The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [92]
The waiter was bringing some sort of dessert of soft chocolate.
“I remember sharing some black-market ice cream with you,” Marshall said.
“We did not resort to the black market!” she protested. “We went to people we knew.”
She took a spoon of chocolate and savored it.
“Only the children were allowed rations for chocolate,” she said. “I was too old, but Monique wanted to share her chocolate. We wouldn’t allow it.”
He tasted the chocolate and tried to picture Annette’s little sister.
“The moon is coming up,” Annette said. “It is near the full. I never want to miss the full moon. It is one of my principal joys!”
38.
PARIS WAS WARM AND MUGGY. THE SKY FELT CLOSE, THE AIR HEAVY with coming rain. A storm cloud was like a piñata waiting for thunder to whack it, Marshall thought, but he knew that thunderstorms were infrequent in Paris, so he walked to his apartment from the Gare Montparnasse with his small duffel. He told himself he was getting in shape for his hike with Annette, but the weight unbalanced his shoulders, and he began to wish he had taken a taxi. He arrived at his apartment sweaty and feeling lopsided.
Marshall was moving around his own apartment as if exploring it. The bedroom was stuffy, so he pulled open the windows and leaned toward the street. Children on the playground were hurrying away as large drops of rain began to fall. The dark, heavy shadows of pigeons rushed past the windows. He could feel the breeze pick up.
He closed the windows halfway, and the rain splashed against them while he read his mail. Al Grainger had written again, suggesting a crew reunion at the crash site in Belgium. “It was my wife’s idea, and I have to say she was right on target. After what you wrote about going back there and meeting those people, it just seems right to go and thank them in a proper way. And we could have a great time seeing each other, catching up, reminiscing. Couldn’t we round up all the surviving crew? Their families could come too.”
O.K., but no preaching, Marshall felt like replying. He tended to answer letters in his head instead of on paper. Marshall the Procrastinator. Thirty-six years.
After the rain let up, he telephoned Nicolas and reported on his trip.
“Marshall, maybe I have found the house where you stayed before we sheltered you in Chauny.”
“The women in black?”
“Yes. I don’t know if any are alive, but there is a daughter.”
“Good work, Nicolas.”
Marshall thanked him and agreed to come to Chauny for Sunday lunch after he returned from his hike with Annette.
Later, he telephoned Mary and found himself confiding that he had located an “interesting” woman who had been a girl when he came through during the war.
“Her family took care of me when I passed through Paris back then,” he told his daughter. “Now I’ve looked her up, and we had a good time reminiscing.”
He couldn’t continue. He was thinking of Loretta. “A good time” perhaps wasn’t the right phrase.
“Dad, it’s O.K. if you have some women friends.”
“Thank you. Your old dad is still alive and kicking.”
“That reminds me—I heard that Albert has a girlfriend! I was blown away. Don’t tell him I told you.”
“That’s good news,” Marshall said. “I always thought it would just take time. Maybe this one will work out.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Mary, with only the slightest hesitation in her voice.
“How about you, Mary?”
“I’ve been going out with a guy at the college—an economist. He’s really interesting, and he has some theories about inflation that baffle me.”
“Well, let me know if you find out what causes it. How about this—I’m planning to go hiking, and I’m going to buy hiking boots tomorrow.”
“Well, far out, Dad!”
“I guess so. But it was never my ambition to become an old fuddy-duddy, you know. I can still get around.”
She laughed. “Remember how you and Mom would take us for picnics at a state park