I don’t smoke,” said Charles.

“Good. Don’t start. Some doctors might disagree, but in my opinion, it revs up the heart, and yours doesn’t need any extra rev. Take a walk every morning and a nap every afternoon. Sound advice for everyone. But especially for a man your age.”

“He’s barely forty-eight,” said Adele.

“Exactly,” said Dr. Lattimer. He tapped another Lucky from the packet, dismissing them.

Charles took the pills. He walked and napped.

His color improved. His appetite returned.

He still huffed a bit after walking up the stairs, and his ankles still swelled more than Adele would have liked.

But he began driving out to the drilling sites again.

She went with him, not because she was worried, but because he was right: she needed to learn the business.

She needed to accustom the foremen to her presence.

To see which ones looked her in the eye when they answered her questions and which ones looked over her shoulder.

She sat with him in his study, too, going over lease agreements and oil-in-place estimates, reviewing payroll and equipment expenses. She didn’t particularly enjoy this desk work, but it provided some distraction from George and her all-too-evident eagerness to leave.

George was always running off to the airfield or to Helen’s.

When she was home, she found a reason to exit any room Adele entered.

Recently, she’d begun driving out with Frank Bridlemile in the evenings.

Adele wondered how Helen felt about these outings, but George never held still long enough for her to ask.

Some days Adele felt like a hunter, creeping up on her daughter, hoping to snare her into conversation, into closeness.

At the dinner table, George stared into the distance.

Dreaming of flight training, Adele supposed.

A world Adele couldn’t imagine and would never be part of.

If only they could go back to the days when Adele could do something simple like jack up the car and George’s eyes would widen with awe.

The evenings when George would scoot right up next to her on the sofa so that they could study the diagrams in Popular Mechanics together.

There must have been a last time that George climbed into her lap. A last time she’d carried George somewhere. A last time they’d leaned over an open hood together. So many lasts, none of them marked with the least bit of fanfare. No one likes a moper, she heard her mother say.

She did her best to stay occupied, to maintain a sense of dignity as she let her daughter go.

The Packard didn’t need a thing done to it, but she decided to change into her coverall anyway and poke around under the hood.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she smelled the orange-peel-and-vanilla scent of Shalimar.

George had taken to wearing perfume lately.

Adele suspected this had something to do with Frank Bridlemile.

George’s bedroom door was open. She stood at the foot of her bed, arms crossed, frowning at the outfits she’d spread out. A couple of utility dresses. A tailored blouse and a pleated skirt. Light wool trousers and a twinset.

“Deciding what to pack?” asked Adele.

George looked up and smiled so warmly that Adele’s heart turned over like a newly tuned engine.

“Oh, I’ll take pretty much everything,” said George.

The engine died. Of course, she thought, because George didn’t expect to return home again anytime soon.

“I’m trying to decide what to wear for my first day of training.”

Already? She had weeks to figure that out.

George hadn’t consulted her about what to wear for her trip to Washington, DC.

Adele didn’t expect her daughter to consult her about her wardrobe for her first day in Sweetwater either.

But George hadn’t shooed her out of the bedroom. Maybe that was an invitation.

“Those trousers look nice,” said Adele. “With that twinset.”

George smirked. “Oh, Mother, you always think trousers are nice.”

When was the fanfare-less last time her daughter had wanted her advice on anything? The natural order of things, she heard her father say. Why did this natural order of things have to sting so much? “Wear what you like,” she said as she closed George’s door behind her.

The week before Thanksgiving, Adele stood beneath the green-striped awning of the market, thumbing through her ration coupons, as if shuffling them might make them multiply. She’d decided to bypass the turkeys this year—too scrawny and too pricey—and make do with a couple of chickens instead.

“Hello, Adele.” Bess Cramer, Helen’s mother, approached, canted to one side to counterbalance the heavy basket on her opposite arm.

Her hair, once golden like Helen’s, had faint gray streaks in it now, but her eyes remained bright and lively.

And friendlier than most women’s. Adele didn’t spend much time socializing with other women in town, but she felt she and Bess shared a sense of practicality.

“Hello, Bess. You must be in the thick of it. The holidays and a wedding.” She wasn’t going to pass up this chance to confirm that Helen and Frank were still engaged.

“Well,” said Bess, setting down her basket and leaning in, “just between us, we’ve decided to wait on the wedding. Frank’s shipping out soon, and we don’t want Helen rushing into anything because of the war. It won’t hurt them to wait. Not that Helen sees it that way. She’s simply livid.”

Helen was a girl who didn’t hear no easily. No doubt she was raising quite a fuss. “Well, you’re probably right about the waiting.”

“And Georgeanne? When does she leave?”

“In the new year. She’d go tomorrow if she could.”

“I envy you the calm house you’re about to have.”

“Hmm.” Adele imagined the hours in Charles’s study, reviewing derrick maintenance schedules.

The days that would pass while she waited for the mailman to deliver a letter from George.

She pictured the Cramer household, bustling with Helen’s two younger brothers.

Boys still young enough to need some mothering, whether they knew it or not.

Plus, the commotion an outraged Helen would add.

Adele had never regretted having just one child, but she envied Bess her not-so-calm house.

“Not that it’s the same, but Helen wants to do her little part too,” Bess went on. “She’s signed up with the Red Cross to help organize assistance for soldiers’ families. We’re hoping it takes her mind off Frank.”

Adele winced, thinking about her plan to “make do” with two chickens rather than a single turkey.

She would still buy two, she decided, and take one and a basket of dry goods to a family in need.

Then she would call Helen and find out how else she could help.

She would escape her too-calm house. She would make her world a little bigger.