“Married!” cried Emma, embracing the bride. “You could knock us both over with a feather. But at least we can be so happy that it’s you, Lizzie. You’ve heard a hundred times, I’m sure, how your mother and I used to wheel your carriages side by side. Now tell us: What are your plans? When are you going?”
“Flight school,” Jon said. “I want to pilot a bomber. So we’ll be heading south next week. Lizzie’ll be with me till I go overseas. She can get some sort of job while I train.”
He looked proud, and so young, and so vulnerable. Adam swallowed hard before speaking.
“We must get together with your parents, Lizzie, and have a gala send-off.”
“That’s what my mom and dad said.”
“Then we’ll have two send-offs,” Emma declared stoutly. “We can eat two big dinners within one week, can’t we?”
At the front door they stood watching Elizabeth’s car disappear down the road. When they looked at each other’s faces, they could see that neither had any words with which to express his feelings, and each turned back to the task at hand.
My hand is trembling, and I am ashamed. Who am I to be any different from all the other hundreds of thousands whose sons are going into the line of fire? But perhaps their hands are trembling, too? Adam asked himself. But it is only that I have the first Jonathan on my mind. Surely one loss like that is more than enough from any family. I am ashamed, I who have always been proud of my optimism, my certainty that if you keep your head and keep calm, everything will work out. Now, when I should have confidence, I have none. I know as I sit here in my safe little room that my son will crash from the sky in flames.
And if this war lasts, then James will go. . . .
He got up from the chair and went outdoors into springtime, where birds crowded the feeder and naturalized daffodils sprinkled the grass. At the movies lately, they had been showing the same spring scenery ripped and blown apart, houses crumbled, and young men dead. If I could do something about it, I would, he thought angrily, but there is nothing I can do.
Andy was pushing Eileen on the swing. He was a very nice kid, a very nice one, but no student like Jon and James, not driven to excel, yet he did. Sometimes it seemed as if everybody in town must know Andy Arnring, or that he, so friendly, enthusiastic, and even a little bit nosy, too, must know everyone.
Fourteen, he was. God willing, the war would be over before he would follow his brothers overseas. . . .
So he stood there watching his children, wondering what life would do to them, and what they would do with life if they should be lucky. Certain skills were inborn. Long ago, that first Jonathan had known what he wanted to be, and now young James seemed to be following in those footsteps. Jonathan would follow his father into the business. The girls, of course, would get married. They were both pretty and would be even prettier in a few years. Neither one of them would look like their mother, but then, how many women were there who had Emma’s beauty and her talent?
Music, it seemed, had died out in this generation. Eileen, at eleven, had been having piano lessons for three years now and was already starting to rebel. Eileen was a rebel, anyway. Her shrieks of delight were loud and her skirts flew as she soared on the swing, while Louise below was waiting for her turn. Three years younger than her sister, it seemed that she was always waiting for her turn and having to wait too long. She was far too shy for her own good.
It was easy enough to bring them into the world, wasn’t it? But what to do with them, and for them afterward was another matter. It seemed there was so much more for parents to worry about than there used to be. Simon certainly had never stood watching his children and trying to plan their future. Now the choices were limitless. Anybody could be anything. The worry now involved the psyche; Freud had done that.
He called out to Andy. “Look at those weeping willows. They need water. Take the hose, please, Andy, and I’ll take care of the swing. Now get off, Eileen, and let Louise have her turn.”
“It’s not time yet. I haven’t finished my turn, Daddy.”
“Yes, you have. I’ve been watching you for ten minutes. Now get off.”
“Louise is such a crybaby. She wants everything just because she’s younger.”
“That isn’t true. She hasn’t said a word. Now climb on, Louise.”
Sometimes Eileen annoyed him. She wasn’t girlish enough. She didn’t play very much with dolls anymore, but liked to hang around her brothers, who didn’t want her in the middle of their football practice. But he tried hard not to show his annoyance. And he thought again of his father, who had never hidden the fact that Leo annoyed him—not that there could be any comparison between Leo and any children of his.
It had been a long time since he had thought about Leo. As far as Adam was concerned, Leo might as well have evaporated. What point was there in thinking about a person who didn’t exist anymore? And anyway, who can worry about the past while the world, or a large part of it, is burning?
“At least,” Emma said as they were listening to the news that night, “Jon is starting his life with a fine, dependable girl from a solid family. It will be nice to share our grandchildren with them. Think of that, Adam.”
She was trying her best with her usual optimism to console him. But lying beside her that night, he had his dreams, and he could not prevent them: First Jonathan’s face was smiling under his Air Force cap, and then he was crashing to earth in flames. Then came the face of the first Jonathan, complete to the faint worry lines on the forehead, then Leo . . . I said some awful things to him and maybe I shouldn’t have, even though he deserved them . . . and Pa telling me that sometimes people just hate each other . . . Faces. Faces.
Chapter 23
Outside, the November dusk is falling, while inside, for the first time in many years, all the chairs around the table are occupied, Emma at one end where the pies are being cut, and Adam at the other, where the remains of the turkey lie on a platter. They smile at each other without words. There is no need for any words. The boys are home.
All is what it used to be. A small fire flickers under the mantel, the candles flicker over the table, while memories flicker through Adam’s head: waiting with heart in mouth for the mail, the weekly films of wreckage, the times when they stood in line to give blood, the little girls learning to knit socks for the soldiers, and Andy’s constant misery over his rejection by the military because of his eyesight.
Even now, James has just finished assuring him that “without people like you working in defense plants, Andy, an army has no weapons.”
James has a way with people. It is no surprise that he wants to be a doctor; he has always wanted only to be a doctor.
They are having their second pieces of pumpkin pie, when Adam asks Jon when he is going to take off his uniform.
“Well, not for a long while, Dad.”
“What do you mean? That you’re so spruce in it, Major Arnring, with your gold leaf that you can’t bear to part with?”
Adam jokes, but the truth is that Jon, with his major’s gold oak leaves and a ribbon on his chest, is really remarkably well turned out.
“No. I’ve made a final decision. I’m staying in the service.”
“Staying in? Staying in?”
“Yes, I love the life. And Elizabeth’s willing.”
Jon looks around at the silent faces, all turned, as if commanded by a single thought, toward Adam.
“We always had an understanding that you’d go into the business,” Adam says.
“I know, and I was very interested in it. I appreciated the chance, and I always will appreciate it. But my heart’s in the Air Force now. I’ve had four years of it, and they’ve changed me.”
Talk about sinking hearts, Adam thinks. Mine has sunk to my shoes. He was going to take my place. He was going to carry on what I’ve built out of next to nothing. True, I have no right to plan my son’s life for him, but a father can hope.
It is a few minutes before he is able to reply. ?
??I am more disappointed than I can say, Jon. Of course I have no right to be so disappointed, but I have to be truthful. Selfish, but truthful.”
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m truly sorry. You wanted to hand this over to one of us, I know.”
“Tell everybody more about what you did on the home front, Andy,” says Emma, interrupting the uncomfortable silence.
So Andrew does. The wineglasses are refilled. Emma scoops ice cream and brings in a bowl of fruit. The painful subject is dropped.
The boys’ letters during these last hard years have naturally told almost nothing. Only now could one know that Jon had piloted one of the bombers that crossed the channel on D day, or that James had spent two weeks in an abandoned German farm shed during that final, desperate Battle of the Bulge.
Yes, they had done their part. Any disappointment on his part was unimportant and ungrateful. He was thinking so when the following evening there was a polite knock on the door, and Andy came up to the desk where Adam was working.
“I was wondering,” he began, “whether I could be the one to work in the store. What do you think, Dad?”
The father was embarrassed in front of his boy. But he wasn’t a boy; he was eighteen going on thirty! There was something about him, though, that made one think of him as a boy. What the deuce could he do in Cace Arnring, that citadel of perfection? He didn’t even dress neatly enough to be a salesman in the men’s department, which was very small and already had enough salesmen.
“You wouldn’t like it,” Adam said. “After working in a gun factory, you wouldn’t like being a clothing salesman, and that’s what a department store is all about.”
“Well, if I don’t try it, how can I know whether I’d like it or not?”
One couldn’t very well argue with such a reasonable statement.
“Give me a chance. If I don’t satisfy you, just throw me out.”
Jon would have been a presence in the store. He would have risen to department manager and up. And up.
“I’ll work for nothing. Try me, Dad.”
Suddenly Adam remembered another time and another young man whom he had not wanted to work at the store. But Leo hadn’t wanted the job. Had he?
“Okay,” Adam said finally. “Come to work with me on Monday, and I’ll find someplace for you.”
In the stockroom late Monday afternoon, Adam went looking for his son.
“How are you doing, Andy?” he inquired.
“Not badly, I guess. I’ve been counting things and putting them where I’m told they belong.” Andy looked around and lowered his voice. “It’s not especially stimulating work, to tell the truth.”
Somewhat stiffly, Adam retorted, “It has to be done, though.”
“I know, I know. But I was thinking of something as I went along. These thick cotton sweaters here—they’ve been around a long time, I hear, so they’ll have to be going on sale, which is too bad because they’re really nice, and they could bring in money, you know,” Andy said, looking so wise that Adam was amused.
“They could? How?”
“Simple. Have the alterations ladies make a felt outline of the words ‘Chattahoochee High,’ stitch it on every sweater—takes a few seconds with a machine—and these would fly out of the store. The guys would love them.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. And if you wanted to go a little further, you could have some with the words soccer, baseball, et cetera, if anybody wanted that, too.”
The markdown on a few heaps of sweaters was hardly the end of the world. Yet Andy’s face was alight with his proposal, and his eyes were so eagerly searching his father’s eyes that Adam couldn’t bear to disappoint him. “It’s something to think about, Andy.”
At dinner that night, Andy wanted to know whether Adam had made up his mind about the sweaters.
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t had time to think, but I will.”
“I have a lot of other ideas, you know.”
In Emma’s smile, Adam read her thought: Cute. Isn’t he the cutest?
“Tell us,” she said.
“Well, I was thinking about that glass-roofed space you have. You could get a lot more publicity out of it instead of just using it for big affairs. For instance, last year when Eileen and Louise had their artwork on exhibit in that store the school rented, you could have donated the space. The light from the glass roof would be perfect, all the parents and grandparents would have to walk through the store to get to the stuff—it would be great! Don’t you think so?”
“You could put my picture in the center,” Eileen said, “with my name in larger letters because I’m a daughter of the store.”
“I don’t know,” Louise said, “that wouldn’t look quite fair, would it?”
Eileen admonished her. “You’re always afraid of what people will think. Will you ever learn to stand on your own two feet?”
Emma’s impatient sigh was audible. Oh, those two sisters again. When will they ever—
“I hear,” Andy said, “that Jon is being transferred to a base in California. James told me yesterday.”
He was truly, truly kind, Andy was. Somehow, whenever in his presence the two girls started a battle of words, he managed to head it off by changing the subject.
“Let’s leave the store till the weekend,” Adam told him. “You and I will sit down together and talk.”
On Friday evening, Jeff Horace’s weekly column bore the heading:
ARNRING’S SECOND GENERATION PRESENTS HIS IDEAS.
Stunned beyond words, Adam read on about Andy’s ideas, to which more had been added: The glass-roofed room could be used for chamber music, such as his mother’s quartet; serious new artists from other parts of America could have their first exhibits at the Cace Arnring store . . .
Flinging the paper down, he demanded of Andy, “What the devil is this? Have you gone crazy? Do you realize what you’ve done? You called Jeff Horace?”
“Dad! I didn’t. I didn’t ask him to put this in the paper. I did cross over when I saw him on the other side of the street, that’s true. I know he’s a good friend of yours, and I just wanted to say hello. We just talked, that’s all.”
“You wanted publicity, don’t fool me, Andy.”
“Well, maybe I did have a little thought about something, but never all this.”
“You shot your mouth off. You made a fool of yourself, and of me. How am I going to explain this to the people, to the board, to the staff? I could wring Jeff’s neck. He knew better than to do this. And friend or no friend, I’m going to give him a piece of my mind.”
“Dad, I’m genuinely sorry. It was innocent, believe me—”
So it went in the Arnring house all Friday evening until exhaustion came at midnight and the lights were turned out.
But unexpected events occurred on Saturday. The men’s department was crowded with high school boys who wanted a decorated sweater, who put down their deposits and were promised one within ten days. The main floor was crowded with young men and women, all friends of Andy’s, who were surprised to learn that he’d started to work there. They all made quite a stir of enthusiasm on the ground floor, adding so much to the pre-Christmas enthusiasm that Adam came down from his office to see what the bustle was all about.
“I read in the paper that you might have an exhibit of children’s artwork here, Mr. Arnring. Do you remember me? Miss Bratton? I taught Louise in fifth grade. Such a darling, sweet child. I missed her when she went on to sixth. Are you really going to do it? I hope you do. It would be marvelous, Mr. Arnring.”
Adam did not remember her, but naturally he said he did. Nor did he know what he wanted to do, or what the board would want to do, about these exhibits, concerts, and all the rest of the stuff. But he was certainly being forced to think hard about them. What on earth had gotten into Andy’s head?
Six months later, June roses flamed in pots on tall new iron stands throughout the Cace Arnring store. Business, during the past half year, had inc
reased by two percent. Andy Arnring, now in charge of Customer Relations, was as visible and as welcome as the roses.
“He told her she needed a bag to match her new shoes,” one of the saleswomen reported to Adam. “He actually brought her over to me, and she bought two bags. He’s so friendly with that smile of his, and of course, that red hair. People don’t forget him.”
Reilly also had something to say. “The kid’s a natural. He’s a whole lot like you, Adam. The energy, the drive . . . just like you.”
“Strange,” Emma said when Adam repeated Reilly’s words. “Of all our three boys, I’d have said he was the very least like you. Isn’t it odd how you think you know a person, even your own child, when you really don’t at all?”
Chapter 24
The years went by, the boys all married and had children of their own, and every year the family gathered on Thanksgiving day to celebrate in the same way. Nothing ever changed, and nobody ever wanted any substitutions for the blue-and-white china, or the silver candlesticks, or the chrysanthemums on the center of the table.
Andy and his lovely wife Bernice came with their boys Tim and Doug. Elizabeth and Jon were there with their twin boys and two more younger ones, all of them very proper—unlike Andy’s jolly, noisy fellows. Jon was now Colonel Arnring with an eagle on his shoulder, and he was the most proper of all. Next to them sat Dr. and Mrs. James Arnring, with Raymond and Susan. Eileen’s customary tailored suit contrasted with Louise’s customary pretty dress. Adam was thinking that the dress looked like one they had just had in the store’s window last week, when Louise’s voice cut through the general hum of adults and squeals of children.
“I suppose now is as good a time as any to make my announcement to you all. I am going to get married.”
After a second of silence came a babble of voices. “What? When? Who is he? You never said—”