She fell into the arms of Barbara’s daughter, Jillian, a pediatrician, newly pregnant, and married to Shane, who stood beside her. They had driven from Kalamazoo, where they had both recently joined a practice of young physicians. “Mom should be here soon, Grandma. Her flight was supposed to land half an hour ago. Did she tell you Dad’s in Beijing? He’s sorry he can’t make the funeral. He sends you his love.”
The smell of flowers was intense and the music a lament. Gary guided Margie up the aisle and placed her in the first pew, where the family congregated. In front of the altar stood Wade’s casket, handsome and substantial. The service started, but there was still no sign of Barbara.
The black-robed minister described Wade as a faithful husband, a loving father and grandfather, a brave war correspondent, a talented editor, and a mentor of young musicians. Margie nodded her agreement, and then added in her own mind—a provider of food in the face of starvation, of comfort in those years of deprivation, and of support in the war’s long aftermath. He was a good man.
A hymn interrupted her reverie, and the congregation filed out. The family gathered around the casket to say their last good-byes. Gary slipped his arm around her waist, and feeling light-headed, she leaned against him. She wanted to go home; she wanted to sleep, but she dutifully and numbly attended the graveside service and then brunch at the Riverside restaurant.
The day blurred. She remembered talking to her brother, Frank. He had sold his veterinary practice to his son, Billy, a decade ago, and he and Irene were world travelers, having sailed into almost every cruise port. Gracie was there. Kenneth had died a few years ago, and she had recently moved to a condo in Ann Arbor. Margie clung to her friend, and they both murmured they didn’t see each other often enough. Margie looked around for the man called Kodak, but he wasn’t there. Nor was Barbara. Jillian said her plane had been diverted to Chicago, and she had rented a car to drive the four hours to Little River.
Windshield wipers slapped at the drizzle as Gary’s car sloshed through the streets. Liz turned to Margie in the backseat. “Can’t I talk you into coming home with us, Mom? The twins are there. They will be going back to college in the morning. I fixed up the guest room for you.”
Margie didn’t want to be anybody’s guest today, and as much as she loved Seth and Eric, she wanted to be alone with her memories. “Thank you, but I’d like to go home.”
Gary walked her to her door and helped her over the threshold. “Are you sure you’re okay? I don’t like leaving you alone.”
She patted his arm. “I know you’re concerned, but I’m very tired. I want to lie down.”
His face was puffy, his eyes weary and indecisive. “All right. I’ll stop by later.”
She hung her damp coat on a hook in the kitchen to dry and changed into warm pull-on sweats. She took her wedding picture off the mantel and studied it, Wade radiant and she seven months pregnant, but barely showing. Exhausted, she lay on the bed, covered up with a quilt, and hugged the picture to her heart.
What was Wade thinking the last time he closed his eyes? About his parents and sister Carol, who had preceded him in death? The honky-tonk tunes he strummed on his guitar, or the Brahms’s sonatas he played on the piano? Did he regret he had never written the novel he had planned to, or built his dream house on his grandfather’s land on the shores of Lake Michigan?
Neither sleep nor rest came, and her memories continued to churn. She wanted to look through her photo album to see the pictures of him as a young man, and to read the letters he’d written that were stored upstairs in a hatbox. Her grip tight on the handrail, she climbed the steep stairs, taking a long time to get to the top.
The central hall opened to three bedrooms and a bathroom. The floors were hardwood smoothed from use, and the walls wavy from layers of paint. A leak in the roof left a stain on the ceiling, and a few months ago Gary had warned her about the upcoming expense. She and Wade would be better off in a condo, he had urged. A new development was opening near his house.
In the front bedroom, an old flowered rug, still rich in color and soft underfoot, covered a section of floor, damping its squeaks. Her grandmother’s cherry highboy and four-poster bed had gracefully aged to a satin patina, and a white chenille spread covered the mattress. Sheer curtains framed tall windows, and roll-down shades provided privacy.
Breathless from the climb, she sat on the bed. This room had been Wade’s and hers since early in their marriage until after Mama died and they moved to the bedroom downstairs. Her cedar chest sat under the window. The lid felt heavier than she remembered and she dug through layers of wool sweaters and blankets until she found the hatbox. She placed it on the bed along with the photo album from the bottom drawer of the highboy. Turning on the lights and peeling back the chenille bedspread, she made herself a nest of pillows and quilts and crawled into bed. She heard the cuckoo bird in the clock that hung on the wall by the kitchen chirp four times as she lifted the hatbox lid.
Her four military medals sat on top of a pile of letters, photos, and military papers. She opened each small leather box and inspected the medal inside, remembering how faint with fatigue she had been when they were presented. Fifty years ago, she had chucked the medals rudely into the hatbox, but seeing them now, she felt a reverence for them and the service they represented. She put them aside and continued to search.
The string of pearls from Royce had dulled, as had her memory of him, and Abe’s pilot’s ring had tarnished. She didn’t want these brave young men who had died serving their country to be forgotten. It shouldn’t be so. She picked up a fountain pen and read the inscription: To Helen. Happy Birthday. Love, Mabel. Tears sprang to her eyes. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
She slid the mahogany ring Wade had made for her while at Santo Tomas over the knobby knuckle of her little finger. The finish had aged to a sheen that added depth to the intricate carving. How many hours had he worked on it, hungry, and hunched in his bamboo hut, in love and dreaming of marrying her, while she held back?
The ink had faded on the letters he had written while they were engaged, while he was still in the Philippines. She leaned closer to the lamp to read his loving words. She’d had doubts then and wondered, now, if he had sensed her uncertainty. Self-reproach stabbed her, and she wished she could have returned his feelings during those times when they had nothing else.
Her passion for him came later. After Gary’s birth, feelings ignited that surprised and exhilarated both of them. Days filled with warm embraces, knowing smiles, and a desire to be closer preceded passion-filled nights. In time, their love mellowed and deepened. Happy memories of those good years swirled in her head, and she dozed.
Sometime later she heard a voice, a one-sided conversation—Barbara talking on a telephone. Margie opened her eyes, not sure where she was at first, then recognized her upstairs bedroom. Letters were strewn around her, and the photo album lay open on the end of the bed. Sitting up, she quickly tried to stuff her things back in the hatbox.
Barbara came into the bedroom looking travel weary, her dove-gray slacks and coral silk blouse deeply creased and her chin-length hair tucked behind her ears, the front mostly silver-white now. She had flown in from Los Angeles, where she was a professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California.
“I’m sorry, Mom. Did I wake you? I was talking to Gary. He asked how you were. I told him you were asleep.”
Margie welcomed her with a warm embrace. “I was worried about you. You must be exhausted. Are you hungry?”
“No. I got a hamburger on the road. Are you okay?”
“I am now that you are here. It’s so good to see you, Barbara.”
“I’m glad to be home. I’m sorry I missed Dad’s funeral. I feel awful about it. Gary said he died in his sleep.”
“He did.” Margie had thought over Wade’s last night alive, wondering if she had missed any indication of his impending death. Slowly he had been getting weaker, but there were no overt clues. �
��He just didn’t wake up.”
They both dried tears, and Barbara helped her mother repack the hatbox with the letters and pictures. She picked up the military medals and curiously examined them. “What are these?”
“Just some of my things. They’re not important.” Not wanting to open the door to that part of her life, Margie tried to close the cases, but Barbara held on to the Bronze Star, admiring its weight and luster.
Turning it over, she read the inscription aloud: “Heroic or Meritorious Achievement, Marjorie Olivia Bauer.” With puzzlement, she asked, “This is yours?”
Resigned that her past, at least in part, was going to come to light, Margie replied, “Yes. There are some things that happened long ago that Dad and I never talked about.”
Barbara carried the hatbox and the photo album downstairs. She placed them on the kitchen table, then brewed a pot of herbal tea.
Margie contemplated how much of her life in the Philippines to reveal as she sliced apples and uncovered a plate of shortbread a neighbor had brought over. She removed the four medals from the hatbox and placed them on the table.
Over a cup of hot tea, she told Barbara about being an army nurse in the Philippines, working in the field hospitals on Bataan and in the tunnels on Corregidor. Barbara watched her face as if she were a stranger, but then, maybe in many ways she was.
After listening intently, Barbara asked, “Why did you keep it a secret?”
“Because, we were told not to talk about it. Not that I wanted to, anyway. It was a bad time. We were under constant fire with little food and few medicines. I scrimped, scratched, and fought with one goal in mind—to keep my patients and myself alive.”
The experience had left its mark. Even now, half a century later, the faces of the men she cared for sometimes floated through her dreams, and, occasionally, a blast from a bomb would jerk her breathless out of sleep. On those nights, Wade would hold her until she calmed. How much she was going to miss him!
Barbara held up the Philippine Defense Medal, and the American Pacific Campaign Medal. “What did you go through to be awarded these?” She put them down and picked up the Presidential Unit Citation. “That time when I was fourteen, Mom—could you have been having a flashback?”
Margie had not anticipated that question. Surprised, she snapped, “I told you then how much you frightened me. I thought you were an intruder. Don’t go reading more into it. What could you possibly know about flashbacks?”
“A lot. In grad school, I researched post-traumatic stress disorder. I learned flashbacks are immensely more powerful than a simple remembrance. There’s a neurological basis for them, an adrenalin surge and an oversecretion of stress hormones—a double whammy. I was curious, because of you, and what I’d seen—your nightmares, sleeplessness, hypersensitivity, and how sometimes you seemed to be in another world. You fit the profile of a person with PTSD, and I suspected some sort of trauma in your past.” Barbara gestured at the medals. “But not this. I never guessed this. I thought I had something to do with your nervousness, the way you pushed me away when I lived at home.”
“That’s poppycock,” Margie said, her heart racing. “So I had nightmares. If you had seen what I had seen, you would have had nightmares too. If you thought I avoided you, it was all in your imagination.” Margie felt her jaw clench. Why couldn’t she tell Barbara the truth and end this charade? She blurted out, “From the minute I first held you, I loved you more than I was able to show. I’ve always found it hard to say those words. I can’t help it.” Bursting into tears, she ran to the bathroom.
Barbara followed and knocked on the door. “Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. The day is sad enough without this. Is there something I can do to make you feel better?”
Margie struggled to compose herself; her usually tightly held emotions were close to the surface today. She took a few deep breaths before opening the door. “No. It’s me, not you. I know I hold back my feelings, but I’ve tried to be a good mother.”
“You are. You’ve always been supportive. You talked me through some bad times of my own. Remember when my old fiancé broke off our engagement? I was devastated. You were there when I needed you.” Barbara put her arm around her mother’s shoulder. “Come back to the kitchen. We can look through your photo album. I saw a picture of Uncle Frank and Dad hanging diapers on a clothesline. Were they mine or Billy’s?”
Slowly turning the pages of the old album, they poured over grainy gray pictures and reminisced about long-ago Christmases, birthdays, and vacations they’d taken on the shores of Lake Michigan. Margie found the activity soothing, and she said, “Wade loved his grandpa’s cabin. He was always relaxed there. It was where he wrote some of his best love songs.”
Barbara said, “I remember falling asleep in the bunk bed in the back bedroom, listening to the waves of Lake Michigan pounding the shore, and Dad composing his music. I’ve got his songs on CDs. They take me back.”
Coming to the end of the album, Barbara reached into the hatbox for more pictures. The conversation reverted back to Margie’s early days in the Philippines. She told Barbara about her high school sweetheart, Abe, and his heroic death. And then about Royce and her best friend, Evelyn, and the good times they’d had in prewar Manila. “It was a beautiful city. They called it the Pearl of the Orient, but after the bombs, there wasn’t much beauty left. Our lives got dangerous then.”
Barbara’s look grew pensive. “How did you handle the fear of being so close to the fighting?”
“Oh, Barbara. There was no time for fear. We lived in the moment. The wounded didn’t ever stop coming. We just took care of what was in front of us.”
“Was Dad there too? Is that where you met him?”
Margie blew across the surface of her tea while contemplating how veiled she could be. “No, we met later. He was transferred from London to Manila just before the Japanese attacked the Philippines. He was living on a university campus when we met. I spent a little time there. I was lonesome, and he was from Little River. It didn’t take long for us to become good friends.”
Barbara’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Please tell me it wasn’t the University of Santo Tomas!”
Margie’s breath caught. “How do you know about Santo Tomas?”
“When I was researching post-traumatic stress, I read several case studies of men and women held in prison camps during World War II. Santo Tomas was a camp in Manila for civilians rounded up by the Japanese. I interviewed one of the internees. I know a group of nurses were held there. Tell me it wasn’t you.”
Margie said softly, “Well, there you go. Now you know.”
“Oh my lord! You and Dad!”
Margie saw Barbara’s distress and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “It wasn’t as bad as the camps where the Japanese imprisoned the soldiers.”
“Don’t make it sound less horrible than it was, Mom. I know it was an ugly, dirty place, and the internees died of disease and starvation. This answers so many questions—why all the jitteriness, and the fear of loud noises, why all those acres of gardens, all the canning and preserving, and neither one of you ever throwing out a morsel of anything edible.” Barbara sat back in the chair and sighed. “It’s why you founded the Abundant Harvest Food Pantry, isn’t it? I always wondered why you worked so hard for so little in return.”
Margie studied her clueless daughter’s face. “Little in return? You’re so wrong. I worked hard because I had a hunger inside me that no amount of food could satisfy. I found relief from it by feeding others. I got more out of the food pantry than I ever put into it.”
There were tears in Barbara’s eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you wouldn’t have listened. Nobody did. When we came home, nobody wanted to hear what we nurses had been through. We were expected to carry on from where we left off—get married, have our babies, support our husbands’ careers. That’s what I tried to do, but I had a bad time for a while.” She began
picking up the papers strewn around.
Barbara gathered up the pictures, and finding two stuck together, she carefully peeled them apart. She scanned them quickly, but then studied one more closely. She pointed to the man standing next to Evelyn. “Who is this?”
Margie glanced at the picture and felt her skin grow clammy. She thought she had destroyed all the pictures of Max. “He was a friend of Evelyn’s. I don’t remember his name.” She tried to take the picture from Barbara, but she wouldn’t let it go.
Barbara stared at the picture while running her fingers through the silver streak in her hair. She turned it over and read aloud, “Evelyn and Max before our wild ride in a banca. Sierra Madre, 1941.” She sat back, frowning and chewing on her lower lip.
Knowing her sharp-minded daughter would soon deduce her secret, Margie swallowed dryly and steeled herself for a torrent of questions.
Barbara held the picture up to the light. “That silver streak in his hair, those hypnotic eyes—even that haughty expression. He could be my brother . . . or given the timing, my father?” She reeled around to face Margie.
She cringed under her daughter’s accusing gaze. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Wade is your father, and don’t you ever forget that!”
Barbara held the picture closer to Margie’s face. “Look at this and tell me I’m not a dead ringer for this guy.” She got up to pace around the kitchen, and Margie could almost see the wheels turning in her head.
Coming back to the table, Barbara said gently, “No one would blame you under the circumstances. It would be natural to seek a little pleasure—”
“Pleasure!” Margie blurted out. “There was nothing pleasurable or consensual—” Her hand flew to cover her mouth.
Barbara blanched, and she quickly came to Margie’s side.
Margie pushed her away with a slap of her hand. “Don’t touch me!”
A Pledge of Silence Page 32