“And here I thought I was charming.”
“You became charming, once you were no longer afraid of me. But that did not happen on that first walk. When we finally reached the factory where we lived, I said, ‘Thank you for walking with me, Ira,’ and all you said was, ‘You are welcome.’ Then you turned around, nodded at my parents, and left.”
“But I was better the next week.”
“Yes. You talked about the weather. You said, ‘It sure is cloudy,’ three times. Twice you added, ‘I wonder if it will rain later.’ Your conversational skills were dazzling. By the way, your mother taught me the meaning of that word.”
“And yet, you still wanted to walk with me.”
“Yes,” she says, looking right at me.
“And in early August, I asked if I could buy you a chocolate soda. Just like David Epstein used to do.”
She smooths an errant tendril of her hair, her eyes holding steady on my own. “And I remember telling you that the chocolate soda was the most delicious that I had ever tasted.”
That was our beginning. It’s not a thrilling tale of adventure or the kind of fairy-tale romance portrayed in movies, but it felt like divine intervention. That she saw something special in me made no sense at all, but I was bright enough to seize the opportunity. After that, we spent most of our free time together, although there wasn’t much left of it. By then, the end of summer was already approaching. Across the Atlantic, France had already surrendered and the Battle of Britain was under way, but even so, the war in those last few weeks seemed far away. We went for walks and talked endlessly in the park; as David once did, I continued to buy her chocolate sodas. Twice, I brought Ruth to a movie, and once, I took both her and her mother to lunch. And always, I would walk her home from the synagogue, her parents trailing ten paces behind, allowing us a bit more privacy.
“Your parents eventually came to like me.”
“Yes.” She nods. “But that is because I liked you. You made me laugh, and you were the first to help me do that in this country. My father would always ask what you had said that I found so funny, and I would tell him that it was less about what you said than the way you would say things. Like the face you made when you described your mother’s cooking.”
“My mother could burn water and yet never learned how to boil an egg.”
“She was not that bad.”
“I grew up learning how to eat and hold my breath at the same time. Why do you think my father and I were as thin as straws?”
She shakes her head. “If your mother only knew you said such terrible things.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered. She knew she wasn’t a good cook.”
She is quiet for a moment. “I wish we could have had more time that summer. I was very sad when you left to go back to university.”
“Even if I’d stayed, we couldn’t have been together. You were leaving, too. You were heading off to Wellesley.”
She nods, but her expression is distant. “I was very fortunate for the opportunity. My father knew a professor there, and he helped me in many ways. But the year was still very hard for me. Even though you had not written to Sarah, I knew you would see her again, and I worried that you might still develop feelings for her. And I was afraid that Sarah would see the same things in you that I did, and that she would use her charms to take you away from me.”
“That would have never happened.”
“I know this now, but I did not know it then.”
I shift my head slightly, and all at once there are flashes of white in the corners of my eyes, a railroad spike near my hairline. I close my eyes, waiting for it to pass, but it seems to take forever. I concentrate, trying to breathe slowly, and eventually it begins to recede. The world comes back in bits and pieces, and I think again about the accident. My face is sticky and the deflated air bag is coated with dust and blood. The blood scares me, but despite this, there is magic in the car, a magic that has brought Ruth back to me. I swallow, trying to wet the back of my throat, but I can make no moisture and it feels like sandpaper.
I know Ruth is worried about me. In the lengthening shadows, I see her watching me, this woman I have always adored. I think back again to 1940, trying to distract her from her fears.
“And yet despite your concerns about Sarah,” I say, “you didn’t come home in December to see me.”
In my mind’s eye, I see Ruth roll her eyes – her standard response to my complaint. “I did not come home because I could not afford the train ticket,” she says. “You know this. I was working at a hotel, and leaving would have been impossible. The scholarship only covered tuition, so I had to pay for everything else.”