by Vanda
“Ag, this is Dickie’s life. You have to do what the doctor says. He’s the professional. ”
“Dickie always makes all the decisions for us. Like which auditions to go to or which Saturday night dance if I get invited to two, which happened a lot. I’ve never made any important decisions by myself, and now you want me to start with Dickie’s life as my first one? I can’t do it. I have to ask Dickie what to do.”
“You can, of course, do what you want, but we don’t recommend discussing this with the patient.”
“Why do you call him the patient? He’s Dickie. My Dickie.” Tears poured down her face.
“Now, Mrs. Dunn—”
“I’m not Mrs. Dunn. I’m Aggie. Aggie Wright from Huntington, Long Island, and I don’t know what to do. This will change his life forever.”
“Aggie,” I said, putting an arm around her. “Do what the doctor says.”
“Seaman Dunn needs his wife, his helpmate,” the doctor said, “more than ever now. This is not a decision he can make.” He slid a paper and pen toward Aggie. “Time is our enemy. We must act immediately or else—”
“Or else, …” she whimpered, taking the pen.
“Sign at the bottom.”
She dipped the pen into the inkwell and looked at me. “Al?”
I took a breath and nodded.
She signed her name.
Chapter Forty-Two
September–November, 1943
When Dickie woke up from the operation and the nurse explained what the rest of his life would be like, he was seized with a fury whose full weight he directed at Aggie. For days, I had to mediate between them. Aggie cried that she knew it had been a mistake. She got mad at me for encouraging her to do it. I reminded them that without that operation Dickie wouldn’t be here for anyone to blame anyone. Gradually, Dickie’s love for Aggie and his need not to be alone overtook his fury, and he understood why Aggie signed the papers.
His recovery was slow. In September, a bad infection took hold. When they finally got that under control, he started having horrible nightmares. The doctor said he was shell-shocked. Another infection got him in October and he would wake up crying in pain. They gave him morphine, which put him into a dull stupor.
Aggie gave up a job she really wanted in the chorus of Cole Porter’s new one, A Mexican Hayride, so she could take the bus to D.C. every weekend. Weekdays she stayed in New York looking for work as a day player in radio so she could support herself. She could’ve gotten a job in a defense plant—they were always looking for girls—but Aggie said leaving show business completely would’ve been too much to bear.
In D.C., Aggie stayed in a boarding house. Sometimes, Aggie or Dickie’s mothers stayed in the room next to hers, and they’d take her out for a decent meal. The fathers joined their wives and Aggie when they could, but they were working lots of shifts at Grumman Aircraft since Grumman was supplying planes for the war. Without all those hours, they never would’ve been able to pay for their wives to go regularly to Washington.
Henry called Miss Royle to quit as a volunteer at the Canteen. I never saw him again, but years later I heard he’d settled in Minnesota teaching at the local community college and he’d found a nice Minnesotan girl to marry. I even read one of his stories in the Saturday Evening Post . A nice, simple story about nice, simple, decent folk. He and I never would’ve lasted. Everyone at the Canteen and at Gimbels were always asking what happened, and I never had a good answer.
The first time I saw Virginia after the wedding, she dragged me into my office before I could even say hello to Alfred Lunt.
“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” she demanded. “I left lots of messages with your roommate.”
“I don’t know, Virginia. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t talk to anyone.”
“It was Juliana, wasn’t it?”
“No. What do you mean? She had nothing to do with it. It was just one of those things that happens between people.”
“What happened between you and Henry was Juliana. I’m telling you, you’ve got to stay away from that woman. She’s trouble.”
“What did she do to you to make you say something awful like that?”
“I can’t tell you.”
October brought its usual brown and red leaves, and the war went on. Sometimes I’d think of Grandma and jumping in the leaves at her house and how much Juliana had liked that story. I hadn’t seen Juliana since my wedding that didn’t happen. She didn’t call after that first night. I kept meaning to call her back, but something kept stopping me.
One dark, mid-October night, the phone rang and Aggie ran to get it, thinking it was Dickie. I took a deep breath hoping it was Juliana.
Aggie held the phone out for me. “It’s your mother.”
I shook my head no. Mom had called every other night or so since August, but I always told Aggie to tell her I wasn’t home.
Aggie shook the phone at me, whispering, “I’m not lying for you anymore.”
I made a silent groan at Aggie and walked toward the phone. “Hello?”
“Well, at last. Where have you been?”
“You wanted to talk to me, Mom?”
“What did you do to Henry? I knew you’d do something to ruin this. He was your best shot at a life. What did you do?”
“I gotta go, Mom. Aggie’s got supper ready.”
“You’re not going anywhere till you tell me what happened to my grandchildren.”
“Thanks for calling. Bye.” I hung up the phone.
“So how is she?” Aggie asked.
“Fine. You want a glass of wine?”
Aggie and I took the bus to D.C. to spend Thanksgiving with Dickie. The hospital antiseptic smell assaulted me as we walked down the hallway to Dickie’s room. As usual, that smell sent me whirling back to the time my mother sliced up one of her wrists with my father’s razor. I found her in the bathroom starting on the second one when I came in from my first day of fourth grade, and I got her to the hospital.
“He's lost more weight,” the chubby nurse with dimpled cheeks said before Aggie and I took our first step into Dickie’s room.
“But I just saw him a week ago,” Aggie said. “I thought he was getting better. Has he changed that much?”
“Well,” the woman said nodding us away from the door, her spotlessly crisp uniform making a swishing sound, “I don’t want you to look shocked when you see him. He doesn’t need anyone upsetting him, not even his wife. He’s had a rough week. It breaks my heart.”
“That operation was sposed to make him better.” Aggie’s voice cracked with fear. “But he seems to be getting worse.”
“You have to talk to the doctors about that, but, of course, they're not here on a holiday. Now you have yourselves a nice visit, and remember, these boys are doing it so we all stay free.”
The woman tootled and swished away, leaving us standing there, afraid to move into Dickie’s room. Aggie grabbed my arm. “Al, I’m scared.”
“I know, but we gotta go in there. Dickie needs you.”
“Stay close to me.”
We must've looked like Siamese twins when we entered Dickie’s room in lockstep, Aggie’s arm wrapped around mine. A faint scent of Number 2 mixed with ammonia floated in the air. Dickie looked like the skeleton that used to hang in front of Mr. Darnell’s science classroom in eighth grade. Around his eyes were two sunken sockets like dark caves. A tube, connected to a pole came out of his scrawny arm. I forced a smile onto my face.
Dickie tried to raise himself up in bed but couldn’t manage it. Aggie ran to him. “No, Dickie, don’t sit up.”
“I want to,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I want … to visit with you.”
Aggie stood there swaying back and forth, looking for me to do something.
“This bed must have a crank,” I looked around. “Here it is. Aggie, why don’t you crank it up?”
“He looks so fragile. Maybe I’ll break him.”
“You won’t.
Come on. Over here. I’ll help you.”
“I can’t.”
I cranked up the bed, while Aggie stood frozen.
“I brought you pumpkin pie,” Aggie said. “But it’s from a sugarless recipe I got in Women’s Day , so I don’t know how good it tastes.” She pulled a flattened piece of pie wrapped in a linen napkin from her purse .
“He can’t have that,” I scolded.
“He can’t? Well, I didn’t know.” She started to whimper. “You don’t have to yell at me.”
“I’m sorry, Aggie.”
“I bet it’s real good,” Dickie whispered.
“Of course, you can’t have this. What’s wrong with me? I just wanted to give you something. I’m such a fool.”
“No. You’re my dollface wife.”
“Oh, Dickie,” Aggie said, her lower lip quivering.
I looked around for a window I could open so the smell wouldn’t be so bad, but there was none. I thought I should give them time alone. “I’m gonna take a walk, you two.”
The day had turned gray, and rain pounded against the windows that lined the hallway. Seeing Dickie like that was awful. I leaned against one of the windows watching the angry sheets slide down the glass. I remembered when we saw him off at Penn Station. He practically danced the whole way onto the train. Dickie was always dancing. That’s what Dickie did; he danced. Once he told me it was like there was a spring inside him that kept him bouncing up and down, and he had to follow that spring or die. What was gonna happen now?
I wandered back into Dickie’s room. Dickie still sat up in the bed, but his head hung to one side, his smile slack. Aggie sat in a chair next to him in the dark, the overhead light off. I turned on the little light on the bedside table. Aggie had her arms wrapped around herself rocking back and forth like she was in a rocking chair, only she wasn’t.
“How ya doing, Dickie?” I leaned close to him.
“Al,” he whispered. “Send Aggie to the cafeteria for coffee. She needs to get outta here.”
“I can take her down.”
“You stay.”
“Hey, Aggie. I’d really love a cup of coffee.”
She jumped out of her seat and ran from the room.
“Al, take care of Ag for me,” Dickie said with great effort.
“Pretty soon you’re gonna be coming home taking care of her yourself.”
“I’m not so sure,” he continued in a whisper, so I put my ear close to his mouth. “You can take hard things ’cause of your family problems. But Aggie—her family gave her everything, even when they had nothing. She’s their princess.” He smiled at the word “princess.” “She’s no good at this. You gotta watch out for her. Promise.”
“But, Dickie, you’re gonna—”
“Promise.”
“I promise.”
“I haven’t heard from him in a month and a half, Al,” Virginia said, pulling off her gloves as we both sat down at a center table at Schrafft’s, Fifth Avenue. “I’m scared. Scared something has happened to him.”
“I’m sure Max is just fine. He’s fighting a war. A month and a half isn’t so long. He probably just doesn’t have time to—”
“He always used to. Since he’s been away, I’ve gotten a letter at least once a week, sometimes more.”
“Still, a month and a half? You know how slow V-mail can be with it having to go through the censor first. Have you tried writing to him again?”
“Every day. I get nothing back. A martini,” Virginia snapped at the waitress who stood at our table. The waitress nodded and walked off. “I just know something awful has happened to him. What will I do if he ….” Tears overflowed her eyes. “I wouldn’t be able to face it, Al. I just wouldn’t.”
“No, Virginia, he’s fine. You gotta keep believing that.” Too many terrible things had been happening lately for me to let my mind start worrying about Max, too.
“Then where is he?” Virginia demanded, hitting a fist on top of the table.
The women at the next table scowled at her, but she didn’t see. She drank many more martinis that afternoon than I’d ever seen her drink before. I had to take her home in a cab.
Chapter Forty-Three
December, 1943
December brought cold , and snow, and change. I kept working at the Canteen and Gimbels. I did a couple of bit roles for some radio soaps but never could get anything meatier. I didn’t want to work at Gimbels selling fancy perfume all my life, but I didn’t know how to find that one perfectly wonderful thing I knew I was born to do. The only thing that meant anything to me was the Canteen. There I had purpose. But it took a war to do that, which wasn’t a good way to plan a life.
The men that came to us at the end of ’43 were different from the men who had arrived at the beginning of the war, even if some of them were the same men. They were quieter, their smiles more serious. Many entered on crutches or in wheelchairs. Some even arrived in ambulances. We were trained in first aid and in how to speak to these new, more seasoned veterans. We had rules like: “remember the man; forget the wound; don’t use the word cripple; don’t give him help unless he asks for it.” It would have been impossible to miss that the war was all around us, but the Canteen gave these men peace, and there was joy seeing them dance, and sing, and crowd around some “star” I helped bring in, but I couldn’t stop thinking of Juliana.
I hadn’t seen her name in Cue, so I wondered if she was working outside the city. Sometimes, I’d take out the paper with her number on it and think of calling her, but then I’d return it to my wallet and go back to my life.
One weekend, when Aggie was down in D.C., I was alone with the telephone. I took Juliana’s number out of my purse.
“Hello?” Juliana said.
“Uh, Juliana?” I squeaked. “It’s Al.”
“Well, hello. How’ve you been?”
“Okay, I guess. I was wondering …. I kinda wanted to talk to you. ”
“Come over. Now, if you like.”
“No, I don’t think that’d …. What about some restaurant or something.”
“Why don’t we meet at Café Reggio’s?”
I plowed through the cold December wind. Crispy brown leaves flew into my face as I turned down MacDougal. I passed Max’s apartment where Virginia now lived. I hid my head inside my coat so she wouldn’t see me hurrying to meet Juliana.
Juliana was seated in the corner, wearing a blue hat. I was about to approach her, when I saw she wasn’t alone. That woman with a French accent from Schrafft’s was sitting with her.
Juliana signaled me over. “Margaritte, this is Al Huffman.”
“Yes,” Margaritte said, standing. “I remember your little friend. We met in Schrafft’s, did we not, ma petite?”
“Yes.” She wore a multicolored dress with a hat that looked like a flying saucer from a Buck Roger’s comic strip. The fox fur around her shoulders looked right for her but wrong for the place. She peered at me through squinty eyes, studying me like she wanted to bite my neck and make me bleed.
“Margaritte was just leaving,” Juliana said, throwing her cloth coat off her shoulders and back against the wrought iron chair. “Weren’t you, dear?
“Oui, oui,” Margaritte said, still looking at me. “I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your little tête–à–tête.” She said the last through clenched teeth and then wiggled her rear end out the door.
Juliana, watching her, sighed. “Ah, yes, she does that so well.”
“What?”
“Sit down. I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
Juliana’s eyes smiled at me from over her coffee mug. She wore a blue and white satin dress that hugged every single one of her curves. She also wore a wedding band. I’d never seen her wear that before.
“She’s the one you said is married to an industrialist or a diplomat. You couldn’t remember which.”
“That’s right.”
“She’s your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Th
en why can’t you remember if her husband is a diplomat or an industrialist?”
“Because it’s not important.”
“What sort of—friend is she?”
“What are you asking me exactly?”
I looked down at the marble table. “Nothing.”
“Good. I don’t like those kinds of questions.”
“What have you been doing?” I asked .
“I did a two-week booking in Hoboken, and then I did another few weeks in Boise. Nothing much has been happening for me in New York.”
“You didn’t call,” slipped out of me.
“Didn’t your friend give you my message?”
“Yeah. I meant you called once, and then I didn’t hear from you again.”
“How about a cappuccino?”
“Okay.”
Juliana signaled the waitress over and told her to bring me a cappuccino. After the waitress left, she said, “I called you once. I don’t chase after my women.”
“Women? How many do you have?”
“Why am I here?”
“I wanted to ask you something.” My mind wandered away for a moment. Her dress was low cut, and I could see her cleavage. Oh, geez I’ve gotta stop thinking and looking like that.
“You know, Al,” she said, leaning her forearms on the table and laying her breasts on top of them. She looked right into my eyes as she slid herself closer to me, her cleavage becoming more pronounced. “I wore this dress especially for you.” She sat back, smiling. “So, what did you want to ask me?”
I took a deep breath, building my courage. “How come, uh …?” I couldn’t bear asking her, but she was the only one I could ask. “Why, you and me—those feelings. Why, what is that?”
“Do we have to give it a name? Can’t we just enjoy it?”
“I gotta know. Things Henry said. I need to know.”
She sighed. “Some people might call us homosexuals.”
“No. Oh, God, no. I’m not that. I’m not, Juliana. Those people are horrible, dangerous—”