Chapter 28 #5
He said no. She’d been clear, from the start, that she wanted to stay in Florida.
He didn’t. He’d only been sticking around, he said, because he knew his absence had been hard on his parents, and he hadn’t been sure what he wanted to do next.
Now he had no reason to stay. And he was done, he said, absolutely done, with the South.
He said there’d been another prisoner in the camp from St. Pete, a sergeant who’d also fought in France.
His name was Ronald Lewis, and he was a black man, so he’d gone to Gibbs, not St. Pete High.
He and Leonard didn’t have any mutual acquaintances.
Not one. But when Sergeant Lewis heard where Leonard was from, he came and found him in the camp, and proposed a deal: If only one of them made it home alive, the other would carry a message to the loved ones of the other.
Sergeant Lewis memorized the names of Leonard’s parents, and my name as well.
Leonard told him he could find me working at the library by Mirror Lake, and Leonard memorized the name of the sergeant’s wife, who worked as a nurse at Mercy Hospital, and the names of the sergeant’s two daughters, who both attended Gibbs.
In the end, they both made it back to St. Pete.
Leonard had been home six months before he bumped into Sergeant Lewis at the ballgame, the same one I’d gone to with Russ.
The sergeant told Leonard he barely recognized him, wearing civilian clothes, and clean shaven. Leonard laughed and said the same.
“But you know,” Leonard said, “we couldn’t go get a beer together.
We had to leave the field to even talk. This man fought in two wars for this country, and almost starved in Korea, and he can’t sit on a bench downtown, or go in the front door of a restaurant.
His girls couldn’t go to a swimming pool until just this summer, until someone donated the money for a separate one.
” He squinted through the windshield at the diner.
“He’s staying in St. Pete because his father is sick.
So he’s got a reason. I don’t. Not anymore. ”
“Will you go to New York?” I asked. I was thinking he had an aunt there, and cousins. “Or is Dale still in New Hampshire?”
Leonard said no, not New York, and not New Hampshire. He wouldn’t go anywhere with cold weather. He gestured to the blister on his nose, and to a scaly spot on his cheek. “Frostbite. It bothers me more in cold weather,” he said. “What’s left of my fingers, too. I was thinking about Phoenix.”
He reached up to pull down his visor, then reached over to pull mine down as well. I wanted to take hold of his arm and pull him to me.
“Phoenix,” I said. “I heard it’s nice.”
“Maybe Phoenix,” he said. “You know, as soon as I got back, my mom was talking about how I should apply to school in California. I couldn’t figure it out, how she seemed like she’d missed me so much, then couldn’t wait for me to get so far away.”
I told him his mother had suggested California to me as well.
“Before I married Russ.” I spoke slowly. I wanted him to understand. “She told me you’d fallen in love with a girl in Japan, and that I should take my broken heart to California.”
He was silent, taking this in. I thought, okay, at least I have that. At least he understands I didn’t just get tired of waiting.
After a while, he sort of laughed and said it would have been funny if we’d both taken his mother’s advice, gone to California, and bumped into each other out there. But then he closed his mouth tight, and I could see he was trying not to cry. She’d broken his heart, too.
“Are you happy?” he asked. “Are you happy with him?”
I nodded.
He waited. “Will you look at me and answer?”
I turned to look at him and tried to nod once more. My old failing, failing me again.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
He said it mattered to him. He said I’d saved him twice—the first time in high school when he was so unsure of himself, and dying of loneliness. Or feeling like he was dying. And then again in Korea, where he really might have died.
“You got me through it,” he said. “And it’s more than that. You know, Nora. I’ll be okay. I want you to know that. I’ve got life ahead of me, and I’m grateful for it. But if I look back on my life so far, and I think of my happiest moments, most of them are with you.”
I closed my eyes, wiped my cheeks again. I would have those words as well. They would have to be enough.
“Are you saying it doesn’t matter to you if you’re happy?”
I shrugged and looked at my hands, all ten fingers intact. “I don’t think I can be,” I said. “I don’t think that’s in the cards for me now.”
He slapped the steering wheel. I looked up at him. It was the exact same thing his mother had done that night she drove me home.
“Did your mom ever talk to you over there?” I asked. “Were your parents ever in your head?”
He didn’t like that question. I could see it on his face. But after a while, he nodded. “Her especially,” he said.
Well, there you go, I thought. We’d all helped to bring him home. And not one of us deserved him.
“I better get back,” I said. No part of me wanted that to be true. But the shade from the diner had disappeared. It was already well past noon.
“Can I write to you?” Leonard asked. “Would Russ be upset if you got a letter from me? I don’t mean like pen pals. I just want you to have an address. I want you to be able to reach me if there’s ever—”
“They seal the records,” I said. “She’s lost for good.”
He nodded. “I mean if you ever need something. Anything. I don’t know where I’ll be yet, but when I do, I want you to at least know how to get in touch with me.”
I wanted to tell him yes. But it wasn’t a good idea. I usually got the mail, but not always. I told him if he needed to reach me, he could write to Mae.
He turned the key in the ignition, but we stayed parked in the sun, the engine humming.
“I just want to make sure,” he said. “You’re happy with him? Being married to him?”
I told him happiness came from deciding to be happy. From the quality of your thoughts.
He raised the one good eyebrow. “You’ve been reading Marcus Aurelius.”
I laughed, and he did, too.
“You know,” he said. “He also said you assemble your life, action by action. You’ve assembled one, Nora. Is it the one you want? That’s what I’m asking.”
I took a while to answer, to choose the right words.
“I think I’m living the life I should be living,” I said. I meant the life I deserved. But I knew better than to say this. I didn’t want him hearing sad violins when he thought of me, wherever he ended up.
He dropped me off where he’d picked me up, where the road from the Treasure Island Causeway intersects with Paradise Boulevard.
Again there were cars behind us, honking and impatient.
We didn’t have time for a long goodbye, or an embrace.
I thought maybe that was for the best. I’d given a lot of thought to Miss Berry telling me I’d be smart not to ever hold my baby.
She might have been lying about that, too, just trying to get what she wanted.
But for all I knew, I’d have been better off taking that advice.
When I was again alone, walking back to the house, I came up with the idea that I could borrow Leonard’s trick from Korea, and keep an imaginary version of him in my head.
When I turned onto Dolphin Drive, the hot wind was blowing so hard I had to hold tight to my sun hat, and with every step, the sawing and hammering got louder.
Still, not exactly a prison camp. And it helped, having imaginary-Leonard telling me I was doing fine, that I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
But when I caught sight of my own front door, my feet felt particularly heavy.
“Keep going!” imaginary-Leonard said. “You can do it!”
My imaginary-Leonard wasn’t better than the real one. The real Leonard would have given me entirely different advice. I made it inside, but after I closed the door behind me, I knew very well I was alone.