Lovey

Chance

My momma always thought I was part gypsy. I couldn’t read palms or crystal balls, but, from the time I was little, I’d go anywhere and do anything, sacrifice whatever necessary to have a new experience. My momma never left North Carolina once, and she was just fine with that. But me? I wanted to see the world.

With Dan, see the world I did. He would hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to practically anywhere, and I’d scramble to arrange sitters and jump right on board with him.

One of his favorite things was always taking the ferry from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard. He loved the feel of the wind in his hair, the water rushing by, the cool early fall air in his face. While I was a born Pollyanna, I wasn’t insane. I knew that even with a nurse to transfer Dan, and Annabelle (secretly) to help me, taking a car to the Raleigh airport, a flight from Raleigh to Boston, a cab from the airport to South Station, a bus from South Station to the ferry, the ferry to Woods Hole and a cab to our favorite inn in Edgartown, the Harbor View, was way too much.

But there was also no way a wheelchair-bound man was going to get into one of those tiny commuter flights on Cape Air that my darling husband was also so fond of. So we did some research, flew to JFK and took a rather large flight into Martha’s Vineyard.

“Oh, Lovey, it’s so cool,” Annabelle said, grasping my arm tightly as we walked down the winding ramp. I wondered momentarily if they had had to put that out instead of the usual steps to accommodate Dan. But I stood up straighter, held my head up high and reasoned that, if you had lived as long and proud as Dan, concessions should be made.

She reached her hand forward and squeezed Dan’s shoulder. “So, D-daddy. How you feeling?”

“Hungry,” he replied shakily.

Annabelle raised her eyebrows at me, and I could feel the tiniest smile playing on my lips. Sometimes, I went days without hearing that voice, so even two syllables felt like a victory.

“D-daddy,” she said, “if I remember correctly, you were awfully fond of the sandwiches at Humphrey’s.”

“Good tea too,” he said, still looking ahead at the people filing into Martha’s Vineyard’s undeniably charming airport. The cedar shakes, the wooden beams . . . It was like a preview of what was to come, an indication that, yes, if the airport was this good, the rest of the island was incredible.

After a short ride in our handicap van, on our way down Edgartown’s enchanting Water Street on foot, Annabelle and I were chatting, pointing out which stores we planned to visit, which items in the windows appealed to us.

I nearly fell right smack off the sidewalk when Dan, a few feet in front of us, pointed shakily and said, “Lynn, look!”

I turned my head into the North Water Gallery and, in an instant, was transported from the sidewalk in Edgartown to the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. I was nineteen again, slightly uncomfortable in the outfit the modeling contest had provided, feeling as though, farm girl that I was, I was wearing a costume, ready to take center stage at that Broadway show they gave me tickets to.

As the first bite of key lime tart melted off my fork onto my tongue, the sweet and sour fighting for position on my taste buds, I noticed that the noise from the guests was beginning to overshadow the lively songs of the orchestra.

When people began to shuffle in their seats and then, overwhelmingly, rush out the door, the alarm bells finally went off in my head. Was it a fire? A gunman in the restaurant? A mobster in our midst? I too rose from my seat and headed toward the lobby, trying to discern what was happening. Through the rumble of voices, over the din of the orchestra, I made out something distinct. “The war is over!” a man’s voice cried. “It’s over! We’ve won!”

My sister will come home, was my very first thought. The breath caught in my throat and, in the rush of the excitement, feeling as though my feet had left the ground, I let the crowd carry me along. To say that Times Square might as well have been Mars is an understatement. The lights, the buildings, the throngs of people everywhere you looked . . . For a girl who had known more cows than humans in her lifetime, it was startlingly wonderful, the rush of a lifetime. There I was, all alone, my chaperone having gotten lost in the crowd, looking up, up, up, marveling at the buildings around me, at the sheer energy of this place.

People were dancing, singing, throwing their hats. I didn’t know what to do, all alone in a brand-new place. So I simply marveled, memorizing every detail. Even then I knew that, one day, my grandchildren would ask me, Where were you when the war was over?

And this unfathomably glamorous story is what I would get to tell them.

I felt that familiar ache in my heart, that soft pitter-pat that reminded me that I hadn’t found the love that I would create those grandkids with yet. In the midst of my marveling, out of nowhere, a soldier, dressed to the nines in his whites, grabbed my arm, spun me into him, dipped me and planted a kiss on me that quieted the deafening noise.

“What’s that photo, Lovey?” Annabelle asked, bringing me back into the moment.

We walked through the doors of the gallery and, as the woman dusting frames came over and asked, “May I help you?” I laughed as Dan said, “Yes. I’d like to buy this photo for my girlfriend here.”

“Wait,” Annabelle said, peering at the photo. “That’s not you, is it, Lovey?”

I put my hand to the frame around the photo, the nurse in her uniform, the soldier in his, caught up in the kind of kiss that can only come from a moment of complete freedom. I shook my head. That photo of that couple’s kiss might have changed the world. But my kiss that day changed mine.

“Oh, Dan,” I scolded. “I can’t imagine what that photo costs.”

“I said I’m getting it for you, and I am,” Dan said. He reached up to take my hand and put it to his lips.

We might as well have been back in Times Square for the rush it gave me to get a glimpse of my husband’s old demeanor, his attitude, the way my pleasure mattered over all else. I almost expected him to get up out of the wheelchair and walk to the counter to pay. The momentary thought that I had decided not to fly private in order to save money crossed my mind. The girls can sell this photo later for whatever he pays for it now, I thought.

I looked at the photo again and there I was, back in Times Square, breathless and shocked. I was trying to organize the fragments of my brain into one solid piece, scold this complete stranger for taking liberties with a woman he’d never met in the middle of all these people, for heaven’s sake. But, in reality, I wasn’t angry at all. My heart was racing out of my polka-dot dress, and I thought that, maybe, just maybe, in the most dramatic fashion, I had somehow stumbled right smack into the lips of a man I would be with forever.

I looked down at my shoes and said, “I don’t know how you people do things up here, but where I come from, we certainly don’t kiss total strangers in public.”

I heard a gasp, and I looked up to hear Dan say, “Lynn?”

I put my hand over my mouth and laughed. “Dan?”

He wrapped me in a hug and kissed me again, this time with even more intention.

“What are the chances?” he asked. “How on earth are you?” He paused. “Because you look like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

I could feel the golden glow emanating from my pores, a type of glee I didn’t even know I could feel seeping out of every organ.

My Dan was back.

It was precisely the same thought I had standing in that art gallery that day, him chattering on with the owner.

“I’m lost here, Lovey,” Annabelle said.

“I’m so sorry, darling. The picture isn’t of us, but that’s precisely how D-daddy and I got together. He kissed me in Times Square when the war was over.”

“Wait. I thought you two grew up together.”

Dan interjected, “In the rush of the celebration, I kissed the first woman I saw. And when I pulled away, it was her, that beautiful girl that I had carried in my heart since the day I waved good-bye to her out of the window of my daddy’s Chevrolet.”

I could see tears standing in Annabelle’s eyes. I knew that those tears weren’t from the heartwarming story; they were from having a man she loved like fury talking to her again. “When you know, you know, right?”

I nodded. “I knew when I was still that girl in pigtails. But coming back together like that, running into each other out of random chance and complete coincidence practically a world away from where we grew up . . . We knew it had to mean something.”

Dan smiled up at me, and, in his face, I still saw a remnant of the boy I had fallen for a lifetime ago. Even the nurse pushing his wheelchair laughed as he said to Annabelle, “Don’t believe a word she says. I would never, ever leave something as wonderful as being with my Lynn to chance.”

As the woman behind the counter wrapped my photograph in brown paper, I glanced at it one last time. The utter shock and awe of that day, the freedom, the relief. The war was over. Dan was home. We were safe. I was having an experience a country girl like me never even dreamed of. Nothing had touched it until now, until, if for only a moment, my love had come back to me. Standing in the store that day, we may not have been kissing, lighting fireworks and making babies. But, all the same, holding his hand, knowing that he was the same man he’d always been to me, was totally exhilarating. And, even though I knew it’d hurt like hellfire tomorrow, I let myself think, like I always did: Maybe this time he’s back for good.