Anne Korkeakivi - Shining Sea

That’s how it would be. That’s how it should be.

“Here — let me do that,” Jeanne says, following her into the kitchen.

But that’s not how it is. Because Michael is not here.

But the kids are. And Michael’s sister, Jeanne, and their eight-year-old niece, Molly, who have flown across the country to join them, are, too. Her parents, who have never been more than fifty miles outside of San Francisco before, will arrive by overnight bus tomorrow in time for the funeral. Father O’Malley, their neighbors and friends, Michael’s colleagues from the hospital, possibly the milkman and newspaper delivery boy, perhaps someone from the Veterans Administration, although she declined to request a space for Michael in the already overcrowded Los Angeles National Cemetery. They will all soon arrive to share their condolences.

And then there will be the day after. And then the day after that. And after that, until the day she joins Michael six feet under.

Jeanne’s husband, Paul, walked out a few years ago and never came back, but Jeanne’s only got the one kid and has a good job teaching Greek and Latin at a fancy girls’ college on the East Coast. She, on the other hand, is almost thirty-seven with almost five kids and not even a college diploma. What does she know how to do, other than be a wife to Michael and a mother to their children? God in heaven, at least let there be a decent pension or whatever it is that goes to a widow. Somehow she has to keep this family going.

The baby pokes her gut, hard. She pats the solid knob that is either the baby’s head or the butt. Butt, fingers crossed — by now the baby should be in position for entering the world.

Time isn’t going to stand still while she figures things out.

“Is he moving?” Jeanne says, her long pale face an artless blend of concern and envy. At forty-one, there’s no chance of Jeanne having a second child now. Not with her lousy husband MIA. “Are you okay?”

“Oh, he’s gotten too big to move. Just an elbow or knee every now and then.” She she she, she thinks. She and Michael have both been hoping for a second girl.

“Far along as you are, Barbara, you still look so light.”

Light? She feels so heavy she could fall right through to the other side of the world and come out in China. Maybe light to Jeanne — Jeanne, Lord bless her, is as tall as a man. Taller than most men, actually. Taller than Jeanne’s husband, Paul, was. “Thank you, I guess.”

But she would not come out in China. Nowhere on that side of the Pacific. She’d sooner burn up at the center of the earth.

While Jeanne hacks at the ham, she lines up slices of white bread, opens jars of Kraft mayonnaise and French’s mustard, tears off big crinkly leaves of lettuce. It feels good to do something manageable. With four kids, plus Francis’s friend Eugene always around, and any other of the kids’ friends who may happen to be over at any given time, she’s used to feeding the troops. She picks up the cigarette she set down in the seashell ashtray Luke made for her in second grade and inhales slowly then exhales, letting the smoke stream out her nostrils.

The baby grinds down hard against her pelvis.

She stabs the butt of the cigarette into the ashtray and takes out the Melmac serving platter, white with a spray of spindly blue, green, and pink flowers around the edge. She and Michael bought a full dinner set when they moved down from San Francisco. So young, so inexperienced. So proud to be picking out housewares with her handsome new husband. How many plates should I get? she asked. The entire set, Michael told her. And in this way it was agreed they would fill their home together with children and life, and everything that had happened over the last years would be left behind them. That was the plan, anyhow.

She whacks the platter down on the counter. “They got him in the end. The Japs.”

Jeanne sighs. “Oh, Barbara.”

If she didn’t have the kids around, if her sister-in-law hadn’t flown across the country to stand beside her in her kitchen, if a river of well-meaning well-wishers wouldn’t soon begin to stream through their home, she would throw the platter across the room.

Although it wouldn’t break. Melmac.

“I guess I should cut the crusts off the bread. Make them look nicer.” But she doesn’t; after all these years, she still can’t bring herself to waste food. After what he went through in the Pacific, Michael couldn’t throw food away, either. They were completely in tune about this. They were in tune about everything.

She uses a spoon to air-drop mayonnaise across half of the slices of bread, then slaps a piece of ham and a leaf of lettuce on top of each.

A perfect, perfect man. A perfect husband.

Last evening, one of the neighbors brought over a tentlike black dress for her. I don’t mean to intrude, dear. But I thought it might be handy.

I’m not going to wear black on Monday. I’m going to wear yellow.

Be reasonable, dear. You can’t wear yellow to your husband’s funeral.

Michael.

She loved him. God almighty, how she loved him.

She smashes the other half of the slices of bread on top, then picks up the meat cleaver, because it’s the closest to her, and quarters the sandwiches. The cleaver leaves fissures on the cutting board. She’s wearing the yellow maternity dress now. She bought it to wear for Easter, and she’s going to wear it today, on Easter. She’ll wear it again tomorrow for the funeral, too, if she wants.

“Can I help, Mom?” Mike Jr. keeps a careful distance from her. “I’ve put away everything from…outside.”

Poor Mike Jr. He doesn’t want to talk about the sun on their backs, the lemonade tinkling in the pitcher, everyone so happy. The last moments of life as it was. Mike Jr. went out as the sun was going down yesterday and finished the painting, without a word to anyone as to what he was doing.

“That’s a good boy,” she says, laying the knife down and ruffling his short tawny hair. “Where are your sister and brothers?”

“I told Luke to help me clean up, but he said he was thinking. Patty Ann is in her bedroom with the door shut. I guess Francis is over at Eugene’s.”

“Well, go tell Patty Ann to come give me a hand.”

“Molly, too,” Jeanne says. “Your cousin can help, too.”

“Molly went with Francis,” Mike says.

“Who is Eugene?” Jeanne asks, looking up. “Is he that curly-haired boy?”

She picks up the cleaver again. A few months ago at lunch, two ladies started talking about how having Eugene’s parents in the neighborhood is an embarrassment . I hear the husband takes a shotgun up into the hills to hunt rabbits toward the end of the month, one of the ladies said. Kick a fella when he’s down, why don’t you? They’re decent people, she said, standing up from the table. It’s no one’s fault the father lost his right thumb and, with it, his job as a plumber. In a way, Eugene’s parents remind her of her own, struggling all those years just to keep food on the table. Her father still works in the cigar-box factory; during the worst years, he couldn’t even get that. The kids make a funny pair — Francis, fair and quiet, and Eugene, with his mother’s black ringlets and a mouth that won’t stop — but it’s good Francis has a best friend to keep him company through this.

She’s just not gentle enough for Francis. Michael could be so patient.

“Yes,” she says, wielding the cleaver on the last of the sandwiches. “A good kid. Look, let’s boil up those eggs also. We’ll devil them.”

She doesn’t want to have to see them in there later, all lined up and ready for a family life that now will never be lived.