What I want now, more than anything (well, not more than finally meeting you!) is to go back home. I hate this boarding house. I hate Old Man Winfield’s talcum powder and the smell of Mrs. O’Neil’s cabbage soup and the way the landlady’s son looks at me when I get in at night. No one talks to me and if it weren’t for Aunt Anna in Mastic Beach I’d feel so lonely I would die. I manage to get over there at least once a week. I’ve sworn Aunt Anna to secrecy—if Mom knew I was homesick she’d worry and she does enough worrying as it is.
Cathy didn’t say anything but I could tell she’s having a lot of problems at the factory. She works six days a week and sometimes she doesn’t even take all of Sunday off. She’s skinny and short-tempered and for the very first time I could understand how much she has on her shoulders. I wish she’d tell Daddy just how hard it is on her. Mom doesn’t pay much attention to what’s going on at the factory. When Cathy tried to tell her about a problem with the union organizer, Mom just said, “That’s nice, dear,” and continued rolling bandages for the hospital.
The men fight Cathy about everything. Back in the beginning, right after Daddy went overseas, they were real nice to her and said “Yes, Miss Wilson” and “No, Miss Wilson” and pretty much kept on their toes. Not anymore. The men who are there are either biding their time until they go to war or else they’re too old or too sick to join up. Whatever the reason, they’re awfully angry about something and now that Lou Alfano is gone, it seems they’re taking it out on Cathy. She used to go head-to-head with them but now I think she’s getting scared (those union organizers are very tough). She’s hired some girls to work on the assembly line but the men kicked up such a fuss that she’s been forced to assign the girls to one area and keep them all together. I guess there’s safety in numbers.
She’s started asking Eddie Martin (he’s a clerk) to do all the talking for her and that’s making her very mad, let me tell you. They’re working around the clock at the factory and what with the union trying to come in she’s worried that she’ll lose control completely. I guess it’s hard for a man to take orders from a girl.
One good thing—I think Cathy has finally accepted the fact that Douglas is gone. Sure she was short-tempered and tired, but I didn’t see that haunted look in her eyes that used to scare me so much when I lived at home. She even went over to Aunt Edna’s Saturday night for the Weavers’ anniversary party and didn’t come home all pale and quiet. It’s hard to imagine what her future will be like—for as long as I can remember, it was always Cathy-and-Douglas, like it was one name instead of two. But at least she’s smiling now.
I should be home with my mom and Cathy. I know that now. I didn’t have to leave Forest Hills to work for the war effort. I could have done that right there at home at Daddy’s factory. Maybe if I was in the office, I could help Cathy with her problem with the men. Right now I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do—or even if my mom wants me to move back.
But I promise I’ll let you know if my address changes back to the old one, okay?
In the meantime, please take care of yourself and write to me soon!
With much love,
Nancy
August 1, 1944
Dear Nance,
You really have me worried. What do you mean you don’t like the way the landlady’s son looks at you? Did you tell your Mom? Did you complain to the landlady?
Pardon my language, but I think you should get the hell out of there and fast. I can’t stand being so far away and not able to take care of you. How can you think your mom wouldn’t want you back? Just pack your bags and go home. I bet they welcome you with open arms. (Even Cathy!)
It took a while for us to get the scoop on D-day. Newspapers take time to reach you on the other side of the world. I’m glad we’re beating the hell out of the Germans but it’s sure going to put the heat on us over here. They’re talking about sending us more manpower and making a push on the Japanese forces in CENSORED. I’ll bet we’re here at least another year. Maybe more. Are the leaves changing yet? It’s hot and steamy here. Your clothes feel wet all the time and you can’t breathe without feeling like your lungs are clogged with soggy cotton wool. A USO show came through last week on some little island where we were anchored for repairs. I had a day off so I yanked a wheelbarrow into the field and set myself up with a front-row seat. It rained—natch!—the day of the show but all I had to do was cover myself with an old tarp and it was almost as good as being at Radio City Music Hall. I saw Rita Hayworth and Joan Leslie. Jack Benny and Rochester did a skit about being stuck in a bank vault, and Bing Crosby sang “Blue Skies” and “White Christmas” even though Christmas is over nine months away.
Please move back home, Nance. It’s where you belong. Families should stay together. Besides, I want to know you’re safe and sound.
Much love,
Gerry
September 5, 1944
Dear Johnny,
I feel as if we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well these past fifteen months and I believe I can trust you to help me relieve Daddy’s mind.
We’re having a bit of trouble at the factory. To make a long story short, morale is pretty bad and a union organizer is stirring everyone up. My father’s position has always been anti-union and I am holding fast to his wishes, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep the peace.
I know it isn’t right, asking you to lie for me, but it’s important that my father not have anything more to worry about. My mother isn’t very interested in what goes on at the factory, but I know that the union organizer has written my father a three-page letter filled with demands—and unfortunately a few threats.
I have sent Daddy a letter of reassurance and am begging you, Johnny, to back me up. Tell him my letters to you have been filled with success stories about the factory. The truth is, we’ve never been more productive, but if the union organizer gets his way, that productivity is going to stop any time now.
Believe me, I can handle this problem. The one thing I can’t handle is my father’s peace of mind. Would you do that for me?
It would mean the world, Johnny.
Love,
Cathy
October 15, 1944
Dearest Tom,
How I miss your letters! It’s been over two months now since I last heard from you and, as you can imagine, my imagination is running riot. The newspapers are filled with talk of Aachen and burning cities and I am terrified that you are in the midst of it all. I’m certain you must be—Cathy hasn’t heard a word from Johnny, either. How we worry about the two of you.
I love you, Tom, and will wait for you forever. I said a rosary last night to pray for your safety and Johnny’s—and the safety of all the men who are fighting for us so bravely. Must go now. I’m writing this from the hospital and my lunch break is over. We’re having a knitting bee this afternoon—more of those long white bandages. Much more tomorrow, darling, and every day until you are home in my arms.
All my love always,
Doro
November 8, 1944
Dear Johnny,
I hardly know how to begin this letter. I am afraid I have offended you and I want to apologize if that is the case.
Looking back, I can hardly believe I sent that letter to you. Johnny, I know I had no business dragging you into a family matter—on business, no less!—and I realize I put you in a terrible position. You and Daddy are friends. Had I taken a minute to think about it, I would have understood that your loyalties are to him. (And they should be.) I was going through a difficult period then and I was desperate for support. I apologize for asking you to take sides in a family matter.
Over the last few months I’ve really come to count on you as a friend. Isn’t that strange? I mean, I barely know you—we only saw each other that once at the Stage Door Canteen. And yet I can talk to you the way I can’t talk to anybody else around here. Everyone else wants to think of me as solid, capable Catherine, when inside there are times when I wish I co
uld just bury my head under the covers and let someone else take over. It was so much easier before the war. Now I hardly know what it is I’m supposed to do. Or who it is I’m supposed to be.
I hope you’ll forgive me and drop me a note. I miss your letters, Johnny. I miss talking to you.
Love,
Cathy
November 24, 1944
Dear Gerry,
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day yesterday—well, at least as wonderful a day as you can have so far away from home.
Cathy was in better spirits. She even lent me her copy of Forever Amber. She is making a real effort to be more cheerful around the house right now. We haven’t heard from Daddy in a long time—a couple of months, to be exact. And it’s been just as long (or longer) since any of us have heard from Johnny Danza.
I know I’ve gone all around the mulberry bush with this. I guess that’s because I’m really afraid to say what’s on my mind, almost like if I say it, it’ll come true. Gerry, I think something terrible has happened. Cathy has always said she knew all that week that something had happened to Douglas but she was afraid to admit it to her herself. Well, that’s exactly how I feel right now, except I’m not sure who it’s happened to. (Not you! I’m certain you’re fine—I couldn’t live if you weren’t.) Sometimes I think Daddy has been shot and other times I think it’s Johnny or one of the boys we went to school with.
The only thing I’m sure about is that things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. General Eisenhower told us on the radio yesterday that the courageous troops are suffering and need “myriads” of supplies. We’re bombing Tokyo and not even that is enough to end the war. But worst of all was a little article buried among the lists of wounded and dead. Up until the beginning of this month, we’ve had 528,795 casualties in all theaters, and 88,245 of our boys have been killed. One of them was Douglas. Now I’m scared one of them might be my father.
Please, please keep yourself safe and healthy.
I love you, Gerry.
Nancy
December 1, 1944
Dear Johnny,
I am so scared I can barely hold my fountain pen still enough to write this letter. All day long I’ve had this terrible feeling that the worst has happened, that you or Daddy have been injured and I just can’t shake it.
I keep telling myself that maybe my letters just aren’t getting through. The man at the post office says it’s almost impossible to deliver mail to the European front these days, but even though I know he’s telling me the truth, there’s a little part of me that’s so scared, Johnny, that I can hardly think.
Every night I pray to God that my father comes home safely. I can’t even bear to think what would happen to my mother without him. But I also pray to God for you. Please come back hale and hearty, Johnny.
More than anything, I’d like to get the chance to know you better. You’ve come to mean so much to me.
With much love,
Cathy
PART III
THE HOME FRONT
I think that this is as good a time as any... to warn men that when the war is over, the going will be a lot tougher, because they will have to compete with women whose eyes have been opened to their greatest economic potentialities.
— Saturday Evening Post
Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior.
Chapter Five
No one could pinpoint exactly when it happened, but by Christmas Eve of 1944, it was clear that Catherine was in charge of Wilson Manufacturing.
No announcements were made. No papers were signed. But everyone understood that the buck stopped right there on Catherine’s desk. Lou Alfano, her father’s right-hand man, had retired just after Easter, but the truth was few people even noticed. Catherine had become the heart and soul of the Wilson factory, pushing them on to greater levels of production than even the most optimistic War Office officials could have hoped for.
Even the trouble with the union organizer had been resolved—at least, in a manner of speaking. Tom Wilson had been gone for eighteen long months; the situation he had left behind was not the situation Catherine dealt with on a daily basis. Despite the wartime prosperity the United States was enjoying, the Depression was still fresh in everyone’s mind. It had happened once and no one doubted it could happen again—no matter what the powers-that-be had to say.
“Hey, Cathy!” She looked up and saw Eddie Martin standing in the doorway to her office. “It’s time to give out the Christmas bonuses.”
She rubbed her eyes and mustered up a smile. “Is it eleven already?”
Eddie looked down at his pocket watch. “Five minutes after. The natives are getting restless.”
“Eggnog all gone?”
“An hour ago.” His grin spread from cheekbone to cheekbone. “Bill Danneher dug up an old bottle of rum to spike the punch. You’d be surprised how quick the eggnog disappeared after that.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” She ran a brush through her hair and reached for her lipstick in the top drawer of her father’s battered desk. “With rationing the way it is, an extra pound of butter would be enough to start a riot.”
Eddie struck a jaunty pose as he leaned against the doorjamb. “I guess you don’t want to hear about the ton of butter cookies my mother made, do you?”
Catherine flashed him a stern look. “The black market is going to get you in a lot of trouble, Edward Martin. I’d think you, if anyone, would be smart enough to stay away from it.” Eddie had been struggling for more than two years to get into the armed services. It amazed Catherine that he would bypass the limits imposed by the government.
Since rationing had taken effect, a healthy black market in butter, sugar and the other “luxuries” prized by American homemakers had sprung up in almost every city and town in the country. You could have anything you wanted—for a price.
Catherine was adamantly opposed to black-market profiteering, but she understood all too well the desires that drove men and women to take advantage of the system. Rationing made it impossible to save up coupons for a holiday baking spree; coupons came complete with expiration dates. The motto of the day was Use Them or Lose Them. Housewives were urged to “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without,” and for the most part, they did. Some enterprising women on Hansen Street, led by the redoubtable Edna Weaver, had pooled their resources with those of single working girls and managed to continue their baking traditions for one more Christmas.
She looked at Eddie’s freckled face and sighed as she swiveled the lipstick back down into its case. “I guess a few trays of butter cookies won’t hurt the war effort, will they?”
Eddie’s dark brown eyes twinkled with merriment. “Especially not when they’re going out with the next troop carrier leaving the pier.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “I should have known better. Your mother is about the most patriotic woman in town.”
“I had you going for a minute, didn’t I, Cathy?”
“I wouldn’t brag about it, Martin. I could still hold back your Christmas bonus.” She looked at him across the desk. “Did the year-end projection come in yet?”
Eddie’s smile turned into a full-fledged grin. “We’re running thirty percent ahead of last year. At this rate we’re providing enough metal parts to build a ship every six and a half days.”
She leaned forward, fingers tapping on the scarred desk top. “Think we can up production ten percent for January?”
“Think you can help me get into the service?”
She touched his hand lightly. “Still 4-F?”
He nodded, the twinkle in his eyes dimming. “You were expecting something different?” He paced the small office, fists thrust into the pockets of his trousers. “I’m still short, half-blind, and too damned stupid for the army.”
“You’re not stupid, Eddie.”
“Yeah, right.” He glared at her as he paced. “Now tell me I’m not short and blind and I’ll marry you tomorrow.”
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“Careful what you say, Eddie. I might take you up on it.”
“Hey, look,” he said, spreading his arms wide in mock appeal. “I’m desperate!” He, stopped short, his round cheeks reddening. “Geez, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean... you know I wouldn’t... Cathy, I—”
Her laugh broke the tension in, the office. “I think you need some food in your stomach. The eggnog has gone to your head.”
“Yeah, right. Throw me a bone, why don’t you? I don’t want your sympathy, Wilson.”
She stood. Even in her lowest-heeled shoes, she was able to look him right in the eye. “You’re not going to get it, Martin. You’re too valuable to me right here for me to be wishing you off to war.”
“Thanks a lot,” Eddie mumbled. “Fat lot of good that does me.”
Catherine, who knew exactly how he felt, pretended she didn’t hear him. “Come on,” she said as she picked up the Christmas bonus checks from atop the filing cabinet. “Let’s join the party.”
The truth was, Eddie Martin needed Catherine’s approval far more than he dared let on. They both knew it, but Catherine made certain she never acknowledged the fact. He was proud and she respected him. His job with Wilson Manufacturing was one of two things in his life that mattered.
The other was going off to war.
Both of Eddie’s brothers entered military service not long after Pearl Harbor, sailing off on a tidal wave of patriotism and youthful enthusiasm. Eddie wanted to sail off with them; the thing was, the navy didn’t want him. Neither did the army or the marines or the coast guard. He begged; he offered bribes; he threatened and cajoled and underwent test after test after test until his poor body was as battered and bruised as his ego.
Once a month, as regular as the phases of the moon, Eddie called in sick to Wilson so he could present himself to the powers-that-be down on Whitehall Street and offer Uncle Sam his body and soul.
And once a month they turned him down.
He’d gone his whole life not knowing he had a portion of his spine missing and he’d done just fine. He was short but not too short. His eyes were bad but passable. He could hear a pin drop three states away. He could run, swim and hike, but he couldn’t do a thing about his spine.
Sentimental Journey (Home Front - Book #1) Page 7