James Van Pelt - Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille

“I lost Robert in 1983,” said Erica, carrying a tray with cups and a coffee pot. “We’d just inherited the property from my mom and dad. He had a stroke while adding the garage.”

“I’m sorry.” Meadoe sat on the edge of the couch, unsure how to ask her questions, unsure, now that she was there that she wanted to ask them.

The elderly woman said, “It’s a long life, but you’ve got to live every minute of it. We had a few good years.” She balanced a cup on her knee and filled it with coffee, then filled the other and handed it to Meadoe. “I contributed to the oral history project a few years ago. Young man with a tape recorder came out and asked questions for a couple hours. Nice fellow, from the university. Don’t know what he did with all that blather.”

The coffee nearly blistered Meadoe’s lip. She blew across it and took a sip. A rich blend with a hint of licorice. “This is more for me than the library, I’m afraid. I wanted to talk about high school, about Nathaniel Shirley. I moved into his house.”

Erica put her cup on the table, then hid her hands in her lap. “What made you come to me?”

“Your picture together in a yearbook. I found drawings in the house that were his. Good art.”

Erica swayed a little, and when she reached for her coffee, her hand shook with a palsy Meadoe hadn’t noticed earlier. “He never drew me. I asked him to once, but he said he didn’t have the skill yet. He wanted to get me right.” Her voice quivered, not nearly as full as it had been at the door. She wiped at her eye. “Sorry, the infirmity of age. So many old friends have passed. I guess Nathaniel was the first.”

“Can you tell me about him?”

“It was a long time ago.” In the parlor a clock chimed the hour, six mellow gongs. Afternoon sun fell in a narrow strip along the carpet in front of the living room window. Meadoe drank again, almost holding her breath, barely noticing the scalding liquid.

“We started dating at the beginning of my senior year; he was a junior. Many of the older boys had left to Germany or the Pacific so the girls dated younger. He was a beautiful boy. Did you see his picture? He had long fingers, like a sculptor. I thought it was just a fling, of course, so I had a beau at Homecoming.” Erica sighed. “Girls now don’t understand what it was like then, I think. If a girl today likes a boy, she just asks him out. The feminists have it right; it’s a better system, but then—oh, then—a girl sat by the phone. He took me to Homecoming, and we had fun, but I didn’t fall in love until the next week. We were in choir. One morning I walked into the room, and there was a drawing of Tokyo Rose on the blackboard, a huge one done in colored chalks—he could really draw Tokyo Rose—and underneath he had written, “Erica Weiss is lovelier than Tokyo Rose.” He didn’t sign it, but we all knew, even the teacher. She didn’t erase it. It stayed there all period.”

Meadoe considered the room, the woman. It was hard to imagine her as a high school senior. In the pictures, she was pretty, curly black hair, bright eyes peeking at the camera. Meadoe couldn’t see the young woman in the old one. “I don’t know how to ask this; it sounds rude, and I don’t mean it to be, but I need to know. Were you two… serious? I mean… were you close?”

“Very close.” Erica looked at Meadoe and blushed. “Oh no, nothing like that. It was 1945, after all. Not today. We never… not ever. Good girls didn’t.”

“That’s not what I meant to imply.” Meadoe tried to smile, but that was exactly the question she wanted answered. The pinup girls. The touch on her back, the sitting on the couch in front of Casablanca were so sexual.

“Well, we were people, of course. Young people. I think most old folk forget how high their juices used to run, and the young ones, of course, believe they’ve invented sex. We thought about it. We wanted to, but I was firm. I was proper.” She looked past Meadoe at the pictures on the wall. “Most of the people I grew up with are dead now. I have their photographs.” She paused. The clock ticked. Meadoe cupped her coffee, warming her hands. “During the war young kids had less opportunity than they have now. They chaperoned the dances. My mother called slow dances, ‘vertical fulfillment of horizontal desires,’ and the chaperones separated you if they thought you were too close. We thought about it though, what with the boys going away to war. Some girls absolutely thought it was their patriotic duty.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No, we never did.” She looked miserable. “I graduated in ’45, and I was going to go to college. He still had a year left, but he told me he was signing up that summer, the summer he died.”

Talking about his death seemed to have exhausted her, so Meadoe helped put away the coffee cups.

“Did you see Casablanca with him?”

Erica closed a kitchen cabinet softly, hiding cups and saucers by the row. Meadoe believed most were never used, that the old woman took out the same cup or two everyday but never any more. The house seemed bigger now, and more empty.

“We did. At the Denham for an encore showing. It was a couple of years old by then.”

Meadoe remembered the popcorn, the quickening of breath. “Did you sit in the back row?”

They walked toward the front door. Erica paused. “Funny question.” She rubbed her brow in thought. “Yes… you’re right. We did. How did you know?”

Meadoe shrugged.

They said goodbye, but before Meadoe moved to the porch, Erica put her hand on Meadoe’s arm, stopping her. The old woman’s eyes were watery and pale, her gaze steady. “In August that year, my aunt in Fort Collins became ill. My mother left me alone in the house for three days. I was eighteen. She said she trusted me. For the first time since Nathaniel and I started dating we had an empty house. I was going to go to college. He was joining the army. I called him. He was coming to see me when he had his accident.”

Meadoe nodded dumbly. The woman’s grip was intense. Her mouth grim. “He never would have been in the intersection if I hadn’t called. All these years, all these years I’ve known, Nathaniel Shirley died because of me.”

August 5, Wednesday Evening: A Visitation

Meadoe left her car in front of Erica’s house and walked home, deep in thought.

Erica’s look stayed with her. The old woman’s grip on her arm. The way she said “Nathaniel.” Never “Nathan.” His whole name over and over again. When she’d spoke her final words it was if all the time between had been erased. As if only moments before she’d hung up the phone and sat in her empty house waiting for a boy who never arrived.

A half hour later as the dusk deepened, she rounded the corner onto her street. No cars were parked in front of the houses for once, and none of the neighbors were in the yards. Dinner time, she thought. But as she walked, she slowed. No cars. No people. Just the elms’ lazy sway, the stillness of summer lawns, the day’s last heat baking through the sidewalk. She turned to look behind her. For a moment nothing moved, and she marveled. This could be 1945, she thought. I have no evidence otherwise. Nathaniel might have seen his street just like this. A plane hummed away in the sky. Sunlight caught it there, way above her, like a golden cross: a four-engined golden cross. She thought, is that a B-29? But when she blinked, it became a jet. A car turned up the street, a mini-van that turned on its lights as it passed, and the moment vanished.

At first in the darkness inside her house, Meadoe didn’t notice the disarray. Silverware on the kitchen floor stopped her. Drawers were open. Canned goods scattered across the counters. Couch cushions were on the floor. Art hung crooked on the walls. Meadoe, clutching her hands to her chest, moved into her bedroom. Sheets on the floor. Dresser drawers open—one was across the room—her clothes emptied from them. Windows and doors were locked. Nothing missing. Nothing broken. Meadoe picked up methodically. Why would Nathaniel act out this way? Was it because she visited Erica?