On the first of December, Ralph came by the café at closing. I clocked out, grabbed my coat, and met him at the door. We stepped out into the frosted evening.
“Look! Perfect timing.” He smiled and held up a little box. “It just arrived today from the States.”
He handed me the little box, which felt velvety smooth. We stopped walking so I could open it. Inside was a stunningly beautiful diamond ring, the loveliest thing I had ever seen. It glimmered like fire under the soft glow of the streetlight.
“Want to try it on?” he said with a wink.
I could only stare at the ring. To this point our plans were all talk. But this was a real diamond set on a real engagement ring.
“Hello?” Ralph said good-naturedly to me.
“It’s so . . . expensive,” I finally got out. It was the wrong word, but Ralph just laughed.
“Well, it’s not the biggest one I could have gotten, Elise. You should have seen the rocks I didn’t get. But I totally agree with you. I would never willingly spend this kind of money on a piece of jewelry when there are starving people in the world. But we need to do it like this to convince my family, who will see this ring when we get home. If I was in love with you, I’d get you a ring like this one.”
Ralph lifted the ring out of the box, took my left hand, and slipped it on the ring finger. “Not bad,” he said. “I guessed on size. I’ve got the wedding bands, too. Yours and mine.”
The gem sparkled on my hand like it was made of starlight.
“So you want to talk to your parents tonight?” he said. “I think we should. I won’t get permission from my commander to marry if your parents haven’t agreed to it.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the ring’s cold beauty. “Does your mother know about me?” I asked him, suddenly needing to know what his family was thinking about all of this.
“We’re going to surprise her,” Ralph said. “Trust me. It’s the best way. Definitely the best way. So. Tonight?”
I nodded numbly.
We walked the several blocks to the flat, and Ralph carried the conversation. I felt like an actress in someone else’s life. I wanted to run to Mariko and ask her if I should do this. Should I marry this man? And it seemed so cruel and ironic that I couldn’t ask her: cruel because she’d been snatched from me, and ironic because it was due to her disappearance from my life that I was doing this.
In the end we worried needlessly about securing my parents’ permission. Mommi and Papa both cried when I showed them the ring that night at supper, Mommi because at long last I would never be hungry and cold again, and Papa because those five things would cease to be a burden I also had to bear. I would be gone from them, and that made them sad, but I could recapture the life they had begun for me what seemed a lifetime ago, and that made them happy.
Max was strangely quiet at the news. We were all seated around the dining table and Max was directly across from me. I could tell my brother was conflicted about what my leaving would mean. He was nearly thirteen, already as tall as me, and not the little boy who had once dreamed of becoming a rancher. He’d lost the book on cowboys in the bombing in Pforzheim, but even before that, it had been many weeks since I’d seen him looking at it. My brother had made many new friends in Stuttgart, and I hardly ever heard him speak English anymore. He did not itch to go back to America. He had not lost his best friend and his vision for the future.
“You can come visit us in California,” I said to Max, and I looked to Ralph for confirmation, which he readily gave.
“Of course,” Ralph said. “You can spend your summers with us if you want. I’ll teach you to surf.”
“Um. Sure,” Max replied, but he was not sure.
The rest of the conversation around the table was about how quickly everything would need to take place in order for Ralph and me to marry before he was shipped back to the States. I told my parents that I was more than fine to marry in a simple civil ceremony at the Bürgermeister’s office. Ralph had looked into it. All we needed was a blood test, which we could get at the local dispensary. Then with my parents’ permission, the commander’s okay, my U.S. passport, my Iowa birth certificate, and the marriage license from the local justice of the peace, I could legally go back to America as Ralph’s wife.
“I had always thought you’d marry in a long white dress with a veil,” Mommi said thoughtfully.
“I don’t think there are many long white dresses available in Stuttgart,” I said to her. “And I won’t care what I’m wearing.”
But I could tell she cared. I knew she would spend the next few weeks looking for a way to dress me in white. I decided I would let her.
When the evening was over I walked Ralph to the door. “Easy as pie,” he whispered. And he leaned in to kiss me on the cheek.
The kiss warmed and surprised me. I must have looked as astonished as I felt.
“In case anyone is watching,” he murmured, and winked.
He left, and I immediately felt alone with my enormous secret. I helped Mommi with the dishes and hoped she wouldn’t ask me too many questions about how I fell in love with Ralph. Lucky for me, she didn’t.
“He seems like a genuinely nice young man,” Mommi said as she washed the last plate.
“He is,” I said.
“And you think you’ll be happy with him?” She locked eyes on me, a rare thing.
That’s exactly what he’s offering me, I wanted to say. A chance to be happy instead of sad.
“I do,” I said.
“There are things I need to tell you,” she said softly, loosening her gaze a little. “About . . . about what it means to be someone’s wife.”
I felt my face grow warm as it dawned on me what she meant. I hadn’t considered Ralph might want to enjoy the physical benefits of our marriage vows. We hadn’t talked about it. I assumed he wouldn’t want to. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe he would. And despite what had almost happened in the alley, I found myself wondering if I would, too.
When I said nothing, my mother surely thought I was too overcome with apprehension at the thought of the sexual act to comment.
“It’s a little scary, and it hurts, but only at first,” Mommi said. She was looking down at the plate in her hand, clean and shiny, albeit with a chipped rim. “And even while it’s hurting, it’s strangely wonderful because of your love for each other.” Her cheeks turned crimson, just like mine. She paused, forgetting for a moment that I was standing right next to her. “It’s what binds you together, Elise,” she said, a moment later. “More than the ring you will wear or the paper you will sign. Remember that. All right?”
She glanced up at me. I nodded, unable to say a word. I wasn’t prepared to think about what she was telling me, nor what Ralph might want to do on our wedding night. Nor what I might want to do.
In my bed later that night, the pale light of a beautiful moon was shining through the lace curtains onto my blankets, dappling me with luminescence. I could shift my ringed finger from shadow to light by the merest movement of my wrist. Beside me on a nightstand lay Mariko’s notebook, also dotted with moonlight. I reached for it and held it up so that both the ring and book were sprinkled with light.
Calista was still stuck in her tower. I knew this because I had flipped through the pages and had easily seen that Mariko hadn’t moved the story forward. Not an inch.
The warrior princess hadn’t discovered a way out of her prison. The door was bolted shut and the tower was too high. But she was going to have to find a way to escape or she would die there, lost and forgotten.
I looked at the diamond twinkling on my hand and then I gently shoved Mariko’s notebook under my mattress so that I didn’t have to look at it and consider what Calista would do, if she were me.
* * *
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In the days that followed, it was easy to convince myself that God in heaven was smiling down on me in approval. The details that needed to be taken care of for Ralph and me to marry fell into place with extraordinary ease. It was likely because Papa was known all over the U.S. Army base and was respected and liked, and because Major Brown, whom Papa had stayed in contact with and who worked at headquarters, had been able to expedite the paperwork that would allow me to become Ralph’s wife before he was to leave. I found out early enough that I would not be able to be on the same ship as Ralph for the trip back to the States; he would be billeted on a troop ship back to America and I would have to take a passenger vessel that would leave several days after him. But I comforted myself with the fact that I had been on a ship before and that my destination this time was a happy one.