The Magic of Ordinary Days (29 page)

That evening after dinner, I sprawled out on the floor and began wrapping Christmas presents. When I came to that wallet for Father, my offering, I rubbed my fingers along the grooves in the leather. I placed the wallet in a box and began wrapping. Father and I weren't so different from each other. He had lost himself before her death, but I had crumbled afterward. Neither of us had been as strong as we'd wanted to be. Perhaps the scene on the front would remind him of those days in the mountains after the first snow, those good times.

Ray was finishing up the last of a cobbler I'd made for dessert. He stood up from the table and put his plate in the sink. Then he stood around in different spots on the kitchen floor. Finally he came forward, stood over me, and pointed to the wrapped packages. His scent of earth and soap came with him. “You've done your shopping?”

“Well, I'm not finished yet.” I had purchased presents for my family in Denver, but had bought nothing for Martha, Hank, and the kids. I would've loved to buy a bicycle for the boys, but with rubber and metal so scarce, new ones weren't available. And what would I get for Ray? I sat back and rested on the heels of my hands. “But I've made a good dent.”

Ray pulled up a chair and sat before me. The tips of his old work boots looked up at me like a pair of wise old eyes. I tied a ribbon around the last package. Now finished, I shoved the box aside and looked down at my hands. “I'm sorry for all I've done to hurt you, Ray. Maybe I should never have come here.”

His boots hadn't moved, and his voice was the softest I'd ever heard it. “You were supposed to come here. I knew it the second I saw you.

Now I sat still. “Ray, I wasn't supposed to come here. I had dreams far different from this. I thought I did have a destiny, but it wasn't this one.” I wanted him to understand. “There are so many things I planned on doing, places I dreamed of going. What you know of me is simply the outside shell. You don't know what creature lives inside me yet.”

His hands, which I'd watched for over three months now, hung down before me, the curled fingers motionless. Underneath his nails, I could still see faint lines of dirt from this land he so loved. “I know enough,” he said. “And I want to know more.”

I shook my head. “I never imagined a marriage like this.”

“I didn‘t, either.”

I wanted to understand his love, to see it clearly before me, to put it into a form I could roll around in my palm and examine like modeling clay. Or I wanted to write it with words of reason and illustrate it with romance. I wanted to study it as once I'd studied my books. I still remember the way the kitchen light filled the room behind him when I said, “I don't understand, Ray. Many girls get in trouble. I could've been any one of them. Do you love me just because I came here?”

“Of course not,” he said in a whisper.

I cocked my head to one side. “Then why?”

Ray continued to defy all logic. “I love you because you came here to me.”

Thirty

Perhaps because Ray and I were speaking again, I rested well throughout that night. The tension that had run through the house like wire on fire seemed to be burning itself out.

The next day was Sunday. I wore the new suit Lorelei and Rose had made for me to church. In the kitchen after the service, Ruth came rushing up to me to get a closer look at it, her eyes as big and wide open as ever. “Where did you get this?” she asked me and touched a finger to the shoulder seam.

Ruth was such an observant girl. She could tell just by the sight of this suit that I hadn't bought it anywhere close by or even ordered it from a mail-order catalog. “My friends from Amache custom-made it just for me. In their family, everyone is an expert tailor.”

Ruth ran her hand down the collar, then took a step back to get the overall effect. “It's wonderful.”

“We could hire them,” I said. “To make a suit for you.”

Ruth put her hand over her mouth to hide a grin. “A suit for me?”

“Sure. You're a young woman now. With a bright future, too. You never know when you might need a good suit.”

Ruth looked amazed, and I could swear she blushed. She was still lost in wonder over my suggestion when Martha came up and handed me something on a covered plate. “It's angel food cake,” she said with a sad little smile. “Angel food for the baby.”

I took it from her, but wondered why she would be baking for Ray and me. We still received pies and cakes from Mrs. Pratt all the time, and I'd been trying some recipes for new holiday desserts I'd found in the newspaper. “Thank you,” I told her. “But you shouldn't have bothered.”

Martha had dullness in her eyes I'd not seen before, and she looked tired, too, but she kept the smile on her face anyway. “We've been baking a lot lately.” She glanced over at Ruth, who had now been taken away from her thoughts of new suits, I could tell, and was looking at the floor. “To get our minds off of other things, you know.”

Ruth glanced up and gave me a knowing look.

Pearl Harbor Day coming up on Thursday, of course. The loss of Daniel. The next few days were going to be tough ones for this family. But Martha would never say it aloud.

“Maybe we could go shopping together,” I suggested. “I don't really know what I should be buying for the baby.”

Ruth now beamed at me from beside her mother, and Martha looked pleased, too.

“I haven't bought anything yet, and I'm sure I should be stocking up. ”

Martha said, “We'd sure enjoy helping you.”

“Love to,” echoed Ruth.

The next morning, I stretched out in bed and waited for the now familiar baby kicks to begin. After the first nudge or two, I got up, threw on my robe, and headed for the kitchen. On the table, instead of Ray's breakfast dishes, I found a dusty old box. I moved in closer. Ray apparently had ripped off the tape, so I opened the flaps.

Inside, I found stacks of old framed photographs. On top was one of Ray's family. In it, Martha looked to be a preteenager, Ray was a boy of about five, and then, in their mother's arms, I saw the tiny plumped face of a baby who could only be Daniel. I didn't touch anything, didn't lift anything out, but I did peer closer into the dark corners of the box. I could see bronzed baby shoes in one corner, and in another, a stack of silver baby cups. Beneath the framed photos, it looked like albums, perhaps yearbooks and scrapbooks, too.

Back in my room, I threw on clothes and thrust my arms into my overcoat. I found Ray outside the barn, moving haystacks from the truck bed inside.

“Morning,” he said as he lifted a bale of hay and tossed it inside the barn.

I gave a half smile. “I saw the box.” I put my hands in my pockets. “I looked inside, but I won't touch anything without your permission.”

He kept working. “I got it down for you.”

“From the attic?”

He nodded and slowed for a moment. “I told you once Martha had pretty much everything. But I didn't tell you that Daniel had put a bunch of stuff in our attic after our folks died.” He stopped to catch his breath. “It did make it easier.” He gestured around, outside the barn. “They're everywhere around here, anyway.” Then he looked at me. “But those photos and other things, why, they were like flags waving sadness in our faces. After Daniel died, I did the same thing with his stuff, too.”

Just outside his ear, I saw a thin line of shaving cream he had apparently missed that morning. I wanted to brush it away, to touch his cheek, to see how soft it would feel after a shave. “After I look through the box, what shall I do with it?”

He leaned on the pitchfork. “I couldn't face it before, but now ...” His voice trailed off, then he said, “You can do anything you want.”

The sun was beginning to burn off the chill of the morning. Icicles that hung from the barn eaves began dropping tears on the ground. But Ray looked relieved, as if he'd finally shed his sadness. Three years since Daniel's death, and even longer since his parents‘. Three years it had taken him to get to this spot.

“I'd like to put them out. The house is so bare anyway. And I think it's those personal things, those remembrances, that make a house into a home.”

He nodded. “Go on ahead, then.”

But as I walked back up the steps into the kitchen, and then found myself standing before the box again, I hesitated to do it. It wouldn't be fair to pry into these lives, especially those ones dead and gone that meant so much to Ray, if I wasn't at least willing to try it. I looked back outside and watched the easy, comfortable shape of him stepping outside the barn as he hooked another bale of hay.

The house did seem warmer when he came home. The awful news of the war had been easier to take when he was here to share and validate the horror of it with me. He continually surprised me by doing things, such as magic tricks, I'd never have imagined him likely to do, such as checking out that book from the library, marking on his calendar with my name, thanking me for the strangest things. We didn't share a single interest, but he had found things in me to love. And over the past months, the pain of losing Mother had become less dreadful in his company.

I opened the box and touched the top photo frame. What would happen if I just gave in and allowed him to love me? Could I continue to be the seeker I'd always been, only planted here on this growing ground instead of far away? Outside, Ray had paused from his work to throw a stick to Franklin. When that dog came loping back up to him with the stick in his mouth, panting and so proud of himself, Ray crouched down and scratched both sides of Franklin's neck at once.

I lifted the first photo out of the box, brushed it off, and started back in time. I didn't know it then, but as I went down into that box of Ray's gentle love, I was traveling back in time, too, peeling off layers of past pain and grief, and beginning to heal my own damaged heart.

On Wednesday, I went shopping with Martha and Ruth. We bought diapers and diaper pins, some yellow receiving blankets, and a few long white baby gowns. We looked at cradles and bas sinets, but I didn't find one I liked enough to buy.

The next day, December 7, Ray emerged from his room as if the day were like any other. He sat down, prayed as usual, and then began eating the eggs over easy and sausage I'd made for breakfast.

I waited until he had finished up, had downed each bite and emptied his coffee mug, too. Then I whispered, “Ray, I want to help you.” I put my napkin on the table and moved in closer. “To get through this day. Maybe we could go somewhere, do something special.”

He looked up at me, and to my surprise, his eyes were dry.

I asked, “Where would you like to go?”

He rubbed his chin. “The truth is”—he sat back in the chair—“I'd like to stay around the farm. I could show you more parts you never seen before.”

I smiled. “That sounds fine. Whatever you want.”

The sun was coming up warm, but still we loaded up coats and a thermos full of hot coffee. Ray drove away in the direction opposite where he'd taken me before. We passed by clumpy dirt in empty fields spiked with every shade of brown dry plants, then, unexpectedly, a broad green rectangle of winter wheat lit up the landscape, looking to me exactly like a park of summer grass.

As we drove out, I asked Ray, “How does it feel to have all the photos and things around?” The night before, after I'd sifted through the box, I'd dusted and found a spot for each item around the house. The photos of Ray's parents; childhood pictures of Martha, Ray, and Daniel; scrapbooks; yearbooks; Ray's and Daniel's bronzed baby shoes—silver baby cups engraved with their names; and the greatest find of them all—the Singleton family Bible filled with information and words of inspiration on every birth and death over generations. These treasures now adorned every room.

“It's not bad,” Ray said and looked over. “There's more, you know. In the attic. Her china, her knickknacks, and whatnot. She collected buttons.”

“Your mother? Buttons? I knew she collected stones for the garden, but I didn't know she could sew.”

“She did sew.” Ray nodded. “But most of those buttons never got put on clothes. There's all kinds. Old ones, brass ones, ones with tiny birds and other things painted on the fronts. They're in the attic, a whole box of them in jars.”

I tried to imagine what else might be up there. Even in my exalted, blown-up physical state, I could climb up there and find it, examine it all.

Ray seemed to know what I was thinking. “Oh, no, you don't. You're not going up there after it.” He put his hand on the seat between us. “It's yours,” he said. “If you want it. But please let me get it down for you. Promise?”