Radio romances (July-Dec 1945)

the old, she said, attracting the attention of everyone who passed along the highway, especially the tired war plant workers who had to drive long miles each day from the only available housing in Centerville. OPHE house seemed to spring up by ■* magic. When we returned from our short honeymoon at the beach, it was finished and furnished, down to the last crisp new curtain and the bright bordered towels on the fancy lucite rods in bedroom and kitchen. It was a doll house, like something out of a little girl's dream; and I was proud to show it to people Father Baird brought to see the new subdivision. Grif and I had only three weeks in the little house before he went into the Army. Three incredible weeks of waking at night to find myself in his arms, of waking in the morning to find the sun streaming through the gauzy gold curtains at the tiny bedroom windows, of loafing over the funnies and a last cup of coffee in the pint-sized nook off the kitchen. "Gotta be gittin'." Grif would spring up, dumping me and the funnies out of his lap. "I almost forgot I'm supposed to be a business man now." But he wasn't very good at selling real estate. He always blurted out the truth about termites and leaky roofs, and shrugged ruefully about the sales he had killed. He had gone into his father's office straight from high school, to learn the business. His desk was still so new that he laughed about not having any important deeds or documents to clear out of it before he left. "Well," Mother Baird folded Grif's telegram and pushed it into the pocket of her smooth white skirt. "We mustn't stand here wasting time, Peggy. We've a million things to do before he arrives. Everything — everything — must be just exactly as Grif left it, so he can step right back into his old life and forget completely about the war. Isn't that right?" She smiled and went briskly off through the gate which separated our little square yard from the lawn of the bigger house. I would have given my very heart to possess her looks and her poise, her calm acceptance of all the good things of life which seemed to fall so easily into her lap. Since the first day that Grif had brought me home to meet his parents I had felt coltish and clumsy beside her, and I'd tried my best to be like her in every way. I wanted so terribly to be perfect for Grif . . . The hours slid past while I worked my way happily through the little house, cleaning and polishing in time to my own joyous whistling. At last everything was finished except for a final, last-minute flick of the dustcloth. The refrigerator was crammed to bursting with all the things Grif liked best to eat; every chair and book and ash tray was exactly as he had left it; there was fresh tobacco in the humidor beside his pipe rack. I brushed a last speck of dust from his old football letter, still thumb-tacked to the plaque board with other school mementos, including the ping-pong paddle, with which he'd won the Inter-High tournament, and which bore the scribbled autographs of every member of his class. "We'll use this later," he'd told me, when he hung it up, "to paddle any cocky little strangers who happen to come to live with us." I stood still now, the dust cloth still in my hand, remembering how my heart had turned over inside me when he said it — remembering every single thing about those three precious weeks together, and that last day ... the blueand-white print dress I'd been weaping because it was his favorite, the way the sun slanted through the open front door and set his bright hair on fire, the way he cupped my face tight in. his hands before he kissed me. "Hold everything, Peg," he'd said. "I'll be right back." That was what he said to me each morning as he went to work, and that was what he said then, going off to war. It was our real goodbye, not the chinup, be-brave one at the depot, with a crowd around and everyone trying to think of cheerful things to day. Two years ago . . . two years and seven months and exactly four hours and fifteen minutes by the little clock that had been ticking off the slow seconds ever since he left! I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how it would be to hear his voice again, to feel his arms around me, his kisses sweet on my month. A tune we had danced to hummed through my head, and my eyes flew open. I must get out all his old favbrite records and pile them up with the ones I'd collected since he left. Why — I mustn't stand here dreaming— I must hurry. Grif was coming home! Grif was coming home, and everything would be just as it had been in those few short, wonderful weeks, only better, because this time we'd have a thousand thousand tomorrows to look forward to . . . together. AND then, at last, everything was ■** done — and there was still time, time to fill before we could go to the station, infinitely long minutes to fill somehow before train time, before the time for me to begin to live again. I tied a handkerchief over my freshly shampooed hair, and took Penny, Grif's lopeared cocker spaniel, for a walk. Far up the slope back of the Baird subdivision I unsnapped the leash and let her run while I lay in the sparse shade of an old eucalyptus tree, listening to the scratch of dry branches above my head, half-awake, but dreaming of those thousand, thousand tomorrows when Grif and I would be together. And in spite of all my impatience, I was nearly late. I heard Father Baird, who had come home early from the office to drive us to the station, halloo-ing to me from the bottom of the hill, and Penny and I raced down together. I felt hot and breathless when I finally climbed into the car, my hair hastily combed, my old blue-and-white dress, saved for Grif's homecoming, quickly pulled into place over my head! "/ didn't mean to listen. Mother Baird had a fresh silver rinse that made her prematurely grey hair a well-disciplined halo about her he She looked wonderful m her now 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 tell 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 1 fell hot and disheveled in spite of countla trips to the ladies' room to re-comb my hair and powder my nose. But in that first moment when 1 saw Grif, I forgot all about myself. Then' he was — Grif, leaning from the v. bule as the train slowed, scanning testation 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 naat San Francisco about the same tone Qrii went into the Army. Mother Baird was calling hollos to both of them, running forward to tilt up her lips for Grif's kiss. Fath. . Hand was gripping Grif's hand and saying, "Welcome home, my boy!" E BS frenzied second I wanted to run away —from Mother Baird's poise and pel fection, from Father Baird's voice, tl 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 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 was home! 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 smUe, 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) Tmgladl did. Because now you won't have to say it over agmn.