Believe in Me: George and Louise, #3

To the #MeToo crowd: I believe in you.

George

There is nothing quite as surreal as becoming a bachelor father at eighteen.

Especially when said bachelor father happens to be in the midst of his second year at a reputable seminary, the faculty of which would be far from impressed to discover one of their star pupils has an apparent morality problem.

It was me, the star pupil and the bachelor father. But I would like one point to be very clear from the start.

I did not have a morality problem.

You, Miss Fizzytwigs, were abandoned on the doorstep of my mother’s boarding house one summer morning in 1933. Your birth certificate, tucked into the cardboard box in which you were left, announced you as Hazel Mae, but I can taste words, and Hazel Mae tastes like twigs dipped in shaken-up Coca-Cola.

I’m sorry I can’t offer a less pathetic explanation for why I’ve called you Fizz for the last thirty-odd years.

That birth certificate also listed me as your father, and... I am that.

You asked me for the story, and the only way I can properly tell it to you is to write it out. I think you will understand why this is the better way.

Part One

Then she made offers again, and said, If I would be ruled by her, she would make me great and happy, for, said she, I am the Mistress of the World, and men are made happy by me. Then I asked her name, and she told me it was Madam Bubble.

John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

Salem, Oregon, September 1931: George

Louise and I were at an age when anyone over the age of twenty-five felt obligated to enquire about our plans for the future.

That is, they’d ask me.

But Louise, who refused to be brushed aside as someone who needn’t bother with plans because she was just a girl, always answered first. She’d launch into a long, articulate exposition about her brand-new commercial pilot’s license and how she was teaching her first pupil of, she hoped, many, so she could save up enough to buy her own plane. That goal accomplished, she would get married and have six children (whilst still flying planes).

To this the enquirers invariably responded with an instant of dumbfounded silence, followed by, Goodness me, however will you manage?

I can manage anything, she would reply, coolly. And it was true; she could. Anyone who saw her caring for a zooful of small humans on a Saturday so their frazzled parents could breathe for a few hours, or corralling other energetic small humans in her Sunday school class, would ever doubt her capabilities. Children adored Louise, and she adored them right back. No amount of chaos could faze her. She thrived on chaos the way I thrived on the exact opposite.

Then the enquirers would turn back to me and ask the question again. I’d switch on my polished orator’s voice and explain that I was starting seminary studies in January, because I had been working hard to graduate high school early, and they’d look from me to Louise as if thinking, And how are these two futures going to mesh, exactly?

People always assumed that, because we were inseparable, we were an item. We weren’t.

My dreams were lofty and a tad vague, to be sure, but one doesn’t bother much with practicality when one is sixteen-almost-seventeen.

(Unless one was Louise.)

At any rate, I spoke well and knew it, and had immersed myself in Hebrew study for nearly seven years already. I was sure crowds of thousands would someday gather to hear the Reverend George Graham, famed expositor of Scripture.

You’re awfully full of yourself, was all Louise had to say on the subject. She was not graduating early, because she was quite content to finish high school at the usual time. Her voice had a calculated sweetness in it that, in the earliest days of our friendship, might have earned her a bucket of water over her unsuspecting head.

I suppose I, like many other men, didn’t like to admit The Woman Was Right.

Louise had two overarching obsessions. One was her love affair with flight, which began at age ten when we saw a film called The Air Mail. After that day, any aviation-related news got clipped from the papers and lovingly pasted into scrapbooks, to be read and re-read. It didn’t matter to her that so many of them were about accidents and deaths. She said, Each one teaches me a new thing not to do.

When Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic in 1927, it sent Louise into a fever of delight and ecstasy. One scrapbook and half of another were specifically devoted to him (and his wife, who flew with him and was therefore even more thrilling to Louise).

Louise even named my dog—my dog, mind—Lindbergh.

The second obsession was my uncle Jamie, Dad’s twin brother, who was an impossible standard for her future husband to live up to. Obviously she couldn’t marry him, and she’d already met, analyzed, and dismissed his five sons from the running as Already Taken, A Literal Fossil, Undependably Volatile, Too Young, and Definitely Too Young.

To be fair, I also loved Uncle Jamie, despite some rather intense theological differences between us. He meant the world to me. But my father was alive and present; Louise’s wasn’t. So I knew Uncle Jamie met a specific need for her—and she wasn’t at all subtle about her determination to marry someone just like him.

The problem was, nobody else could ever be anything close to Uncle Jamie.

There were other things Louise loved, too. Good food. Making impossibly delicate lacy handwork. Pretty clothes. Dancing.

We’d taken ballet lessons intensively for two years, starting in the spring of 1927, with Tabitha Wisniewski, a former principal dancer from Poland. Then I spent several months of 1928 in London courtesy of Uncle Jamie, living at his London flat with my half-sister Beatrice and being put through my paces by an incredibly exacting Russian balletmaster who’d emigrated to London. Afterwards, I came back to Mrs. Tabitha, and Louise and I had done performances in both Salem and Portland with a new company from California.

But when the crash came in 1929, our lessons came to an end. Louise had progressed as far as she cared to with ballet proper (she was adamantly uninterested in pointe), but I was not ready to give it up. There is something about the precision of the art that makes it the kind of challenge I adore.

Fortunately Mrs. Tabitha and her two daughters Olivia and Natalia became the first official boarders at my mother’s boarding house. As part of their rent she kept working with me, and Olivia, who had continued to pointe, became my partner for ballet performances. But Louise kept in trim in her own way, and she and I had developed our own brand of what she called ballet-influenced ballroom dancing.

This was all, of course, frowned upon by the portion of our Presbyterian church family Louise had dubbed the Mrs. Myrtle Morgan Mob. Every church seems to have such a cadre of shrewish, disagreeable old ladies, and Mrs. Morgan (a deacon’s wife) was the dominant one at our church. She was scandalized that an aspiring minister and a current Sunday school teacher should condescend to engage in such debauchery as dancing and said so.

Loudly.

And often.

I didn’t much mind. I’d have been in her bad books even without the dancing for several reasons. Let me list them.

1. Having heathen parents who didn’t attend church.

2. One of these parents being Jewish.

3. Not trying harder to make said Jewish parent Christian instead.

4. Still stubbornly identifying as Jewish myself despite my choice to follow Jesus, and doing all those Jewish things like the holy days and Shabbat and not eating pig.

5. Being the baby half-brother of the aforementioned successful and therefore surely dissolute English actress Bea Graham. (The entire town knew of her because in 1929 she’d come to California to be in a talkie production of a recent New York stage performance that had been a huge hit, then toured a whole string of theaters along the west coast, including our own Elsinore Theatre. She stayed with us a couple of nights, and her picture had been in the paper.)

Of course, I’d have been thrilled to have my parents go to church with me, but in my family the principal tenet we all followed was mutual respect for one another’s beliefs (or lack thereof, in my father’s case). In my opinion, personal choice and not coercion was the only way any faith could stick and have meaning.

But I was talking about dancing.

When I wasn’t studying and Louise wasn’t flying, and Olivia did not require me for a performance somewhere, you could dependably find Louise and me dancing. We had spent most of the summers of 1930 and ’31 as street performers in both Salem and Portland. Anywhere there was an open space and a steady stream of passersby became our stage, and we’d come home with a hatful of small change. It added up to quite a lot, always more than covering our train fare. We split the difference into our banks: mine a Mason jar with a chipped rim, hers a sock whose mate had been lost.

Of course our school and other Salem organizations often called on us as well, when planning programs and fundraisers. The attention was flattering, even if neither of us planned to make a career of it, and the stuff we danced to was not exactly Music, according to Uncle Jamie, who preferred Handel and hymns.

"I think he doesn’t mind modern music nearly as much as he pretends to mind it," Louise said, dropping on a record of her favorite song from Show Boat. He just likes to razz everyone.

September 17, 1931: Louise

Today was my birthday, and George and I converged paths on our bicycle rides home—from downtown and the airfield, respectively. George’s four-year-old fox terrier Lindbergh barked a greeting at me from his spot in the wire basket fixed to his master’s bicycle.

Happy birthday! George called.

My house or yours? I called back.

Yours.

I charged off. He raced after me, past his house and down a few blocks, until we swerved around a corner to dump our bikes in the dried-out front garden grass of my place. George scooped up Lindbergh and followed me into the house.

My house was always quiet and cool, unlike the boarding house chaos of George’s. I lived alone with my mother, a concert pianist who taught all of the brightest young musicians in Salem.

(Mother was naturally timid; I was not. I’d been working hard finding places for her to give recitals here in Oregon, and occasionally even gigs with the symphony orchestra in Portland, one of which landed her a proper agent. Enid Baxter helped her publish several songs of her own composition and was working on getting her name out there. My mother had once dreamed of traveling the world performing. She should do exactly that, and I believed she would, with Miss Baxter’s help.)

We went up to my room, where I kicked off my shoes, tossed my helmet and leather flying coat to a nearby chair, and flopped back onto my bed. Lacing my fingers together under my head, I grinned at George. Okay, you can show me whatever is in your pocket now.

How’d you—oh, never mind. He put Lindbergh onto the floor. The dog jumped onto the sunny windowsill to watch squirrels, and George fished out a little box from his pocket and held it out to me.

It’s so tiny! I squealed, inspecting with delight the perfectly miniature wrappings and bow (he knew how much I loved tiny things) before carefully extracting what was inside so as not to destroy said wrappings or bow.

George said, It’s not the airplane you want, but until you get that one—

I set the wrappings on my nightstand and flipped up the lid, bouncing as I lifted out a silver chain bracelet with a Spirit of St. Louis charm hanging from it. It caught the afternoon light, twinkling like a star. I held out my arm and he sat beside me to fasten it on. A good many links dangled free once he got it fitted around my wrist.

I can take the extras off, he offered, but I shook my head.

I like it this way. The dangly bit is just that much more sparkle.

He leant back against my headboard and I sat beside him. He often said my room was a pleasant place, which surprised me, because it was cluttered in comparison with his own. Pinned all over my walls were photographs of aviators, and dancers like the Astaires and the Castles, and fashion plates I saved from magazines. Lindbergh (the real one, not the dog one) was well-represented too, in the form of a bank in the shape of his head, his book We, a model of the Spirit of St. Louis hanging from my ceiling, and George’s own silly drawing of me lying on its wing so I could kiss him on the cheek (Lindbergh, not George). (George doesn’t do kissing. I’ve been waiting for years for him to decide he does.)

As we sat there he slid down until his head was on my pillow, his eyes closed behind the lenses of his round wire-rimmed glasses. I watched him a while, dreaming about putting my hand on his chest and leaning down to kiss him. He was so good-looking, and I wished that my lying here beside him would awaken some sleeping passion in him. But after all these years, I knew there was no point in such wishing, and although nothing hurt more than the George-shaped ache in my heart, I refused to take what he hadn’t offered first.

So I said, It’s very appropriate, really, considering the Lindberghs were in the paper today.

I watched his face as he struggled to connect my statement to anything. I wasn’t sure he realized I was referring to the bracelet. He didn’t open his eyes, even when he finally spoke: a carefully chosen comment. They’re always in the paper.

Not every day. Anyway, they left Japan for China! It’s new news!

"But they’re not flying the Spirit of St. Louis," he pointed out.

Ah, so he had connected the dots.

Doesn’t matter, Mr. Literal, I said. Can’t you extrapolate?

I’m a minister, not a mathematician, he said.

Not yet, I reminded him.

Apprentice ministry counts, he said.

I decided not to engage. I knew he would just remind me he’d applied for a license to preach and he didn’t have to be ordained to get started.

So I said, Anyway, I have news. He waited, still not opening his eyes, and I slipped my arm through his and rested my head on his shoulder. There’s a dance competition on New Year’s Eve and I’ve signed us up for it.

What night of the week is that?

It’s not Friday. I checked. He’d become very dedicated to Keeping Shabbat ever since he came back from his ballet stint in London several years ago.

That’s fine then, he said.

It’s sponsored by several businesses and local bigwigs. People are coming from all over to compete. Portland, even. The first prize is $50 and we are going to win it.

We are, are we? He opened his eyes at last.

Yes. Now, what shall it be? Waltz, tango, or foxtrot?

He considered. Waltz. Everyone does the foxtrot.

Not many people do tango.

I was baiting him. He knew it. Tango might seem a bit... racy.

(George does pick the oddest things to be prudish about.)

I laughed. Only to you and maybe Mrs. Myrtle Morgan. Anyway, we’ll need panache to help us win, which means you need a proper tuxedo.

He groaned. "You seriously expect me to be seen in public in a penguin suit?"

Oh, please, I said. "You wear tights without a second thought—how in the world are tights higher on your ‘publicly acceptable’ list than a tuxedo?"

He ignored the question, his face smugly satisfied as he had a fresh idea. You don’t have anything nearly that formal yourself.

Oh, but I will. Your mother’s agreed to make me a dress. Already spoke to her today before I ran into you. As for you, Director’s is having a sale tomorrow. It’ll be my treat.

He gave me A Look, and I punched his arm lightly. "Come now, you don’t hate shopping that much."

He let out a melodramatic sigh. Happy birthday, he said drily. A shopping trip is the gift I would rather not have given you.

Stop grousing, I said. And now I want to change, so scram.

If George was like ordinary boys, he would have tried to coax me into letting him watch, but he is not like ordinary boys, and immediately left the room to wait downstairs.

Lindbergh stayed with me as I stripped out of my oil-smudged things. For a moment I stood in front of my mirror.

I had a figure, of a sort, but George never seemed to notice it, and I didn’t want any other boys to, so I generally stuck to no-nonsense skirts and cardigans which concealed it. But the dress Mrs. Graham had agreed to make me would to be a bold move on my part, to make him notice me. I cupped my breasts in my hands—small, but nice enough, I thought. I closed my eyes and imagined it was George’s hands holding them, that he was pressed up to my back now, his lips brushing my cheek. It hurt, desire did, and my desire for George was intense.

I’d been in love with him since we were twelve, knew I wanted to marry him, but it was a couple of years before I understood what actual desire felt like. (I suppose the theological word would be lust, but I think of lust as a bad desire, the kind that burns out fast and hurts forever after. What I feel for George is pure and unbreakable and will last until the day I die.)

It was when he came back from England. He left a boy and came back a man. Well, his face was (and is) still very boyish, but he’d gotten much taller and his voice had dropped into a resonant bass that didn’t sound like it should come out of that face. He was my same George, but also not. There was an aura of discipline and determination about him, more intense than ever before. It was in the way he moved as much as the way he stood still, and in every word he spoke. He seemed to have settled many of his faith-related dilemmas too, adding to the peaceful resoluteness.

But it was his hands my eyes had locked onto. They’d always been nice hands, but the sight of them made my heart seize up and my face grow hot. I’d wanted them on me, wanted him to whisper lovely words in his new voice while he did things to me with those hands. Breathe, Louise, I’d reminded myself as I began to feel light-headed.

I felt light-headed again now. But George’s voice from downstairs tore me out of my reverie.

What’s taking you so long?

Flushing, I tossed on my clean clothes and scooped up Lindbergh, running downstairs with him.

Your mother promised me a birthday cake, I said. So let’s be off to your place.

"What about your mother?" George asked as I deposited his dog into his basket and propped my own bike up against the side of my house.

She’s at a recital with her students. She’ll meet us at yours when she’s done.

George walked his bike along the sidewalk until we reached his house, and we used the back entrance that led directly into what I’d named the Inner Sanctum—the area only family was allowed in, now that the Grahams had boarders. It consisted of the kitchen, the nook where they took their own meals, and a bed-sitting room where Mr. and Mrs. Graham spent their leisure hours. After the boarders had been served dinner, the Grahams (and often Mother and me, as tonight) settled in for a long evening of our own share of dinner, with a side of chocolate cake, while I reminded everyone that now I was incontestably older and wiser than George was.

I’ll join your lofty, elderly wisdom in three months, he said, helping himself to his third slice of cake. In the meantime, tell me what ideas you have in mind for this dance.

He didn’t need any encouragement from me. George has a melodramatic streak a mile wide, and he is not self-conscious of his dancing or who might see him. Mr. Graham asks him to cut the grass? He piqué battus back and forth until the job’s done. Waiting to cross the street coming back from the library? Pirouettes to pass the time. Sweeping the floor for his mother? The broom becomes a stand-in for me. He just never stops.

It’s not surprising that Mrs. Myrtle Morgan has such a vendetta against him, since she doesn’t understand he can’t not dance.

September 18, 1931: George

At the store the next day, Louise led me around, making me try on more clothes than all six of my Scottish cousins probably owned combined. Shirts and vests, trousers and jackets, gloves and cufflinks, most of which did not seem actually relevant to the end goal of Dance Outfit. Am I a doll to you? I complained. We came to find me a penguin suit, and we’ve already found all the pieces of that.

It’s fun to hear you moan. And we’ve not found all the pieces, because here are the bowties.

I can’t tie those.

You can’t tie any ties. Or shoelaces, helpless man. We’ll take one white and one black, she said to the saleslady. All right, now we are done. Let’s go have lunch.

Lunch was a prospect guaranteed to un-grump my mood, and then we went to the high school gymnasium to practice our dances for the upcoming state fair.

During the musical programs at seven to eight o’clock each evening, we’d been slated to dance along with the high school band, and tonight was our final rehearsal with the musicians. It would be the same program every night, which made it easier on us all. We’d picked our favorite routines that would correspond to the band’s selections. (Our picture would end up in the paper after one of the performances.)

We got home and had mere minutes to prepare ourselves before Mamma was shouting to us that it was candle-lighting time.

I liked Friday evening dinner. It was comforting and peaceful and a perfect way to slow down and enjoy being together. Mamma didn’t keep Shabbat in any meaningful sense herself otherwise; she shopped and worked as usual. Quite honestly I think she did Friday nights for me more than for herself. I took it very seriously, and spent the day in my attic fully absorbed in study or prayer.

I did not, however, object to dancing on Shabbat, as long as we were doing it for fun and not money, and that is what Louise and I did after we finished our dinner.

Dad settled at the table with papers from work. Mamma began the night’s dishwashing with the help of Mrs. Pearson, and Louise sat to put on her dancing slippers.

Do you like dancing in slippers? Dad asked her, not looking up.

Love it, she said.

I wasn’t sure if you just did it to be nice to George.

I scowled. My vanity was severely injured by the fact that, no matter how hard I wished it, I’d never been able to get taller than Louise.

Wonder if you’ve caught her up yet, Dad said. He came to push us together, back to back, inspecting us closely from all angles, laying a book across our heads, then calling to Mamma. Have we a spirit level, Alice?

Her response was unprintable. Louise giggled uncontrollably, and my eyes rolled up so far into my head it’s a wonder they aren’t stuck there still. Finally Dad pronounced his verdict. They’re even. What is it, Louise? Five foot six?

It is indeed, she said, turning to pat my head as if I was Lindbergh.

Dad sat back in his chair, musing, It is funny how you’ve ended up such a shrimp.

Dad! I moaned, blushing to the roots of my hair.

George, stop insulting him! Mamma’s voice came floating over from the kitchen. He can’t help how tall he gets!

Or doesn’t get, Dad countered softly.

I heard that!

I could grow a moustache, I said. Maybe then people would take me seriously.

Can you? Louise asked skeptically.

Dad laughed again. Your uncle Jamie was shaving every day by the time he was fifteen.

Mamma’s voice from the kitchen again. Goodness sake, George, you are almost fifty-two and still can’t grow a decent beard yourself!

Not as if you’d let me!

That’s beside the point! Leave your son in peace!

I huffed. If all everyone was going to do was find my unmanliness uproariously funny, I’d go to my room and engage in some light reading. Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of St Luke, perhaps.

Louise, who had been winding the gramophone, dropped a record on and took my hand, and I automatically fell into step with her. Dad went to the kitchen to make a nuisance of himself in there.

I don’t know if girls will want to kiss you with a ’stache, George, Louise said.

As if girls are queueing to kiss me now, I said sarcastically. I’m a small bespectacled shrimp boy. Anyway, I haven’t time for such nonsense, I’m busy. And no inclination, I added internally. Yuck.

Louise hummed along to the music for a while. It doesn’t matter, she said at last. I like you just the way you are, small bespectacled shrimp boy.

December 1, 1931: George

It was pouring rain and growing dark, and Mrs. Pearson had sent me in their car to the airfield to collect Louise and bring her home. We both knew she’d ride her bicycle home if I didn’t show up and pre-empt it, and her mother was worried about Louise catching her death.

Nobody was on the field when I arrived and parked near the pilots’ clubhouse. The lights were on inside, so I turned up my collar and sloshed my way through the muddy puddles to let myself in.

It was unusually quiet inside, all the pilots huddled together around a central point at one of the tables. Louise, her face on her arms on the table, sobbed her heart out at that central point, and all the men looked somber.

Louise almost never cried, so I hurried over, instantly alarmed. What happened? I asked.

Louise looked up, her face a mess. Keith, was all she could say, and buried her face again.

I looked to the others for an explanation, and Mr. Eyerly, Louise’s instructor and boss, gave me a grim look. We just got a call from the Roseburg airport, he said quietly. Keith Smith is dead.

Dead, I repeated. I dropped into a chair and looked at Eyerly. I knew who Keith was, of course. Louise had taken him on as her first student after getting her own license earlier in the year. I’d met him a few times. He was a nice lad.

He only needed two more hours, another fellow put in. He’d have had his license as soon as he got back here. Tomorrow, we’d figured, since this rain came in...

Tailspin, a third man said. He went down and the plane crushed him underneath.

Of course Louise would blame herself for the boy’s death. I went around the table and shook her gently. Come on, I said. Let’s get you home. I helped her up and she let me guide her out to the car, where she slumped into the passenger seat. She didn’t say a word the entire time I tied her bicycle onto the back and drove us back to her house.

When we entered, Mrs. Pearson looked panicked, no doubt assuming Louise herself had been injured. She’s not hurt, I assured her quickly. Louise dragged her helmet off her head and it dropped with a dull thunk to the hall table. Come on, I said again, urging her up the stairs toward her bedroom, Mrs. Pearson following behind.

She dropped onto her bed, and Mrs. Pearson gave her a handkerchief. We sat on either side of Louise; Mrs. Pearson stroked her hair and I listened helplessly to her crying, at a loss what to do with this outburst of grief.

I told him his plane was good to go! I checked it myself! More sniffs. They’ll blame me for it. He was only sixteen—his poor mother— She became incoherent again.

Louise

Mother held me closely long after George had gone home, until I’d quieted enough for her to offer me tea. I followed her listlessly to the kitchen table and neither of us said anything. I didn’t want to