July 1945, San Francisco.

The fog was thickest in the summer, receding only during the day when she was inside the factory, then billowing back down the hilly streets as she made her way back into the city to her tiny room. The ships entering the Bay sounded their horns constantly, a symphony of coded communication in deep, resonant tones. She lay awake in her bed, listening to the rumbling of the streetcars outside and the alternating notes of the foghorns in the distance, wondering when he'd be back.

The single photo she had of them was dog-eared from her fingers, she'd stared at it so much in the past two years. He looked stern and a little nervous, his free hand closed in a fist at his side, his other wrapped hesitantly around her slender waist. Her simple, white dress was knee-length, and a small veil of netting from her pillbox hat obscured her right eye looking toward the camera. Her gloved hand rested on his chest under his uniform and she was grinning like a fool. It was like looking at a photograph of strangers.

Rey could never tell if her pictures had made it to him at the front. The few letters she'd received back were frequently open, sections redacted and sometimes even cut out, but she knew their safety was at stake. She could recite them from memory, she'd read them so many times. The ink was smeared in spots where she'd traced the slanting, looping script from his hand, her husband's handwriting. It was strange that they'd been apart far longer than they'd ever been together, but she took comfort they were not the only ones. Jessa's husband had been deployed shortly after Ben, and last they knew, he was headed for islands in the South Pacific.

Surely it couldn't be long now before Japan surrendered… could it? V-E Day had come and gone several months earlier, and while the shipyards had slowed somewhat, she had not yet been laid off. Her callouses from the rivet gun remained intact, and besides, she needed the money to send home to her family. Uncle Unkar's wheedling tone grated over the sketchy connection to Bakersfield when he called to gripe why she couldn't send any more than she already did, and she suspected he was calling from the local bar. Sometimes she asked herself whether she hadn't married so hastily to give herself a different family to run away to when this whole stupid war was over.

Turning on the small light on her nightstand, she retrieved the scant collection of letters she kept in the back of a book. They were in date order, and she began reading.

May 14, 1943

My dearest R- We have left Hawaii three days ago aboard the Finalizer. That territory is a strange, remote paradise. It would be good to return when this is over with you, and fitting that we leave from the place that launched us into this madness. So far, spirits are high, but who knows what will happen when we finally reach [redacted]. The admirals tell us we should be confident, that the Japanese are on the run, but I fear we may be underestimating our unseen enemy.

I miss you already, and I hope I am not being too bold to hope you miss me in return. Please give my regards to your family and to (y)our friends there in the city.

All my love,
Ben

This was the first of seven. After two more had arrived with such restrained expressions of his longing, Jessa had grabbed her elbow and practically insisted Rey send him some photos of herself.

"Look," Jessa had pointed through the fencing at the pin-ups decorating the noses of the bombers that were waiting for their crews to deploy. "Something like that. Do you have any decent underwear that doesn't look like you've worn in a hundred times? No? Get yourself over to Magnin's on payday- you know they carry the fancy stuff from France, right? I'll help you do your makeup, Jack left his camera with me, and you can send Ben something to make life worth living."

Rey still blushed to think about it. He'd never acknowledged the photos, and it made her wonder if the military postal censors hadn't confiscated them for their own enjoyment.

She skipped forward several letters.

November 1944

Dear R - Thank you kindly for your last letter. It lifted me considerably from this darkness that seems to surround us all at this point. Things are looking quite grim, as you may already know. The [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] in a few weeks.

I feel like I'm being torn apart, and I question whether I have the strength to do what I know I must. I continue to pray to a Maker whose existence I'm not longer sure of that we will be reunited.

Do vegetables continue to grow in the Victory gardens so late in the season there in SF? It is wonderful to hear that the country has pulled together in support of us here overseas. It becomes easier every day to feel so distant from what we're told we're fighting for. If I do not return, I hope you find happiness with another, but I pray that is not the case.

XOXO, your Ben.

It was this letter that tore at her heart in particular. She had written him a lengthy missive about the goings-on at boarding house where she had taken a room, one populated by other new brides like herself, other fellow Rosies, one run by a tough but caring older woman of indeterminate age and origin known only as Maz. Together they scratched out a tiny Victory garden on the hillside behind the house to grow cabbages, onions, peas, and cucumbers. It seemed meager compared to the fruit and nuts she'd grown up tending, but she'd proven herself to have a green thumb in addition to a good sense of mechanics. She'd felt silly writing this to him, like it couldn't possibly compare with the excitement and drama of the front, but obviously it had been well received. Still, she worried for his state when he returned; she had heard stories already of men returning from the war irreparably damaged, sometimes not even physically, but seeming to have changed personalities.

Rey turned on her side and tried not to fret. How would she even know if he'd changed so drastically? They'd barely known one another when they'd decided to get married. A few weeks, no more. They'd had a week as man and wife before he'd deployed, and they'd scarcely left their bed. They had been, much to her relief, very compatible in that way. Her stomach still flip-flopped at the memory of it. He hadn't asked, and she hadn't offered, that he wasn't her first. Besides, he was ten years her senior and rather handsome. It hadn't escaped her notice how his tall frame turned heads as they strolled down Market Street. She wouldn't have believed for a second he hadn't had a special lady or two. She had the sense that his upbringing had afforded him the luxury of a prolonged bachelorhood, whereas her own had made her eager to avoid the trappings of marriage and motherhood as long as possible. She felt eternally grateful that he'd been reasonable about taking precautions against leaving her with his child while he was indefinitely away.

His final letter was fairly recent.

April 21, 1945

My darling Reynata- I hope this letter finds you hale and hearty. We have reached [redacted][redacted] and have been here for some time now. We are given to understand the fighting is nearly over in Europe, but no such progress seems to be on the horizon here in the Pacific. The Japanese are proving a fierce opponent, and I am struck that they are not unlike us Americans in their isolationist national identity.

I hope you can accept my apologies if my last letter was too fatalistic - I long to be back by your side. My mother is a pacifist and begged me not to enlist, but I could not stand by as our country was attacked. Hopefully she can find it in her heart to forgive me. She will love you as I do, I am sure of it.

With all my heart, B-.

P.S. Tell Maz I very much look forward to making her acquaintance. She sounds like quite a character.

She smiled at his postscript, every time. Maz defied characterization: tall for a woman, and perpetually clad in a get-up that followed no rules of gender nor style that Rey could discern. Her ensembles frequently included dresses or modified chongsams over pants, long scarves wound around her neck under her great brush of dark, silvering hair and a thick, gold hoop earring in her single pierced ear like a Gypsy fortuneteller. She was given to addressing her tenants with endearments like sweetheart and honey and darling and Rey, if she were forced to admit it, had grown quite fond of this odd woman. Maz knew a great deal about cultural goings-on that Rey had only heard about in passing: the opera, the theater, and especially Hollywood starlets.

It had been mere weeks after this letter that the Krauts had capitulated. Spontaneous applause and hoots had broken out during the newsreel announcing what the audience already knew when she and Jessa had taken in the latest Betty Grable picture at the Castro. They had clutched hands like school girls and grinned in the darkness. Their men would be coming home soon.

The foreman came over the intercom in the factory on August 6th and 9th with terse announcements, interrupting their work: American bombers had dropped weapons of unprecedented strength on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leveling both.

After a brief break in work, they'd returned to soldering and riveting with the same fervor as before. These new, nuclear weapons may have been powerful, but they had been preceded by firebombings that had failed to stop the war. It was hard to say if this would have any measurable effect.

That evening, Rey held the strap overhead, swaying with the shifting, jolting ride in the Shipyard Express. She closed her eyes against her exhaustion, counting off the stops she knew by heart as they trundled back the depot: Eastshore, Albany Village, 9th street, Grayson, San Pablo & Alcatraz, finally the Emeryville depot. Those of them left poured themselves onto a waiting Key car to cross the bridge. The steel girders on the lower deck obscured most of the view, but she could see the great, low fog bank encroaching over the city.

Dinner was almost always nearly over by the time she finally reached the house, but Maz was kind enough to keep some food back and her place st at the table.

"How are you, darling," she purred as Rey slumped in her chair. "Have you heard from Ben recently?"

Rey shook her head, poking at her potato dumpling. She never wanted to see another potato again after the war ended.

Maz smoothed her large, rough hand over the back of Rey's. "I don't think it will be long now. Not after two of these atomic bombs. There's no way they can keep going."

Rey shrugged. "I just keep thinking of all the people. They weren't soldiers. You know it was families, and old people, and their animals."

Maz peered at her and Rey couldn't help but lift her gaze to meet her landlady's eyes behind her ridiculously large glasses. She had often wondered if Maz really needed these glasses to see, or if she merely liked the way they looked. Either way, there were unlike any spectacles Rey had ever seen: thick, black frames with very large eye-holes, with an iridescent pearl inlay in the stems. Maz had once told Rey they were Chinese.

"Rey, you have an old soul," Maz said gently. "Do you know what I mean by that? You seem like you've lived a long time for one so young."

"I know you always say that," Rey chuckled, "But really - I'm no one. My parents were nobody and we came from a nowhere place, to a nowhere place. Have you ever been to Bakersfield? We might as well have stayed in Oklahoma and starved."

Maz closed her eyes thoughtfully and said, "Don't say that, my child. I know these have been some hard years, but keep your youthful spirit as long as you can - you have plenty of time to get old and bitter like me, alright?"

Rey nodded. She knew what was coming.

"Tell me about your young man," Maz prompted her for the millionth time.

Jessa and she were lounging on a blanket in the park the following weekend, listening to jazz concert from the bandshell when they heard the shouts. They sat up, shielding their eyes against the rare summer sun and followed the direction of the noise.

"The war is over, it's over!" Two young boys were riding bicycles along the main road and yelling to anyone who would listen. "The Japs have surrendered!"

They looked at each other in disbelief before hugging one another so tightly they could barely breathe.

"Do you think it's for real?" Jessa sounded like she was holding back tears.

Rey looked over her shoulder and could only nod around the lump in her throat. "Mmmhmm," she finally managed.

The entire city seemed to be emptying into the streets as they made their way back home. As they neared City Hall they heard lewd cheers and caught sight of two young women frolicking in the altogether in a fountain to the delight of a sizeable crowd of young men in uniform. They squeezed each other's elbows tight and grinned as a stranger offered them a drink from a flask.

As the night wore on, Maz forbid Jessa to walk home alone, insisting she stay with them. "Lord knows what young men will get up to tonight," she said mysteriously.

Her intuition proved right, and in the morning Maz made them all call in at the factory. There were reports of wide-spread looting and mobs of undeployed sailors roaming the streets, up to no good. The women looked at each other, unsure of whether to try to overrule her, but also slightly afraid for their virtues.

"Those beasts," Maz hissed as she peeked out from behind the lace curtains in her drawing room at the street below. "They had better not try anything here."

They huddled together listening to the radio and tried not to think about what was happening outside. It struck Rey that the very freedom they were meant to be fighting for now trapped them.

Three weeks later, an official postcard was waiting on her pillow when she arrived home from work.

Snatching it up, she read the partial sentences three times through before falling onto her bed, face-first in the pillows to muffle her screams.

2 Sept '45

USS Finalizer en route to Honolulu. ETA September 22 in San Francisco USA. I love you. BS.

Her flyboy was coming home to her.