Love Letter
By J. Warren
Since there had been people there had been bold girls and girls who stayed home. That's what Jeanie thought. She defined herself as the bold type. She wasn't the only bold girl in town, but she may as well have been. In a male dominated world she shined with unrelenting femininity. She was known for wearing heavy perfume even in the daytime. At night, her arms were full of bangles, which clanked together as she moved like percussion instruments. She was known by the boys in the bars and restaurants as the Queen Bee ,and she didn't mind a bit.
She welcomed stares from the stay at home crowd. She didn't blame them for being unattractive. It was their lack of guts that annoyed her. Sadly they stayed at home because they refused to dine alone. And because they stayed at home they remained alone. These kinds of girls would never cross a room to talk to a boy. They waited for the end of the work day to catch someone's eye, showcasing their virtue for lack of any other appealing quality. They knew there was safety in numbers. They could turn to each other for comfort and blame the war for the lack of men.
It wasn't true. The wartime world was not without men. A girl just had to be a bit daring. She simply had to go to the places men were. In peacetime she could give more serious thought to the idea of settling down. In the mean time she had these boys to practice with. They were good time boys and they knew their place. Love had no place. There were more important things to consider with the future of democracy at stake.
Sure enough, the war ended and love returned. The magazines would have everyone believe that traffic stopped at every corner to allow for spontaneous lovemaking in the street. At lunchtime she ate her sandwich and mused over the silly headlines and giddy articles. She laughed out loud when she read them. She failed to notice that no one was laughing with her. All that time it was happening and she never realized it. All that time the world was secretly planning her demise. She never saw it coming.
She had taken time to collect herself after she lost her welding job. She'd expected to keep working, even with the writing was the proverbial wall. Some of the other girls had already decided to leave voluntarily, to pursue opportunities in larger cities. She figured this would only increase the odds that she would be kept on. She was wrong.
On her last day of work she decided to go out to one of her favorite spots. For the past few weeks she had stopped going out to dinner in order to save a little money. Aside from the silly magazine articles, she was glad the war had ended. She was eager to catch up with some of the boys over drinks at their favorite Friday night spot. It was so charmingly predictable with its burgundy walls, meatball spaghetti and chianti candle holders. She skipped down the street. She boldly flung open the door as she had on many other occasions.
The little Italian place had changed. It was no longer her personal watering hole. It had become home base for returning GI s and their families. It was so crowded at the restaurant she couldn't get a booth. She couldn't get a table. She found a wall to lean on near the kitchen. She drank her drink, unable to hear her own thoughts over conversations of war stories and happy reunions. Two minutes later she was nudging her way towards the door. She couldn't even see the floor. She navigated carefully around a big yellow skirt and she was outside.
She lingered outside looking in. She noticed that the skirt belonged to Betsy Gross. She was a prim and proper stay at home girl if there ever was one. She was definitely not the kind to be out on a Friday night. She looked happy, almost pretty as she waited for a table. Jeanie was sure it was her. She wasn't alone. A guiding hand had placed itself on her shoulder blade. She recognized the man. The couple disappeared into the crowd and she went home with an empty stomach.
This would never have happened while she had been paying attention. Like all conspiracies, it seemed to have happened when she was looking the other way. It was like an unexpected storm, something she hadn't prepared for. It was just at the moment when she'd stopped to tie her shoe, to button up her cardigan against the post war winter. It was while her back was turned that everyone had secretly agreed to pair up.
John was gone and Charlie was gone. So were Matt and Henry. Her shining lips and sharp tongue were gone. For the last two years she'd had always had a place to go and an opinion on everything. Men flocked to her. She assumed at the time that her intellect had been the attraction. Now she was not so sure. It chilled her to think that for a brief time she had been beautiful; that it had been her chance. She was older and she felt it. No real time had passed. She hadn't changed actually, but that was worse really because it meant that she hadn't kept up. Her hair was starting to grow out. Her bangles had faded and cracked, and she hated them now.
She fought with herself about whether she should learn to type or go back to the other thing. She had been a seamstress briefly before her job on the pier, but she never liked the work. She was not accustomed to being an ordinary thing. Out of fear, ordinary thoughts and conventional thinking were creeping in. There had been plenty of interesting jobs back then. It had never occurred to her to save. She would never be able to scare up enough to move to another city. Now she might have to fight other women for jobs she didn't even want. Worst of all her war time bravado seemed to date her, make her seem prematurely gray against a backdrop of frilly yellow skirts.
She fought to push such thoughts out of her head. Thinking she was just overtired she adopted a habit of taking walks. At first, they were short trips around the block. Sometimes she went as far as town where all the shops were, but she didn't dare go in them. Eventually, her walks took her to the pier where she used to work. She remembered how wonderful it was in those days to breathe in the sea air all day welding. She had her own money and at night she could go to the restaurants and order whatever she wanted.
Now, the pier was just another unpleasant reminder of the past. She hadn't intended to end her walks there, but as she had run out of other places to go it seemed almost inevitable. Otherwise she spent too much time at home. The landlady had been very understanding, but she still didn't feel comfortable there.
Her walks to the pier had started to become a daily thing. That was when she first started to notice that other stay at home girls were no longer staying at home. The weather was warming up. The stay at home girls had started coming to the pier, with boyfriends. Some were girls she had known, plain girls in her recollection. They were uninteresting and small minded, the kind she openly felt superior to. But, now they came to the pier in floppy hats and bathing suits underneath their dresses. They came with arms wrapped around boys she had known and been admired by. The boys did not seem to recognize her, or if they did they pretended not to. They were not cruel, but she would've deserved it if they had been. Maybe they recognized that the truth was cruel enough.
Of course, she had never taken any of them seriously. Again she thought of the image of Betsy in the restaurant with a man. 'A year ago that girl would be at home with mother,' she thought to herself. 'A year ago her man and I would be laughing and sipping champagne at the club and I would be removing his hand from my thigh.'
The next day she did not stop walking when she reached the pier. She skidded past the couples as quickly as she could and headed for the beach, which was still a little too cold for the crowds of sunbathers. Here she found that she could bear the loneliness. Here was the place where if her glory had faded it didn't matter. She wanted to hold on to the feeling. She decided she could not risk the sight of even one more happy couple. She navigated the rocks under the pier, seeking out an less explored places.
She'd gotten a few hundred feet away.The pier was high above her now. She turned around when she'd got what she thought was far enough away. Looking up she unexpectedly met eyes with a man in a construction hat. He was evidently restoring the pier from the storms. She smiled at him, remembering the happiness of that kind of work. The sun was in his eyes, but it seemed like he had smiled back. She almost shouted hello to him and prepared to wave. The old her would have done that in a second, but she hesitated and after a few moments the impulse left her.
A bit of torn newspaper flitted past her, amongst other junk that had fallen from above. She used to read the paper, the entire paper every morning before work. By the time the work day ended she was all fired up to talk about it. There was no one who could escape her when she had something to say. She would sometimes stand upon tabletops and address the group. She had compiled lists of boys names, the ones who were not coming home. She would pay for the shots of gin and insist that they drink to each and every one of them. What her real motivation in this behavior was she did not know. It occurred to her that she may not have been a very good person. It had felt right to her at the time.
'That is all in the past,' she said to herself, shaking her head. She'd made her way over the back of a large rock into a little cove. She looked out at the horizon, but there were no ships today. She turned her attention to the waves lapping gently at her feet and the coarse wet sand. The water was gentle like a pet coming up under her nose for attention. She knelt down for a closer look. Between waves the surface of the water was a veil that parted to reveal a dream world of dark beauty. She looked closer. There amongst the little community of sea flowers was a beautiful green gem, all on its own. Its heart like shape made her smile.
The sun was hitting it just the right way, making it glow like an emerald. She could imagine it as a brooch, surrounded by rhinestones. She sighed. Here she was, considering it carefully as would an old spinster. It was nothing more than an old piece of green glass. Foam rushed up suddenly over it and it was hidden. She almost lost her balance and she was glad there was no one to see. As she thought about the embarrassment of staying there all day while her clothes dried, the foam disappeared. The glass was there again. She reached down and grabbed it. She turned it over and crouched there long enough for it to dry in her hand. It no longer looked like an emerald. It looked like a gumdrop. She held it up to the sun. It was such an ordinary thing. Still she put it in her pocket. She stood up, licked the salt from her lips and went home.
The next morning, it was more than she could do to sit calmly while eating her breakfast. She dressed while she ate her toast. She half choked on the last couple of pieces and didn't even bother to check her hair before she went out.
Later she regretted that decision. She wondered what she must look like to others. She was so mad at the world for changing. When things were desperate she had felt so alive. Now that prosperity was returning and victory had been achieved, it seemed ungrateful and almost evil of her to complain. She recognized she could not share the thoughts she had about the war with anyone ever.
Envy was a new and strange sensation to her and she reacted strangely to it. She'd gotten into the habit of talking out loud to herself. She waited till she reached the water to do this. The wind was strong most days and she supposed no one would be able to hear.She was thankful for this at least and the days spent looking for beach glass sustained her. She loved the tactile quality of things and missed working with her hands.
The winter was ending. Couples were falling in love more than ever now. The winds were dying down. The sea was less choppy. Her tunnel vision had made her oblivious to all these changes. It didn't occur to her that there would be fewer and fewer treasures for her to find. She went home empty handed several times. Still, she came dutifully every morning as if to prove to herself that her persistance would pay off. Soon, all there was to be found were specks of glass, tiny and useless.
"Enough of this!" she said. She surprised herself with the shrillness of her voice these days.
In the past, she talked so much that she could control the quality of her voice at will, going at once from silky to smoky. Some of the boys used to comment on it. She had a beautiful voice, a dulcet voice; a radio voice. She supposed that sort of flattery was gone forever too.
She had combed the area, looked in behind her and in front of her. But, there was nothing to be found. She looked again and again, finally reaching the very end of her patience. She had lost all sense of self consciousness. She was unaware that she had been heard. She was equally unaware of being watched. She yelled again in her shrill voice.
"If you deny me tomorrow, I'm never coming back!"
The man in the construction hat immediately went home and emptied the contents of his son's rock tumbler.
His little grey cottage had been the family home for him, his son and wife when she lived there. He was okay with the way things turned out, because he still got to see his son. The boy's old room was full of toys from years past and half finished model kits. He'd not gone in his son's room since the separation. He supposed the boy wouldn't mind him being in there. Most of his favorite things had already been taken to his new home.
The rock tumbler had been a Christmas gift. Like many things his son had passionately insisted he needed, it was used one time and then forgotten. He dumped its contents onto the dining table and the slippery stones spilled all over. He grabbed some agates and one piece of brown glass.
The next morning he loaded up his lunch box and went to work. He hadn't thought about the proper way to transport the rocks. They didn't stay in the corner where he'd placed them. They rattled around in the metal box like jumping beans, exchanging places with his sandwich and his pickle. Folks across the street stared at him and the five minute walk from his cottage to the job site seemed like an hour.
As it turned out he'd had just enough time. Five minutes after he climbed back up to the pier, he saw her crawling over the rocks below like a little crab. He watched to see what she would do. He kept expecting her to turn around like she had on the first day, but she never took her eyes from the sand. She found the items quickly. He couldn't see her face but she seemed excited. She dicarded the two rocks, but kept the piece of glass.
When he came home the rocks were still spread out on the table where he'd left them. He set his lunchbox down on the corner of the table. Something round immediately fell off it and rolled away in a corner of the wood floor. Curious, he followed its path to where it had disappeared under a heavy china cabinet. The sun was setting. He looked at the orange and violet clouds reflecting in the cabinet's glass doors. He was losing the light. He lay on the floor. He reached, blindly with his arm extended till his fingers touched the baseboards. He grabbed at dust bunnies and sticky cobwebs before his fingers found the thing resting against the back left leg of the cabinet. It was small and hard to grab with his thick fingers. It threatened to roll away again. Had it done so and found its way underneath the sofa he probably would've pursued it there too. There were no interruptions now, no one in the house calling him to dinner. He could've spent the whole evening chasing the thing around the room if he had wanted to.
As it turned out he had succeeded. He'd cleverly slapped his palm down on the thing before it could get away again. Sliding his hand toward him he saw that he had made half a snow angel in the dusty floor. He realized he didn't keep house well and he probably hadn't been easy to live with. It was really for the best. He sat up cross legged and examined the thing in his hand.
He recognized it as a marble from a Chinese checker game. The game was missing several pieces, but and his son still played sometimes when he visited. It was a little worse for wear from being put in the tumbler. It looked like something old now, like it belonged in the maritime museum with the things salvaged from shipwrecks. He smiled. He had an idea.
He went all over his house rounding up possible candidates. He had no trouble in this as he rarely threw anything out. Soon he had handfuls of buttons, toy soldiers, swizzle sticks, cracker jack prizes and glass from his beer bottles. All these were slated to be transformed into instant artifacts.
He discovered the glass took about a week to achieve the look of sea glass. The plastic and wood items took less time to tumble. He was thankful she didn't seem to care for the rocks, because they took as long as a month.
He started getting up earlier. He found it took time and skill to arrange the items properly and he didn't like feeling rushed. He tried to scatter them in seemingly random ways, but where she was sure to come upon them. But, he didn't want it to seem too obvious. He wondered just how long he could keep this up without her suspecting. He figured she was bound to find out at some point. She continued to show up day after day and never suspected a thing. As he discovered, she always appeared at the same time, even when it threatened rain.
She paid so little attention to people and the waves or anything else. He started to feel responsible for her. What would happen if she fell in? Would he be fast enough to get down there in time? These were romantic thoughts for a man approaching forty. He turned his thoughts to his task. His experiments with the rock tumbler were beginning to pay off. He was getting a sense of her taste now, judging by the objects she selected and those she left behind.
She was such a different girl from the others with her dark, windblown hair. She had this innocent quality about her. She was a shy girl he thought, but she mustn't stay that way. She seemed so sweet and so unbothered.
After his lunch break he went to use the public restroom. This was his opportunity to see what was happening on the esplanade. It was a livelier scene now with the war having ended, but it was still just a small town. Tourist season was still a ways off. The local girls who went to the pier with their husbands acted as if they were annoyed by the very idea of weather. Like his wife, they never dressed appropriately for it. There was always a problem. They were forever in the public bathrooms while the husbands waited holding their hats and their shopping bags. When they came out finally, whatever was wrong still wasn't right and they were fit to be tied.
"Not that way Roger. Really, Roger. Men are such babies," he overheard one of them saying to her man as he exited the men's room.
They were always losing their scarves, waving their arms about. It seemed like a cry for attention, like they were fussy on purpose. Sometimes they would actually look at him over their husbands' shoulders. It seemed to him a display of cool superiority combined with a feeble effort to entice him. Perhaps like his wife they had married too young.
On his way home he passed by the window of a store that he thought used to be a glass shop. Apparently now it was a sort of general store. In the window of that store were boxes of cigars and as yet empty jewelry display stands. The store window was in the process of being dressed by a slim white gloved hand. Now that he thought about it he seemed to remember it being something else before it was a glass shop. He thought to himself that some spots and some people were just unlucky. He checked his watch and hurried home.
His cottage was conveniently located near town. It was good that he'd rushed home, because he quickly discovered he needed to go out again. Soon, he was on his way to the hobby store with his busted rock tumbler to get some more supplies. It had been making strange noises for the last day or two. He had already seen this coming. It was like when he tried putting paper in the blender to make paper clay. It seemed like genius at the time. It was great fun, and allowed for greater creative expression, but soon there had to be a price to pay, in the form of a broken blender. In fact, he had destroyed many appliances over the years. He was not really surprised when the machine started breaking down.
"My kid," he explained to the man behind the counter as he examined the device.
The aging shop owner raised his caterpillar eyebrow. Rubbing his face, he inquired as to what exactly had been put in. Failing to get a straight answer he simply explained that among other things that were wrong with it the motor was burnt out. He apologized, explaining he didn't do major repairs. It was his advice that the man should purchase a new rock tumbler.
He left the store with every last tumbler. He spent the evening getting them all up and running. Keeping five machines running was going to be expensive, but he didn't mind. It was great. Now he could be far more efficient and selective, taking only the best pieces. It also allowed for even more experimentation. He knew that these machines too would eventually begin to malfunction. He kept the hobby shop owner's number handy. Through a series of phone calls he slowly learned how to diagnose problems and make the repairs himself.
He was really beginning to enjoy his work. Every inch of the dining table was now covered with machines, supplies tools and hobby paint for touch ups. He now took his son out for visits instead of bringing him to the house. It was not something he needed his wife to find out about. It was his business now, not hers that his job had become the thing that supported his passion.
He was starting to realize at a certain point that the girl was coming to the beach later and later. He didn't think too much of it at first. But, then she wasn't coming everyday either. Within a few weeks she was almost never at the beach. He started to wonder. Had she found a boyfriend or a new hobby? Which one was it? He worried about this, but he found that his enthusiasm for his hobby had not flagged.
He rose almost as soon as the sun did. He stood in his front yard startling the paperboy as he rode past. He picked up the paper, brought it in and made coffee. In his house, while his bacon burned on the stove he hollered with pride and great enthusiasm, jumping out of his chair. He'd happened to turn over the paper and came across a full page department store advertisement. In the lower right hand corner of the ad was a special notice featuring new jewelry designs for summer. The ad featured charm bracelets. The little objects were surrounded by silver metal. He recognized them instantly. They were referred to in a romantic cursive script as Jeana's Sea Glass Treasures. He laughed and shouted and danced. It didn't matter to him that smoke was filling his kitchen and that the curtains would be ruined. After all, it was his burnt bacon and his house and he didn't owe an explanation to anyone. He was as proud of her as a father, and at last he knew her name.
He continued his experiments with the rock tumbler in hopes of seeing Jeana again. But, she hadn't been down there for weeks. Maybe she was finding other sources of inspiration for her designs. Or, perhaps she was too busy now. He worked with a guy once who had patented a new kind of watch band. It had really taken off and he eventually had to quit his job to travel and keep up with all the meetings. He never found out what happened to that guy either.
The weather had changed. It was summer and there were mostly couples and families down there now crowding each other out with their umbrellas and beach blankets. The little restaurants now had tables outside. New shops were opening up too.
Soon, he started to see that girls were wearing her things. Even the silly girls down at the pier were sporting her bracelets. Her designs for summer had created a local sensation, filling in some sort of void in the post war fashion world .Of course, the girls at the pier were motivated by trends. They were as short sighted as ever in their efforts to outdo each other. The line in front of the ladies room was longer than ever. This gave the girls ample opportunity to show off and embarrass their husbands by discussing how much they cost and how many other pieces they had at home. They seemed to believe that the pieces were handmade. The pieces they bought in the department stores were approved by the designer all right, but mass produced by a manufacturer. They were still attractive, but only a lucky few possessed the handmade originals.
He found this out much later from the owner of the general store he often passed by on his way to the hobby shop. He went in one day to see what was sold in there. The old lady said they sold mostly cigars and other smoking paraphernalia, but that they used to sell jewelry. He asked about Jeanna. The old lady had smiled and said that she had agreed to display her things on consignment. The pieces were so unusual and she soon discovered she was making more money selling jewelry than cigars. She had bought several pieces herself. Then she said that one day a salesman came in asked about the girl and dropped of his card. He bought all the pieces she had left. She didn't see the girl much after that. She was sorry that she didn't have any more information.
Soon afterwards the lady became too ill to work and closed her shop. After that, it became a store that sold vacuum cleaner replacement parts.
He thought of the idea when he took his son to the department store to go clothes shopping. He could simply visit the jewelry counter and ask about her. Perhaps someone would know how he could commission a piece of hers. It turned out to be a plainly ridiculous idea. The sales girls were overwhelmed as it was with requests for assistance. They probably didn't know anything anyway. He was in danger of getting stampeded by the eager shoppers and his son was complaining he wanted to go home.
It was better this way. He knew that they could not meet, that if she ever found out she would be disappointed or even angry. She wouldn't really benefit from knowing him or being in his life. She was successful now. Who was he? He was just a construction worker. He was no super hero. He finished shopping with his son and after dropping him off at his mother's he went home. He was satisfied with his one and only super power, that every day for a few months he had brought a smile to her face. He continued to fashion the little tokens of esteem and leave them for the girl who came to the water and who's eyes never left the ground. No matter who she would become, or what she did in her life he would always remember her that way.
The End
Jennifer says:
A very sweet story. I'm glad the construction worker was there to help turn Jeana's life around. I wanted there to be a little less melodrama, though. I think Jeana could have been depressed and walking the beach day after day without going quite so far as to be talking to herself. Take a break from this story and re-read it in a few weeks; you should be able to "feel" where it goes overboard and rein it back in.
Plot - 21
Characters - 21
Mechanics - 20
Enjoyment - 21
TOTAL - 83
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