Up in Honey's Room Read Free Page A

Muriel wanting to know if she’d seen Darcy.
    Honey said, “He’s here in Detroit?”
    â€œSomewhere around there. I gave him your number.”
    â€œWell, he hasn’t called. What’s he doing up here, working in a plant?”
    â€œHow would I know,” Muriel said, “I’m only his wife.”
    Honey said, “Jesus Christ, quit feeling sorry for yourself. Get off your butt and come up here if you want to find him.”
    Muriel hung up on her.
    That was a couple of months ago.
    Â 
    Kevin Dean came in showing his ID, quite a nice-looking young guy who seemed about her age, Honey thirty now. He said he appreciated her seeing him, with the trace of a down-home sound Honey placed not far west of where she grew up. She watched him gather the morning paper from the sofa and stand reading the headline story about the invasion of Leyte, his raincoat hanging open looking too small for him. She saw Kevin as a healthy young guy with good color, not too tall but seemed to have a sturdy build.
    â€œI have to fix my hair, get dressed, and leave for work,” Honey said, “in ten minutes.”
    He had his nose in the paper, not paying any attention to her.
    â€œIf Walter’s all we’re gonna talk about,” Honey said, “let’s get to it, all right?”
    He still didn’t look up, but now he said, “We’re back in the Philippines—you read it? Third and Seventh Amphibious Forces of the Sixth Army went ashore on Leyte, near Tacloban.”
    â€œThat’s how you pronounce it,” Honey said, “ Tac loban?”
    It got him to look at her, Honey now sitting erect in a clubchair done in beige. She said, “I read about it this morning with my coffee. I thought it was pronounced Tac lo ban. I could be wrong but I like the sound of it better than Tac loban. Like I think Ta ra wa sounds a lot better than Tar awa, the way you hear commentators say it, but what do I know.”
    She had his attention.
    â€œYou’ll come to the part, General MacArthur wades ashore a few hours later and says over the radio to the Filipinos, ‘I have returned,’ because he told them three years ago when he left, ‘I shall return,’ and here he was, true to his word. But when he waded ashore, don’t you think he should’ve said, ‘ We have returned’? Since his entire army, a hundred thousand combat veterans, waded ashore ahead of him?”
    Kevin Dean was nodding, agreeing with her. He said, “You’re right,” and took a notebook out of his raincoat and flipped through pages saying, “Walter was quite a bit older than you, wasn’t he?”
    Honey watched him sink into her velvety beige sofa.
    â€œYour raincoat isn’t wet, is it?”
    â€œNo, it’s nice out for a change.”
    â€œHave you talked to Walter?”
    â€œWe look in on him every now and then.”
    â€œYou’re wondering why I married him, aren’t you?”
    â€œIt crossed my mind, yeah.”
    â€œBeing fourteen years older,” Honey said, “doesn’t mean he wasn’t fun. Walter would show me a political cartoon in his Nazi magazine, the Illustrierter Beobachter, sent from Munich he got a month later. He’d tell me in English what the cartoon was about and we’d have a good laugh over it.”
    She waited while Kevin Dean decided how to take what she said.
    â€œSo you got along with him.”
    â€œWalter Schoen was the most boring man I’ve ever met in my life,” Honey said. “You’re gonna have to pick up on when I’m kidding. You know Walter and I weren’t married in the Church. A Wayne County judge performed the ceremony in his chambers. On a Wednesday. Have you ever heard of anyone getting married on Wednesday? I’m saving the church wedding for the real thing.”
    â€œYou’re engaged?”
    â€œNot yet.”
    â€œBut you’re seeing