“I haven’t heard from him lately,” Ardis said. She pulled down on her sweater, apparently feeling it wasn’t quite revealing enough the way it was. “Don’t you think that’s kind of funny?”
“Does he usually write to you often?” Julia asked.
“Mrs. Regan, all the boys write to me often,” Ardis answered, and she smiled suddenly, taking Julia into her confidence with that single gleaming burst of enamel, allowing her to join the sorority of worldly women, an honor Julia didn’t particularly desire on that hot day at the end of May.
“Well, David’s been busy,” Julia lied. “His ship is on a secret mission.” A secret mission, she thought. My entire life has been a secret mission.
“Oh, how exciting!” Ardis said. “Doing what? Is it the invasion? Are they going to invade Japan?”
“Dear, he wouldn’t even tell me,” Julia said gently. “His own mother.”
“But you have been getting mail from him?”
“Oh, yes. I told you. I got a letter only yesterday.” And another letter the day before that, but not from David, another letter, he is dead, egli é morto. Memorial Day. A day for memories, a golden day, and my son’s harlot stands here in the hot sun and wiggles like a chorus queen, what secrets does she hold in that empty head of hers? How many men and boys have known the loveless white thighs of Ardis Fletcher, were you the first for him, Ardis?
“Tell him to write to me, will you? He’s kind of cute.”
“I will. And thank you, Ardis.”
“Sure,” Ardis said, and she swiveled off in an elaborate synchronization of hip and thigh and leg, and Julia could not resist shaking her head in slight displeasure. Still, she supposed they had to learn somewhere. She supposed there was an Ardis Fletcher in every town in America, on every city street, a vast auxiliary army of willing young ladies who performed initiation rites on the back seats of automobiles, in vestibules, on living-room couches, on grass as green as green as her skirt she stained her skirt that day the white skirt with the pleats the sun was so hot and her skirt became wrinkled and stained with grass his hand under her skirt one thick brown hand rubbing at the stain and the other hand beneath her skirt the knuckles pressing hard against her thigh she had stained her skirt and she twitched with new desire he could smell in the golden hot sunshine he kissed her again.
The festivities were about to start, she saw. The fire engines had revved their motors impressively, and the fraternal smoke-eaters had lined up behind the engines, ready to eat carbon monoxide if nothing else. The cub scouts stood at the ready, waiting for the signal to “Fuhhut motch!” The brownies stood by, two by two, little girls, she thought, daughters, she thought, ready to walk down the town’s back road to the town hall where a retired navy commander would give a speech, after which the local American Legion troop would fire a twelve-gun salute, and Taps would be played by the town’s best bugler, the town’s second-best bugler playing the echo from behind the school building.
“Come on,” someone shouted, and she turned her head and looked across the road to where an old Ford was parked, a boy in a hooded Mackinaw sitting behind the wheel, a girl leaning out the window, her blond hair hanging over one eye, waving her hand. “Gillian, come on! They’re about to start! We’ll miss it, Gillian!”
She turned as the girl called Gillian moved away from the fire engines and broke into a girlish run across the schoolyard, a slender girl in sweater and skirt, her russet hair bobbing at the back of her neck, a curiously satisfied grin on her mouth. “I’m coming, Amanda,” she shouted to the parked Ford, running past the ranked town band, and then onto the macadam road where summer sat suddenly still and golden.
A butterfly touched Julia’s wrist.
She glanced at it, and then she heard the girl named Gillian say to the other college youngsters in the Ford, “I’d never seen a fire engine up close before,” and she turned again to look at the girl as she got into the car, and she thought, She moves with such grace, she is so lovely, and then the band began playing “Be Kind to Your Web-footed Friends.” Julia hastily found a seat on the grassy bank lining the road, and the parade started with the fire engines creeping at a snail’s pace up the sticky road, followed by the stiff-backed and proud volunteers, and then the martinet leaning into an imaginary head wind and the cubs marching behind him with the vigor of ignorant stragglers. The brownies, buttressed by three firm-busted matrons, nodded at Julia as they filed past proudly, and then the town band wearing blue and white, trousers and shirts, blouses and skirts, blowing their horns and pounding their drums, and the townspeople crowding and shouting and cheering, and the girl Gillian leaning out of the back window of the Ford across the road, her eyes bright, her face aglow with a secret delight, secrets, Julia thought, secrets, I shall have to do something, of course, now I shall have to do something, I will see someone tomorrow, of course I will have to do something. The parade had passed, the parade was over. The Ford coughed itself into life and began driving toward the town hall, and the people of Talmadge, Connecticut, got off the banks and brushed their trousers and their skirts and began trudging up the hill behind the distant music of the school band, like a band of guerrillas carting a cannon across Spain.
The retired navy commander was in the middle of his speech by the time Julia reached the town hall. She wondered briefly if her son had struck a commander, I think we should wait a while, Mother, before telling anyone I’m back in the States, his letter had read, and then simply say I’ve been assigned to the shore patrol here at Camp Elliott. I think that would be best, don’t you? Why did trouble always come in batches, she wondered, and of course she would have to do something now, she couldn’t simply, no she had to do something, tomorrow, she would take care of it tomorrow. She joined the Talmadge townsfolk and the Talmadge commuters who stood around in slacks and sunglasses and made faces indicating they were above all this patriotic and sentimental corn, and at the same time made complimentary and contradictory faces that indicated they relished all this corn and sentimentality, the nation being in the grip of a war for democracy, or whatever they were calling it this time, egli é morto. Julia bent her head and sat on the rock near the giant oak, the rock carrying a plaque that explained that Hessian forces had been driven from Talmadge, Connecticut, in 1779 by the Continental Army, and that the parish house had been burned by the retreating British. She heard the buzz of something in the new green grass and saw her first bee of summer and was then aware of the girl Gillian leaning against the tree and listening intently to the words of the retired navy commander, her arms folded across her white sweater.
The American Legion rifles went off, and then the town’s best bugler played Taps while the smoke from the rifles drifted across the town hall lawn, and then the echoing chorus came from behind the school building and someone jokingly whispered that next year they were going to have an echo of the echo with the third bugler stashed away in the hills of the next town, and Julia saw the girl Gillian frown momentarily and turn to shush the jokester. She kept her eyes on the girl. The distant notes of the second bugle hung like the rifle smoke on the sticky noonday air, faltering, unclear, magnified somehow by the heat, and magnifying it in turn, reminding everyone that summer was truly about to start. She looked at the girl Gillian and saw a thin sheen of perspiration on her upper lip. The girl was listening to the notes coming from the second bugle hidden behind the old school-house, listening with her head bent in silent thought, and then she lifted her right hand quite casually and brushed it gently across her lip, and suddenly Julia Regan wanted to weep.