The Amateur Marriage (2 page)

Michael didn’t even slow down. He was halfway up the block now, with three girls trailing him and a fourth one at his side. She clung to the crook of his left arm and skimmed along next to him in her brilliant red coat.

Even then, Miss Pelowski said later, she had known that he was a goner.

“Parade” was too formal a word, really, for the commotion on Dubrowski Street. It was true that several dozen young men were walking down the center of the pavement, but they were still in civilian clothes and they made no attempt to keep in step. The older of John Piazy’s sons wore John’s sailor cap from the Great War. Another boy, name unknown, had flung a regulation Army blanket around his shoulders like a cape. It was a shabby, straggly, unkempt little regiment, their faces chapped, their noses running in the cold.

Even so, people were enthusiastic. They waved homemade signs and American flags and the front page of the
Baltimore Sun.
They cheered at speeches—any speeches, any rousing phrases shouted over their heads. “You’ll be home by New Year’s, boys!” a man in earmuffs called, and “New Year’s Day! Hurray!” zigzagged through the crowd.

When Michael Anton showed up with four girls, everybody assumed he was enlisting too. “Go get ’em, Michael!” someone shouted. Though John Piazy’s wife said, “Ah, no. It would be the death of his mother, poor soul, with all she’s had to suffer.”

One of the four girls, the one in red, asked, “
Will
you be going, Michael?” An outsider, she was, but very easy on the eyes. The red of her coat brought out the natural glow of her skin, and a bandage on her temple made her look madcap and rakish. No wonder Michael gave her a long, considering stare before he spoke.

“Well,” he said finally, and then he kind of hitched up his shoulders. “Well, naturally I will be!” he said.

A ragged cheer rang out from everyone standing nearby, and another of the girls—Wanda Bryk, in fact—pushed him forward until he had merged with the young men in the street. Leo Kazmerow walked on his left; the four girls scurried along the sidewalk on his right. “We love you, Michael!” Wanda cried, and Katie Vilna called, “Come back soon!” as if he were embarking for the trenches that very instant.

Then Michael was forgotten. He was swept away, and other young men replaced him: Davey Witt, Joe Dobek, Joey Serge. “You go show those Japs what we’re made of!” Davey’s father was shouting. For after all, a man was saying, who could tell when they’d have another chance to get even over Poland? An old woman was crying. John Piazy was telling everybody that neither one of his sons knew the meaning of the word “fear.” And several people were starting in on the where-were-you-when-you-heard discussion. One had not heard till that morning; he’d been burying his mother. One had heard first thing, the first announcement on the radio, but had dismissed it as another Orson Welles hoax. And one, a woman, had been soaking in the bathtub when her husband knocked on the door. “You’re never going to believe this,” he’d called. “I just sat there,” she said. “I just sat and sat. I sat until the water got cold.”

Wanda Bryk returned with Katie Vilna and the brown-haired girl, but not the girl in red. The girl in red had vanished. It seemed she’d marched off to war with Michael Anton, somebody said.

They did all notice—those in the crowd who knew Michael. It was enough of a surprise so they noticed, and remarked to each other, and remembered for some time afterward.

Word got out, the next day, that Leo Kazmerow had been rejected because he was color-blind. Color-blind! people said. What did color have to do with fighting for your country? Unless maybe he couldn’t recognize the color of someone’s uniform. If he was aiming his gun in battle, say. But everyone agreed that there were ways to get around that. Put him on a ship! Sit him behind a cannon and show him where to shoot!

This conversation took place in Anton’s Grocery. Mrs. Anton was answering the phone, but as soon as she hung up, someone asked, “And what’s the news of Michael, Mrs. Anton?”

“News?” she said.

“Has he left yet?”

“Oh, Michael’s not going anyplace,” she said.

They slid their eyes toward each other—Mrs. Pozniak, Mrs. Kowalski, and one of Mrs. Kowalski’s daughters. But nobody wanted to argue. Mrs. Anton had lost her husband in 1935, and then her firstborn son two years later—handsome, charming Danny Anton, dead of a progressive disease that took him away inch by inch and muscle by muscle. Mrs. Anton had been a changed woman ever since, and who could blame her?

Mrs. Pozniak asked for Cream of Wheat, Fels Naphtha, and a tin of Heinz baked beans. Mrs. Anton set each item flatly on the counter. She was a straight-faced woman, gray all over. Not just her hair was gray but her dull, slack skin and her lusterless eyes and her stretched-out, pilled, man’s sweater worn over a gingham dress. She had a way of looking past her customers’ shoulders while she dealt with them, as if she hoped someone else would show up, someone less disappointing.

Then the bell on the door tinkled and in burst a girl in a red coat, carrying a tissue-wrapped parcel. “Mrs. Anton?” she said. “Do you remember me?”

Mrs. Pozniak hadn’t completed her order. She turned, one finger poised on her grocery list, and opened her mouth to protest.

“Pauline Barclay,” the girl explained. “I cut my forehead and your son gave me a bandage. I’ve knitted him a scarf. I hope I’m not too late.”

“Too late for what?” Mrs. Anton asked.

“Has Michael left for the front yet?”

“The front?”

Mrs. Anton pronounced the word with a little halt, a little different sound to the
o
. It seemed possible that she was picturing the front of a room or a piece of furniture.

Before Pauline could elaborate, the door tinkled open again and here came Michael in his shaggy plaid jacket. He must have caught sight of Pauline from the street; you could tell by his artificial start of surprise. “Oh! Pauline! It’s you!” he said. (He’d never have made an actor.)

“I knitted you a warm scarf,” she told him. She held up her parcel in both gloved hands; she tilted her fine-boned, delicate face. The little store was so crowded by now that they were standing almost nose to nose.

Michael said, “For me?”

“To wear to the front.”

He sent a quick glance toward his mother. Then he took hold of Pauline’s elbow. “Let’s go get a Coke,” he said.

“Oh, why, that would be—”

“Michael? We have another telephone order,” Mrs. Anton said.

But he said, “I’ll be back soon,” and he guided Pauline out the door.

They left behind a larger space than they had occupied, somehow.

Mrs. Pozniak paused for a moment longer, just in case Mrs. Anton had something interesting to say. She didn’t, though. She was staring grimly after her son, one hand tracing the Cream of Wheat box as if to square off its corners.

Mrs. Pozniak cleared her throat and asked for a bottle of molasses.

The parlor windows on St. Cassian Street developed a military theme, the Blessed Virgins and china poodles and silk flowers replaced overnight by American flags, swoops of red, white, and blue bunting, and grade-school geography books laid open to maps of Europe. Although in some cases, the religious items stayed put. Mrs. Szapp’s bleached-out Palm Sunday palm fronds, for instance, remained in place even after a banner bearing six satin stars was tacked to the wooden sash. And why not? You need all the intervention you can get, when every last one of your sons is off risking his life for his country.

Mr. Kostka asked Michael what branch of the service he’d joined. This was in Sweda’s Drugs, which had reopened under the management of Mr. Sweda’s brother-in-law. Michael and Pauline were sitting at one of the marble-topped tables; they’d been observed together often over the past few days. Michael said, “The Army,” and Mr. Kostka said, “Is that a fact! I’d have thought the Navy.”

“Yes, but I get seasick,” Michael told him.

Mr. Kostka said, “Well, young fellow, the Army’s not going to ship you over by motorcar, you know.”

Michael got a sort of startled look.

“And when do you leave for boot camp?” Mr. Kostka inquired.

Michael paused. Then, “Monday,” he said.

“Monday!” By now it was Saturday. “Has your mother lined up any help at the store?”

Oh, sneaky; very sneaky. Everybody knew that Mrs. Anton had no idea Michael had enlisted. But who was going to tell her? Even Mrs. Zack, famous for interfering, claimed she hadn’t the heart. They were all waiting for Michael to do it; but here he sat, sipping Coke with Pauline, and the only thing he would say was “I’m sure she’ll find someone or other.”

Pauline was wearing red again. Red seemed to be her color. A red sweater over a crisp white shirt with a rounded collar. It was known by now that she came from a neighborhood north of Eastern Avenue; that she wasn’t even Catholic; that she worked as a receptionist in her father’s realty office.
How
this was known was through Wanda Bryk, who had somehow become Pauline’s new best friend. It was Wanda who reported that Pauline was just the nicest person imaginable, and so much fun! So vivacious! Just always up to some mischief. But others had their reservations. Those seated at the soda fountain, now. You think they weren’t cocking their ears to hear what foolish talk she might be filling Michael’s head with? Not to mention they could see her in the long mirror behind the counter. They saw how she tucked her face down, all dimpling and demure, fingers toying coquettishly with the straw in her Coca-Cola. They heard her murmuring that she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink nights, fearing for his safety. What right did she have to fear for his safety? She barely even knew him! Michael was one of their own, one of the neighborhood favorites, although not till now considered the romantic type. (Over the past few days a number of girls, Katie Vilna and several others, had started wondering if he might possess some unsuspected qualities.)

Old Miss Jakubek, drinking seltzer at the counter with Miss Pelowski, reported that the evening before, she had gone up to Pauline at the movies and told her she looked like Deanna Durbin. “Well, she does, in a way,” she defended herself. “I know she’s a blonde, but she does have that, oh, that dentable soft skin. But what did she say? ‘Deanna Durbin!’ she said. ‘That’s just not true! I look like me! I don’t look
like
anyone!’”

“Tsk, tsk,” Miss Pelowski sympathized. “You were only trying to be nice.”

“I myself would love it if someone told me I looked like Deanna Durbin.”

Miss Pelowski drew back on her stool and studied Miss Jakubek. “Well, you do, around the chin, a little,” she said.

“His poor, poor mother, is all I can think. And the girl is nothing; no nationality. Not even Ukrainian; not even Italian! Italian I might be able to handle. But ‘Barclay’! She and Michael don’t have the least little thing in common.”

“It’s like
Romeo and Juliet,
” Miss Pelowski said.

Both women thought for a moment. Then they glanced toward the mirror again. They saw that Pauline was crying; that Michael was leaning across the table to cup her chrysanthemum head in both hands.

“They do seem very much in love,” Miss Jakubek said.

That night there was a huge going-away party for Jerry Kowalski. Depend on the Kowalskis to make more of a fuss than other people. Other people had been seeing their boys off all week with no more than a nice family dinner, but the Kowalskis rented the Sons of Warsaw Fellowship Hall and hired Lenny Zee and his Dulcetones to play. Mrs. Kowalski and her mother cooked for days; giant kegs of beer were rolled in. The whole of St. Cassian’s Church was invited, as well as a few from St. Stan.

And of course, everyone came. Even babies and small children; even Mr. Zynda in his cane-seated wooden wheelchair. Mrs. Anton arrived in a ruffly blouse and ribbon-trimmed dirndl skirt that made her look grayer than ever, and Michael wore a pinchy suit that might have been his father’s. His raw, bare wrist bones poked forth from the sleeves. A white flake of toilet paper clung to a nick on his chin.

But where was Pauline?

Most certainly she had been invited, at least by implication. “Feel free to bring a date,” Mrs. Kowalski had told Michael—in his mother’s presence, no less. (Oh, Mrs. Kowalski was widely known to be a bit of an imp.) But the only girls here were neighborhood girls, and when the first polka started sawing away, it was Katie Vilna who came over to Michael and pulled him onto the dance floor. She was the forward one of the group. She kept tight hold of his hand even when he resisted. Eventually, he gave in and began awkwardly hippityhopping, every now and then glancing toward the door as if he were expecting somebody.

The Fellowship Hall was a warehouse-like building with splintery floors and metal rafters and naked overhead lightbulbs. Card tables draped with hand-stitched heirloom linens lined the far wall, and it was here that the older women gathered, scrutinizing Mrs. Kowalski’s pierogi and finickily readjusting the sprigs of parsley garnish after one or another of the men had passed through loading his plate. When they stood back to watch the dancing, they tended to clasp their hands on their stomachs as if folding them beneath aprons, even though not a one of them actually wore an apron. They commented on Grandfather Kowalskis sprightly step, on the evident chill between the Wysockis (newlyweds), and—of course—on Katie Vilna’s unbelievable nerve. “I swear, she has no shame,” Mrs. Golka said. “I’d die if one of
my
girls was to chase a boy that way.”

“Fine chance she has, anyhow, with that Pauline person in the picture.”

“Where
is
Pauline, though? Wouldn’t you think she would be here?”

“She’s not coming,” Wanda announced.

Wanda had approached unnoticed, her footsteps drowned out by the music. (Otherwise, the women never would have said what they did about Katie.) She forked a kielbasa onto her plate. She said, “Pauline’s miffed that Michael wouldn’t call for her.”