Leslie Glass - Burning Time

“Did I ever tell you my mother used to shake her finger at me and say, ‘You’ve made your bed, you lie in it,’ every time we picked up and moved to another base? I thought it was my fault she married him and chose to be a navy wife.”

“I know,” Jason murmured. “Did you ever go out with anyone in the navy?” he asked suddenly, as if the question just occurred to him. All day he had been trying to figure out where tattoos fit in the picture. Now he remembered they were a navy thing. Emma was a navy child. Why hadn’t he thought of that?

“I was too young in Virginia and Hawaii. But I did in Alaska, when I was sixteen. Did I tell you I worked the night shift in a crab plant because I hated being called a spoiled officer’s kid?”

She put her head on his shoulder. “He was the lowest-ranking officer, and we had no money. None. How could someone be spoiled who never had more possessions than could fit in a knapsack?” She looked down at her wedding ring. She still didn’t have much jewelry, and no offspring. Jason’s family had been poor, too, and he couldn’t help saving for the future. It was true what the shrinks said about background being everything. Nobody ever got over where they came from, or what happened to them when they were kids.

“I know.” Jason put his arm around her. It was very quiet. He could hear the soft chime of the first clock in the room to herald the hour.

“The only bike I ever had came from the dump. I painted it myself, and then I had to put it back when we moved,” Emma said. “People went crazy in the navy, but no one ever complained. Every time I went to a new place I thought the old one ended.”

“We’re not so very different,” Jason murmured. “I was lonely, too. I worked nights in a gas station. My mother thought if I knew what it was like to work with my hands I’d choose to work with my head.” He laughed. “I still hate the smell of gas.”

“I was covered with crab slime in twenty-below temperatures at three in the morning,” Emma said. “And had to go to school the next day. I don’t like fish of any kind.”

“We’re not in competition for who struggled most.” Jason smiled tenderly.

“My parents were mortified. I hung the rubber suit by the back door so everyone could see it.”

“I guess you like mortifying people,” he remarked. “Goes back a long way.” The bitterness crept back in his voice.

“Well, I never liked people telling me what I can or can’t do.” She pulled away from him, her face tense again. Shouldn’t have married an actress. Did he secretly think she’d fail and never be seen by anybody, just be a voice behind somebody else’s body for the rest of her career?

He changed the subject. “But what about California? Did you date anyone from the navy there?”

“What difference does it make?” Emma sighed. “I only lived in California one year, my senior year in high school. We didn’t live on the base then. It was my first house in a regular neighborhood. I thought I was in heaven. There was no way in the world I would have gone out with a navy man then. I wouldn’t even go to the club.”

“The club?” Jason murmured, confused. She’d said they were poor.

“Officers’ Club.”

“Oh. Did you have a boyfriend that year?”

She frowned and shook her head. “Not really. Why are we talking about this?”

He shrugged. “You said you wanted to go back.”

“What’s going on, Jason? Why won’t you tell me?”

“Nothing to tell. I’m going out for a couple of days. You have a movie deal pending. You have to stay here and negotiate a good deal.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to do it,” Emma said in surprise.

“Well, I was wrong. You have to do what feels right to you.” He leaned forward and put his face in her hair.

There was the slight aroma of brass cleaner on him. She thought he must have been polishing the insides of a clock during a break earlier in the day.

He put his fingers under her chin and turned her head to make her look at him. “Look, I might have been angry at you for not telling me what you did. But you’re all I have. I love you, Emma, and I’m here for you. Don’t forget it.” He held her face between his hands and bent to kiss her.

She shivered at his touch. He’d been avoiding her ever since the film opened and the letters started coming. But even before that, he had been withdrawn from her. He’d been married before. Sometimes she thought he had someone else. She didn’t know how long she could endure marriage without a physical life. The kiss went on for a long time. Maybe he really did love her. The clocks were bonging now, one after another, striking the hour, each in its own rhythm.

30

The air was sharp and cool when Jason got off the plane in San Diego and headed for the baggage area. He had left New York in the early evening, and now six hours later in California the sun was just going down. Somehow the feeling that he was not losing time made him think the trip out here was the right thing to do.

It made sense to him now. It clicked into place after Detective Woo had phoned to tell him the letters came from San Diego, not New York. Emma was right. It was someone who felt close to her, someone who knew her. Only it wasn’t someone with any recent knowledge. It was someone from a long time ago, he was certain of it.

He kept going over his last conversation with the young detective, and brooded all the way out on the plane about whether he should have told Emma about it.

“There’s nothing I can do,” the girl had said over the phone. “Even if we knew who it was, it’s not against the law to send unpleasant letters, Dr. Frank. It’s a free speech thing,” she added.

“So, that’s it?” Jason had demanded, his anger growing. “What if he gets tired of writing letters and decides to pay her a visit?”

“Look,” Detective Woo had said. “I’m not saying I’m not going to check into it. But I have no authority right now to make any kind of, you know, official investigation.”

Jason’s next move had been to call his travel agent.

Now he walked slowly, checking his watch several times. He passed a bank of telephones on the way to the car rental and hesitated as he debated calling Emma. What was the point in worrying her? He didn’t usually call her the minute he arrived somewhere. He switched his briefcase, with the charts he and Charles had made, from one hand to the other and moved toward the baggage claim. Better just to find the guy, take care of it, and tell her about it afterwards, he decided.

A thin woman in a short gray dress hurried past him going the other way. She had a hard, lean face full of fury that reminded him of his first wife. He figured the image of Nancy throwing things at him in one of her frenzies rose out of his anxiety about doing the wrong thing with Emma.

“You’re just a man,” Nancy had kept shrieking at him, until he couldn’t stand it anymore. “You’re not the king of the world, Jason. You’re not God.”

He turned away from the woman in gray with a familiar shudder, because Nancy had been right. There were a lot of things he just couldn’t fix, and the most painful one had been her. The old failure weighed on him. No sign of any baggage yet. He headed for the Budget counter. It was seven-thirty.

Fifteen minutes later he was on the road with the windows of a new Ford open and the California wind blowing in his face. The sun was down, but there was still a vivid glow on the horizon in the west, like a halo over the city. The airport in San Diego was a strip of land almost in the middle of the city, with the ocean on one side. Even though he couldn’t see it yet, Jason felt a surge of energy from the briny smell of the sea. He was suddenly optimistic about his and Emma’s future. He vowed to practice what he taught and listen more. He was committed to working it out. He’d go back to New York, and they’d work it out. He turned his thoughts to things she had said about her year here.