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but Vm glad I did. Because now you won't have to say it over again."
Mother Baird had a fresh silver rinse that made her prematurely grey hair a well-disciplined halo about her head. She looked wonderful in her new dove grey suit and the little wisp of a purple hat tilted smartly over one eye. She out-weighed me by twenty pounds, but I still felt heavy of foot and awkward beside her as we crossed the station platform.
The train was running late. Father Baird fell into conversation with a stranger, talking about a piece of land the man thought of buying, and Mother Baird settled down with a magazine from the newsstand, to wait. When the train finally whistled, far up the tracks, she was as fresh as a daisy, while I felt hot and disheveled in spite of countless trips to the ladies' room to re-comb my hair and powder my nose._
But in that first momefit when I saw Grif, I forgot all about myself. There he was — Grif, leaning from the vestibule as the train slowed, scanning the station with . . . with eyes that didn't look like Grif's at all, they were so tired and old and unsmiling, even when he smiled with his lips when he saw us, and waved.
I heard Father Baird say, "My God, he's thin as a rail!"
"He was always thin, David," Mother Baird answered. "Don't you remember?"
The train was crawling to a stop. Grif was swinging down the steps, and my feet automatically carried me toward him, although a paralyzing thing I knew must be joy, but which was as overpowering as terror, held me in its grip. But suddenly I stopped. Grif had turned to offer his hand to the girl who followed him — slim brown suit, halo of blonde hair, luminous blue eyes shadowed by fabulous lashes. This was the girl — I knew her at once — who had come to our wedding, who had talked so much at the little reception in the church parlors afterwards, who had gone away to school somewhere up near San Francisco about the same time Grif went into the Army.
Mother Baird was calling hellos to both of them, running forward to tilt up her lips for Grif's kiss. Father Baird was gripping Grif's hand and saying, "Welcome home, my boy!" For one frenzied second I wanted to run away -^-from Mother Baird's poise and perfection, from Father Baird's voice, the same one he used to greet people who came to Rosemead to take part in War Bond drives, from this girl whose suit made my blue-and-white print look incredibly frumpish, whose sleek hair made my home-shampooed curls look like a child's. And then I came out of it with a start — why, this was homecoming. This was Grif, my Grif, and he washome!
Grif was looking at me now, and his eyes seemed to be asking a question, setting me apart from the station and the crowd and the family and looking straight into my heart. How could I say anything, how could I even sm\le, when my heart was squeezed so tight I couldn't breathe? Now was the moment — now I'd feel his arms again, and know his kiss again, (Continued on page 84)
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