Chapter 58
I WAS OUT-OF-MY-MIND EXCITED to tell Paul about the house, so I watched the clock all afternoon, and when it was finally a quarter to six, I set off for the pier, where I figured I’d meet the liberty boat.
I got there early, but I wasn’t the first woman there by a long shot.
Laura and the woman I’d met at the luncheon—Rita—were leaning against the hood of Rita’s Corolla, deep in conversation, and Mary Lou was standing a few dozen feet from them with Bev and a couple of women I didn’t recognize.
I said hey to Rita and Laura, then waved at Rita’s three kids in the backseat.
“What’ve you been up to?” Laura asked, and I filled them both in on the house.
“It sounds perfect,” said Rita.
“Paul hasn’t seen it, so I’m a little nervous he won’t like it.”
Laura shook her head in amusement. “Do you like it?”
“I think so.”
“Well, that’s all that matters, in my opinion.”
Rita nodded. “Happy wife, happy life, right?”
She had a point, although I’d never heard it spelled out in quite those terms.
Across the parking lot, Mary Lou was making exaggerated arm movements. “What’s she so worked up about?” I asked.
Laura rolled her eyes. “The mayor is threatening to shut down the commissary and the NEX.”
“Manzoni?” I asked.
“Is that his name?” said Laura.
One of Rita’s kids had climbed out the window, and she warned him to get back inside the car. “It’s a load of bullshit,” she said, and for a second, I wasn’t sure if she was talking about motherhood or Manzoni’s threat.
Laura repeated what Mary Lou had told them, how Manzoni was accusing the navy of not getting the right permits. “He’s saying he’s going to close both retail operations indefinitely.”
“Can he do that?” I asked.
“Mary Lou says no,” said Laura. “That he’s just trying to make sure everyone knows he can come down hard on the Americans when he wants to.”
“Because of the elections?” I said.
“Yeah, maybe?”
The liberty boat arrived right on time, and as soon as it drew close enough for me to make out individual faces, I started waving at Paul like a maniac. Rita thought this was adorable. “Young love,” she teased as she walked around to the driver’s side door of her car and got in.
Paul was slow disembarking on account of his bad toe.
By the time he was standing in front of me, Laura and Rita had claimed their husbands and taken off, and everyone else had shut themselves inside their cars or begun to walk toward the town center.
Paul kissed me, but I was careful not to let my lips linger in case Mary Lou was watching from her Caprice.
“Guess what?” I said as I pulled back to look at him. “We’ve got a house!”
He seemed genuinely stunned, so I rushed to explain Marcello’s phone call and everything that had followed. “He wanted an answer, and I really hope I didn’t screw up saying yes.”
“So it’s a done deal?”
“Well, I mean, technically, no. Marcello said he’d have the lease ready for us to sign tomorrow, but yeah—it’s ours.”
“Wow,” said Paul, and I wasn’t sure how to read it. Was it a Wow, I’m excited or more like a Wow, I can’t believe you committed to a house without showing it to me?
I was so nervous, I just kept talking. “It’s got two bedrooms and plenty of parking and this gorgeous garden…” I trailed off.
“Is it in town?” he asked.
“Ummm,” I said hesitantly, “sort of. You know that turnoff near the gas station on the way to the city beach?”
“Yeah?”
“You turn there and then drive up into the hills past the Villa Webber.”
“Drive?”
This was what I’d been worried about. Both of us had said that we wanted to be in town or close to it, somewhere it’d be easy to get by with only one car.
And here I’d gone and committed to a place that was at least a mile outside of town, if not more.
“You definitely could walk.” I looked down at his toe, which was in a boot. “Just maybe not right now.”
“Eileen—”
“I already figured it out. I can drive you back and forth to the pier. In the morning and at night.”
“That’s a big commitment.”
“A lot of the wives do it. It’ll help me get to know people. And that way, I can keep the car during the day.”
He seemed to consider this. “How much is the rent?” he asked, and when I told him, he looked relieved. It was within our housing allowance, which meant that we wouldn’t have to dip into his basic pay to cover the difference.
“I didn’t want to see it without you,” I said, which was true. “And I never would have committed like this, except Marcello told me it wouldn’t last long.”
“No, no,” he said, like he was working hard to believe me. “That makes sense.”
Honestly, he took the news better than I’d expected. Maybe it was because he was so eager to get out of the hotel, or maybe it was because navy wives were supposed to pinch-hit for their husbands, and this morning, I had done precisely that.
“When do I get to see it?” he asked.
“How about now?”