Sentimental Journey (Home Front - Book #1)

by Barbara Bretton

  Cathy waiting at the door when he got home... a hot meal on the stove... their children doing their homework by the fireplace... his Cathy—his wife—turning down the blankets and welcoming him into their bed...

  “The best,” he said, patting the ring box one more time. “The very best.”

  Johnny was right. Times Square was a zoo. Young men in uniform danced with even younger girls in front of the replica of the Statue of Liberty, and Catherine and Johnny each bought a fistful of Liberty Bonds from the USO workers near a fifty-foot-high cash register that totaled the sales. They joined in a conga line that snaked up and down the Square and laughed uproariously.

  Soon, however, the din became too much even for Cathy, and they went on to Longchamps where they dined on sautéed filet mignon and shrimp cocktail, definitely a special dinner. Catherine was in ecstasy. “Beef!” she said with a sigh. “I can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed a meal more.”

  Johnny couldn’t concentrate on his dinner. She devoured an enormous strawberry shortcake while he smoked cigarette after cigarette, waiting for the right moment. Finally she finished eating and he paid the bill.

  “Want to walk for a while?” he asked.

  Catherine groaned. “I’d better, or I’ll have to let out my seams tomorrow.”

  They strolled through the gathering twilight. From Times Square they heard the faint sounds of music and cheers. Cathy chattered on about the delicious meal and he could only nod and pat his jacket pocket. He felt jumpier than he had in a foxhole with Nazi fire exploding all around him.

  The carousel, he thought. Or the little bench near the lake... There had to be one perfect place, one lucky place, where a man could propose to the girl he loved.

  And then he saw it. A hansom cab waited near the fountain in front of the Plaza. “Come on,” he said, swooping her up into his arms. “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Giggling, Cathy found herself carried across the street and deposited in the back seat of the elegant carriage before she could muster a protest. Not that she wanted to protest. Riding through the park in a hansom cab was probably the most romantic adventure she could possible imagine!

  The gentle clip-clop of the horse’s hooves lulled her into a wondrous romantic blur. Birds chirped softly high in the trees, and now and again you could hear murmurs and whispers from lovers sitting together on the park benches, hidden now by the blue light of dusk.

  Johnny recognized the perfect moment when he saw it. He casually reached into his jacket.

  “I have cigarettes in my purse,” Catherine said.

  “That’s not what I’m looking for.” He pulled the tiny box out of his shirt pocket and placed it in her hand.

  Her eyes widened, then her gaze lowered to the box with its shiny white ribbons.

  “Johnny?” Her voice was soft, her tone both puzzled and cautiously delighted.

  He closed her fingers around it. His heart hammered the way it had in combat. He wasn’t very good with words. “Open it,” he said, knowing he sounded gruff, but when your heart was in your throat it was tough to sound any other way.

  Calm down! Catherine thought. Don’t go setting yourself up for disappointment! A pair of pearl earrings, maybe. A shiny gold locket on a slender chain. A carousel charm for her bracelet. She opened the box.

  “Oh, Johnny!” Her breath rushed from her body.

  “I’d drop to my knee,” he said, “but there’s no room.” He looked jittery and uncertain, hopeful and terrified, and she loved him more in that instant than she had ever loved anyone.

  “Marry me, Cathy,” he said, plucking the sparkling diamond ring from its bed of black velvet.

  Her left hand trembled as she extended it toward him.

  “I love you, Cathy.” How beautiful the words were! How beautiful they made her feel. She’d never expected to hear them again. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks and she didn’t bother to wipe them away. She was certain her smile was brighter than a full moon in August.

  “Yes,” she said as he slipped the ring onto her finger. “Oh, yes!”

  The driver let out a cheer, and Catherine giggled and buried her face against Johnny’s shoulder. “I love you,” she said for him alone. “I’ll love you forever.”

  We’ll work side by side, Johnny. Things will be the same as they’ve always been, only better.

  Johnny felt as if he’d captured the stars with his bare hands. A brand-new life, Cathy. Before long, you won’t have to work for a living. You can concentrate on being my wife.

  “A toast to the happy couple,” said the driver, passing back a bottle of champagne and paper cups he kept on hand for occasions like this. “May you have a long and happy life together!”

  The happy couple clinked glasses and drank to two entirely different futures.

  * * *

  The lights were on late that night at the Wilson house. Dot burst into happy tears and ran across the street to bring Edna and Les Weaver and their other neighbors over for an impromptu celebration. The block party had just ended and now as engagement party was about to begin. Even Nancy seemed genuinely glad for the two of them, and she raised a glass of blackberry wine and said, “To the two luckiest people in the entire world—may you have a hundred years of joy together!”

  Catherine’s tears were tears of joy when Aunt Edna and Uncle Les kissed her and hugged Johnny and wished them both everything wonderful that life had to offer.

  If only her father had been there with them, the evening would have been picture perfect.

  The next day it was back to business as usual at Wilson. Well, as usual as business could be the day after your engagement. Oh, yes—there was also the small matter of victory in Europe. There were an awful lot of hangovers at the factory that morning and a lot of smiling faces.

  Of course, the biggest smiles of all belonged to Catherine and Johnny. Johnny was doing a good job of keeping business and pleasure separate, but Catherine was finding it difficult to tear her gaze from the diamond ring glittering on her left hand. Engaged. She and Johnny were engaged. Out of the most difficult years of her life had come her greatest happiness. The man she loved. Work that mattered.

  The memory of another man, another engagement ring, wasn’t far from her mind. I’ll always love you, Douglas, she thought, gazing out the window. You’ll always be a part of me. Love wasn’t the finite quantity she had once believed; it bent with the wind; it grew in barren soil; it lived even after you’d given up hope.

  “You wanted to see me?” Eddie Martin, hands thrust in the pockets of his brown trousers, stood in the doorway. She motioned him inside. “We need to talk.”

  “Sounds serious.” He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. This intense, angry young man seemed almost a stranger to Catherine.

  “I’ve been reviewing attendance records, Eddie, and I’m afraid yours isn’t the greatest.” He said nothing. “Is there a problem?” she continued. “If there’s something wrong you have to tell me so we can do something about it.”

  “Nothing you could do, Catherine, even if you wanted to.” Catherine. Had it come to that? She’d always been Cath or Wilson or some other crazy nickname to Eddie.

  “The war’s over, Eddie, at least in Europe. We’re going to have to consider the future.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I hear you’ve been considering your own future.”

  She laughed nervously. “The grapevine is in fine shape.” Shyly she showed him her ring. “It just happened last night.”

  “Congratulations.”

  Her smile wavered. “That’s all? Just ‘congratulations’?”

  “What do you want me to say? I’d be lying if I said I think you’ve found a great guy.”

  “I know you and Johnny have had a rough patch or two, but he’s a wonderful man. I think you’ll get to like him.”

  “So when do you quit work?”

  “Quit work! Where’d you get an ide
a like that?”

  “It’s what you do when you get married, isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, it is—I mean, it was. I’ve done a good job here, Eddie. I can do even more once we go back to civilian production.”

  “Don’t try to convince me. Convince your future husband.”

  “I don’t have to convince Johnny of anything,” she said hotly. “He knows how important this company is to me.”

  She did her best to bring the conversation back to Eddie’s absenteeism, but his lack of interest was like a splash of icy water in her face.

  “I’ve made my position clear,” she said in exasperation. “Things have to change, Eddie. It’s time to put the past behind us and look ahead.” Talk to me, Eddie. We used to be friends. Don’t let it slip away from us like this....

  “You’re right,” he said as he rose to his feet. “I quit.”

  “Eddie, please. You don’t mean this—”

  “It’s over, Cathy. Face it. I don’t have a place here anymore.”

  “We can work it out. We can—”

  He shook his head. “No, we can’t. Everything’s changed, whether you want to believe it or not. It’s over. All of it.” He turned and left the office and for an instant she wondered if she would ever see him again.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said out loud as his footsteps disappeared down the hallway. “He’ll be back.”

  But the weeks went by and finally Catherine had to admit Eddie Martin was gone for good.

  * * *

  One month later Dot stood on the dock, craning her neck to see over the crowd.

  “Calm down, Mom.” Catherine laughed and winked at Nancy. “I don’t think the Queen Mary will get lost in the crowd.”

  “Look at all those tugboats,” Nancy said, pointing toward the flotilla of escorts heralding the arrival of the world’s most famous troopship as it entered the narrows. “I’ll bet Daddy’s up there on deck directing traffic.”

  Her two daughters laughed, but Dot was so nervous she was afraid she’d fall apart if she uttered a sound. Johnny patted her on the shoulder and she gave him a quick smile, grateful for his solid presence. This is it, she thought, hugging herself to stem her trembling. Any moment now the ship will dock and my husband will walk down that gangplank and I’ll—

  Dear God, what? Would she run to him and fling herself into his arms? Would she stand rooted to the spot while he strode proudly across the dock to her waiting embrace? Why hadn’t she taken more pains with her hair, pinning it up or brushing it loose or rolling the top into the pompadour he’d always loved. Would he like her new pink lipstick, or should she have rummaged around for the bright red that she’d always worn?

  Later on she would ask herself exactly how she and Tom found each other in the teeming crowd of humanity jamming the pier that day in June. She remembered Nancy’s tears and Catherine’s look of joy and the way Tom and Johnny met each other’s eyes, then embraced like father and son, but how it was that she and Tom had found their way to each other—well, only God had the answer to that wonderful mystery.

  The weeks and the months and the years without him vanished, and she found herself looking into the eyes of the man she loved, the boy she’d married, the father of her children, as if they’d never been parted, not even for an instant.

  She cradled his beloved face between her hands and kissed him soundly. “Oh, Tommy,” she whispered. “Don’t you ever go away again, you hear me?”

  “I’m back, Doro.” He held her close and she felt his tears against the side of her neck. “I’m back.”

  June 21, 1945

  Dear Gerry,

  Well, my dad is home at last. He arrived safe and sound yesterday on the Queen Mary. Can you believe 14,526 soldiers all came back together! I don’t have to tell you that my mother is beside herself with happiness. She’s fussing over him constantly, making certain he has lemonade and clean shirts and all the back issues of Reader’s Digest that he missed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so happy in my entire life.

  I almost hate to write this, but I have to say it to somebody—Daddy isn’t the same. And it’s not the gray hairs or the weight he’s lost—it’s something a lot more complicated and scary. The look in his eyes is different. Gerry, it’s almost like he’s not really there, you know? Last night everyone on the block came over and Mom put together an impromptu party and even though my father said and did all the right things, you didn’t have to be a genius to see he wasn’t enjoying himself at all. Cathy tried to tell him all about the company and how well things are going and he just said, “That’s nice, princess,” and continued thumbing through the June 1944 Reader’s Digest.

  Well, I guess it really doesn’t matter, does it? Come Monday, Daddy’ll be back at work and everything will settle down the way it used to be. At least I hope so.

  All my love forever,

  Nancy

  * * *

  “You old fool,” Dot whispered to her reflection in the mirror as she struggled with the ribbon tie on her brand-new peignoir set. “Married almost twenty-five years and you’re trembling like a bride on her wedding night.”

  Which, of course, in a way it was. How strange the slither of lace felt against her bare skin. How powerful and seductive her thoughts. Tom had been home for two nights now. Each night she had come to bed, giddy with anticipation, to find him snoring deeply. He was tired, she knew, but it was time.

  She glanced at herself in the revealing—and terribly foreign—negligee. “Don’t go losing your nerve, Dorothy,” she warned herself. “This is your husband. Go to him.”

  He was standing near the bedroom window, smoking. He was thinner than she’d remembered, and older, but then time had wrought changes in her, as well. Her heart ached as she thought of the years they had lost, at the thatch of gray hair that salted the brown.

  “Tommy.” She stood near the foot of the bed, arms at her sides.

  He turned slowly, almost reluctantly. No! She wouldn’t think thoughts like that. Foolish ideas had been popping into her head all day. Something’s wrong, her mind would say. He isn’t the same Tom who went to war, but she pushed these thoughts firmly aside and would allow them no quarter. She noticed that his hand trembled. Her heart went out to him.

  “You look beautiful, Doro.”

  She lowered her eyes. “Thank you.” We’re acting like strangers, Tommy. Sweep me into your arms and make love to me the way you used to. The memory of their last night together had warmed her throughout the intervening years, but it was time to create new memories. She sat down on the edge of the bed and patted the spot next to her. “Come here.”

  He stubbed out his cigarette and slowly crossed the room. He eased his body onto the bed as if he were settling onto a mattress of nails.

  She met his eyes. “I’ve missed you, Tommy.”

  He said nothing, but she could see his Adam’s apple working convulsively. She touched his cheek, his jaw, the bristly GI haircut that felt so strange. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Please say something, Tommy. You’re scaring me.” She paused, swallowing hard. “Is there someone else?”

  He shook his head. “Never. There’s only you, Doro. Always.”

  “Then what?” She took his hand and placed it against her heart. “It’s been so long, darling. So very long...”

  And then her heart broke as the man she loved let her see inside his soul. “Hold me, Doro,” he said, his voice cracking. “Just hold me close.”

  She did as he asked. She held her husband close through the long summer night, and when the sun came up the next morning, she knew that things would be different between them for a long time to come.

  But it didn’t matter. He was her husband and he was home to stay.

  * * *

  Tom Wilson did go back to work on Monday; but not quite the way anyone expected.

  After two hours of nonstop “Great to see you... so happy you’re home, Mr. Wilson...” he stepped into his office and ca
lled both Johnny and Catherine in.

  Johnny came directly from working on a problem with one of the machines down in assembly. His hands were stained with grease and he waved off Tom’s handshake with a quick laugh and the remark, “I wouldn’t do it to you, Tom.”

  Catherine smiled. Her dad was seated behind the desk that she’d called her own these past twenty-four months. How odd it felt to see someone in the seat she’d come to consider her own.

  How odd it felt to see that empty look in her father’s eyes. She watched as he glanced around the small office as if he had never seen it before—nor cared to see again.

  Since he’d been home, the only time her dad had come to life was when she and Johnny broke the news of their engagement. His blue eyes had sparkled and he’d hugged her tight, then clapped Johnny on the back and welcomed him into the family.

  “Be patient,” Johnny had said to her this morning. “Remember what it was like for me? Coming home is like being dropped on the moon. It takes some getting used to.”

  She looked over at her dad and smiled at him. He was still her father, still Tom Wilson, president of the company. It would just take time for things to return to normal, that’s all.

  Ten minutes later, all of her hopes were shattered.

  “No!” The word burst from her lips. “You can’t mean that, Daddy. Wilson wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  His smile was weary, “These figures don’t lie, princess. Wilson did just fine without me and it’ll continue to do fine.”

  “But I don’t understand. Why on earth would you want to retire? What will you do?” He was only forty-four, not some doddering old goat ready to be put out to pasture.

  “Nothing,” said Tom. “I just want to do nothing.”

  Panic snaked its way through her chest. He’d gone crazy, that was what. Absolutely, totally crazy. She’d heard stories about battle fatigue, but it never occurred to her that her own father would fall victim.

  Johnny leaned forward, his handsome face creased with concern. “You planning on selling the firm, Tom? Not much call for transactions like that these days. You might want to—”