Saturday, November 2, 1917 — The Birthday
Lyle's Liberty Pass had been granted for noon until ten o'clock —
a generous allowance that he suspected Corporal Briggs had something
to do with, though Briggs would deny it with his characteristic
impenetrable expression.
He arrived at Hawthorn Street at twelve-thirty, in his best
uniform, and Georgia opened the door.
"Happy birthday," she said. She was wearing her good
dress, which told him something was happening beyond the ordinary.
She handed him a small package wrapped in brown paper. "From
Emily and me both."
He opened it on the front step while Georgia watched. Inside was a
small leather-bound notebook — the kind that fits in a breast
pocket — and a good pen of the sort that an auditor would
appreciate.
"For keeping track of things," Georgia said. "Whatever
things need keeping track of."
"Thank you," Lyle said, and meant it more than the words
covered.
Emily appeared behind her mother, also in her good dress — not
the birthday ivory, which she was saving for something she hadn't
decided yet, but a deep green wool that he hadn't seen before. She
kissed him on the cheek and said happy birthday in the matter-of-fact
tone that told him she was pleased and slightly nervous and not about
to show either.
"Are you ready?" she asked.
"For what?"
She just smiled and took his arm.
The Arrival
The trolley ride to 30th Street took twenty minutes, and Lyle
spent most of it watching Emily's face for clues. She gave him none —
she had been raised by Georgia Auble, who had made an art form of
giving nothing away.
What he heard first, half a block from the house, was voices. Not
one or two voices, but many, the particular layered sound of a house
full of people, conversation and laughter overlapping in the way that
only happens when people are genuinely glad to be somewhere together.
Then the front door opened — Della had been watching for them —
and the sound resolved itself into people he knew. Charlie Morrison's
laugh. Eddie Hartwell's voice. His uncle Davey's broad declaration
about something. His grandmother Abbie's precise contralto cutting
through the middle of everything like a knife through bread.
"Surprise!" said approximately fifteen people
simultaneously, with varying degrees of coordination.
Lyle stopped in the doorway. He was aware of Emily's hand on his
arm, steady and warm. He was aware of his mother's face — the
particular brightness of it, the effort she was making not to cry
immediately. He was aware of the room full of people who had come, on
a November Saturday, because this was his birthday and they thought
him worth the trip.
"I told you I knew about the party," he said to Emily,
quietly enough that only she heard.
"I know you did," she murmured back. "Does it
matter?"
It did not. Not remotely.
The Party
Della and Matie steered him into the parlor, where introductions
were unnecessary because everyone knew him and he knew everyone.
Charlie Morrison shook his hand vigorously and said he looked
imposing in the uniform, which was not the word Lyle would have
chosen for a man of his dimensions, but he took it in the spirit
offered.
Eddie Hartwell asked about the Marines with genuine curiosity,
wanting to know about boot camp and the PX and whether Lyle actually
enjoyed the work. Lyle told him about Corporal Briggs, which everyone
who heard it agreed was the best character description they'd
encountered in some time.
Uncle Davey arrived from the kitchen with a glass of lemonade and
the authority of a man who has been here long enough to know where
things are. He was, as always, bringing a story with him — this one
about a fare last Tuesday who had very definite ideas about the best
route to National City and had been completely wrong about all of
them.
"I drove him his way anyway," Davey said comfortably,
"because I'm the one who knows where National City is. He tipped
me generously, which is how I know he was grateful, because some
people can only express gratitude with money."
"And some people express it with cake," said Aunt Amy,
Davey's wife, appearing with a plate of Della's ginger cookies,
"which is the better option."
Aunt Matie moved through the room with the efficiency of someone
who has hosted a great many things and knows that a successful party
requires someone to notice when a glass needs refilling or a
conversation needs joining. She had known Lyle since he was a baby
and greeted him now as she always had — with complete acceptance,
as though his presence required no special occasion but was welcome
to make use of one.
Fifteen-year-old Maybelle, Davey and Amy's daughter, Lyle’s
cousin, had arrived shy and stayed that way for approximately twenty
minutes before discovering that Emily's friend Gladys — who had
come with Charlie Morrison — had opinions about motion pictures
that exactly matched her own. After that, the two of them occupied a
corner of the parlor and conducted an extended review of everything
currently showing at San Diego's picture houses, from which the rest
of the party was excluded but could hear fragments.
Libbie Crouch and her husband Sam had come down from Long Beach on
the morning train, Austin had picked them up in the automobile, and
Libbie — Abbie's younger sister, nearly as sharp and only slightly
less imperious — had brought a framed photograph of the extended
Smith/Carringer family taken in the summer of 1902, which she'd found
while clearing out a drawer. In it, a ten-year-old Lyle stood in the
front row between his parents, his expression suggesting that
standing still had been requested of him and he was complying under
protest.
"You haven't changed much," Sam Crouch said, looking
between the photograph and the birthday boy.
"He's taller," Della said.
"Marginally," Abbie said from her chair, which she had
not left except once for the necessary facilities. She had been
brought her refreshments on a small plate and was making a considered
assessment of the ginger cookies. "He's filled out somewhat. The
Marines did that. Before the Marines he was a strong wind."
"I'm still a strong wind," Lyle said.
"You are," Abbie agreed. "But now you're a strong
wind that can climb a rope, which is an improvement."
Austin Carringer had changed from his work clothes into his good
suit, which he wore with the slight discomfort of a man more at ease
in shirtsleeves and engine oil. But he moved through his own house
with quiet pride — the house full of people, his son in uniform,
the wartime November outside and the warmth inside. He stopped beside
Lyle during a lull between conversations and stood with him for a
moment, both of them watching the room.
"Good party," Austin said.
"Emily organized it."
"I know she did." Austin was quiet for a moment. "She's
a good woman, Lyle."
"She is."
"Your mother likes her very much." He paused. "I do
too. In case that wasn't obvious."
It had been obvious, but hearing it said directly was its own
thing. "Thank you, Father," Lyle said.
Across the room, Emily was listening to Ruth Clemens describe the
Red Cross work with the focused attention she gave to things that
interested her and the honest questions that meant she was genuinely
engaged. Ruth was describing the knitting program — volunteers
across San Diego producing socks and scarves for servicemen — and
Emily was asking practical questions about yarn supply and pattern
standardization that made Ruth blink and then answer with increasing
enthusiasm.
Lyle watched her from across his parents' parlor, this
eighteen-year-old woman who had organized a party for twenty-two
people on a Marine private's salary worth of budget and her own
considerable capability, and thought that Gladys had been exactly
right: she was the most sensible thing in the room.
The Cake
Georgia's entrance with the cake was managed with the theatrical
timing of someone who has thought carefully about timing. The room
had been gradually quieting for five minutes — Matie's doing, Lyle
suspected — so that when Georgia came through the kitchen door with
three layers of white cake and lemon frosting and twenty-six candles,
the silence was already mostly in place.
Someone began "Happy Birthday" — Charlie Morrison,
naturally, who had a good voice and no inhibitions about using it.
The room joined in with the enthusiasm of people who have been
waiting for a chance to sing, and Abbie's contralto anchored
everything from the good chair.
Lyle stood in the center of his parents' parlor, surrounded by the
people who constituted his world — his family, his friends, the
woman he was going to marry, her mother who read his letters and
baked him lemon cake — and looked at twenty-six candles burning
above the frosting.
"Make a wish," Maybelle said, from her position beside
Gladys.
Lyle looked at Emily. She gave him a small, private smile that
said she knew exactly what he was going to wish for and had no
objection to it.
He leaned forward and blew out all twenty-six in one long measured exhalation.
The room cheered. Charlie Morrison cheered loudest. Abbie said
"well done" in the tone of someone crediting a satisfactory
achievement.
Georgia cut the cake with the authority of its creator and passed
the first slice to Lyle. He tasted it and looked at her.
"Lemon," he said.
"Obviously," Georgia said.
"It's perfect."
"I know," she said, and went back to cutting.
Stories and Conversations
The cake disappeared with the speed of anything truly good, and
the party continued in the comfortable, unhurried way of gatherings
where no one is watching the clock. Sam Crouch told a story about
Abbie and Libbie as girls in Missouri that had both sisters objecting
simultaneously, which was itself entertaining. Davey described his
newest taxi customer—a naval officer who had confused Coronado with
Coronado Heights and ended up somewhere neither of them had intended.
Austin, loosened by the warmth of the room and two glasses of
Della's lemonade, told a story from Rockwell Field that he rarely
shared: early in the spring, a student pilot on his first solo had
missed the landing strip entirely and put his Jenny biplane down in a
neighboring field with considerable damage to both the aircraft and
his dignity. When the instructor arrived, the young pilot—entirely
unhurt—was sitting on the wing eating a sandwich he had brought in
his jacket pocket.
"I asked him what he was doing," Austin said. "He
said, 'Sir, I figured if I was going to wait here, I might as well
eat.' " Austin paused. "Best pilot in the class by June.
Some people just have a different relationship with disaster than the
rest of us."
Lyle, thinking of his first week of boot camp, thought this was
probably true of Marines as well.
Charlie Morrison cornered Lyle near the dining room and asked,
with the directness of an old friend who has earned it, how things
really were. Not the PX, not the uniform — how things were.
"Good," Lyle said, and meant it. "Better than I
expected. The work suits me."
"And after? When the war's over?"
Lyle looked across the room at Emily. "After is planned,"
he said.
Charlie followed his gaze. "Yeah," he said. "I
figured." He clapped Lyle on the shoulder. "Good plan."
Goodnight
By eight-thirty, the party was winding down in the natural way of
successful parties — not abruptly, but in the gradual, comfortable
dispersal of people who have had exactly enough of a good thing.
Libbie and Sam Crouch needed to take the trolley to catch the last train
to go back to Long Beach. Maybelle was visibly tired despite her best
efforts to appear otherwise. Ruth Clemens had a Red Cross shift at
seven in the morning. The neighbors said their goodnights with the
warmth of people who have always known this family and are glad to
see them flourishing.
Emily and Georgia helped Della with the washing up, which Della
initially declined and then, gratefully, accepted. The sound of the
three women in the kitchen — Georgia efficient, Della glad of the
company, Emily in between — came through the dining room where Lyle
sat with his father and Edgar and Davey in the comfortable aftermath
of a good party.
At nine, Lyle stood and found his cap. He said goodbye to his
father with a handshake that became something more. He kissed his
grandmother's cheek and she patted his hand and told him to write
when he could. He thanked Matie for the cookies and Sam and Libbie
for making the trip from Long Beach and Charlie for coming and being
exactly Charlie.
Emily and Georgia had their coats on by the time he reached the
kitchen. Della hugged Emily with the completeness of a woman who has
decided on someone and sees no reason to hold anything back. Georgia
received Della's handshake and returned it with equal warmth, which
from Georgia was as good as an embrace.
Davey drove them home through the cool November night, The streets
were quiet. Somewhere over Balboa Park, the lights of the barracks
were visible on the hill.
At Hawthorn Street, Georgia went inside with the decisiveness of
someone who has spent exactly the social energy she intended to spend
and is now reclaiming her kitchen. Lyle and Emily stood on the front
path in the November dark.
"Did you have a good birthday?" Emily asked.
"The best one I can remember."
"Twenty-six," she said, tilting her head slightly as she
assessed this. "You seem older."
"I am older. As of today."
"You seem it in a good way." She reached up and adjusted
his cap — the gesture had become her particular punctuation for
moments that mattered. "Mother was right, wasn't she? It's
different when you actually walk into it."
"Very different," Lyle said. He took both her hands.
"Thank you, Emily. For all of it — the planning, the list, the
notebook, the lemon cake — "
"The lemon cake was Mother."
"The lemon cake was you. You told her. Don't argue."
Emily didn't argue.
He kissed her at the gate of Hawthorn Street, in the November dark
of San Diego in wartime, twenty-six years old and certain, more
certainly than he'd ever been certain of anything, that this was
exactly the life he was going to live.
He walked to the trolley stop with his hands in his pockets and
the small leather notebook in his breast pocket and the taste of
lemon frosting still with him, and he thought: twenty-six. The number
had seemed large in the abstract. Standing inside it, it felt exactly
right.
Monday, November 4, 1917. Posted from the
Marine Barracks, Balboa Park.
My Darling Emily,
I've been thinking about Saturday since the moment I left
Hawthorn Street, and I think I've identified the
best moment of the entire evening.
It wasn't the cake, though the cake was perfect and please
tell your mother so.
It wasn't Charlie's version of Happy Birthday, though that was
memorable.
It wasn't even the photograph Libbie brought — though seeing
myself at ten, looking profoundly inconvenienced by the requirement
to stand still, was instructive.
The best moment was walking into the room. Before I'd spoken
to anyone, before the cake, before the stories. Just the room itself
— full of people I love, in my parents' house, in November, in the
middle of a war. The fact of it.
You made that. I know the logistics were shared, but the idea
was yours, and the idea was exactly right.
I carry Saturday with me. It fits in a breast pocket, right
next to the notebook.
I love you, Emily.
Yours always,
Lyle
