Keeping Margie in the dark wasn’t difficult, because all she wanted to do was sleep. She couldn’t seem to get enough of it. Her appetite, which had returned, disappeared again, and she felt queasy most of the time. She smiled and laughed through welcome-home teas, luncheons, and visits from old friends and neighbors, but they were exhausting ordeals to get through. She missed her army friends who shared her torments and fears. She needed to talk with someone who understood about the images stuck in her head, and the dreams from which she woke up crying.
Rummaging through a closet one afternoon, she found the dress she’d made for her and Abe’s wedding; it hung far in the back and was covered with a bedsheet. Removing the sheet, she held the dress close to her body and looked in the mirror, seeing a cloud of white chiffon over nylon—a lovely dress designed by and made for a young girl. She twirled around and watched the chiffon playfully poof in the air, a sad reminder of what might have been, but neither the playful girl nor her handsome fiancé existed anymore. She put it back on the hanger and covered it with the sheet, thinking about the young brides in town who would cherish the beautiful dress, and with a sigh of goodwill and regret she decided to donate it to the church’s charity closet.
Later that day, she borrowed several recent issues of Brides magazine from the library to see the latest styles.
“Are you sure about this wedding, dear?” Mama asked. “This might not be the best time to make such a big decision.”
“I’m capable of making my own decisions,” Margie snapped, but she knew it wasn’t true. She had trouble picking out what to wear each morning, or choosing between pancakes and cereal for breakfast. She concentrated on the details of her new wedding dress, drawing and redrawing sketches before designing the perfect one, when the agonizing over fabrics and accessories began.
Watching her work, Mama said, “It’s going to be beautiful; you have such flair. Best we make it a little larger, though. You’re bound to fill out some.”
Margie scrutinized her scrawny figure in the mirror. Her eyes, still too big for her face, looked less haunted, and the ten pounds she had gained filled out her breasts a little, but her elbows, knees, and hip bones still protruded, knobby and Halloween-skeleton ugly. She wondered what Wade’s parents would think when they met her.
Abe’s mother telephoned. She was glad Margie had arrived home safely. She’d heard Margie was engaged to be married and wanted to extend her best wishes. She invited Margie to lunch; they could have a nice chat.
Margie knew this reunion would be a sad one and tucked a hankie in her pocket. She covered her hair with the silk scarf Abe had given her years ago and retrieved her bicycle from the barn. Though she was wobbly at first, her body quickly remembered how to balance. With growing confidence, Margie rode through Little River’s familiar streets to the Carson home. Their front yard blazed with daffodils and tulips, the lawn already thick and green. The mature sugar maple leafed out like it did every spring, just as if nothing had changed. A “Sons in Service” flag hung in the window, the blue star in its center replaced by a gold one, showing that Abe had been killed in action.
The front door opened, and Mr. Carson welcomed her in.
Abe’s parents looked much older than Margie remembered, their expressions weary and tinged with sorrow, but their hugs told her they were genuinely glad she had come. They led her into the living room, where a picture of Abe, now forever young and handsome in his dress uniform, dominated the space over the mantel. Mrs. Carson offered Margie a chair and brought her a glass of lemonade. The lump in Margie’s throat softened after a few sips, and she said, “I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you, dear. It’s a difficult time for us. I doubt if we’ll ever fully recover. There’s a group in town we belong to, the Gold Star Mothers. And wives. Families, really. We help one another.” She stopped and sighed. “You’ve had a loss too, your daddy. He was a fine man. He loved you so much and was so proud of you. If you ever need to talk about him, or Abe, we’re here.”
Margie stammered out a thank-you.
Mr. Carson held out Abe’s pilot’s ring. “He wanted you to have this.”
“I can’t. You should keep it.”
He placed the ring in Margie’s hand and folded her fingers around it. “Those were Abe’s instructions.”
Margie admired the heavy sterling-silver ring with its blue stone and Abe’s name engraved inside the band, and she blinked back tears.
“Tell us about you, Margie. What are your plans?”
She hesitated. How could she chatter about her wedding to Abe’s grieving parents?
Mrs. Carson said, “It’s all right, honey. We can talk about Wade. I knew his mother, Barbara. She would have been pleased he chose you for his wife.”
Margie flashed Mrs. Carson a grateful smile. “I don’t know when Wade will be home, so I can’t set a date. I designed my dress, though, and it’s almost sewn.”
Mrs. Carson said, “I know it will be beautiful. I can hardly wait to see you in it.”
“Thank you. It’s ivory crepe. It has a high collar and long sleeves with some beading on them. I cut the skirt on the bias so it would drape gracefully.”
On the coffee table was a box, and Mrs. Carson nudged it toward Margie. “This is what came home to us. I thought you might like to look through it. The letters you sent to Abe are in there. I haven’t read them, Margie. Take them with you if you like.”
Margie opened the box, remembering how personal her letters to Abe had been. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yes, dear. They belong to you.”
Margie found the packet and put it in her purse. Then she carefully looked through the rest of the box’s contents—flight manuals, schedules, test papers, and souvenirs from Abe’s travels around the globe. Finding pictures of him posed in front of his airplane, Margie focused on the nose art. She made out her own face and a cascade of wild hair.
Mrs. Carson said, “Abe dated a few of the women pilots. They had a lot in common, flying and all, but he always asked about you, Margie.”
On the way home, Margie rode her bike through Davis Park, thinking back to the night Abe had become her first lover. She chuckled as she remembered the confines of the car and the clumsiness of the escapade. “You still have a place in my heart,” she whispered to the heavens.
Margie found mail from Wade waiting for her on the hall table. After leaving Santo Tomas, he had moved to a shack in the countryside, where he felt safer. His letter relayed news of the violence in Manila. The Japanese were firmly entrenched within the stone-walled buildings of Intramuros, and MacArthur had ordered the use of tanks and howitzers to root them out. For days, US artillery rammed through the stone walls, killing tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers and trapped Filipino civilians. Facing death or capture by Allied troops, and intent on eradicating Manila’s whole population, the Japanese army lived up to their reputation by mutilating and raping Filipino men, women, and children.
My darling, the savagery and destruction I’ve seen here are beyond telling. It is far greater than anything I saw in Europe. I can’t imagine that Manila will ever recover from this carnage. Its beauty has been obliterated, and its culture annihilated.
I miss you. I love you, but sadly, as yet, I don’t know when I’ll be home. I pray sooner than later.
Longing to be in your arms,
Wade
Margie put the letter in her bureau drawer, deciding not to share it with Mama and Irene. Its unblinking account of the barbarity of war was upsetting even to her. She sighed. Second thoughts had surfaced about marrying Wade, a decision made in haste and at the worst of times. Now at home, her outlook was changing, and Wade seemed a part of another life, one she had no desire to summon up. She feared his presence would rekindle feelings of despair and degradation she was trying so hard to tame. She hardly knew him, she felt. How could she possibly meet his expectations of her as his wife? She didn’t know what to do.
Letters arrived from Fran
k sporadically and out of sequence. Mama left the microfilmed V-mails she received out for all to read, but Irene shared only parts of her missives, which were more intimate.
At twenty-three, Irene was four years Margie’s junior. She worked as a bookkeeper at the Ford plant and, as mother to an active little boy, seldom got a full night’s sleep. Patient and nurturing even after a long workday, she spent most of her free time with Billy, supervising his dinner, bathing him before bedtime, and lulling him to sleep with baby songs and softly told nursery rhymes. She watched over what he ate with an eagle eye, making oatmeal gruel like Margie’s mother had taught her, and cooking and mashing his fruits and vegetables herself. She collected hand-me-down clothes from her sister and friends, washing and ironing them on Thursday nights. She coped with uncertainty, loneliness, and fear; just the sight of a Western Union boy delivering telegrams guaranteed her an attack of itchy hives.
“We have a code,” Irene told Mama and Margie. “When Frank asks about the baby kicking, I know his unit’s on the move. I cross-reference the date with newspaper accounts of troop movements and the maps in Life magazine showing the latest offensives. I can guess where he is, or rather, where he was.” According to Irene’s calculations, he’d traveled north through Italy into France. Mama looked up the locations of unfamiliar faraway cities in the atlas kept open on the coffee table.
In his letters, Frank complained about the food, the weather, the fatigue, the boredom, and the lack of mail. He revealed little about the other men in his unit, or the war itself, except to say it was hell.
Pensive after reading his latest, Irene asked Margie, “What was it like? You were there.”
Flipping through a recent issue of Life, Margie studied the pictures of scruffy-faced and shirtless marines; they looked fit and strong standing beside their tanks and supply trucks. She thought of Wade as she last saw him, bone-skinny and hollow-eyed. Choosing her words carefully, she said, “Guess it depends on where you are. These guys in Life don’t look any worse for wear.” She knew better, but what else would she tell a young wife pining for her soldier-husband? Think of hell, multiply it by a thousand, and you wouldn’t even begin to get close to the savagery, the horror, and the images that burn into your brain.
Margie looked her directly in the eye. “Frank will be all right. The medics go behind the troops and pick up the pieces. He’s not in much danger.” Then she ducked back behind the magazine and hoped her performance had been convincing.
CHAPTER 19
Miami, spring 1945
Margie’s leave ended, and she received orders to report to the redistribution center in sunny Miami, Florida. She dressed in her uniform and assessed her image in the mirror. She had put on some weight, her face looked less drawn, and her hair shined as it hadn’t in a long time. She wondered if her friends would recognize her.
She placed her makeup bag and toothbrush in her suitcase, then snapped it shut and carried it down the stairs. Her mother stood close to the radio. When she turned, Margie saw tears on her face.
“Mama? Mama, what’s wrong?”
“I just heard President Roosevelt had a cerebral hemorrhage and died.”
Stunned, Margie put down the suitcase and hurried to her mother’s side. “I hadn’t heard he’d been ill.”
“They said it was sudden. Oh, Margie. What’s the country going to do now?”
Margie didn’t know. A four-term president, Roosevelt had just always been there in her recollection. To calm her mother, she said, “Our country’s bigger than one man, even President Roosevelt.”
Mama wrung her hands. “But we need him to win this war. Nobody can deal with Stalin and Churchill like he can. It’s why I voted for him.”
She didn’t want to leave her mother on this sad note, but she couldn’t miss her train. “I’ve got to go, Mama. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Will you be all right?”
Mama nodded and gave Margie a hug. “Be safe.”
Margie mulled over her mother’s concern for the future as Irene drove her to the train station. General Eisenhower had demanded Germany’s unconditional surrender, and she wondered, with the United States in both mourning and transition, if the Nazis would take advantage of the distraction and harden their position. Most of the world, like Mama, equated Roosevelt with America.
Irene stopped the car in front of the station, and they watched a workman lower the flag to half-staff, then take a rag from his pocket to wipe the tears off his face. Other men took off their hats, and both men and women shed tears.
Irene lamented, “I’m never going to get Frank home.”
Margie would never give voice to it, but she worried that too. She could only nod to Irene, afraid her fears would come true.
The train from Detroit to Miami covered the fifteen hundred miles in thirty hours. Cozied up in her berth, Margie read the Ann Arbor Tribune articles about Vice President Harry S. Truman’s swearing in as thirty-third president of the United States, and his promise to keep Roosevelt’s cabinet intact. At least there will be some continuity, she thought. She read the plans to transport Franklin Roosevelt’s body to his home in Hyde Park, New York, where he would be buried in the family rose garden. The print blurred before her eyes, and she turned out the light.
Arriving in Miami the next morning, she gathered her things and caught a taxi to the redistribution center. A familiar figure stood outside the center’s door. Margie waved and hollered, “Hey! Boots!”
Boots trotted over. “Margie! You look great! Are you an old married lady yet?”
“Not yet. I can’t get my other half home.”
Boots laughed. “That’s not all bad. Come to breakfast. Some of the old gang’s here.”
The center was crowded with soldiers, but not one was familiar to Margie. The men she had cared for on Bataan and Corregidor were still languishing in Japanese prison camps—if they were alive—or hiding in the mountains, fighting with the guerrillas that harassed the enemy. She heard her name called, and turned around and saw Larry, a medic she had trained with at Walter Reed. Glad to see him, she smiled. “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Looks like your mama’s feeding you well.”
He limped over with the help of a cane. “Margie, I saw your picture in the newspaper. I’d recognize that wild hair anywhere.”
“Where have you been?”
“Africa mostly. I was wounded there, and I’m staying stateside for the duration. There’s a desk job for me in Texas.”
“Join us for breakfast. I’m sorry about your leg. How’s it doing?”
“It holds me up.”
At the table, Gracie grabbed Margie’s hand. “Guess what? Kenneth accepted an assistant professorship at U of M. I’ve requested to be assigned to the veterans hospital in Ann Arbor. You and I might be neighbors.”
Margie thought that was wonderful news.
She sat with Boots, Gracie, Larry, and a few others for breakfast. She felt at ease with this group and able to let her guard down. Nobody looked at her askance when she said that her joints ached like an old lady’s, or when she mentioned she woke up crying at night and couldn’t remember why. She noticed that Gracie still favored her arm.
“My shoulder never healed right,” Gracie said, demonstrating its limited range of motion. “The doctor says it won’t get better without surgery.”
Boots looked over a platter of pastries on the table and selected a blueberry muffin. “I heard Ruth Ann lost all her teeth. Wouldn’t that be a kicker? Has anyone heard from Tildy?”
Margie had received a letter from Tildy a week ago. She had been in and out of the hospital several times with stomach pains and the doctors couldn’t find the cause. “Last I heard she said she was coming. She’s having problems with her stomach. She might be sick again. I have her address if you’d like to write to her.”
“Well, I’ve got good news,” Gracie announced. “I heard through the grapevine that Miss Kermit is getting married!”
Everyone at the table smiled at t
he news. “Who to?” Boots asked.
“Some old beau who she’s known for decades.”
An officer quieted the room by tapping his spoon against his water glass. He made several announcements and led a silent prayer for the late president.
Afterward, Larry said, “They may say he wasn’t sick, but my buddy is an MP, and he saw Roosevelt close-up recently. He said he looked like death warmed over. Personally, I think he worked himself to an early grave.”
“So, who knows anything about Truman?” Boots asked.
No one answered.
As the days passed, groups of soldiers cycled through the redistribution center, new ones arriving as others left. Temporarily housed in nearby hotels, they energized any area they occupied, monopolizing the local marinas and beaches by boating, fishing, swimming, and playing beach volleyball. At night, they overflowed restaurants that offered live entertainment from crooners to rousing dance bands. Still later, they crawled the bars and strip joints that stayed open into the wee hours of the morning.
Underneath the gaiety, however, dark rumors circulated. Soldiers huddled over beers to discuss what they had heard. An invasion of Japan’s main island was a certainty, with protracted bloody battles expected. The soldiers serving in Europe could be reassigned to the Far East as soon as Germany surrendered.
Margie glanced around the bar filled with drinkers and dancers. She wondered who in this assembly of war-weary, seasoned fighters—wanting nothing but peace, tranquility, family, friends, and a life away from the battlefield with its dangers and atrocities—who would be asked to serve, yet again, on the most dangerous of turfs?
The army doctor who examined Margie asked how was she coping, and how she got along with her family. Had she resumed contact with friends and neighbors? Did she have any health concerns?
She told him how things at home had changed: her dad’s death while she was in the Philippines, her mother’s difficulties adjusting to his absence. She worried about her brother, a medic still posted in Europe. When she got home, she met the sister-in-law and nephew she hadn’t known existed. Twirling the mahogany ring around her finger, she told him of her wedding plans, although her fiancé’s return home was still uncertain.
A Pledge of Silence Page 22