Pilots of the Purple Twilight

a short story
by Kit Reed

The wives spent every day by the pool at the Miramar, not far from the base, waiting for word about their men. The rents were cheap and nobody bothered them, which meant that no one came to patch the rotting stucco or kill centipedes for them or pull out the weeds growing up through the cracks in the cement. They were surrounded by lush undergrowth and bright flowers nobody knew the names for, and although they talked about going into town to shop or taking off for home, wherever that was, they needed to be together by the pool because this was where the men had left them and they seemed to need to keep claustrophobia as one of the conditions of their waiting.

On good days they revolved slowly in the sunlight, redolent of suntan oil and thorough in the exposure of all their surfaces because they wanted the tans to be right for the homecoming, but they also knew they had plenty of time. If it rained they would huddle under the fading canopy and play bridge and canasta and gin, keeping scored into the hundreds of thousands even though they were sick of cards. They did their nails and eyebrows and read Perry Mason paperbacks until they were bored to extinction, bitching and waiting for the mail. Everybody took jealous note of the letters received, which never matched the number of letters sent because mail was never forwarded after a man was reported missing. The women wrote anyway, and every day at ten they swarmed down the rutted drive to fall on the mailman like black widow spiders, ravenous. Most of the letter were for the wretches whose husbands had already come home, for God's sake, whisking them away to endlessly messy kitchens and perpetual heaps of laundry in dream houses mortgaged on the GI Bill. Embarrassed by joy, they had left the Miramar without a backward glance, and for the same reason they always wrote at least once, stuffing their letters with vapid-looking snapshots of first babies, posting them from suburbs on the other side of the world.

At suppertime they all went into the rambling stucco building, wrenching open the rusting casements because it seemed important to keep sight of the road. Just before the shadows merged to make darkness they would drift outside again, listening, because planes still flew out from the nearby base every morning and, waiting, they were fixed on the idea of counting them back in. Most of their men had left in ships or on foot but still they waited. To the women at the Miramar every dawn patrol hinted at a twilight return, and the distant Fokkers or P-38s or F-87s seemed appropriate emblems for their own hopes, the suspense a fitting shape to place on the tautening stomachs, the straining ears, the dread of the telegram.

They all knew what they would do when the men came back even though they had written their love scenes privately. There would be the reunion in the crowded station, the embrace that would shut out everybody else. She would be standing at the sink when he came up from behind and put his arms around her waist, or she would be darning or reading, not thinking about him just for once, when a door would open and she would hear him: Honey, I'm home. There would be the embrace at the end of the driveway, the embrace in plain view, the embrace in the field. None of them thought about what he would be like when they embraced, what he must look like now, the way he really smelled, because their memories had been stamped with images distilled, perfected by the quality of their own waiting, the balance they tried to keep between thinking about it and not thinking about it. If I can just manage not to think about it, Elise still told herself, then maybe he will come.

Watching the sky, even after all these years, she would be sure she heard the distant vibration of motors drumming, or maybe it was the jet sound, tearing the sky like a scythe; she had been there since Chateau Thierry, or was it Amiens, and she knew the exact moment at which it became too dark to hope. "Tomorrow," she would say, and because the others preferred to think she was the oldest and so was the best at waiting, they would follow her inside. They all secretly feared that there was an even older woman bedridden in the tower, and that her husband had sailed with Enoch Arden, but nobody wanted to know for sure. They preferred to look to Elise, who kept herself beautifully and was still smiling; she had survived.

They were soft at night, jellied with anticipation and memory, one in spirit with Elise, but each morning found them clattering out to the chaises with Pam and Marge, hard and bright. Pam and Marge were the leaders of a group of self-styled girls in their fifties, who had graying hair and thickening waists. They liked to kid and whistled songs like "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" through their teeth. They shared a home-front camaraderie that enraged Donna, who was younger, and who had sent her husband off to a war nobody much remembered. She and Sharon and a couple of others in their forties would press their temples with their fists, grumbling about grandstanding, and people who still thought fighting was to be admired. Anxious, bored, frazzled by waiting, these two groups indulged in a number of diverting games: who had the most mail and who was going to sit at the round table at supper, who was hogging all the sunlight. They chose to ignore the newcomers, mere slips of things who had sent their men off to -- where was it -- Nam, or someplace worse.

Pam and Marge were tugging back and forth with Donna and Sharon this particular morning, wrangling over who was going to sit next to Elise, when Peggy walked in. Her shoes were sandy from the walk up the long driveway and her brave going-away outfit was already rusty with sweat. Bill had put her in a cab for the Miramar because, as he pointed out, he wasn't going to be gone for long and she would be better off with other service wives, they would have so much in common.

"Bitch," Marge was saying, "look what you did to my magazines."

Donna dumped her makeup kit and portable radio on the chaise. "It serves you right."

Marge was red-faced and hot, she may not even have heard herself lashing out. "I hope it crashes."

Even Pam was shocked. "Marge!"

"It would serve her right."

Peggy dropped her overnight bag. "Stop it."

Donna had gone white. "Don't ever say that."

"Stop." Peggy set her fist against her teeth.

"Girls." Elise stood between them, frail and ladylike in voile. "What would Harry and Ralph think if they could see you now?"

Donna and Marge stood back, pink with shame.

"What is the new girl going to think?"

"I'm sorry," Marge said, and she and Donna hugged.

Elise saw that Peggy was backing away, ready to make a break for it. The perfect hostess, she put a hand on her arm. "Come and sit by me, ah..." She inclined her head graciously.

"Peggy."

"Come, Peggy." She patted the chaise. "I want you to meet Donna, her Ralph is in the Kula gulf, and Pam and Marge both have husbands at, yes, that's sit, Corregidor."

"But they couldn't."

Elise said, serenely, "Won't you have some iced tea?"

Peggy was gauging the distance between her and the overnight bag, looking for a gap in the overgrown greenery. "I can't stay."

"You'll have to excuse the girls," Elise said. "Everybody is a little taut, you understand."

"I don't belong here, I'm..."

Elise spoke gently, overlapping, "...only here for a little while. I know."

"Bill promised."

"Of course he did.

Later, when she felt better, Peggy let Elise lead her inside the cavernous building. She unpacked her things and after she had changed into her bikini she went out to take her place by the pool. She thought she would join the other girls in bikinis, who looked closer to her age, but they sat in closed ranks at the far end of the pool, giving her guarded looks of such hostility that she hurried back to her place by Elise.

"Don't mind them," Elise said. "It takes time to adjust."

Going down to dinner, Peggy understood how important it was to be well-groomed. The room was bright with printed playsuits and pretty shifts in floral patterns chosen in fits of bravery. Although there were only women in the room, each of them had taken care with her hair and makeup, pressing her outfit because it was important; if they flagged, the men might discover them and be disgusted, or else the word would get out that they had given up, and there was no telling what grief that would bring. Either way they would never be forgiven. Whether or not the men came they would face each dinner hour tanned and combed and carefully made up and no matter what it cost, they would be smiling.

That night Pam and Marge were never better; they had on their sharkskin shorts and the bright jersey shirts knotted under their breasts to expose brown bellies, and when Betty joined them at the end of the dining room they went into their Andrews Sisters imitation with a verve that left everybody shouting. Jane played the intro again and again, and even though they were spent and gasping, they came tapdancing back. There was a mood of antic pleasure which had partly to do with the new girl in the audience, and partly with the possibility that the men just might come back and discover them at a high point: See how well we do without you. Look how pretty we are, how lively. How could you bear to leave us for long? They imagined the men laughing and hooting the way they did for USO shows; at the finale, the women would bring them up on stage.

Bernice was next with "I'll be seeing you," and they were all completely still by the time Donna took the microphone and sang, "Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane." Then it was time to go outside.

"Tell me about him," Elise said, leading Peggy through the trees.

Peggy said, "He has blue eyes."

"Of course he does. Gailliard has blue eyes."

"Who?"

"Gailliard. He crushed my two hands in one of his, and when I cried out he said, Did I hurt you, and I had to let him think he had pinched my fingers because I didn't want to let him know I was afraid." She whimpered. "I'm still afraid."

This old lady? Peggy wanted to support her. Oh Lord.

"Harry always kisses me very sweetly," Pam was saying to Marge, "he only opens his mouth a little."

Marge said, "Dave promised to bring me a dish carved out of Koa wood. Have you ever seen Koa wood?"

Donna and her group muttered together; they had been schooled to believe it was important not to let any of it show.

None of the young things seemed to know what they thought about the parting. Still they came out into the evening with all the others, straining as if they too were convinced of the return. Marva knew they didn't even speak the same language as the old ladies, who would talk about duty and patriotism and, what was it, the job that had to be done. She and Ben and a whole bunch of others had been together in the commune, like puppies, until they came for him because he had thrown away the piece of paper with the draft call, the MP kicked him and said, Son, you ought to be damn glad to go. Now here was this new girl not any older than Marva but her husband was what they called a career man, she probably believed in all that junk the old ladies believed in, so she could learn to play canasta and go to hell.

At first Peggy was afraid of the shadows; then the figures in the field sorted themselves out so that she could see which were trees and which were women running across the grass like little girls, stretching their arms upwards, and she found herself swallowing rage because this place was worse than any ghetto. The women were all either stringy and bitter or big-assed and foolish and Bill had dumped her here as if she were no better than the rest of them. When Elise tried to take her hand she pulled away.

"It's going to be all right."

"This is terrible."

"You'll get used to it."

"Listen." Marge's voice lifted. "Do you hear anything?"

Waiting, they all stood apart because each departure shimmered in the air at this moment of possible return.

Elise remembered that Gailliard had taken her to the balcony at the Officers Club. He had set her up on the rail in her grey chiffon with the grey suede slippers and then he stood back to regard her, so handsome that she wanted to cry out, and she remembered that at the time they were so steeped in innocence that each departure of necessity spelled victory and swift return. She wondered if old ladies were supposed to feel the hunger that stirred her when she remembered his body. She wondered if he was still loyal, after all these years. In retrospect their love was so perfect that she knew he would always be beautiful, as she remembered him, and true.

Pam and Marge had said goodbye in peacetime; when Harry and Dave flew out from Pearl in April of that year it had seemed like just another departure. Marge could remember dancing with Dave's picture, relieved, in a way, because the picture never belched or scratched its belly, although she and Pam stoutly believed that if they had known there was going to be a war they could have surrounded the parting with the right number of tears and misgivings, enough prayers to prepare for the return. Their fears would have been camouflaged by bright grins because, when you were a service wife, you had to treat every parting like every other parting. Still...

Bernice's husband Rob enlisted in the first flush of patriotism after Pearl Harbor. "Go," she said, clenching her fists to keep from grabbing him. He looked back once: "At least I'm doing the right thing." He's off there accomplishing things with a bunch of other guys, they're busy all day and at night they relax and horse around while I am stuck here, getting older, with nothing to do except sing that song on Saturday nights... Donna remembered her and Ralph on the bed, wondering what sense it made for him to go into the mess in Korea. There was no choice and so, laying resignation between them like a knife-blade, they made love one last time. Marva remembered being stoned in that commune near Camp Pendleton, Ben would come in looking like Donald Duck in that uniform and all the kids would laugh, but the last time he made her pick up her bedroll and he brought her here, he told her he would be back and maybe he would.

Peggy nursed a secret hurt: what Bill said to her in a rage right before he dumped her at the Miramar: "If you can't wait more than five minutes, why should I bother to come back," and her riposte: "Don't bother," so when Marge yelled, "I think I hear something," she had to run to the edge of the clearing with the rest of them; at the first sound they would light the flares. She heard herself calling aloud, thinking if anything happened to Bill it would be her fault, for willing it, and that if she spread her arms and cried, "They're coming," it might bring them.

She discovered that the days were exquisitely organized around their waiting; no one sunned or played cards or read for too long in any one day because it would distort the schedule; they had to keep the division between the segments because it made the hours keep marching. Although fights were a constant, no quarrel could be too violent to preclude a reconciliation because they had to continue together, even as they had to silence any suggestion that even one of them might be disappointed; when the men came back they were all coming, down to the last one. Unless this was so, there was no way for the women to live together.

Pam and Marge organized a softball team, mostly thick-waisted "girls" from their own age group. They got Peggy to play, and after some consideration Donna joined them.

"Wait till you meet Dave," Marge said, sprawling in the grass in the outfield. "I would see him at the end of the walk in his uniform and that was when I loved him most. He'll never change."

"Everybody changes," Donna said gently.

"Not my Dave."

"Now Bill..." Peggy began, but when she tried to think of Bill there was a blur and what she remembered was not what he looked like but what she wanted him to look like because she had always been bothered by the hair growing in his nostrils, his wide Mongol cheekbones, covered by too much flesh, so she recomposed his face to her liking: If I can't have what I had, then at least let me make it what I want. "Bill looks like something out of the movies."

Somebody decided it would be a good idea to have bonfires ready; if the planes should come by daylight they would see the smoke columns. Every few weeks the women could rebuild the heaps of firewood, taking out anything that looked wet or rotten. Bernice organized a duplicate bridge tournament. Marva and some of the younger girls mediated for half an hour before breakfast and again before supper and, grudgingly, asked Peggy to join them.

She and Peggy were the first at the chaises one bright morning and they exchanged stories, grumbling about being stuck with all these old biddies, no better off than anybody else.

"I don't know," Marva was saying, "at least the meals come regular. I got sick of granola."

Peggy said, "I never had a tan like this before."

"But they act like we're going to be here forever." Marva looked at Marge, wabbling out on wedgies. "It's obscene."

Peggy said bravely, "We're not like them."

"We'll never be like them."

"We just have to hang in here for the time being." Peggy settled herself, feeling the sun on her belly. "For the time being we're in the same boat."

Elise seemed especially drawn to Peggy; she would pat the chaise next to her and wait for Peggy to join her. Then she would put the name, Gailliard, into the air between them and sit contemplating it, assuming that Peggy shared some of the same feelings. She told herself Peggy was young enough to be her daughter but that was a lie; she could be Peggy's grandmother, and knew it. Still it seemed important to her to keep the pretense of youth, even as it was important to keep herself exquisitely groomed and to greet each morning with the same generous smile, the same air of hope because to the others she was a fixed point, which they could sight from, and until she flagged they would not waver. She did her best to suspend Peggy in that same network of waiting, to keep her safe with the rest.

"You ought to talk to Donna," she said, "I think you have a lot in common."

"I'm afraid of her because she seems so sad."

"You could learn from her," Elise said. "She keeps herself well."

Peggy knew what Elise meant. Pam and Marge and their group played records over and over and mooned and dithered like a bunch of girls but Donna kept her dignity, fixed in a purity of waiting which Elise would admire because it resembled her own. There was no way for Peggy to explain that she and Bill had parted in anger, that she was pledged to wait but she had already jeopardized everything she was waiting for, that in her failure of will she might already have wished Bill to his death.

Please bring him back, she thought. I would give anything to have him back.

By the time she thought this she had already been there longer than she realized; time blurred, and as she sent out her wish she heard the distant drumming of engines and the sky darkened with planes returning, the message running ahead of them, singing in the air at the Miramar, hanging before them as clearly as anything in writing:

so that Peggy had to hide her head and rock with anxiety and it was Donna who was the first to acknowledge it, addressing the sky gently, her voice soft with several lifetimes of regret.

She said, so nobody else heard her: "I'm afraid it's too late."

Elise found her hands fluttering about her face and her loins weak and her head buzzing in panic. Even with her eyes closed she was ware of Gailliard shimmering before her, beautiful and unscathed, and she pulled a towel up to cover her, murmuring, "He'll see me, he'll see me," because she knew that he would come to her with his beauty preserved at the moment when his life went out like a spark and she was well past seventy now, beautifully groomed but old, wrinkled, with all her systems crumbling, diminished even further by his relentless beauty, and if he recognized her at all he would say, You're so old. She pulled the towel closer, like a shroud, whispering, "Please don't let him see me."

(Donna murmured, "There's nothing left here.")

"You bastard, wasting me like this, while you stayed young." Bernice went to her room and pulled the curtains and slammed the door.

Marge was ablaze with love, and she sang, or prayed: Dave, let me keep you out there, perfect and unchanged. If you come you will have a beer belly, just like me, you will have gotten gray. As she sang, or prayed, she imagined she heard him responding: How could I, I've been dead, and she said, aloud, "Dave, let me keep you the way I thought you were."

(In the tower, the oldest lady turned milky eyes to the ceiling; she could no longer speak but she made herself understood: It was all used up by waiting.)

Peggy cowered; they were supposed to light the flares or something -- set off fires. Remembering the story of the monkey's paw she thought her last wish had come true and that Bill was struggling out of some distant heap of wreckage at this very minute, and he would be mangled, dreadful, dragging toward her...

"The meals aren't bad," Marva was saying, doing her best to override the thunder of the engines; the sky above was black now but she pushed on, "And Ben, he never really gave a damn." Shrugging as if to brush aside the shadows of the wings, she said, "Hey, Peg, do you hear anything?"

...either that or he would try and yank her away from this place that she loved just to go on making her unhappy. He would be Enoch Arden, at the window, and she would turn to face him: Oh, it's you.

"No," Peggy said firmly, as the planes passed over, "I don't hear anything."

© Kit Reed 1998, 2003.
This story appears in print in Kit's collection, Weird Women, Wired Women (Wesleyan University Press, 1998; Big Engine Press, 2002).


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