“It could be that she is getting your letters but is unable to write back to you, especially if her father is not allowing it,” he said. “I wouldn’t stop if I were you.”
The ache of not hearing from Mariko was soothed by working. By this time I had been at the café for four months and some of the GIs who had become regulars began to see me as a little sister, I suppose, because they stopped pressuring me to sneak off with them to some little quiet place. They would give me the candy out of their C rations, and cigarettes if I wanted them—I didn’t; they made me gag and sputter—and magazines from home. Being at the café was like being back in America. It was the best part of my day.
One afternoon I was feeling particularly concerned that no letter had come from Mariko. I was preoccupied by these thoughts and failed to see that a young American soldier had sat down at one of the smaller tables by the window. He had to call out to get my attention.
I apologized as I made my way to his table with my coffee carafe. He was a private first class, and good-looking but not what I would call handsome. He had a kind face and eyes that made him look like he was perpetually on the verge of smiling. His hair was reddish brown and his eyes light green. A thin scar stretched above his right eye, which I would later learn was the result of connecting with a surfboard when he was sixteen. I hadn’t seen him in the café before, and his surprise at my perfect English was obvious. I was all prepared to answer his What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this, when he said to me, “Hey. I remember you.”
“Pardon?” I replied.
“You’re the American girl we saw when we rolled into town last year.” He smiled. “I remember you.”
From the foggy recesses of my mind I recalled that day back in July when Max and I stood on the street to watch the Americans arrive and to cheer the departure of the French. I remembered crying as I heard the American soldiers laughing and talking in English and saw them handing out chocolate. And I remembered the young GI who stopped to tell me I had nothing to fear, that they weren’t going to hurt us, and me replying that I wasn’t crying because I was afraid; I was crying because I was so happy to hear fellow Americans laughing and joking. That GI had turned to the soldier marching next to him and had probably said, “That girl back there is an American!” That second soldier, who was now sitting in the coffee shop, had then turned back to look at me.
“I remember you, too,” I said out loud, oddly delighted by the memory.
“You’re American,” he said gently, not in a shocked, incredulous way. He seemed instantly sympathetic toward me, like he knew it had not been by choice that I was in Germany, and that something had happened to put me on a battered Stuttgart street last summer.
“I am,” I said.
“You spent the whole war here?” he asked in that same gentle tone.
“Not all of it. Just the last year.”
His eyebrows rose.
“The last year? You mean the worst year?” Again, he sounded compassionate, nonaccusing. His tone was an invitation unlike any other I’d been extended to be honest about why I was here.
“Yes,” I said.
“Where are you from?”
I couldn’t help but crack a tiny smile. What a funny question that was to me after all that had happened.
“Iowa,” I answered, nearly attaching a chuckle to it.
He smiled back, as though he knew exactly how sadly absurd that question was. He put out his hand. “Ralph Dove,” he said. “I’m from California.”
Hearing him say the name of the state Mariko had been from startled me, and I failed to give him my own name as I shook his hand. “California,” I said reflexively. “I have a very good friend who is from California. Los Angeles.”
“Really?” he said, his eyes widening merrily. “That’s where I’m from.”
Herr Bloch, annoyed that I’d been neglecting other customers while talking to Ralph Dove, called out my name.
“I have to get back to work.” I hastily poured Ralph’s coffee from the carafe I held.
“Well, it was very nice to meet you, Elise from Iowa,” he said, letting me know he’d paid attention to Herr Bloch’s saying my name.
I felt my cheeks flame to crimson as I walked away. Ralph Dove was very different from the other young soldiers who frequented the shop. They were full of compliments, too, but I sensed that Ralph meant what he said.
I moved away to wait on other people, and when I glanced back at Ralph a few minutes later, I saw that he’d been joined by a few companions and that Herr Bloch’s daughter Margaret, who was a year younger than me and also worked at the shop, had already filled their cups. He happened to look my way at the same moment, and he smiled. I turned away, pretending I hadn’t been looking at him, which made my cheeks burn again, because it was obvious that I had been looking. And that he’d been glad.
I wanted to be the one who brought Ralph and his friends their bill and collected their money, but it was Margaret who ended up being closest to them when they rose to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Ralph rise from the table and move toward the door. He turned his head to look in my direction and nodded a wordless farewell.
I didn’t see him for a week even though I kept looking for him to come through the door. It surprised me how much I wanted to see Ralph again.
When he finally did return, the shop was half an hour from closing and most of the tables were empty. It had been easy to spot him coming in and to make my way to his table with my coffee carafe before Margaret did.
“Good afternoon,” I said pleasantly. “Coffee, sir?”
“Please.” He smiled up at me. “And you can just call me Ralph. I’m not a sir,” he said, nodding to the rank on his sleeve. “Surely you know that.”
“Every man is called sir in here,” I said, pouring his coffee. “But I will call you Ralph if you want.”
“I do want,” he said, grinning but not in a salacious way. “And may I call you Elise or will you insist on Fr?ulein?”
I grinned, albeit nervously, in return. “I’m not a Fr?ulein,” I said softly so no one sitting nearby could hear. “I’m just an American. Surely you know that.”
He laughed lightly. I could tell he liked my little attempt at humor.
“You came at a good time today,” I said, feeling awkward and sensing the need to say something else. “We’re not as busy so near to closing.”
He raised the cup to his lips. “That’s why I came now,” he said, and then drank.
I was fairly certain he was telling me that he came when he did, not to get an unrushed cup of coffee but to see me. It was an exhilarating feeling. But I wasn’t sure this was the reason. He wasn’t flirting with me. The character of his voice was so very different from the toying tone that the other soldiers used. He was interested in me because of something he saw in me, not because of what he was imagining I looked like underneath my apron and cotton dress.
“So, Elise,” he said, as he placed his cup back on its saucer. “How do you happen to have a friend from Los Angeles if you’re from Iowa, if I may ask?”
His curiosity thrilled me a little. Perhaps I had been on his mind as much as he’d been on mine.
I knew I should politely tell him that was something I wasn’t comfortable discussing, but I found myself wanting to tell this man how it was that Mariko and I came to be best friends. I hadn’t realized this desire to have someone know who I really was was ready to burst out of me. I looked at the rank on his uniform and I considered that if I did tell Ralph Dove how I got here, who could he tell at the army base that would get Papa into trouble or cost him his job? This soldier was a lowly private, albeit a sympathetic one.
“I met Mariko at an internment camp,” I replied quietly.
His silent response was what I expected: wide eyes, the initial moment of disbelief, and then the astonished comprehension that I wasn’t joking.
“An internment camp.”
I nodded.
“You visited her at one?”
“I lived with her at one.”
“You’re not Japanese.” He said this slowly, as though he was trying to puzzle it out himself. Being from Los Angeles, he surely knew what had happened to the West Coast Japanese Americans. But it was clear by his expression that he hadn’t heard a lesser number of German immigrants and their families had also been rounded up and detained, and for the same reason; we were incapable of being trusted.
“My parents are German,” I replied. “They immigrated to the United States before I was born, but they hadn’t become citizens yet when the war started. They had always thought there was plenty of time for that.”
“Was your father a member of the American Nazi Party or something?” Ralph asked, ever more curious.