Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

“I think yellow is a good color,” Mike Jr. says.

“Yellow is pretty,” Patty Ann says. “Don’t you like yellow, Lukie?”

“I never said it wasn’t nice,” Luke says. “I was just curious why the same color twice. Why not white? Or blue? I’m just wondering.”

“That’s enough, Luke,” Barbara says. “I love the yellow.”

The world suddenly upends itself, spinning.

“It has to be yellow,” he says, dropping his head between his arms.

* * *

1945. She’s wearing bright red lipstick, a little too old for her, and a crisp yellow dress. Not a nurse but a local girl, volunteering. A very pretty local girl, with shiny dark hair and a round face.

Where you from, soldier?

When the first B-29 flew over Jinsen dropping supply packages, he and the guys burst open the packets of Spam and chocolate bars and sucked out every last sweet drop from the cans of peaches, cans of fruit cocktail, the sticky liquid dripping down their cracked lips into the sores on their necks. Over three years as a prisoner, he’d lost almost one hundred pounds from his six-foot frame. Anything, everything, was like manna. But it wasn’t until he was picked up by a transport plane three weeks later and dropped in Honolulu that he could keep a meal down. For another three weeks, the nurses stuffed him with an endless feast of sulfanilamide, Atabrine, pork, and oranges to fight the beriberi, the malaria, the dysentery before sending him on. Then the mainland. This girl.

Does she notice how his bones still press through his shirt, the dry red patches on his skin, the uneven patter of his weakened heart?

Massachusetts, he says.

Bet you can’t wait to get back there. You have a sweetheart waiting for you?

I’m not going back. I’m going to spend the next two years at the University of California in Los Angeles. I joined up the day I finished medical school. But I still have two years to go before I’m a full-fledged doctor.

The touch of her little hand on his shoulder sends sparks all the way down to his bloated ankles. Thank the Lord the swelling in his scrotum has faded.

A doctor! But the University of California in Los Angeles — that must be expensive.

Uncle Sam’s dime.

Is that a fact? Well, Lord knows that’s the least we can do for you, after all you boys have been through. And then corrects herself: After all you boys have done for us.

She lowers the tray stacked with books and magazines so he can go through them without sitting further up. He takes his time, although he’s ready to read anything. The written English language looks as beautiful to him as this girl.

Well, almost. Nothing could be as beautiful as this bright-eyed girl. She is life itself.

She doesn’t hurry him. Instead she smiles some more and starts to play at helping him choose. How about this one? she says, holding up a copy of White Fang. He read it as a boy: a fighting dog, cold, capture. He shakes his head.

Or this? She picks up a copy of Life magazine with the words BALLET SWIMMER and a girl in a two-piece swimsuit underwater on the cover.

That looks nicer, he says.

She takes a closer look at the cover image and frowns. No, not this. This looks terrible.

And then she shoots him an even more brilliant smile that lets him know, at least to this beautiful girl, he is by some miracle still whole.

Will you come back again tomorrow? he asks her.

She frowns for just one brief moment, maybe deciding whether it is worth losing her job or skipping school or whatever coming back tomorrow will cost her.

You bet. I’ll come back to see you as often as you’d like me to.

And she does.

Her name is Barbara, and she is nineteen years old, one year out of high school and working as a receptionist. She lives at home alone with her folks; her only brother fell on D-day and is buried in Normandy. My mother’s family is French. So at least in a way he’s home, she tells him, and he understands right away that this is how she survives, that this is the way she has chosen to navigate this world. That she is a girl who will fight to the end, fight to remain cheerful no matter what life throws at her.

That’s a good way to think about it, he says.

It’s the only way to think about it, she says.

After ten days, he is ready to go outside for a walk. In a light warm drizzle, they stroll through the Presidio to the waterfront.

She leads the way, pointing out the Golden Gate Bridge, Torpedo Wharf, Anita Rock, the yacht club. We used to come down here most every morning when I was younger. Looking for something to put in the pot.

At the yacht club?

If we’d been that type of people we wouldn’t have needed to fish for our supper! But it was okay. We’d go before school and, with the day opening up over the water, I always felt…I don’t know, like something good might arrive with all the light.

The edges of her mouth turn up. It’s the dearest mouth he’s ever seen.

Would you miss it? he asks, taking her small cool hand in his.

If what? she says, still looking out to sea.

If you married me and moved down to Los Angeles.

She turns to look at him. Nope, she says, her eyes sparkling like the water at their feet. I wouldn’t miss it a bit.

He could kiss her all day, and all night, too, but he doesn’t want to make a spectacle of her in public. Not his Barbara. So he kisses her once, just once, and there have been a few other girls, but it’s the best kiss he’s ever known.

Are you sure you’re ready to throw your lot in with an old man like me? Ten days isn’t very long to know someone. He is twenty-six years old, nearly seven years older than she. And being in the war ages a man.

She stretches up onto her tiptoes and kisses him again.

We’ll have a lifetime to get to know each other, soldier.

She’s been in the war, too. Not in the same way, but still.

* * *

“Michael?” Barbara says, holding a glass of lemonade out toward him. “Everything okay?”

His head is still light, his arms feel strange, uncomfortable, but the pain hasn’t returned. Maybe this attack, whatever it was, is passing.

“I’m the one who is supposed to be asking you that,” he says, working to keep his voice even. If he were to lay his hand on her belly, he would sense the heartbeat of his fifth child. For that he doesn’t need his stethoscope.

Oh, Barbara! Every night he relives that magical first kiss by the water. Her small vibrant body never loses its warmth and mystery.

She laughs. “It takes more than a baby to stop me. Here: drink.”

How cold the glass feels in his hand. Gingerly he lifts it to his lips and lets the cool, bitterly sweet liquid trickle down his throat. In an instant, the hair on his arms — not on his chest, for some reason he’s never grown hair there — and legs stands up. His skull prickles. Fingertips of ice crawl up his body, prying into his every pore and crevice.

He sets the glass down on the lawn. But the chill has lodged; an icicle has made it to his right ventricle. His heart freezes up around it.

Is this it? Is it—

* * *

1933. Snow squeezes under his feet. White flakes scatter down from the trees and sneak under his collar. His feet slide as he tries to pull Jeanne on the sled up the hill; at twelve, his younger sister is already almost as tall as he is at fifteen.

But there’s the house, peeking through the barren oaks over the hillside. Just ten minutes more. He needs to get Jeanne home before she catches pneumonia.