The Wedding Dress

by Danielle Steel

  “When do you want to enlist?” she asked him in a dead voice, trying to imagine what her life would be like once he left. It would be complicated and lonely, alone with Camille, with no one to help her, worrying about his safety, praying he was alive, and waiting for him to come home. And what if they didn’t assign him to an office and sent him to the front instead? It sounded like a grim future to her. He had had the whole day to think about it, and she was sure he had a plan. But she didn’t expect the answer he gave her.

  “I’m going to sign up tomorrow,” he said quietly. She was shocked.

  “Why so soon?” It was almost as though he had been waiting for this, some way out of his dreary job with no future, and now his chance had come.

  “I don’t want to wait. They need men to enlist now, right away. I want to be one of them. And it sets a good example to others.”

  “Even though you know our lives will be ruined forever if something happens to you? Camille deserves to know her father and grow up with you,” Eleanor said passionately. She was angry at him for wanting to enlist, but she could already tell it was an argument she wouldn’t win. His manhood and love of country had kicked in, and he wanted to serve his country and help win the war against the Japanese. The president had called it a day of infamy, and Eleanor didn’t deny that, but she didn’t want to sacrifice her husband to win the war. She and Camille needed him more than they did.

  They went to bed that night and didn’t speak to each other. They were both thinking about what he wanted to do. She didn’t think she could dissuade him. His sense of duty was too strong for him to pay any attention to what she said. And his mind and heart were set on going.

  She cried after he fell asleep that night. She was up and dressed when he got up in the morning. She had hardly slept all night, worried about him. They had waited so long for the baby they had wanted so badly. And now he was going to risk everything and go to war. She didn’t want to lose him.

  Alex kissed her before he left for the office, with the same determined look as the night before. When he got home that night, he sat down at the kitchen table and looked at her seriously. “I volunteered today.” She should have expected it, but she felt as though he had punched her in the stomach. She wanted to feel proud of him, but she didn’t, just angry at his deserting her and Camille.

  “So you did it.” She tried not to look as shocked as she felt. “When do you leave?”

  “I report to Fort Ord in Monterey in three weeks for boot camp for six weeks, and an officers’ training class after that.” They were letting him stay home for Christmas.

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know yet. They’ll probably send me to Washington, or some other benign place, while someone else gets freed up to go to war.”

  “And if they send you to a combat zone?”

  “They won’t,” he said confidently. “That would be ridiculous at my age.” So was enlisting, in her opinion, but there was no one else to reason with him, and he had already signed up anyway, and who knew how long the war would last. He could be gone for years. And as an officer, she wasn’t as sure as he was that they wouldn’t send him into combat. What if they did? There was no telling now what could happen.

  The three weeks before Alex had to report to Fort Ord felt surreal to Eleanor. He was still part of their everyday life, but in some ways he wasn’t. He was so preoccupied with everything he needed to do, that in Alex’s mind he was already gone. And then there were tender nights when he made love to her, and it had the bittersweet flavor of farewell, and the terror of the unknown and what lay ahead, for both of them.

  Christmas at the lake was somber, with news of the war, and knowing he was leaving. They spent their last weekend together at Lake Tahoe with her parents. Alex and Charles went for a long walk, where they went over details of Alex’s investments, in case something happened to him. They had lived very frugally for the last ten years, and he had saved as much as he could of the money he had gotten for his parents’ house. It was infinitely less than it should have been, but there was still quite a bit left. He had invested it very conservatively, and he had a life insurance policy to benefit his wife and daughter. It was for a small amount, but they would need it all if anything happened.

  “None of this will be necessary,” he reassured his father-in-law, “they won’t send me to the front anywhere, but crazy things happen in wartime. Eleanor is upset with me for enlisting.”

  “There are some things a man has to do,” Charles said sympathetically. “That’s hard for a woman to understand. I was forty-one in ’17 when we entered the last war. I volunteered and they kept me at a desk job in the Presidio, but I couldn’t not serve. We’ll get Eleanor to come up to the lake and stay with us on weekends, as often as she can. She can always live with us here if she wants to. We’d love to have them.” He smiled at his son-in-law, proud of him for what he was doing.

  It was a tearful moment when they said goodbye to him at the end of the weekend. Louise gave him a warm hug and told him to be careful and promised they would take care of his girls.

  “I’m only going to Monterey, Mother Deveraux.” He smiled at her. He was more formal with her out of respect, and called Charles by his first name. “I won’t be far away.” She wiped her eyes and hugged him again.

  Alex had already left the bank by then, and his colleagues had shaken his hand and wished him well. Several of the younger men had already enlisted. One of them would be going to Fort Ord when he was. On their last night together, Eleanor never slept. She lay watching him all night, praying nothing bad would happen to him. He was going to have six weeks of boot camp and four of officers’ combat training which had just been reduced from twelve after Pearl Harbor, which Alex said was just routine. He said it was only a refresher course to remind him how to shoot a gun. It had been twenty-three years since he had been in the Great War. In some ways, it made him feel young again to be re-entering the military, with men half his age.

  Eleanor saw him off at the train station the next morning. It was the first of January, a cold wintry day, and she had Camille in her arms. She wanted to be with him until the last minute.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said as he kissed her and Camille patted his face and squealed with glee.

  “Dada,” she said over and over again as Alex and Eleanor kissed.

  “I’ll call you when I can,” he promised, but didn’t know when that would be, or how soon. He knew she would be allowed to see him in four weeks, and again when he finished the total ten weeks of training. She couldn’t wait to visit him at the end of January.

  The platform was crowded with young men and a few his age, parents and girlfriends and children waving to their fathers. They kissed one last time, and Eleanor stood and waved with Camille in her arms until the train was fully out of the station, and then she went home to their apartment in Chinatown, to begin her life without him. They hadn’t been apart for a day in the twelve years of their marriage, and Eleanor couldn’t imagine what it would be like now.

  She put Camille to bed that night, and sat in the living room feeling dazed, and thinking about him.

  * * *

  —

  Four weeks later, Eleanor drove to Monterey, and left Camille with a neighbor she trusted. The family had moved in around the time Camille was born and had a baby the same age.

  It took her four hours to get to Monterey from San Francisco, she left her car in the visitors’ parking area at Fort Ord, and went to the visitors’ center to meet her husband. She almost didn’t recognize him. He had lost weight, he looked trimmer and his shoulders were broader, his face was thin, his head was nearly shaved, he looked strong and fit and young, and his eyes were alive when he hugged her, and he was delighted to see her. He said the training was going well, although most of it was unnecessary, but he was in the best shape he’d been in, in years.
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br />   They had coffee and sat and talked, as she watched families around them visiting, some with small children. They went for a walk in the sea air, as the seagulls flew overhead. They held hands as they had when they were courting, and two hours later, it was over. He kissed her again. He was coming home for a weekend in six weeks, at the end of his training. She’d had very little to tell him except that she missed him. Her life was the same routine it had been since Camille was born. She left her with the babysitter, worked at the school all day, picked up her daughter, fed her, bathed her, put her to bed, and thought about her husband. It was lonely without him, but she didn’t say so. She tried to look happy and strong as she waved goodbye to him, and watched him disappear with the other officers in training, back to their barracks.

  Then she drove back to San Francisco. She was exhausted when she got home, after eight hours of driving back and forth to Monterey. But she was glad that she had seen him. He looked handsome in his uniform.

  But their lives seemed miles apart now. He was embarking on a whole new adventure, wherever it might lead him, and her job was to keep the home fires burning and take care of their daughter. When the training course was over, she hoped he would be assigned to San Francisco, as he thought he probably would in the Presidio, the army base in the city. At least then she could see more of him.

  She went to bed that night and lay awake for hours, thinking about him, wishing that the Japanese hadn’t bombed Pearl Harbor and things were different.

  * * *

  —

  At the end of Alex’s training course in March he got a three-day leave to come to San Francisco. She was waiting for him at the apartment when he arrived. They had allowed her to take the afternoon off from school, and she had left Camille with the neighbor again.

  They dove into bed almost as soon as he came through the door, and their lovemaking was filled with the pent-up passion of two months without him, intense loneliness on her side, and extreme physical exertion and challenges on his. He looked and seemed ten years younger than when he left.

  Alex had written to tell his brothers when he enlisted. Harry had asthma and a heart murmur and had been rejected. And Phillip had been drafted and assigned to a desk job in Washington, D.C., through his wife’s connections. Both of them had been shocked to learn that Alex had enlisted at his age, but said they admired him for it.

  Alex took Eleanor out to dinner that night at one of the Chinese restaurants in the neighborhood. And afterward, they picked Camille up at the neighbor’s. Alex carried her sound asleep and deposited her gently in her crib in their bedroom. They closed the door quietly and made love again on the living room couch. They couldn’t get enough of each other.

  They spent Saturday as a family, and took Camille to the park. Eleanor cooked dinner, and after Alex gave Camille her bath, they put her to bed, and sat talking in the living room. He had to be back in Fort Ord on Sunday night, and they were both luxuriating in the pleasures of a quiet evening at home in their cozy apartment. And as they talked, Eleanor suddenly saw something in his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t know what it was, but she sensed instantly that he was hiding something from her.

  “What are you not telling me?” she asked as her eyes met his, and he turned away and lit a cigarette. He had never smoked before, that was new since his training course. He had picked it up from the other men when they had nothing to do. He didn’t want to lie to her now, but he was buying time. And as she watched him, she knew she was right. “Is something wrong?” Suddenly she was afraid there might be another woman. She didn’t know what, but there was something. And as he turned back to her, she was sure of it.

  “We got our orders on Thursday,” he said quietly.

  “Orders for what? Where they’re sending you now?” He nodded. “Are you coming back to San Francisco?” She was suddenly afraid that they might send him East to Washington, where she couldn’t see him. It would be much more complicated, and expensive to visit him there, and they only had her salary now, and their savings.

  He shook his head in answer. There was no easy way to tell her. Other officers he had trained with were having to deliver the same news he was, and he wasn’t sure how to do it. “I’m shipping out,” he said so softly she could hardly hear him as she stared at him.

  “What do you mean?” She could hear her heart beating. It was louder than his words.

  “I’m being sent overseas, I can’t say where. To the Pacific. It’s not the way it was last time, in the last war. They’re sending officers my age into combat zones. I won’t be on the ground, in the heart of the action, we’ll be in the command posts, and on ships. It turns out that’s what the officers’ training was for.”

  “You lied to me,” she shouted at him, and swung at him. He caught her fist just before it hit him. “You said they wouldn’t send you into combat or overseas. Why did you have to enlist in this stupid war!” She was sobbing, as he pulled her close to him and held her.

  “They might have drafted me anyway before it’s over. They need everyone they can get. With all of Europe involved, and now the Pacific, the military needs us.” She cried for a long time and then looked up at him.

  “When are you leaving?”

  “This week. In a few days. They don’t tell us exactly when, but very soon. This is my last leave before we ship out,” he said, and she had never been as frightened in her life. What if he didn’t come back? If she never saw him again. The thought of it was too much to bear. She had been spending her last hours with him before he went to war, and she didn’t know it.

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner, when you got here?”

  “I didn’t want to spoil our last few days together.” She nodded, but his visit had taken on a whole new flavor, an entirely different mood. She could feel the minutes ticking away, like sand in an hourglass, and in less than twenty-four hours he would leave her, maybe forever.

  They sat and talked for a long time, about what to do now. He thought she should move to Lake Tahoe to be with her parents, but she still didn’t want to. There would be other women like her, with husbands who had gone to war. She didn’t want to give up her job and live like a child with her mother and father. He didn’t argue with her, but he worried about her in San Francisco. No one knew if the Japanese would be bold enough to attack the West Coast, and he didn’t want her in the city if they did, but she was adamant about it. They went to bed hours later, and lay holding each other in the moonlight, while Camille slept in her crib.

  They made love as discreetly as they could without waking her, and lay awake after that, and finally fell asleep when the sun came up. Eleanor couldn’t stop thinking that it might be their last night together, forever, or certainly for a long time. Alex had no idea for how long he would be stationed in the Pacific.

  Eleanor got up when Camille woke, and Alex stayed in bed a little longer. And then they had breakfast together, and spent the day savoring every moment they had, hugging and kissing each other and playing with their daughter, and at four o’clock Eleanor took him to the train station, with Camille in her arms. There were no words left by then. They had said them all. Tears rolled down their cheeks as they said goodbye, with Camille standing next to them, holding her mother’s skirt.

  “Take care of yourself…please…” Eleanor said in a hoarse voice.

  “I’ll write to you,” he whispered.

  “I love you,” she said, as he grabbed his duffel bag, and hopped on the train. He stood on the steps as they pulled out of the station, and he shouted back to where she stood.

  “I love you!” She saw his lips move, but couldn’t hear him, and mouthed the same words to him. As Camille waved to her daddy, the train rounded a bend and he disappeared.

  Chapter 9

  They celebrated Camille’s birthday in Tahoe again that year. She was two, and Alex had shipped out to the Paci
fic three months before. Eleanor had no exact idea where he was. She went to visit her parents at the lake as often as she could. School had just let out for the summer, and she stayed with them until a few days before she had to be back to Miss Benson’s to teach in September.

  Alex wrote to her whenever he was able to. There would be weeks when she wouldn’t hear from him, and then he’d write to her again. He gave her no details about where he was and what they were doing, but he said that he was fine, and he missed her and Camille. He had taken a stack of photographs of them with him when he left. And she sent him photographs of Camille every few weeks. By September, she had changed a lot in six months. Eleanor was living from letter to letter, although the time at the lake over the summer had been good for her. And her parents loved having them around.

  Her mother spent hours in her garden, and she’d even gotten Charles working in the garden with her. It seemed to give purpose to their life. She had a gardener to help her with the heavy work, and she had created some beautiful effects around their simple house, which really gave her pleasure.

  As Charles had predicted ten years before, the war had infused life back into the economy. Factories were operating at maximum capacity, the country was employed again, unemployment was the lowest it had been in a decade. The Great Depression was over at last. It had been the worst in American history.

  Eleanor and Camille spent Thanksgiving and Christmas with them. Her father had cut down their Christmas tree himself, and they decorated it together with ornaments Louise had saved from their home when it sold. It brought back memories for all of them to see the same ornaments so many years later, and reminded them of all their traditions before their lives had changed so radically. Charles had just turned sixty-five, and Louise was fifty-nine. They both looked older than they were. Charles had never fully gotten over the losses they had sustained, and the humiliation of having to close the bank and lose their home. And Tahoe belonged to someone else now. He was only a guardian there, an employee, except for the small home they had kept. But seeing Eleanor and their grandchild always cheered them.