Yours Always: Part III
As the weeks passed, our letters became longer. I would stay up all night writing pages. Sneaking out when my family had gone to sleep, I wrote in secret under the streetlight. This became harder as the days of summer melted away and the sweet scent of honeysuckle was frozen over with autumn winds, but Thomas’s words always made the cold worth it.
In late November, I sat under the streetlight, the collar of my jacket turned up against the bitter night. Paper shaking in my hands, I read:
The boys tease me about the girl I’ve got back home. They ask me how you can be my girl if all we do is write letters, and I realize I’ve never asked you if you would like to go steady. I don’t have an extra set of tags to send you, or a class ring like I would have given you if we were still in high school. But I do know that I love you, and I hope that is enough. Yours Always.
All alone on the street, I swung around the lamp post like in Singin’ in the Rain, laughing and squealing. My body felt like it had been electrified, like energy sizzled under my skin. I wondered if I could swim to Puerto Rico and kiss him. What would it be like to kiss him after all this time? My smile froze in the cold, but I didn’t mind. My face could stay this way for the rest of my life.
I wrote him back, my hands trembling from excitement and the winter weather. It was more hastily written than any of my other letters. Every other sentence was I love you too.
Slipping the letter in the mailbox, I leaned my forehead against the freezing metal as though in prayer. In the pit of my stomach, I desperately wanted Thomas to come home. I pictured him, lying in his bunk, staring at the ceiling, wondering how I would respond. He was so brave, to have written love knowing that it would be a week before he knew my answer.
I floated up to my room. My feet passed soundlessly over the stairs. In the room I shared with my three sisters, I found Magdalena waiting up. The other two were fast asleep.
“You were dancing,” Magdalena teased. “Who is it, Bea?”
“I wasn’t dancing.”
“You were swinging around a lamppost.” Magdalena said. “Come on, tell me about the boy.”
Magdalena bombarded me with questions. Was he handsome? Was he rich? Was he Italian?
I chose to answer none of them.
“Why do you love him?” Magdalena asked.
“Because I’ve told him everything.” I answered without meaning to. “Because he listens to me, and I listen to him, and I want to keep seeing the world through his eyes.”
Magdalena was shocked silent by my sudden outburst. She blinked at me, her mouth hanging slightly open. I wondered if she had a different standard of love with her beau.
“That’s very…romantic,” she said finally.
I urged her to go to sleep and got in bed myself. I was on the edge of a dream when I heard — or maybe imagined — Magdalena’s voice.
“Did Angelo listen to you?”
“No.” Then I drifted off.
The week crept on as I waited for the next letter to arrive. I noticed Magdalena lingering in our room when as I got home from work. She’d pretend to be excited to see me — “I think it would be interesting to be a bookkeeper,” she would say. But I knew she just wanted to look at the contents of my next letter. I was just as desperate as she was.
The day it arrived, Magdalena didn’t bother hiding it under my mattress. Instead, she ran outside to meet me. With Magdalena right there, I tore open the letter. I tossed the envelope aside. Magdalena caught it before it fluttered to the frosted ground. Too excited to wait, I read it immediately.
I’ll be home on leave for Christmas. Would you like to go shopping for a ring? I want you to have a say in it. I can propose after you’ve picked something you like — and after I’ve talked with your folks, of course. Yours Always.
“He’s coming home, Mags!” I shouted. Before my sister knew what was happening, I threw my arms around her.
“Why are you telling me all this now?” Magdalena spluttered to get my hair out of her mouth.
“Because, you’ve been so wonderful. And because, I can’t keep him a secret for much longer.”
Magdalena held me at arm’s length. “Bea, are you really thinking…do you really want to marry him?”
“I do.”
Even as a child, I had never been more excited for Christmas. This Christmas brought the promise of Thomas and the future. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. Just about all I could do was focus on my numbers at work and write to Thomas.
Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, I was making eggnog and the house smelled like cinnamon. The whole family was gathered in the kitchen: the younger ones stringing popcorn for the tree, while Magdalena and my mother prepared the seven fishes for that evening. Magdalena had put her beau’s class ring on the window sill — she said it was because she was cooking, but I noticed she had been wearing it less and less recently.
The doorbell rang. I assumed the first relatives were starting to arrive.
My father answered the door. “Who are you?” I heard him ask.
“Nice to meet you Mr. Martinelli, I’m Thomas Daly.”
I dropped egg I was holding. It smashed against the floor.
“What do you want?”
“I was hoping to speak to Beatrice, sir.”
I rushed to the door. “I’m right here, Thomas.”
My father stood squarely between Thomas and me. My mouth went dry and my head felt light. Not now. He couldn’t stand between us now. Not when Thomas was so close I could see the crinkled tan-lines around his eyes, and smell his aftershave. His hair looked newly cut; I couldn’t help but think he had gotten it done for me.
He smiled, showing those white teeth. I had the sudden urge to reach out and take his hand over my father’s shoulder.
“Hi, Beatrice.” His voice was so much stronger than it had been in the hospital. The sound of my name on his voice reverberated through my ribcage.
“What is this? Why are you addressing my daughter?”
“It’s alright. We’re friends from high school.” I grabbed my father’s shoulders and tried to edge him away from the door. He wouldn’t budge.
“I still don’t understand, what do you want with Beatrice?”
“Well, sir, I was hoping to marry her.”
My father hollered with a deep, primal yell that was perhaps in the vocabulary of the first humans. He stormed around the kitchen, stomping with every footfall. The house seemed to shake. I feared the floorboards would give out and we would fall straight through to the basement. I rushed towards Thomas who reached out and took my hand. It was warm in mine.
Then my father used expletives he reserved for his buddies at the bocce club. He went down the list: Thomas had insulted his authority as a father, Thomas had insulted my modesty as a daughter, Thomas had insulted our culture as Italians, Thomas had insulted himself for thinking he would ever get permission to marry me. The room was a wall of sound made solely of my father’s voice. For a few moments, all I could hear was my father bellow, and all I could see was Thomas’s smile.
“Why shouldn’t you let Bea marry him?” A high voice cut above it all.
We all turned to Magdalena. She shrugged. “I’m sorry — I just don’t see the problem here.”
My father repeated that I would not marry Thomas.
“You don’t think Bea is ever going to marry someone you want her to, do you?” My sister stood with her hand on her hip, the way my mother did when she was about to win an argument.
My father turned as red as my hair. “She will marry someone I approve of.”
“Daddy,” Magdalena gave an exasperated sigh. “You keep picking people that are like you. Bea wants to marry someone who is like her.”
At that moment, I wanted to hand my heart to my sister and tell her it was hers forever.
My father turned from Magdalena to face Thomas and me in the doorway. “If you leave with this boy now, Beatrice, do not come home.”
My grip tightened on Thomas’s hand. I looked over my shoulder at my family. The youngest had tears clinging to the edge of her eyelashes. My mother remained frozen, poised above the oven, about to put in the cod. I locked eyes with Magdalena.
She nodded.
“Goodbye,” I said.
I took a step back, taking Thomas and I out of the doorway and onto the front cement steps.
For the second time in recent memory, I ran across the front yard in my stockings. This time, the witch’s burrs were buried under several inches of snow. The ice bit my feet, but I was laughing.
Thomas opened the car door for me and I fell in, and he ran around to his side. We looked back at the front door. No one was coming after us, but my siblings had pressed themselves against the window to watch us. Magdalena waved.
Thomas started the car.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Wherever you want.”
