Emily
and Lyle’s Story – The Honeymoon and
Back To Work
The Day After — Ocean Beach
They woke late on Thursday, by the standards of Lyle's usual PX schedule, and
took a leisurely breakfast in the room before dressing and making
their way, mid-morning, back to 30th Street to collect Austin's
automobile, as arranged the day before.
Austin handed over the keys with a few brief instructions about
the choke and a piece of advice about the route to Sunset Cliffs
Boulevard that Lyle only half-listened to, eager as he was to be on
the road with his new wife beside him. Della sent them off with a
small basket of rolls and fruit "in case the diner's line is
long," which it was not, but which they appreciated all the same
on the drive out.
Ocean Beach in late June was bright and busy once the morning low clouds retreated westward, the Pacific exactly
as cold as Lyle remembered from the previous summer's outings before
he'd enlisted, and they left their shoes on the sand and waded in
together, laughing at the shock of the water, Emily's skirt pinned up
with the same pragmatic efficiency she'd shown at La Jolla months
before their engagement. They swam properly for a while once the cold
had lost its power to surprise them, and afterward lay on the warm
sand drying in the sun, Emily's head on Lyle's shoulder, both of them
entirely unhurried in a way that neither had experienced together
before — no trolley to catch, no Liberty Pass expiring, no three
o'clock deadline pulling at the edges of the day.
"This is what it's like now," Emily said, watching the
waves. "No clock."
"There's always a clock," Lyle said. "Mine starts
again Friday morning."
"Not today, though." She turned her head to look at him.
"Today there's no clock at all."
They ate lunch at the small diner near the pier — the same one
from the year before, the same tomato soup and grilled cheese that
had sustained them on their courting days, eaten now as a married
couple with Lyle's new ring catching the light when he reached for
the salt.
In the afternoon they drove back toward town, stopping first at
Harrison Avenue to change clothes and then at First and Hawthorn to
collect Georgia, who was waiting on the porch with her good coat
already on and an expression that suggested she had been ready for
some time and was pleased, though she would not have said so
directly, to be included in the day.
"How was the water?" Georgia asked, settling into the
automobile's back seat.
"Cold," Emily said. "Perfect."
"I assumed as much," Georgia said, and that was the
whole of her commentary on the matter, though she reached forward and
briefly squeezed Emily's shoulder in a gesture that said considerably
more than the words had.
Dinner at 30th Street that evening was quieter than the wedding
celebration had been — just the family again, Della's cooking, the
particular comfort of an ordinary evening made extraordinary by what
had happened the day before. Austin asked about the automobile's
performance on the way to the beach with the specific interest of a
man who cared about such things, and Lyle reported that the choke had
behaved exactly as described, which pleased Austin considerably.
By the time Charlie collected them again — his chauffeuring
duties apparently extending through the full length of the honeymoon,
a fact he mentioned with theatrical long-suffering that fooled no
one, least of all himself — the June evening had settled into the
particular gold-then-grey light that San Diego did so well, and Lyle
and Emily returned to the U.S. Grant for their final night as
newlyweds still officially on honeymoon, before Friday morning and
the ten-hour shift and the whole ordinary architecture of married
life reasserted itself.
The Last Honeymoon Night
The second night held less of the wonder of the first — not
because it mattered less, but because wonder of that particular kind
arrives once and then settles, appropriately, into something steadier
and no less precious for being familiar. They talked again, more
easily now, already building the private shorthand of two people who
have decided to spend every remaining night of their lives in the
same room. They spoke of the house on Harrison Avenue, of Georgia's
move still to come at month's end, of Lyle's Monday shift and Emily's
own return to Marston's later in the week, of the whole ordinary
future stretching out ahead of them, made extraordinary simply by
being shared.
"Tomorrow we go back to it," Emily said, as the lamp
burned low. "The clock starts again."
"It does," Lyle agreed. "But we go back to it
together now. That's the whole difference."
"It's a considerable difference," Emily said, and
settled against him, and they slept their second night as husband and
wife with the bay dark and quiet beyond the window, and Monday
waiting, unhurried, for its turn to arrive.
Friday
The honeymoon was over early on Friday morning – Lyle needed to
go to work at the PX on the base by 7 a.m. They ate a quick breakfast
at the hotel cafe, Emily kissed Lyle goodbye, and Lyle caught the
trolley to Balboa Park to work. Emily had the day off from work, and
she walked to visit her mother at Hawthorn Street. Emily worked in
Georgia’s small garden and rested a bit.
After work, Lyle went to Hawthorn Street, took Emily to dinner at
Tivoli’s, and then they went to their new home on Harrison Avenue
for their first night together there. Exhaustion! Happiness! Love!.
Sleep.
Saturday Morning
The alarm at 2064 Harrison Avenue rang at half past five, and Lyle
woke in his own bed, in his own house, with his wife beside him, and
thought that this was a very good way to begin a Monday.
Emily stirred as he rose. "You're not late," she said,
without opening her eyes fully.
"I'm never late," Lyle said, which was true, and which
she knew, and which she said anyway most mornings because it was a
comfortable thing to say.
The kitchen still bore the faint disorganization of a household
not yet fully settled — Georgia's pots in the cupboard nearest the
stove, in her order, but the coffee kept in a different tin than
either Lyle or Emily instinctively reached for, so that both of them
opened the wrong cupboard first before remembering. Emily made coffee
while Lyle dressed, and they ate a hurried breakfast together at the
small kitchen table — the first of what would become several
thousand such breakfasts, though neither of them thought of it that
way yet, being still new enough to the arrangement that every
ordinary thing felt faintly remarkable.
"Marston's at eight," Emily said, checking the small
clock on the shelf.
"PX at seven." Lyle finished his coffee standing, the
old habit from the barracks not yet worn off. "Ten hours today.
I'll be home by six."
"I'll have something ready," Emily said, and then
paused, visibly trying the sentence out for size — I'll have
something ready, said by a wife to a husband, in her own
kitchen, for the first time in earnest rather than in rehearsal. She
smiled slightly at herself. "That's a strange thing to hear
myself say."
"Get used to it," Lyle said, kissing her before he left.
"I intend to hear it a great many more times."
He caught the trolley at the corner, two blocks from the house,
and rode it toward Balboa Park through a San Diego Saturday that
looked, to every outside appearance, exactly like every other
Saturday the city had produced that summer — except that Lyle
Carringer rode it now as a married man, which altered nothing about
the scenery and altered a great deal about how he saw it.
Corporal Briggs looked up when Lyle reported for his shift and
studied him for a moment with the particular scrutiny Briggs reserved
for inventory discrepancies and, apparently, newly married privates.
"Married," Briggs said. It was not a question.
"Wednesday. Married Wednesday."
"Congratulations." Briggs said the word the way he said
most words, without excess, but he extended his hand, and the
handshake that followed was longer and firmer than Briggs's
handshakes typically ran. "Harrison Avenue treating you well?"
"Very well, Corporal. Our first night there was last night."
"Good street," Briggs said again, as he had back in May,
and returned to the ledger, the conversation closed, the
congratulations delivered and received in the economical Briggs
fashion that Lyle had long since learned to value precisely because
it cost Briggs something to offer at all.
Saturday — First and Hawthorn
Saturday night brought them both to First and Hawthorn Street for
dinner, the house now considerably emptier than it had been even at
the wedding, Georgia's notice to vacate ticking down toward its June
30th deadline with the particular relentlessness that deadlines have
regardless of how well one has planned around them.
Georgia met them at the door with the expression of a woman who
has spent the week packing boxes and has developed strong opinions
about the process.
"You'll want to see what's left," she said, by way of
greeting, and led them through rooms that had, over the preceding ten
days, been steadily reduced to their essential furniture and a
scattering of boxes labeled in Georgia's precise hand: KITCHEN —
FRAGILE. LINENS. GEORGIA'S ROOM — NOT YET.
Dinner was simple — Georgia had been cooking around the packing
rather than for any particular occasion, and served them a plain but
satisfying meal of chicken and vegetables at a table that itself
would need to make the journey to Harrison Avenue before the month
was out.
"How was the first few days?" Georgia asked, once they
were settled.
"Good," Emily said. "We enjoyed the two days off,
did some looking and shopping and even went out to the beach!"
"Corporal Briggs congratulated me," Lyle offered. "At
some length, for Briggs."
"What did he say?"
"'Congratulations.' One word. Followed by a handshake that
lasted four seconds longer than his handshakes generally last."
Georgia considered this. "For a man like that, four seconds
is practically a wedding toast."
They talked through dinner about the coming week's logistics —
Georgia's larger furniture, the bed frame and the wardrobe from her
room, still needing transport before the thirtieth, and the question
of whether Austin's automobile or a hired dray would prove more
practical for the heaviest pieces. Georgia had opinions, delivered
with her customary economy, about which items mattered enough to
preserve carefully and which could be left behind without regret, a
distinction she drew with the particular clarity of someone who had
already moved a household twice before, from Chicago to San Diego in
1911, and from house to apartment in 1916 after her husband died,
with considerably less warning and considerably more at stake.
After dinner, the three of them sat for a while on the mostly bare
front porch, First and Hawthorn quieter now than it had been in
years, watching the June evening settle over the street that had been
Emily's whole life until ten days before.
"Will you miss this house?" Lyle asked Georgia, careful
in how he asked it.
Georgia was quiet for a moment, looking at the street, the porch,
the door she had opened and closed some hundreds of times over two
years. "I'll miss what happened in it," she said finally.
"Emily grew up in these rooms. That matters more than the rooms
themselves." She stood, gathering the evening to a close with
her usual decisiveness. "The house is just boards and plaster.
I'm not sentimental about boards and plaster. I'm sentimental about
considerably less replaceable things."
She did not elaborate, and neither Lyle nor Emily asked her to,
understanding that this was as close as Georgia Auble generally came
to saying something tender outright.
Sunday — 30th Street
Sunday's dinner at 2015 30th Street carried the easy familiarity
of a tradition now fully re-established — the newlyweds arriving at
the family table not as guests being specially accommodated but as
the married couple whose Sunday presence was simply expected, the way
it had been expected on Thursdays for the twelve months before.
Della had cooked generously, as she generally did on Sundays, and
the table held roast chicken and vegetables from the garden and rolls
that disappeared with their customary speed. Austin asked after the
days at the PX with genuine interest, and Lyle described Briggs's
four-second handshake, which Austin found sufficiently amusing to
repeat to Edgar, who had arrived slightly late and missed the
original telling.
"Four seconds," Edgar said. "For Briggs, that's
practically an embrace."
"That's exactly what Georgia said," Emily noted.
"Georgia is a woman of sound judgment," Abbie said from
her chair, which was, from Abbie, high praise indeed, delivered in
the tone of someone confirming a verdict rather than offering a
compliment.
The conversation moved easily through the meal — Austin's week
at Rockwell Field, a new training class arrived from the Midwest that
had, in Austin's telling, considerably more enthusiasm than aptitude,
though he expressed confidence this would correct itself with
practice; Della's garden, which had produced its first real tomato
crop of the season, a fact she mentioned with a sideways glance
toward Georgia's absent competitive commentary on the subject, since
Georgia's own tomato ambitions from the previous summer remained a
matter of family legend.
"You'll have to tell your mother," Della said to Emily.
"Three tomatoes already, and it's barely the solstice."
"She'll want the count," Emily said. "She keeps
precise track of these things."
After dinner, when the dishes had been cleared and the family had
settled into the parlor for the unhurried remainder of a Sunday
evening, Lyle raised the matter he'd been planning to raise all
through dinner.
"Father," he said. "Could I borrow the automobile
on Thursday? Georgia has furniture that needs moving to Harrison
Avenue before the thirtieth, and Thursday is my next Liberty day, and
it seems as good a time as any to make a start on it, while I have
the entire day."
"Take it as long as you need it," he said. "I'll
come along, if you'd like an extra pair of hands. Moving a bed frame
alone is a good way to put your back out, and you'll want your back
in working order for the next day's shift.
"I wouldn't say no to the help," Lyle admitted.
Edgar, overhearing, volunteered himself as well, on the grounds
that three men moving furniture accomplished the job in considerably
better time than two. Austin said “Maybe Davey can help too."
To be continued...
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