“I…I liked him,” Jackie said, wanting to talk to someone about William but at the same time not wanting to talk. Her reaction to William didn’t make any sense, since Jackie had been married for most of her life, but the truth was, she had never been “in love.” She had married Charley so she could get out of Chandler. Charley had known that and hadn’t cared that he was being used. He was quite willing to trade a few marriage vows for the company of a long-legged colt of a girl with an insatiable curiosity and a willingness to work such as Charley had never seen before. Within twenty hours of meeting her, Charley had a feeling that she would take care of him. He hadn’t misjudged her. In all their years together, she had made sure the bills were paid, that they had a roof over their heads, and she had smoothed out all his problems, making Charley’s once tumultuous life as peaceful as it could be. He had repaid her by showing her the world.
“I liked him,” Jackie repeated. “That’s all there was to it. He was there when I crashed, he took care of me, and we talked. Very simple.” Talked as though we’d known each other forever, she thought. Talked as though we would never stop; talked as though we were friends, old friends, new friends, best friends.
“Who is he?”
“Ah, uh, William something, I don’t remember.”
“He lives in Chandler?”
“I’m not really sure.” She talked quickly so Terri wouldn’t ask her why she’d agreed to be partners with a man whose last name she didn’t know. “Terri, really, you’re making too much of this. It was nothing. I’ve met a thousand men in my life, given flying lesson
s to hundreds of them, and this one is no different.”
“You can lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. You are blushing like a schoolgirl. So when do I get to meet him?”
“I don’t know. I think his sister said he might be back on Saturday.” The day was emblazoned in her mind. Saturday, late afternoon, she’d been told. At three P.M. Jackie planned to be wearing a pretty little yellow and white pinafore, something with ruffles around the wide straps and a white blouse underneath. She might just dab some perfume in a few strategic places and have bread baking in the oven. He had seen her in a leather flying suit, hair plastered to her head by a cotton-lined leather helmet, so next time she thought it might be nice to show him another side of her—say, the side that could take care of a house, maybe even be somebody’s wife.
Jackie’s head came up at the sound of Terri’s laughter. “Oh, honey, you have it bad, very bad. You remind me of myself when I was eighteen years old.” Terri’s tone said clearly that the way Jackie was acting was understandable in an eighteen-year-old but rather silly at thirty-eight.
At the sound of a horn, Jackie jumped, her head swiveling toward the window, again causing Terri to laugh. “That’s my eldest,” Terri said.
“You must invite him in for milk and cookies,” Jackie said, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to endure the smutty leers of the “boy.”
“No, I must return,” Terri said, bravely trying to keep the misery out of her voice. Her three sons and husband always felt betrayed when she dared take an afternoon off and not stay in the house at their beck and call, so they punished her by doing what they could to destroy the house while she was away. She knew that now she would return to food spilled on the floor, screen doors left open to admit thousands of flies, and angry men complaining that they hadn’t been fed in hours. “I’ll call you on Sunday, and I want to hear everything,” Terri said as she left Jackie’s house, running because her son was lying on the horn so it made a constant stream of deafening noise.
Chapter Three
Jackie tried to be sensible during the following days, but it wasn’t any use. She tried to talk to herself, telling herself that she was an adult woman, not a frivolous, starry-eyed girl, but she didn’t listen to her own advice. She cursed herself for having been born a woman. What in the world was wrong with women anyway? They met a man who was nice to them, and within minutes they began planning the wedding. She told herself that it had been an ordinary encounter, that what had made it seem extraordinary was that she had just been hit hard on the head. Otherwise she would have had her wits about her and she wouldn’t have given another thought to the incident.
She made herself remember all the many men she’d met over the years. There was the time she’d been on a boat with Charley and a very nice man who…well, the truth was, he was more than nice. He was absolutely gorgeous, tall, with dark blond hair, crystal-clear blue eyes, and he had spent eighteen years or so in various universities studying a number of subjects, so he’d been fascinating to talk to. He was brilliant, educated, terribly handsome, everything a woman could want, but although they had spent the whole four days of the trip together while Charley was prostrate with seasickness, Jackie had not fallen in love with the man. Of course, she argued with herself, she had been married, and maybe that had something to do with it. Maybe William was the first interesting, handsome man she’d had any contact with since she’d become a single woman.
She had to smile when she thought that. After Charley’s death she had been amazed at the number of men who came to “pay their respects.” At the time she had been grieving, wondering what she was going to do with herself without Charley to take care of, and suddenly there were many men offering her anything she wanted. It was flattering and annoying at the same time.
She didn’t so much as go out with a man for six months after Charley died, but the combination of loneliness and the constant invitations she received broke her. After months, she began to go out to dinner and movies, to auto races, to picnics. You name it and she went to it. And at each one it was the same thing: “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” “Where did you grow up?” “Where did you go to school?” “How many races have you won?” “Who are the celebrities you’ve met?” “What was it like having dinner at the White House?”
After six months of these dates, she began to consider having cards printed with vital information on them, so she could avoid having the same boring conversation over and over. Didn’t anyone ever have anything interesting to say? Like “What’s the biggest lie you ever told?” she couldn’t help thinking. That was what William had asked her. And he had made her a sandwich she liked, not a conventional sandwich of grilled cheese or beef with mustard, but a real sandwich.
A year after Charley died she had moved to Chandler, for she was tired of the circuit, tired of people who had seen so much and done so much that they were dying of ennui by the time they were thirty. Jackie was afraid that if she stayed with them she would become one of them. She wanted to be with people who had wonder in their voices when they talked of airplanes. “I don’t know how those things stay up,” they’d say. Words that once bored her to tears, words that made her angry with their very stupidity, now pleased her with their simplicity. She liked Chandler, liked the people in it, people who had done little in their lives—little except keep the world going, that is.
And now, here in this sleepy little town, she had met a man who had done what no other man since Charley had been able to do: he had interested her.
On Thursday she cleaned house. On Friday she went shopping and spent twice her three-month clothing budget, and when she got home she decided she hated everything she’d bought. She went through all the clothes in her closet, pulling out things she’d kept for years. She couldn’t decide whether to try to look like a sweet-tempered housewife or a sexy woman of the world. Or maybe she should aim for the movie-star-at-home-look of tailored trousers and a silk shirt.
By Saturday morning she was sure that her whole life depended on this afternoon, and she knew that whatever she chose would be wrong. When she awoke that morning she was angry, angry at herself for acting like a love-starved girl, for making something out of nothing. Maybe this man wouldn’t show up. Even if he did show up, it could be very embarrassing to be dolled up as though she were going to the school dance. What if he came wearing work clothes, ready to get started overhauling a plane engine or whatever he wanted to do? What if he didn’t show up at all?
She went to the stable that had been converted into a hangar, climbed a ladder and began trying to take the ruined propeller off her wrecked plane. The first thing she did was drop the wrench, tear one fingernail half off, then cut the bright red polish off another nail. Holding her hands up to the light, she grimaced. So much for having beautiful hands, she thought, but then she shrugged. Maybe it was better that she didn’t try to impress him.
Standing on a ladder, wearing greasy coveralls that once had been a rather pleasant gray but were now stained into a non-color, Jackie was pulling on the bent propeller with a wrench. Wiping her hair out of her eyes, she left a smear of grease on her cheek as she looked around the shaft and saw a pair of feet. Expensively shod feet. After wiping her face on the sleeve of her coveralls and smearing more grease on herself, she looked down to see a good-looking young man staring up at her. He was a tall man, with dark hair and eyes, and he was staring at her in a very serious way, as though he expected something from her.
“You need some help?” she asked. Most people who came to Eternity, if they weren’t friends, were tourists wanting to see the ghost town, or they were lost.
“Remember me?” he asked in a very nice voice.
She stopped trying to loosen a nut and looked down at him. Now that he mentioned it, there was something familiar about him. But she couldn’t place him. No doubt he lived in Chandler and she had gone to school with him.
“Sorry,” she said, “can’t seem to place you.”
Without so much as a smile, he said, “Do you remember this?” Holding out his hand, he had something in his palm, but she couldn’t tell what it was.