Seven
Jennifer,
Now that I’ve written that difficult sentence, and you had to read it…
Please take a good look at the old black-and-white photo I’ve clipped to this letter. It was taken the day the direction of my life changed forever.
I remember it was a humid morning in July. I know it was humid because my hair had sprung into those stupid Shirley Temple curls that I just hated at the time. See the apothecary jars inside the plate-glass window behind me? I’m standing in front of Dad’s pharmacy, squinting in the sun. My dress is blue and a little faded. Note my hands-on-hips stance and the self-possessed grin. That’s who I was. Confident. A little forward. Naive. Full of potential to be anything I wanted to be. Or so I believed.
Here’s what I was thinking at that very moment.
My mother had died some years before and I was managing the store that summer. But the next year I was going to leave Lake Geneva, go to the University of Chicago, and eventually become a doctor. That’s right, I planned to be an obstetrician. And I was proud of myself for working hard to make it come true.
After this picture was taken, I followed my father back into the dimly lit and narrow store. I swept the wooden floor with Dust Down compound and set the daily newspapers out on the radiator near the door.
I was sponging down the marble counter at the soda fountain when the door opened and slammed shut with a sharp bang.
It would be accurate to say that my whole life changed right there, with that bang!
I looked up, scowling, and my eyes locked with those of a most handsome young man. I noticed everything about him in a flash: that he was limping, and I wondered why; that he was dressed in expensive clothes, which probably meant he was a lakeshore person, a summer visitor; that he looked at me hard—bang—like a shot to the heart.
We continued to make twenty-twenty eye contact as he slowly walked to the soda fountain, then sat down on one of the swivel stools. On closer look, he wasn’t conventionally handsome. His nose was a little too wide and his ears stuck out some. But he had jet-black hair and dark blue eyes and a nice mouth. That’s exactly what I thought. I remember it to this day.
I took his lunch order. Then I forced myself to turn my back and I made him an egg salad sandwich, no onions, extra mayo on the side.
I put coffee on to perk, feeling his eyes on me. I could almost feel steam coming off the back of my neck.
I had lots of things to do that morning. Cartons of Listerine, Ipana, Burma-Shave all needed unpacking, and my father had asked me to help him measure out prescriptions.
But I was stuck there at the soda fountain because that boy wouldn’t leave. And to be completely honest, I didn’t want him to.
He finally pushed back his plate and asked for another “cuppa joe,” which made me laugh.
“You’re beautiful, you know that?” he said as I poured more coffee into his cup. “I think we’ve met. Maybe in a dream I had? Or maybe I just want to know you so badly that I’ll say anything right now.”
“I’m Samantha,” I managed to say. “We’ve never met.”
He gave me a brilliant smile. “Hi, Samantha. I’m Charles,” he said, and extended a hand for me to shake. “Will you do a soldier a big favor? Have dinner with me tonight.”
Who could say no to that?
Eight
Jen,
Charles and I had dinner that night at the posh and wonderful Lake Geneva Inn, where you and I still have two- and three-hour lunches. I’d never been inside the place before and I was dazzled by the grandeur, the lights, theclass. (Remember, I was all of eighteen.) Candles winked, glasses clinked, silent waiters served lavish dishes, and the wine kept coming—champagne, too.
Charles seemed so much older than his twenty-one years, and I was fascinated by everything he said and everything hedidn’tsay that night. After much urging by me, he finally told me about the bullet he’d taken in Sicily, and he hinted at a deeper hurt that he said he’d tell me about someday.
I found this promise of future intimacy by Charles irresistible.
At eighteen, I was very impressionable. I was a small-town girl, and being with Charles opened me to a much larger world, one that intrigued me. How could it not?
You have to understand that life felt very precious during the war, Jen. Gail Snyder’s brother had been killed at Pearl Harbor, my uncle Harmon had been wounded, and nearly every boy I knew was fighting overseas. (I say “boy” because that’s what most of them were, and that’s what war has always meant to me—a place where boys are sent to die.) It seemed a miracle that Charles had come home and that we had met that summer.
We went out every night for a month and a half, and he usually stopped by for lunch as well. I got my spunk back and began to have more fun than I’d ever had before. Charles talked easily about all the countries in Europe he’d seen and cracked me up by singing popular American songs with a French accent. He was moody occasionally, but it mostly seemed a dream come true. He was so handsome and quick-witted, and a war hero.
Then one moonlit night on the lake, Charles whispered that he loved me and always would: he was so certain of it that he convinced me. When he proposed marriage nine weeks after our first date, I almost bounded over the moon. I shrieked, and he took that to mean yes. Then Charles kissed me tenderly and slid a large emerald-cut diamond on my ring finger. Oh, I was the happiest girl in the world.
