by Vanda
“Henry, please,” I banged on the door. “Open the door. Let me in.”
After a few minutes, the door popped open. I walked into a storage room with boxes and dusty furniture turned over every which way. A few choir robes hung from nails hammered in the splintery unpainted walls. Henry sat on a wooden box, his tuxedo tie loosened, his cane between his legs. He didn’t look at me as I entered.
“We’re friends,” I told him. “That’s all.”
“I’m not a child, Alice, so don’t treat me like one because I’m a—cripple . I know that ‘friends’ do not kiss each other, even close girlfriends, that way. Why?”
“I don’t know. I try. All the time I try not to think about …. I don’t know why. I do love you.”
He stood and faced the wall, his back to me, leaning heavily on his cane. “I don’t understand it, Alice, but I know it’s wrong. It’s a sickness or something.”
“No. It’s not like that. It’s—”
He spun around toward me. “On our wedding day. You couldn’t stop yourself on our wedding day.” His face was red with pain. “How long has this been going on? ”
“Well—”
“No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Has this gone further than kissing?”
“Well ….”
“It has.” He rushed toward the door and stumbled, almost falling.
“Let me help you.”
“Don’t touch me!” He held a hand up to stop me. “Don’t you ever touch me again!” He limped the rest of the way to the door.
“Henry, wait. Don’t leave me like this.” I held my hands out toward him. “You have to forgive me. I feel so ashamed.”
“You should. You sure had me fooled. I thought you were a sweet, innocent girl, pure, and now I find you’re nothing but a—a …” His face became twisted and grotesque. “I can’t even say the word. It’s stuck in my throat. You wallow in the filth and disease of prostitutes selling their bodies on the street.”
“No.”
“You live in the foul stench of drunken whores shooting poison into their veins, white slavery, extortion, murder. I introduced you to my parents. Oh, God, how can this be you? I knew you.”
“It’s not like that.”
“You disgust me. I never want to hear your name again. I’m going out now to send our guests home.”
“You won’t tell them. Please, Henry, you can’t.”
“Do you think I could possibly get something like that past my lips? It makes me want to throw up. I will not let your sickness publicly humiliate me. I’ll be a man and take care of everything. Or would you rather be the man this time?”
“Please, don’t talk to me like that.”
He opened the door about to leave when he turned back. “It wasn’t bad enough I couldn’t fight in the war? You had to do this to me?”
“Henry, I love you.”
He walked out of the room, slamming the door, leaving me alone.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I escaped through a back door and walked for hours. I stopped on Ludlow Street and watched some kids working in their victory garden. They stared at me strangely, and that’s when I remembered I still wore my wedding dress. I must’ve made a foolish sight. Mrs. Havisham came to mind. I walked until it was night, and the darkness was everywhere around me. I wanted to be clothed in the night, to be not seen. What made me do that? In one single, unthinking moment, I ended my life.
My feet grew tired and the wet heat clung to me. I couldn’t stay among the anonymous crowd any longer. Each step led me to the next until I was at the West Side Pier. I leaned on the railing, the same one Danny and I had leaned on two years before. I imagined jumping into the brown water below and being so completely covered no one would ever see me. Was that where Danny was? At the bottom of some sea never to be seen again? Or would he follow Uncle Charlie and use a gun? In the army, he could get a gun. I had no idea how to get a gun or how to use one if I got it. But lying at the bottom of some sea seemed peaceful, quiet. I remembered Mary O’Brien and pictured her alone, looking down from her open tenth floor window just before she …. All I have to do is …. I hoisted one knee on top of the railing … push myself upward and ….
“Hey! You!” a voice called out through the black night. I jumped down, pulled my dress into place, my heart thumping. A face coming out of the shadows, walked toward me. “What are you doing?” a man in the marine uniform barked. “How’d you get here?”
“I … just walked and—”
“You can’t be here at night. Go. ”
“Okay, all right,” I said, my limbs shaking. I hurried past him.
I heard him call from behind me, “You all right?” But I was melting into night.
Each step away led me to Milligan Place, the closest thing I’d ever had to a home.
I stopped in the courtyard and looked up at my tree, still crooked, wanting to absorb courage from its scrawny limbs. I climbed the steps and stood outside my door; that’s when I realized I’d left my purse at the church. My key. I found the extra under the doormat and stood holding it. I had to go in. There was no other place left for me.
The light was on when I pushed through the door, but no one was there. I stood in the center of the room, the Bloomingdale blackout curtains pulled tight over the window, my heart sinking into my stomach. Suddenly, Aggie burst into the room from our bedroom. “Al! Where have you been? I’ve been crazed with worry. I was going to call the police. Come. Sit down.”
She was all around me, and then she was pushing me down onto the couch. “How awful for you. What happened? Are you all right?”
“All right?” I asked, trying to grasp what the words meant. “No. I might not be.”
“Well, of course, you’re not. Henry walking out on you at the last minute. Who could expect you to be all right? Don’t worry. You two will get back together soon.”
“No. We won’t. It’s over.”
“’Cause of a little fight? Dickie and I fought all the time when he was here. Oh, look, you’ve gotten dirt on the bottom of your beautiful dress. I’ll get that.” She spit on her handkerchief and started scrubbing it.
“Leave it,” I said, but she kept pulling and scrubbing at my hem.
“Don’t,” I said, but she continued merrily scrubbing. “Leave it alone!” I shouted, yanking the dress away from her.
“A little fight doesn’t mean anything,” she said as if I hadn’t just screamed at her. “It’s the making up that’s fun.”
“There won’t be any making up.”
“But you’re so right for each other.”
“I don’t think Henry would like to hear that.” I kicked off my shoes and headed for the kitchen. “Do we have any wine left?”
“A half bottle. I drank some ’cause I was worried about you. I could get another if you want.” She jumped up.
“Stay put. I’ll drink what’s there.”
“Your mother called.”
I poured the wine that barely filled a quarter of the glass and returned to the parlor.
“She’s worried about you. “
“Sure. ”
“She is. She was over here for hours waiting for you to show up. But when it was time for their train she had to go. She wants you to call her.”
“I can’t right now.”
“A girl should have her mother at a time like this.”
I gave Aggie a look.
“Okay. I know how your mother can be, but still, family is family and—”
“Stop it, Aggie.” I sat on the couch nursing my wine and unbuttoning the little pearl buttons on my dress.
“Virginia Sales called, too. She said to call her as soon as you get in. Oh and that woman singer, what’s her name, Juliana, she called.”
“What’d she say?”
“Nothing. She just gave me this number for you to call her back.”
I took the paper from Aggie’s hand and stared at it. Juliana’s number. Probably the most impossible
number to get in New York City and there it sat in the palm of my hand. I tightened my fist around it. I saw my purse lying on the coffee table. “Thanks for taking this,” I said as I picked it up. I stuffed the paper inside.
“You’re not serious about not marrying Henry, are you?”
“That’s how Henry wants it.”
“But why? I don’t understand how this could happen. You were practically married. Only an hour away.”
“Well it happened.” I sipped my wine.
“Henry’s gonna change his mind. I’ve seen how he looks at you. He’s hooked. You and him—”
“Are nothing.”
“Oh, of course, you are.”
“We’re not! It’s over. Finished. Why can’t you accept that?”
“’Cause it’s so fast. It doesn’t make sense. And ….” She looked away. “What about the name of a doctor you were gonna—”
“Is that what you’re really worried about?”
“No. I care about you.”
“Here! Here!” I reached into my purse and slammed a piece of paper onto the coffee table. “I didn’t get it from Henry. He’s too ‘good.’ I got it from Virginia Sales, someone Max knows. You have to call that number and the person who answers will give you another number and that’ll be the one. So now you’ve got what you want. You’re free to go kill your baby, and leave me alone.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? But let me tell you something. My mother had one of those things and she almost died.”
“What?”
“Blood everywhere. She wouldn’t stop bleeding. Is that what you want? To bleed to death? Our regular doctor looked down on her like she was garbage, like she deserved to die. Is that what you want? Do you? Do you? ”
“No, no.” Aggie held her hands to her face, horrified, crying hysterically. “I don’t. I don’t.”
I walked over to the window blacked-out from the light. “I wish I could tear this dang curtain down. I want light, dammit! When is this damn war gonna be over?”
Chapter Forty
“This is the best thing to do, isn’t it, Al?” Aggie sat on the couch in an old dress with the collar up to her throat. Next to her was her packed suitcase. I was going with her on the train to get her settled at The St. Mary Magdalene Home for Unwed Mothers in New Jersey.
“I think whatever you think is best, is best,” I told her.
“This is best. Do you think they’ll try to convert me?”
“That’s what Catholics do.” Then I thought about Juliana. “No, maybe they won’t do that.”
“They won’t turn me into a fish-eating pope-lover. I told my parents I’m going on tour. I’ll call them and make up where I am.” She sighed. “I hate lying to my mother.”
“It’ll be over soon and you’ll be home working in the theater again. Seven months isn’t such a long time. Soon this’ll just be some bad dream you can hardly remember.”
“Do you really think that?”
I remembered Virginia’s tears as she spoke about Joan. “It’s about time we headed out.”
As we both stood, there was a knock at the door. A boy from Western Union on the other side. “Telegram for Mrs. Richard Dunn.”
Aggie dropped her suitcase. “No.”
My hand trembling, I took the telegram from the boy and handed him a coin. He ran from the door. “Aggie, here. Maybe it’s not what you think—”
“You know what it is.” She wrapped her arms around herself and walked up and down. “He’s dead. He’s dead. Al, what am I gonna do? He’s dead.”
I opened the envelope. “No, Aggie. It’s not that.”
“It’s not? ”
“No. It’s good. Well, not exactly good, but it’s from Dickie and he says he’s been wounded, but not bad. He wants you to meet him at Walter Reed Hospital in D.C. next weekend. He’s coming home.”
“Home next weekend? What am I gonna do?” She was pale with terror.
I ran over to catch her before she collapsed onto the floor. “Here, sit on the couch. We’ll figure something out.”
“What? What?” She jumped up, grabbed her purse, and snatched out the paper I’d given her. “This. This is what I gotta do, isn’t it? Isn’t, Al? I’m gonna bleed and bleed and die. But this is what I gotta do. It is. It is.”
Aggie didn’t bleed and bleed and die. After it was done she came home, rested on the couch, listened to radio soap operas, and got me to bring her dry toast and tea with honey. Sometimes late at night I heard her crying, but we never talked about that. We couldn’t talk about that.
A few days later the navy flew Dickie home in an army air transport. Aggie and I took a bus down to D.C. to meet him. They rolled a few guys on gurneys away from the plane. They were bandaged and had tubes coming out of them.
“Gosh,” Aggie shouted above the din of airplane engines, our hairdos flying in the wind. “Al, he really is wounded.” We ran to him. “Dickie, you’ve been hurt.”
Aggie and I ran alongside the gurney while two guys hurried it toward a waiting ambulance. Before they lifted Dickie into the ambulance, they stopped so we could talk to him. Dickie’s face was a dreadful pale, but when he grinned I saw the Dickie I grew up with. He tried to raise himself up, but he fell back down. There was a long tube coming out of him that was connected to a pole, but I didn’t see any bandages.
“Dickie,” Aggie said. “You said it wasn't much; this looks awful.”
“Nah, dollface. It’s not as bad as it looks. Just a little stomach thing.” He tried to smile, but I could see the pain in his eyes. “Gonna be back in shape in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. That hotshot Gene Kelly better watch out. I’m coming right up behind him. Gosh, it’s good to see ya, hon.” He flopped back into the gurney, and his smile went slack. It was as if he’d used his last bit of energy. They took him to Walter Reed.
Chapter Forty-One
“Thanks for coming back to be with me,” Aggie said as we sat down in the waiting room. “When Mom had to go home to Dad and the doctor said he wanted to see me today, I knew I couldn’t do it alone. My mother-in-law gets hysterical and yells at me, so I don’t want her near me. If you didn’t stay, I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
“I want to be here with you.”
“I’m nervous.” She pulled off her dark gloves and placed them in her purse. “What could he want to speak to me about?”
“You’re Dickie’s wife. He probably wants to give you a progress report. Take your coat off. I’ll hang it up.”
I was hanging Aggie’s coat next to mine when the doctor came in. “Mrs. Dunn?”
Aggie sat bowed over The Ladies Home Journal without stirring. “Aggie?” I said.
“Yeah?”
“The doctor. Mrs. Dunn. That’s you.”
“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting. No one ever calls me that. Oh, but you do, don’t you, Dr. Lungsten?” She giggled as she got up and dropped the magazine on the table. “How are you, doctor? This is my good friend, Miss Huffman. I hope you don’t mind if she comes with me.”
“That’s fine.” The doctor adjusted his tie and turned to lead the way. He wore a white coat over his army uniform. We followed him into a small office with an oak wood desk and a few matching chairs; the walls were covered with diplomas and charts of people’s inside guts. Dr. Lungsten signaled for us to sit as he took his own seat behind the desk. He opened a file that lay in front of him, letting his eyes run over it .
He looked up from his reading with friendly eyes that were just beginning to show a hint of wrinkling. “Mrs. Dunn, your husband’s condition, as I’m sure you know, is serious. You may have heard it referred to as a stomach wound, but that isn’t entirely accurate. Stomach is kind of shorthand for abdomen and the abdomen covers more structures than the stomach. Seaman Dunn’s wound is really here.” He picked up a pointer and indicated the place on a chart that hung on the wall near his desk. “This is called the large intestine or t
he large bowel and along with the stomach it is vital for digestion and elimination.”
“Elimination?” Aggie looked at me.
“Going to the bathroom,” I whispered.
“Oh.”
“This is the area where he’s having a problem. We need to do a certain procedure. Without this procedure, your husband will—forgive me for being so blunt—your husband will die.”
Aggie gripped my hand. “Do it. Of course.”
“It’s not so simple. We need you to sign the papers without discussing it with your husband.”
“I can’t do that. Let Dickie sign for himself.”
“In the case of such a serious diagnosis, we feel it is best not to give the patient too many details before the operation. It creates anxiety, which can interfere with the success of the procedure.”
“What is the procedure?”
“It’s called a colostomy.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I only went through high school, and I didn’t like that very much.”
“It means we’ll go in and repair the damage to the patient’s large intestine and then we will bring a portion of the intestine through his abdominal wall to the outside of his body.”
Aggie gasped and gripped my hand harder.
“With adhesive tape, we will attach a rubber collection container to the stoma, that portion of the bowel that will remain on the outside of the body. Whenever the patient has a bowel movement instead of it occurring in the usual way the fecal matter will go into the container.”
“Feek? Feek?” Aggie looked at me.
“Number two,” I whispered.
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s difficult,” the doctor said, “but people live productive lives this way. As long as the container is kept clean, no one outside the family need know. It is a common wartime injury.”
“This would be for the rest of his life?”
“I’m afraid so. We need you to sign the papers right away.”
“Without talking to Dickie? I can’t do that. Al?”