Chapter 7 #3
He didn’t answer. The waitress set down our banana split, which appeared at least half whipped cream.
She made small talk until she saw we didn’t want it, and again left us to ourselves.
Leonard nudged the banana split toward me, but I shook my head.
He picked up his spoon and poked at the whipped cream, then set the spoon back down.
“Japan,” he said. “Kyushu.”
I will tell you that right at that moment, sitting there in that diner, I knew something bad would happen to him. I felt it as a weight inside me, something hard and sharp in my chest.
“Come on,” he said. He moved the banana split out of the way and reached for my arm. “It’s not even three years anymore. I’ve already done fourteen weeks. But I know it’s far.”
“It’s by the Soviet Union,” I said. “That’s why they’re sending you there. Japan’s by the Soviet Union.”
“It’s by a lot of places.” He lifted my hand and kissed it. “I’ll be fine.”
“That could change,” I said. “Three years. We could be at war with Russia any minute.”
He said if we went to war with Russia, I’d be in as much danger here in Florida as he would be in Japan. Everything was different now, as the Russians had the bomb, too. I knew that was right. Or I’d heard that before. But my foreboding, what I felt, was for him.
“And I’ll be on a big American base over there. Missing you, sure, but not in danger. I’ll probably be doing some officer’s laundry. Mopping floors, that kind of thing.”
A fly landed on the whipped cream, already melting. Neither one of us waved it away. The jukebox went silent, then shuffled and clicked through its records.
“Do your parents know?”
“Not yet.” He paused, rubbing his temples. “I’ll tell them when I see them tomorrow.”
They would hate me even more. But that wasn’t what was needling me. I still felt it in my chest, that he would die. If he went to Japan, he would die.
“Leonard,” I said. “Don’t go. Let’s just go somewhere together, me and you. We can get married.” I hesitated, then made the decision. “I’ll marry you right now if you stay.”
The mournful eye took me in. “It’s too late for that,” he said.
“No, it isn’t.” It would only be too late if he went overseas. For now, he was with me, right in front of me.
“Nora,” he said. “It’s too late.” He explained that at this point, it was Japan or jail. And anyway, he’d taken an oath. And still, I argued. When I started to cry, he handed me a napkin.
“We have right now,” he said. “We have tonight.” His voice was soothing and certain. “Come on, Nora. Come on. It won’t be forever. I’ll be fine.”
But he wouldn’t be. I knew it. And I would never love anyone as much. I knew this as well.
—
Later, when I was being interviewed, really, interrogated, about why I made the decision I made that night, I would be asked, again and again, how I could have been so foolish.
Had I been drinking? No. Did he pressure me?
He did not. There was only the headiness of our names on the register, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, and the key to the room, the lock on the door, and inside, a queen bed, a bathroom with a shower, and a view of the Manatee River on its way out to the sea.
We left the heavy curtains open, and the sheer curtains rose and fell with the breeze for the rest of that day, and into the night.
I didn’t say all that to the social worker, of course. I was already mortified. And anyway, she would have had none of it. Everything in her expression, her tone, said she’d heard it all before.
“Why take the risk?” she asked. “You knew he was going to leave.”
“Because I loved him,” I said. “Because I had a bad feeling, a terrible feeling.”
“Nora,” she said. “That doesn’t make any sense. If you felt you were about to lose him, why would you want to get yourself into this predicament? Why would you shame your family?”
“Because it would be our only chance.” I was crying. It didn’t matter. She remained unmoved. “Because I wanted that with him.”
“And? What else did you want?”
“Nothing,” I said, and I told her more truth, or what I believed was the truth: I’d made not a decision, but a mistake.
We thought we were being careful. I wanted to die, having to say these words to her, but I made myself.
I told her the army sent him home with condoms, but not with clear instructions on how to use one.
We didn’t know he couldn’t linger, I said. Linger. That was the word I managed.
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re a smart girl.” She waited. “Maybe too smart.”
She was good at her job, the social worker.
Because I hadn’t yet acknowledged, even to myself, that I remembered holding on to him, my calves wrapped around his, his quickened heartbeat against mine.
He was stronger than I was, of course, but maybe not at that moment.
Or maybe he really didn’t know, or didn’t feel, what was happening.
I did. But I wasn’t afraid, not of that.
I feared only never getting to touch him again, never hearing him say my name.
I feared him being lost—not just to me but to the world. So I held on.
The other fear would come later, when I was again alone.