The top one was thick, nearly bursting from its envelope, written to Beth Godspeed from Lenore Allstock, and postmarked May 2, 1920, Cherbourg, France. The others were in a bundle, tied together with twine, and addressed to Ellis Parrish from Catherine Godspeed, who hadn’t died in the dust at all.
LENORE
PART 2
APRIL 30, 1920
Dear Beth,
There’s so much to write, and I feel as if I need to write it all in one place or I’ll never write any of it. I hope you’re settled in somewhere to read this.
It’s been ten months since that terrible day I was supposed to board the ship, and I never heard from you after the telegram I sent that day, and I don’t blame you. But there are things that I need you need to know. They all involve you, whether you want them to or not. Just like when I pushed my bloody hand onto your knee, you’re stuck with me, in so many ways that you didn’t ask for.
The first thing I need to tell you is that I’m going to have a baby.
The second is this: that I don’t know how many ways I can apologize and have it mean enough.
I’ve spent so much time since that day trying to figure out what went wrong. I know how angry you must be. I know that you waited for me all these years, or at least I hope you did. And then I didn’t come. I know you were counting on me.
I still don’t understand it completely myself. But here’s my attempt to explain.
The morning I was supposed to board the Cunard, I swear I didn’t have a thought in my mind about turning back. I got to Southampton early and waited in line like everyone else. I’d already said my good-byes, and while my sisters and brothers and parents were insisting I’d be back—in my mind I was already gone.
It was a foggy morning—stepping out of the train into the city, I could swear I smelled the North Sea already. The gulls were circling, the breeze was soft, and it all felt so exciting. I stood on the docks with my ticket along with the rest of the crowd, and the line moved along slowly. There was a crowd of people protesting, circling with picket signs and shouting about poison in the air. I couldn’t hear myself think for all the noise.
I stepped up to the edge of the gangway just like the person did before me. I handed over my ticket to the porter. That’s when I was overcome with terror. And I knew immediately that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get on.
My hands shook and the world swayed and the porter took my arm, so it must have looked like I was about to fall over. The only way I could force myself to walk was to walk away, out of the crowd and away from the ship. I rushed toward the taxi stand, and I swear I couldn’t breathe, and I kept unlacing the belt of my dress, but it didn’t help.
All this is a long and overdone way of saying that I was too afraid to come—too afraid of going down like the Lusitania or of getting to America and not finding what I came for or . . . I don’t know what. That’s the awful and humiliating truth. And I’m sorry I couldn’t send anything but a telegram to let you know. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to write until I could say something intelligible, and I suppose I still haven’t.
I know you’re disappointed in me. But believe me, you couldn’t be any more disappointed than I am in myself. For all my anger with James for not staring death in the face by fighting in the war, I couldn’t even get on a boat.
I’m so tired, Beth. For now, I’m going to bed, and I will write more in the morning.
MORNING, MAY 1, 1920
It seems like every time I think things will settle down and life will stand still for a while, something shifts. And the things I get so scared of aren’t the ones that actually end up happening; other things come along.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I’ll explain, though even writing this is making me so tired.
For weeks after I got back from Southampton I walked around in a daze. My parents were happy to have me home, of course, instead of far away with you. But I think most of all, they wanted me to be happy—and Mother kept coming to my room to stroke my hair and chat, to try to get me interested in things. She started having her friends over for cards and dinners again, and getting involved in the business—sticking her nose in the ledgers and asking Dad to fill her in on his days at the office.
She’d started taking regular day trips to London, to shop and to sightsee, and a few times she talked me into going with her. Looking back now, I think I was thinking of James the whole time. Hoping I’d spot him. But London is a big place, and nothing came of it.
One afternoon I walked down to the cottage. I half expected and half hoped for him to still be there. I walked up quietly so I could take him by surprise, but I didn’t need to. It’s funny how quickly a house can go back to feeling abandoned. Some sticks and leaves had fallen in so the floor was covered in debris. A portion of the roof had already crumbled. And it looked like the spiders had moved back in. It was obvious he hadn’t been there in weeks, maybe since the night I told him to leave.
And I should have felt vindicated and glad. But I didn’t.
Life got back to normal. I went on my little trips with Mother and worked long hours at the factory office and went for walks. I was already getting happier, even then.
I guess people are right when they say that time helps grief. I don’t agree that it heals, but maybe it wraps our losses up deeper and deeper inside so we can get on with being alive. I started having fun going to films and lying in the pasture with my books.
This went on well into the winter, falling into a routine—work, home, London. Along the way I convinced myself that I never really wanted to go to America anyway. And if I’m honest about the lies I told myself, Beth, I also decided that you were never that good of a friend to me. I listed the examples in my head of how you’d let me down. It went on like this for months.
And just when I least expected it, everything changed again.
Whenever we went to London, we always took the train to South Kensington, which is close to the British Museum. Of course, it always made me think of James and his imaginary famous family. I’d even go linger out in front of the museum while Mother went to a fitting or some other time-consuming appointment. I’d stand there and picture all those shells and bones inside, but never go inside. I’d imagine the people James had spun in my head. It felt like a memory or a dream full of light.
It was an afternoon in early May when I saw him. I was standing there looking up at the windows when I decided it was idiotic to loiter there on the steps without going inside. He was right there in the main hall standing beside a towering stuffed elephant. He had a big box in his arms and was discussing the weather with a security guard. He stood tall, confidently, as if his scars were invisible now, even to him.
I stood there bewildered and on the verge of ducking outside again when he turned around and saw me.
Then he very politely came up to me and reached to shake my hand.
“Lenore,” he said. I didn’t like that he didn’t call me Allstock.
He was so composed, and I was not. “What brings you to the museum?” he asked politely, not a trace of the past in his voice. He’d gotten past it.
“What are you doing here?” I sputtered back.
“Oh.” He looked down at the box in his arms. “Getting ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“I’m going away,” he said brightly. “To Indonesia. Remember?”
“Oh?”
“Our funding’s been approved.”
“How long will you be gone?” I asked, trying to hide my confusion. Because of course, I’d always thought it was all a lie.
He seemed to falter a bit at that, and it was the first and only indication that it bothered him to see me.
“Five years,” he said with a smile and a wince, as if to apologize. “We’d like to stay long enough to make it worthwhile.”
“The museum closes to the public in ten,” the guard said gently to the room, giving us a quick sideways glance.
We stood
there looking at each other in awkward silence, and I was about to make my excuses to go when he smiled at me.
“Want to meet my parents?”
As you may have guessed already, Beth, probably faster than I did, his parents are famous naturalists, just like he said. He took me back into the dusty offices of the museum and introduced me. His father is short with glasses, and his mother has curly brown hair and sharp hazel eyes and looks like him. It was strange to see a version of his face without anything getting in its way.
They were both friendly, and their conversation was bright and lively. They said things like “Oh, so this is Lenore” as if they’d heard a lot about me but not anything about the falling out.
And then, though the museum had closed, James asked me if I wanted to see the exhibit his family had been working on all these years, and we went and wandered down a dimly lit hall of taxidermied rodents and rare shells and rocks.
I think a year ago I would have found it the most boring section of the museum, but with James’s enthusiasm it all looked fascinating and . . . I can’t explain it . . . like it all meant so much more than at first glance. It was like underneath all these silly little shells was this long thread of time. With James talking me through it, it felt like a story about people.
Finally it was late and I needed to get back to Mother, so he walked me to the front steps. I’ll never forget what the river looked like, how the sun was sparkling on it, and he shook my hand and then hugged me, and we said good-bye.
“So they’re not going to shoot you?” I teased, trying to make light of things.
He shook his head. “No one’s come after me yet. I don’t think anyone has the heart,” he said, waving a hand toward his face, his body. “Soon I’ll be gone anyway.”
“When?” I asked, lingering.
“Tuesday.”
“Well, I’ll think of you that day.” I shook his hand again. “I’m glad I met you, James,” I said firmly. “And good luck.”
“Good luck,” he repeated.
I wanted to thank him, and I didn’t know for what. For helping me to say good-bye to my brother in some way I still can’t understand. I couldn’t find the words.
And I walked away along the river.
I didn’t think that I’d ever see him again.
Don’t you think, Beth, that it’s easy to judge people for their sadness when it hasn’t happened to you? To see it as too strange, or too big, or not done in the right way, until you’ve felt the monster of it inside you? I think that is one thing I’ve learned, and I think it’s made me better.
And on that note, I’ve been holed up in bed with this letter all morning and have to go eat. I’ll try to write again tonight.
I left you at the Thames.
I’ll start back in Forest Row.
That night, back at home, I stayed up late reading. I’d unearthed The Blue Fairy Book and was on “The History of Jack the Giant-Killer” that you always thought was too violent . . . while I’d pretend I was Jack, slaying everyone in sight. Memories were buzzing in my head of when we were little, but not in a sad way. I had this pleasant feeling: happy those times had happened, even though they were over.
I had my window open, and I put down my book when I smelled the chimney smoke on the air. It wasn’t coming from our house. Even at that first moment, I had a tiny bit of hope.
I put on my shoes in the hall and walked outside. A few stars were out, so I gazed up for a bit, then ventured into the woods. And sure enough, there was firelight blazing deep in the woods. The smoke was coming from the cottage.
I was so scared it would be someone else—a passerby or a camper using the fireplace—but he looked up and smiled as I entered.
“I was hoping you’d see it and come,” he said. “Otherwise I was going to come throw pebbles at your window or something.” We stared at each other for a while without saying anything. Then he leaned over the table and held up a plate with a small half of a chicken on it. “I brought dinner.”
We sat on the leaf-and-twig-strewn floor and ate. At first the conversation was slow—I asked him to tell me the details of the trip, and he gave me all the formalities: the route he would take, the size of the crew, how they got the funding. The distance between us made my chest ache, but slowly we both relaxed.
He showed me a new Eveready torchlight he’d bought for the voyage, and we kept turning it on and off, lighting up the room and then watching it go dark.
“Lumbering into the woods to piss will never be the same,” he joked.
We both got quiet.
“Did she end things with you before or after . . . ?”
“After . . .” He looked down at his hands. “But it wasn’t her fault. Who could live with this?” he asked. “Who’d want to build a life with this?” By the gentle way he said it, I wondered if he was still in love with her, and I decided he probably was.
I cleared my throat.
“I’m sorry, James,” I said simply. I knew I didn’t need to say why.
He looked at me long and hard. “I’m sorry too, Lenore,” he replied. “So sorry I lied to you. Sorry I wasn’t brave. I’m not one of those people who things are ever clear to, like you are. And I’m sorry for that too, I guess.”
“It’s not that great, being too decided.”
“But it’s powerful.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I think the conversation would have died there if he hadn’t suddenly widened his eyes and stood up.
“I almost forgot. I brought you something.”
He stepped outside for a moment, leaving me curious, and then came back holding something out toward me pressed carefully between his palms. He squatted before me, and I had to lean closer to see what it was he was cupping so carefully in his hands.
It was small and compact, yellow and green, pretty as a jewel. And it was moving. A tiny head shifted, a pair of tiny eyes looked around, curious.
“My parents brought her back. She’s from the Galapagos—these islands, very remote. One of the great last wildernesses on Earth. I can’t take care of her now that I’m leaving.” He held her out to me, and as I opened my hands he slid her very gently into them. Her shell was smooth, and her head tickled my hands as it darted in and out of her shell.
“I thought I might give her to you. Will you take care of her?”
I cupped the little life in my hands, and even though she was only a reptile, I liked her immediately.
“I have a little bowl for her. But she’ll need a bigger space as she grows,” he said. “I have to warn you, she’ll get rather big. You don’t have to take her.”
“I’ll guard her with my life,” I said.
I’ve been sitting here for almost an hour, and I can’t bring myself to write the rest. I can’t explain myself, or him, or maybe I don’t want to explain. We aren’t in love, that much I know for sure. But we do love each other.
The only thing I can say is that war has made us different, Beth. We want so much. We know our lives are only here for right now. I don’t know how else to explain what happened between us—all of it—from building a house out of sticks to how knowing James helped me let go of Teddy to our last night at the cottage and what happened between us then—except that maybe we wanted to live our lives as much as we possibly could, and for a little while it felt like we were. And now he’s gone to find his dreams. And I have no regrets, even though maybe I’m supposed to.
So here I am. I never sleep. My belly is already getting big, but it is still small enough to hide. The baby is moving—every once in a while I feel a movement against my skin, but by the time I put my hand there, it’s stopped. I can’t imagine it. I can’t fathom there’s a human in there.
I have two more things to tell you and then I’ll finish. And both of them may shock you even more than what’s shocked you already.
I keep thinking of my old broken bones, from that terrible fall off the barn when we were kids. One of the bones, you may remember, was my sac
rum, in my pelvis. Now it haunts me. What if I can’t deliver this baby? To be honest I don’t know if I’m more scared for her or me. All I know is that either way, I need you with me.
And this brings me to my second and final shocking thing. I suppose it won’t be so shocking when you see the postmark on the letter. I plan to mail this from our next stop, so maybe you’ll already know by the time you open it that I’m writing this from the belly of a ship. I didn’t tell you before I left because I didn’t want to lie twice. I wanted to make sure I’d get it right.
I’ve been writing to the endless rocking rhythm of the ocean. And I’m surprised to find that being here isn’t scary at all.
I have everything planned. Once I land in New York, I know how I’ll make my way out to Wichita by train. I already know your address; that was your first mistake. You can’t escape me now.
My parents hate the idea of course, but they couldn’t stop me. And the baby is my secret—yours and mine. When this thing comes along to change my life, I want to be with you when it happens.
James was always right, that our friendship is complicated, but I’ll never love anyone half as much as I love you, Beth.
We reach Cherbourg tomorrow, and I’ll mail this letter then.
Love, Lenore
CATHERINE
PART 2
AUGUST 3, 1934
Dear Ellis,
It’s been three days since we left Canaan, and already I feel like I’d give anything to see our dead garden again, or Galapagos craning her neck at me from across the yard.
We’re camped in the woods on the edge of a town called Bonner Springs, just outside of Kansas City (where I hope to mail this letter), far away from the road so no one will see us. We have some bread, jerky, two potatoes, and two dollars. We have one wool blanket to share, which Beezie has stolen in her sleep. Tomorrow we’ll walk toward downtown and hope to catch another ride close in.
Midnight at the Electric Page 14