Page 29 of The Magic of Ordinary Days

I pulled my hand away from Ray‘s, and then I couldn’t look at the hurt I had caused him.

After silence so heavy I could hear the walls groan, I shoved the cards together, stacked them, and put them away in the cupboard.

Back at the table, I sat again. Ray simply sat, too, until the strain of it apparently grew too much for him, and he had to get up and leave the room.

That night, I tried to read in bed, but the words on the printed page kept swirling into leafy patterns before my eyes.

This life, this life of isolation and more plants than people, was strangling me.

The memories I couldn’t bear to relive came to life as the substance of plants and crops living within me, their sharp stems and tangled roots growing and prodding me internally to let them come out.

By the next day, I couldn’t stay in the house.

I asked Ray to leave me the truck so I could drive over to Camp Amache to visit Rose and Lorelei and take one of those classes in ikebana from their mother.

Before I left, however, I heard the newscasters on the radio announce the latest travel warnings.

The government had decided to ban all holiday travel by civilians because troop movement would be particularly heavy during the coming season.

All pleasure travel for Christmas was seriously discouraged.

I clicked off the radio and headed on my way.

Forward movement had always set my mind into motion, sometimes against my will.

As I drove, again the stems of past memories started spreading and poking their points within me, and I had to force them back into the ground pockets where they belonged.

I had to concentrate on my driving. I tried to remember the lyrics to favorite songs, and I sang them aloud, or else I might end up choked by those emerging vines and pushy shoots.

At Camp Amache, the same guard remembered me, welcomed me in, and sent for Lorelei and Rose.

When they came walking forward to meet me, Lorelei smiled and embraced me as was typical, but Rose held herself back.

Eventually, she greeted me with a hug. But in her eyes I saw tension I’d never seen before, even worse than what I’d seen at the gas station in Swink.

She forced a smile. “We’ve only a few minutes to visit. ”

I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “I thought you two would come along and watch my lesson.”

“We’re helping in the shop.”

Lorelei flicked her hair. “Making posters.”

“Ah,” I answered.

Camp Amache was home to a large silkscreen shop that produced hundreds of thousands of posters for the Navy.

Since the beginning of the war, posters could be seen everywhere, most of them for recruitment and support of our troops, but others encouraging increased factory production and war jobs, even for women.

Rosie the Riveter was mythical, but posters had made her famous nonetheless.

I was reminded of a poster I’d seen at the train station in La Junta.

It read, “Is Your Trip Necessary? Needless Travel Interferes with the War Effort.”

Lorelei took my arm. “Pay no attention to Rose. We’re so happy to see you.” She steered me inside the camp. “At least we can walk you over and chat for a bit.”

Rose fell into step with us, but haltingly. “We should return, Lorelei.”

The skin on Lorelei’s arm flinched. “Don’t fret so much,” she snapped at her sister. She continued to walk down the dusty row between barracks. “We can take a walk, after all.”

Rose and Lorelei had always teased each other and disagreed, but this was different. These were bulleted words, the first truly angry words I’d ever heard from them, and Rose’s face was twisted with worry.

I stopped walking. “What is it, Rose?”

Again, she tried to smile. “Nothing,” she said. “We should return, that’s all.”

“You go back, then,” said Lorelei. “I’m going to walk with Livvy.”

Rose stopped, looked down at her shoes, then turned on a heel and left us.

Lorelei held tighter to my arm and kept us walking. “I warned you once about Rose. Always she must follow the rules.”

We passed a group of older men working together.

I stopped to look at their handiwork—vases, boxes, and toys made of tiny stones, the same ones that covered miles of open desert beyond the camp.

Again they had created works of art out of this empty desert land.

It reminded me of fireweed overtaking areas of forest burns, transforming charred wastelands into swaying red seas.

Lorelei urged me onward. “This is a hobby for the Issei.” She glanced up at me with a sly smile and kept walking. “I have more important things to ponder.”

I squeezed her arm. “Do you have something to tell me?”

Lorelei put a hand on her chest in a dramatic gesture. “I wish I could.”

“Of course you can.”

Lorelei then slowed her pace. Finally, she stopped walking altogether. She turned to me with a movie star smile and seemed to search for words. As I waited for her to tell me, I noticed a tiny gold chain that hung around her neck, one I’d never seen her wear before. “What’s this?” I asked.

Lorelei pulled her collar in tighter around the neck. She lowered her voice. “Rose and I are involved with some men.” After looking about, she fished the chain out from its hiding place inside her shirt. Hanging on the chain was a cameo pendant. “One of them gave it to me.”

“It’s quite lovely.”

“It was his mother’s.”

She tucked the pendant back into her blouse.

We locked arms again and strolled behind one of the large barrack buildings.

How I missed conversations like this one, chatting on the telephone with my sisters, going to the diner with my girlfriends.

This was a bond men couldn’t understand, this sharing between women.

“He gave you something that belonged to his mother? You must be very special to him.”

“I believe so.” She beamed. “He tells me I am.”

“Soldiers?” I asked her.

“Yes.” She hesitated. “We met them on one of the farms we worked, just after we left your place. They were guarding the German POWs also working there.”

I tried to picture their first meeting. Lorelei had probably flirted away shamelessly, while Rose had probably held herself back.

Lorelei had most likely picked her man on the spot, whereas Rose had probably spent her time slowly getting to know hers.

But even as I tried, I was having a hard time picturing it.

The last time I’d passed through La Junta with Rose and Lorelei, they had acted as if the sight of soldiers was near to unbearable.

The news of the kamikaze had even caused Lorelei to shy away.

But perhaps something special had transpired between these two soldiers and the girls.

“How did you meet?”

Lorelei smiled. “I told you. On one of the farms.”

I sounded like a drill sergeant but couldn’t stop myself. “Did you get to go out with them?”

Lorelei stopped walking. “Not exactly. But now they’re writing little notes to us.”

“Love notes?”

“Sort of. But I really can’t tell you anything else. It’s a secret.”

“Why must it be kept a secret?”

She took a deep breath. “It’s complicated.”

How foolish of me. Of course it would be.

“If I speak more about them, Rose will despise me. Please don’t ask me another thing.” She hugged my arm and picked up the pace again. “Just know that we are both very happy.”

But Rose didn’t seem happy.

“And don’t worry for us.”

“Why should I worry?”

Lorelei laughed. “No more questions, remember?”

I longed to know more, but I wouldn’t press her. “Then take me for my lesson.”

Before we moved on, Lorelei took me for a peek inside the silkscreen shop, but I didn’t spot Rose among the workers. She dropped me off at their quarters before Lorelei said she, too, should return to the shop.

Itsu met me just inside the door. She led me in and began quietly talking as she pulled out two vases, some stems in a box, and an assortment of paper flowers for practicing.

“In ikebana, we do not use layer and layer of flowers as American florists do. Instead, we use only a few stems, leaves, and blooms, only as many as it takes to compose, along with the spaces in between, the perfect balance among them all.”

She said we would begin with rikka, or standing flowers, appropriate for arrangement in bowl-shaped vases.

She explained that it took years to perfect any of the styles, and that I would best learn by watching for the first of our lessons.

I observed her select one of the vases, then begin to arrange the stems in exact positions using clippers to cut them and crosspieces to secure them.

She used a kenzan, a holder with many sharp points about a half inch high, to firmly hold the flowers in their places.

As she continued to work, I heard the door open.

Lorelei came back into the apartment. Itsu looked up briefly, then continued with our lesson.

I looked at Lorelei and shot her a question with my eyes, What are you doing?

Lorelei quickly got my meaning, but just shrugged, sat down beside me, and pretended to watch her mother.

But out of the corner of my eye, I could see her gazing out the window and picking at her nails.

Occasionally she would get up from the chair beside me, pace the floor back and forth once, then sit down again.

Now I was having a hard time concentrating, too. What trouble was coming between her and Rose? Why was Rose so tense? And why was Lorelei, who longed for a boyfriend so badly, being so secretive about the one she now had?