Page 36 of The Magic of Ordinary Days

Winter came in its completeness. Even in the middle of the days bright with sunlight, the temperature barely hovered above freezing. Crumbling, ridged snow sleeves, built up by the plows, closed in the road leading to the farm.

On Thanksgiving Day, I had to force myself up after only a few hours of sleep.

In the kitchen, I listened to mixed news on the radio.

Despite American victories, the costs continued to be so high it was difficult to listen.

Battles in the South Pacific continued to rage, with huge numbers of casualties.

Kamikaze pilots continued to dive-bomb our ships, but by all accounts, the Allies were winning; victory would come.

Ray and I had planned a full day of events.

First we would drive out to Camp Amache to visit Rose and Lorelei, and later we’d head back to Martha’s for a family meal.

For several days before, I had been experimenting with baking and preparing side dishes.

I tried the simplest of pies—custard and pumpkin—and left the fruit and meringue concoctions up to Martha, who was also in charge of the turkey and dressing.

Early in the morning, Ray and I stacked the casserole dishes and pie plates on the seat of the truck between us and set out on our way.

We met Rose and Lorelei outside the camp’s dining hall.

Bundled up in their coats, they took us inside, where we sat across from them at a long table.

I handed over two pies as gifts, and they gave me the maternity suit made of gray wool they had just recently finished.

Both Rose and Lorelei seemed relaxed, smiling easily and sitting close to each other, and I hoped this meant that whatever had been troubling them before had now been resolved.

“This suit,” I said and looked it over. “It’s the finest one I’ve ever owned.”

I passed it over so Ray could have a look.

“It’s our first maternity suit. Look,” Rose said as she reached across the table to where the suit now lay in front of Ray. She moved the jacket aside and showed me the cutout area in the skirt that would allow my abdomen to keep on growing. “We gave you lots of room for the baby”

I gazed at that gaping hole in the skirt and wondered if I could ever fill it. Rose showed me some tie strings on either side of the hole. “You can adjust the waistline as you get larger.”

Lorelei stifled a laugh. All at once, Rose seemed to realize she had spoken of a taboo subject in front of Ray. Her face flushed, and she quickly plopped back in her chair.

I said, “You’ve made me a lovely dress, and now a suit, too. My sister sent me a slacks set, so I have all the clothes I need. Don’t spend any more time on me. Promise?”

They exchanged smiles.

“What is it?” I asked. “What are you scheming?”

Lorelei smoothed back her hair. “Nothing special.” She was lying. “Just something for Christmas.”

“I love your work, but please spend no more time on me. You should concentrate on yourselves.” I meant the clothing just then, but I meant other things, too.

“The piece we’re now working on will last you forever,” said Rose.

“For all your future babies,” Lorelei said, then looked down. Now she, too, had embarrassed herself.

As the conversation lapsed, I tried to get a glimpse of Lorelei’s neck.

Was she still wearing the cameo pendant hidden beneath her blouse?

What was happening between them and the MPs over in Rocky Ford?

Unfortunately for me, the neckline of Lorelei’s sweater was high, and I could see nothing.

I wanted badly to ask them about it but couldn’t mention it in front of Ray.

They were way too shy to talk about boyfriends with him around.

The conversation came to a halt. Everything had changed because Ray was with us.

It would be much too uncomfortable for us to speak of the war.

I jabbered on about my efforts to make pies in the kitchen, but after a while, my talk felt as empty as that hole in my skirt.

Ray was sitting next to me with his hands in his lap and hadn’t said a word.

A draft of cold air coming into the dining hall from under the door made Rose slip her arms back into her coat.

“What will you do today? For Thanksgiving?” I finally asked.

Rose answered, “Eat here in the mess hall.”

Lorelei appeared untouched by the lack of real conversation. She hugged herself. “In California, we could eat Thanksgiving dinner outside in our garden.”

“The yard was forever green,” said Rose. “We had vines of red bougainvillea that overflowed the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s and attracted butterflies.”

“And we had an orange tree and huge Birds of Paradise,” Lorelei added.

I tried to imagine a place that was always green, where something was always blooming. The cold season on the plains had only just started, but those green days I’d enjoyed after my arrival now palled under a layer of ice and snow.

“The begonias and pansies bloomed most of the year,” said Rose.

“We also had a pond nearly covered with floating lilies and full of koi fish that grew to over a foot in length,” Lorelei added. “The water never froze.”

Still Ray hadn’t said anything. I glanced once in his direction to see if he was even listening. He must have taken my glance as a dictate because finally he said something. “Fishing from a pond year-round. That’d be nice.”

Rose’s face fell.

Lorelei put a hand over her mouth, but I could still hear her gasp. She said, “Oh, my gosh. I never thought of this before. Those fish were like pets to us. I certainly hope the new owners of our house knew that koi were not for eating.”

Rose paled. “Don’t even say such a thing.”

I said, “They knew.” When I looked over at Ray again, his cheek buckled in and he turned down his eyes. We chatted on about the weather and food; then, as the conversation was so strained with Ray around, I said we should be on our way.

“Long drive ahead of us,” Ray finally spoke again as we rose to leave. Then we wished them a happy holiday and left.

In the truck, Ray drove away in silence. Miles away, his body at last conformed to the seat. He glanced my way. “Sorry I said that about the fish.”

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smile. “It’s okay” Now I could see the humor in the situation, but I doubted Ray could.

He focused ahead on the road. “What are koi fish anyway?”

“They look like big orange and white goldfish,” I told him. “They’re ornamental. People put them in garden ponds, just for show.”

Again, he glanced my way. “I didn’t know.”

Of course he didn’t. And how would he? “Don’t give it another thought.”

But for the rest of the drive out to Martha‘s, I think Ray gave it plenty of thought. Almost at their house, he said to me in a whisper, “I’m not any good with new people.”

“Ray” I turned to look at him across the pile of pies and casserole dishes.

“In school, science was always my worst subject. One day in biology class, I was distracted, when all of a sudden my professor asked me to name the four chambers of the heart. I guess I thought I was back in English Romantic poetry, because I thought he had asked me to name the four ‘dangers’ of the heart. I pondered for a minute, then I said the first danger of the heart was probably falling in love.” I stopped and remembered my embarrassment.

“Everyone in my class nearly died from laughter, except the professor, who asked me if I thought science was a joke.” I shook my head.

“I had to force myself to return to class again after that.”

Now I had him smiling. “Sure enough?” he said. “You did that?”

As we drove on, I remembered how foolish I’d felt. I was mad at myself for weeks afterward. Dangers of the heart indeed. And how odd the way things had turned out. That love had come dangerously for me, just as then I’d predicted it would.

I stared out at the slick, icy road and remembered the days after Edward left.

In only four days, I had mailed him four letters.

I couldn’t sit still. I had to talk about it, so I met up with Abby and Bea.

I remembered how we sat together in Father’s car at the drive-in, eating cheeseburgers.

I told them every detail about Edward—our dancing together, his crooked smile and suntanned skin, his hesitant manner of speaking.

How close I felt to my sisters on that day.

All three of us, after all, were women in love.

In the first few weeks, it never occurred to me that Edward wouldn’t keep his word.

When no letters had come in four weeks, I excused it as lack of time, his backcountry training, of course.

Perhaps weather had hindered the mail delivery.

But each empty-handed walk away from the mailbox put more weight into my shoes.

Each day, I was beaten down lower, just as the flowers in Mother’s garden had been drummed into the dirt by strange summer hailstorms. At first I accepted that perhaps his feelings hadn’t been as deep as mine, but I still never imagined I wouldn’t see him again.

Edward had said he wasn’t much of a writer, so perhaps he’d telephone me instead.

I started staying home all the time, just in case.

As each day passed and as I realized that the unspeakable had happened, claws of despair tore me off my very bones.

Not only had I suffered the worst loss of faith, I had created a problem unthinkable for me to have.

I told Abby, not so much out of pain as out of panic.

Ray ground the truck to a stop in front of the house, and then he started lifting out the dishes and pies we’d brought to share.

Finally, I moved, too. I found Martha busy in the kitchen making final preparations for the feast we’d all later share.

Ray joined Hank somewhere outside, and Ruth helped me to don an apron.

As she tied the strings behind my back, she asked, “May I touch the baby?”

I took her hand and placed it on the ball of my abdomen. “If you wait for a few minutes, you might be able to feel a kick.”

Ruth looked up at me in the way I used to look up to my professors. We stood like that until the baby, as if on command, shifted inside me and gave Ruth what she had been waiting for. Her face spread open in a smile. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “She feels so strong.”

“She?” Martha quipped as she steamed around the kitchen. “So you’ve decided this child will be a girl?”

Ruth blushed. “I can always hope, can’t I?”

A thought occurred to me. If this child turned out to be a boy, he would carry on the Singleton name for both Ray and Daniel. The Singleton name without an ounce of Singleton blood flowing inside him. “I wish for a girl, too.”

Before dinner, Ray tormented Chester and Hank Jr. with still another card trick while Ruth sat beside me and finally said, “You didn’t notice.”

I took a good look at her. She had a new hairstyle, a bob. “Oh, yes, I did,” I lied. “I noticed right away, but I decided to tease you and say nothing.” Now she smiled. “By the way, it looks lovely.” She turned her eyes down. “You look more grown up than ever.”

At the dinner table, we said a prayer of Thanksgiving.

We circled a feast of ham and a stuffed turkey, nutty and fruity salads, peeled mashed potatoes with gravy, and sweet potatoes baked with marshmallows.

Before she started passing around the dishes, Martha explained to me that in their family, they held a round of personal thanks before Thanksgiving dinner.

“We each say what we’re most grateful for. ”

Martha smiled, looked around the table, and began. “I’m grateful for all of you, of course. But I’d also like to say that I’m thankful this war is nearing its end. And I’d like to pray that never again should we have to go through another world war.”

She looked to her side, at Hank. He cleared his throat, then spoke, one elongated word at a time. “I’d have to say I’m thankful for the harvest this year.”

Chester said he was thankful for Christmas vacation and the time he’d have off from school, and Hank Jr. seconded his brother’s sentiments.

Wanda was going to be a woman taken seriously someday. She said, “I’m grateful that none of us has polio.” That holiday season, over twenty thousand cases had been reported in the U.S. alone.

Ruth, who went next, fixed her eyes on me. “The baby coming. I’m going to have a cousin!”

Then Ray, who seemed to have prepared his response, spoke. He looked over at me and said, “Daniel’s seat beside me isn’t empty.”

Ray had unruly eyebrows that, at that moment, I wanted to smooth out with the tips of my fingers. On the table before me sat Martha’s food, mixed of a kind of clan language I didn’t yet know. Something was gnawing at the fisted, beating muscle inside my chest.

I looked up. To my surprise, I saw that everyone was waiting for me. I hadn’t realized I’d be expected to take a turn. What could I possibly say?

I began searching my mind. It had to be something not too sentimental but meaningful, and certainly nothing that would come across as trite.

In my classes during discussion time, often I wouldn’t hear other students’ comments because I was so deep in the throes of practicing my own lines. But here, I’d had no rehearsal time.

“Flowers,” I blurted out. “For the poppies in the field at Normandy. For the tulip bulbs that saved so many Dutch people from starving.”

I looked around at each of them. But they didn’t reply, nor did they move. I had gone last, but still, no one was beginning to eat.

“After a fire, did you know that red fireweed grows in and covers all the burnt ruins of the forest?”

Now I looked around at their faces filled with silent compassion and waiting for something else from me. “And for my mother. She loved all flowers, you know.”

Ray reached over and took my hand in his. And this time, I had no urge to pull it away.