44

Life felt regimented, but comfortable and with frequent moments of delight. The only dark cloud was approaching summer break. Jason would be leaving for two months, undergoing military training at Fort Lewis, Washington. Dawn knew she had to keep busy or be miserable while he was gone. Still intent upon finishing college as quickly as possible, she registered for a summer session psychology class.

The week before finals, Dawn had difficulty sleeping. One morning she rose while it was still dark and quietly slid the partition between the living room and bedroom closed. Turning on the swag lamp over the kitchen nook table, she opened her Bible and workbook. She and Jason had been married five months, and she still hadn’t finished all the sections. She’d been taking her time, praying over the questions, and examining herself, asking God to reveal areas of her life that needed change.

As the warmth of the sun spilled in the window, she heard a soft click. Startled, she glanced toward the bedroom. Jason stood there holding a camera. “Perfect.” Grinning, he set it on the coffee table.

“You took a picture?” She was still in her robe and slippers, her hair loose and wild.

Leaning down, he hemmed her in with his hands planted on the table. He nuzzled her neck. “I love the way the sun lights up your hair in the morning. You look like an angel studying God’s directives for the day.” Straightening, he put his hands on her shoulders. “And I wanted something more natural than a wedding picture to keep me company while I’m at Fort Lewis.”

The first thing Dawn saw when she walked into the apartment after her last final exam was Jason’s physical training uniform hooked on the closet trim, ready to be worn. She burst into tears. They’d been married only five months, and he’d be gone tomorrow morning. He’d spend a month in cadet troop leadership training and then be off to airborne school right after that. “Two months,” she muttered. “Two months!”

He said the camp was designed to develop leadership skills, teamwork, water safety, land navigation, fire support, weapons use, and tactical and physical training. Portions of it sounded ominous and dangerous to her, but he dismissed her worries. Thankfully, the war in Iraq had ended in March. Lord willing, Jason would not see actual combat during his military service. Dawn didn’t know how she would cope with that.

Jason had told her he first started thinking about ROTC after her grandfather had regaled him with World War II stories. After their breakup, Jason started thinking more about the military. He’d sought out Mitch and asked questions about the Vietnam War and his military experience. Mitch had told him the military had a lot to offer and the country always needed good men trained and ready. His school counselor told him to talk to the ROTC recruiting officer at Cal Poly. When he learned the Army would give him the financial aid he needed to get through college in exchange for six years of his life, Jason decided it was a generous offer. Without discussing it with his mother or Pastor Daniel, he entered the program freshman year.

Dawn dumped her backpack on the bed. Jason admitted he hadn’t consulted God about that decision, but whether he had or had not wasn’t an issue now. God was sovereign. Man might plan, but God would prevail. She believed that with all her heart. She just hadn’t realized how much military life might suit Jason—or how much it might demand of her.

Jason took her in his arms. “I’m not gone yet.”

“You’ll be jumping out of airplanes, Jason.”

“Yeah.”

He sounded excited about it. She pushed away and looked at him. He looked excited, too. “You can’t wait, can you?”

“I’m not going to lie to you.”

“I know.” She’d overheard him talking with Dod and Jack. In truth, all three were looking forward to the training, like it was some kind of grand adventure!

Letting out her breath, she withdrew. “I’m just being ridiculous.” Would she rather he was miserable and wishing he didn’t have to follow through on his obligations to the military? When she reached for the duffel bag, he grabbed it and slung it onto the bed. She started packing for him. “I’ll be all right. I’ll keep busy.”

“I’ll call you every chance I get.”

Jason called to let her know he’d arrived safely at Fort Lewis. After less than a minute, she heard another man asking to use the phone. After that, she waited in vain to hear from him. His second call came before he headed into airborne training, though Dawn still couldn’t understand why an engineer needed to know how to jump out of an airplane. She didn’t waste time asking. They talked for fifteen minutes before he had to hang up so someone else could make a call.

To keep from being depressed, Dawn poured herself into her psychology class. While going through lecture notes on symptoms of abuse, she thought about her mother for some odd reason. Dawn realized she knew very little about her mother’s past, other than what Granny had told her.

What had kept Mom away from church for so many years? Why did she withdraw from any show of affection, unless it came from Mitch or Christopher? Granny took a step toward her, and Mom retreated. What caused the tension between them? When Dawn thought more about it, she realized her mother had always had difficulty with relationships, especially if they were casual. She served, but didn’t mingle; she watched from a distance, but didn’t attempt to participate. Dawn had this mental picture of her mother peering over a protective wall while keeping the gate to the outside world locked.

What might have caused that? Could it have something to do with the Haight-Ashbury years? Dawn didn’t know much about that time in her mother’s life. Granny said the past was best forgotten, and Mom never talked about it. Anytime anyone mentioned the turbulent sixties, Mom became very quiet.

Maybe she should ask. . . .

Dawn tried to during one of her weekly calls home. As usual, Mom stayed on the phone less than five minutes, leaving it to Christopher to report the family’s news. Dawn didn’t even get close to broaching the subject with her.

Dawn asked Granny what Mom had been like as a little girl. “Beautiful.” Granny sounded wistful. “Quiet. There weren’t any other little girls her age on our road, but she always seemed content playing by herself.”

“Did she ever seem nervous or exhibit any odd behavior?”

Granny chuckled. “The trouble with studying psychology is you begin to imagine symptoms of all kinds of neuroses in everyone you know. Your mother was a perfectly normal child, just a little quieter than most.”

“So Mom never had nightmares or sucked her thumb . . . ?”

“Oh, there was a while when she used to sneak into Charlie’s room and sleep with him or on the floor beside his bed. It didn’t last long. I put a stop to it as soon as I knew.”

“And she was fine with that, no crying or arguments?”

Silence for a moment. “She started sleeping in her closet. But really, Dawn, you’re making way too much of it.”

“I know, Granny. I’m just curious. That’s all.”

“We started leaving a night-light on in the bathroom. She seemed fine after that. Or maybe it was Oma.”

“Oma?”

“She came to live with us about that time.” Her tone turned brisk. “Either way, your mom stayed in her own bed after that.”

On impulse, Dawn called her mother that evening and asked if she remembered having nightmares as a child.

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m taking psychology.”

“Oh. Well. I suppose all children have bad dreams. Don’t they?”

“Granny said you used to sneak in and sleep with Uncle Charlie.”

“Did she?”

“And when she put a stop to it, you slept in your closet.”

Silence.

“Mom?”

“What started this line of questioning?”

Dawn winced. Mom might as well have said interrogation. “I’m taking psychology, and the lectures have been on child abuse.”

“I was never beaten, May Flo—” She stopped. “Dawn.” She spoke the correction quietly.

“We’ll have to talk about my name someday.” Dawn tried to keep her tone light. When her mother didn’t respond, she apologized for asking such personal questions. “I was just curious.”

Her mother’s reticence only served to make her more so.

Dawn sat at the nook table, flipping through her class notes. Slapping her binder closed, she stared out the window. She’d studied enough. She didn’t want to think about psychology or come up with any more theories on why her mother was the way she was. She’d never know anything more about her than she did now. It wasn’t her business anyway.

She knew what the problem was: she had too much time on her hands. She needed something to do other than go to class, study, and hang around the apartment, waiting for Jason to call. She had to stop counting the days until he’d come home. She looked at the bare white walls, the worn beige couch, the drab chipboard coffee table sitting on the beige rug. Life without Jason was as colorless as the apartment.

The place needed cheering up. It needed color!

Grabbing her keys and purse, Dawn left the apartment. She drove downtown and bought half a dozen women’s magazines. She spotted notices on the coffee shop bulletin board: garage sales popped up like weeds every Friday afternoon. She’d always thought it might be fun to visit a few, see what treasures she might find among the piles of junk. On the way back to the apartment, Dawn stopped by a hardware store and picked out paint color strips.

“Walls have to be back to white before you leave,” Mr. Cooper, the apartment manager told her when she explained what she’d like to do. “Otherwise, you forfeit your security deposit.”

After psychology class, Dawn went to the library and looked for books on interior design. She jotted down ideas, then went back to the apartment to take measurements and map out furnishings. She tore pages from magazines.

Early Saturday morning, Dawn drove south to Santa Maria, hoping to be the first arrival at the Huge Neighborhood Garage Sale: furnishings, fine linens, china . . . She wasn’t. Already a crowd wandered the cul-de-sac, picking through racks of clothing, looking over electronic gadgets, tools, toys, and totally useless knickknacks. Dawn bargained for two matching crested chairs with burgundy upholstery and got them for twenty dollars. She fitted them carefully into the backseat of the Sable and continued her search. She bought two Talavera plates for five dollars; an old, worn, imitation Persian rug in jewel tones for twenty-five; and a glass bowl full of seashells for a buck.

Still on the hunt, Dawn wandered, looking for anything that caught her eye. She became engrossed with a shoe box full of maps and another of postcards. She bought three framed posters of rock groups. On her way back to the car, she bargained for two large sky-blue blankets and a somewhat-faded yellow and blue French provincial tablecloth with deep pink peonies and daisies.

Mr. Cooper saw her pull up and laughed. “When the dog’s away, the cat will play. Need some help unloading all that junk?”

She laughed, excited about getting to work on decorating. “Yes, please.” She started pulling the rolled carpet through the back window. “And I’ll have you know these are treasures.”

Over the next week, Dawn painted the living room wall butter yellow, folded and pinned one blue blanket around the body of the sofa and the other around the two large cushions, unrolled the Persian rug, tucking it beneath the sofa, and set the oval-backed chairs in opposite corners, the coffee table in the middle. Making do without a sewing machine, Dawn folded and pinned colorful cloth covers over cheap pillows and arranged them on the sofa.

Removing the rock concert pictures, she used two of the frames to mount maps of Monterey and Washington, D.C. As the centerpiece of wall art, she created a colorful collage of old postcards from national parks across the country. She hung the two Talavera plates in the kitchen, put a yellow valance over the nook window, and spread the Provence tablecloth. Last touches included the glass bowl of seashells on the coffee table, the new issue of VIA from the California Automobile Association, and a bouquet of yellow roses in a lime green Fiesta water pitcher.

Arms akimbo, she admired the room. Eclectic, she decided, already imagining other things she could do to make the room more interesting. A potted palm in the corner would be nice, and some nice coverings for the ugly end tables. Changing the lamp shades . . .

She stopped the train of thoughts running through her head. The living room looked warm and cozy. Now she needed to read another chapter in her psychology text and review her notes. She still had five more days for decorating before Jason came home.

Flipping through her notes, she became distracted. She had a great idea for adding a little wow factor to the bedroom.

Dawn spotted Jason in his uniform coming down the steps of the small jet disgorging its twenty passengers. She wanted to hurtle herself into his arms, but had already been warned the military frowned on public displays of affection. Apparently, Jason forgot. When she got her breath back, she noticed Dod Henson and Jack Kohl approaching and called out a greeting as Jason took her hand.

They all waited at the conveyor belt that would deposit passenger luggage.

Jason brushed his other hand against her cheek. “What’ve you been doing while I’ve been away?”

“Keeping busy.”

“How’s your psychology class going?”

“Fascinating, but I’ve discovered another passion.”

“What’s that?”

She gave him an impish smile. “Wait and see.”

When he stepped through the door of the apartment, he stared. “Wow! Did you call in a decorator?”

“Nope. I did it all by myself. I spent less than two hundred dollars on the whole place. What do you think?”

“Classy.” He looked closer at the maps on the wall. “Where did you come up with all these ideas?”

“Women’s magazines, garage sales . . .”

He stepped around the partition. “I’m impressed.” He stared at the ceiling medallion where she’d tucked and hot-glued mosquito netting that draped the top half of the bed. He turned to grin at her. “Reminds me of a pasha’s tent. Do you have harem girls in the closet?”

“There’s only room for one girl in this apartment, Jason.” She stepped close and unfastened the top button on his camouflage shirt. She looked up at him as she unbuttoned the next and the next. “And don’t even think about adding another to your life.”

Jason swept her up in his arms and tossed her into the middle of the bed. “Not unless we have a daughter.”