He had slumped down in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He let out a long whistle.
“Damn!” he said. “Pardon my French, but damn!”
“They’re pretty amazing, aren’t they?”
“I’ll say!”
Lloyd resumed a more ordinary position in his chair.
“Then … you do believe them?” Helen asked with some trepidation.
“I have to. I know for a fact that what they say about getting shot or blown apart is right, so the rest of it must be, too. I can’t buy all of it, but I don’t think swallowing stuff like the light rays and the singing fountains and that kind of thing is really the point, do you? Probably different guys see different things depending on what kind of joe they are, what, maybe, would make it easiest for them. It’s what’s the same in what they say that’s important to believe, don’t you think?”
Helen felt like hugging Lloyd, she was so relieved at his response. Even her grandmother had not so thoroughly appreciated the messages from her boys.
“You know what else, Helen?” he continued more quietly. “I want to believe them. I want to hold on to the chance that all those guys I saw die—some of them screaming their heads off—that they all woke up some place sweet and peaceful, with people to look out for them, and that later, they helped look after the new guys that came. I’ll never feel okay about them dying. None of them deserved it. Especially not the way they had to go. But to think they’re okay somewhere—it does make it a little less hard.”
“It was you talking about things being different now you’re home that made me think of the stories,” Helen said, patting the sheaf of writings. “These fellows are getting used to a new situation, too. They’re the same, and yet they’re not.”
“Yeah, but they all met someone who told them it was gonna be all right in the end. Someone who was gonna stick around until it was. Someone they could bank on.”
You can bank on me, Helen wanted to say, but she didn’t dare. The very sentiment confused and unnerved her. What might its expression do to him? What did she really mean by it, anyway? What viable meaning existed for it?
“You don’t think you’re gonna be all right?” she said instead.
“Was I talking about me?”
“Weren’t you?”
Lloyd grinned.
“Guilty as charged,” he said. “But don’t worry about me. I’m coming around. At least I know I’m luckier than your friends there.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the writings.
“More cocoa?” she said. “There’s some left in the pot.”
“Sure.”
She went to the kitchen, warmed up the cocoa, refilled both mugs, and returned to the living room. She unfolded the newspaper.
“I found the Anzio report,” she said, scanning the headlines. “It says the Fifth Army is there. That’s Rosie’s posting.”
“Could I see the pages you wrote on for a minute?” Lloyd asked.
Helen gave him the automatic writings. He ran his hand over the top page, thumbed through the rest as if he were counting them, tapped their edges against his knees to make them into a neat stack.
“You still getting these stories?” he said.
“One every séance,” she answered.
“I wonder if they’ll stop when the war’s over.”
“They’ve slowed down already. I used to get three or four at a time.”
“Slowed down, huh?” he said, interested. “Why do you think that is?”
Helen had already given this some thought, as part of her ongoing assessment of her abilities, their purpose and correct use.
“I think they come because they want to help us, to share some of what they’re finding out. But they’re on a path. I think they lose interest in us.”
“That would explain why the same guys don’t come back, but not why fewer of them are showing up.”
“Maybe they think we’ve heard just about enough, and now it’s up to us to use it as we can.”
Lloyd nodded and sat quietly contemplative. Helen looked out the window at the gloomy day. It was a scene in gradations of black and white, like an etching—the dark tree trunks, the silvery weathered fence, the pearly sky, the gravel drive patched with milky gray frozen puddles. She felt dreamy, suspended, devoid of thoughts.
“You’re gonna miss them, aren’t you?” Lloyd said.
The same remark from someone else would have made Helen feel accused. But Lloyd’s voice was soft and solicitous.
“Yes,” she said simply. “I think I will.”
CHAPTER 33
FEBRUARY 1944
Though Helen had promised Lloyd she’d visit him often at Halloran, she managed to get there only once, and that had been during his first week back. But she did give her mother notes to bring him.
Lloyd was forgiving. He knew that Billy would be home at the end of February and that Helen was busy, once again, with wedding preparations. It was surprising how many little chores stood waiting to be done. Just when Helen thought everything was ready, her mother would discover yet another task. Helen didn’t bother Lloyd with the details, and during her one visit, he didn’t ask for any. She supposed he’d have been bored by them. Even Billy had left it all to her to decide—the menu for the wedding lunch, the kind of cake, the musical selections. Helen didn’t want to tell Lloyd about such things, anyway. She felt strangely embarrassed whenever she even contemplated mentioning the wedding to him, as if she were about to do something he disapproved.
“What’s wrong with you?” she said to her reflection in the bathroom mirror one morning. “Lloyd’s going to be your brother.”
But Helen felt Lloyd would always be something other than a brother, something other than a friend, while being, at the same time, both those things, too. She knew they’d probably never repeat the leisurely camaraderie of his last week of furlough—the circumstances just wouldn’t fall in place again. But the bond forged then would continue, an underground river beneath their separate lives, perhaps rising to the surface like isolated springs when time and chance permitted. She hoped so, anyway.
“Well, tomorrow’s Lloyd’s big day,” Emilie said at dinner one evening. It was now a week to the wedding, and that event had been dominating most of the conversation at the table.
“What do you mean?” Helen said.
“Why, his surgery. He didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“What’s the surgery for?” Walter asked.
“A new doctor came on staff, and he thinks maybe he can restore some sight to the one eye. Lloyd was against it—it’s quite a long shot, and he’s already had so many operations. But the doctor kept at him. He’s young and very devoted—you feel he’d like to totally restore every man in that hospital.”
“So he got Lloyd to agree?” Helen said.
“He did,” Emilie replied. “And you did.”
“Me?”
“Lloyd asked me if I thought you’d want him to try the operation, and I said I was certain you would. It’s going to mean he’ll miss the wedding—he can’t move around at all for a while—but I told him that you and Billy would understand.”
Helen was filled with excitement and dread. No doctor had ever held out much hope for even partial return of Lloyd’s sight. Of course he must grab at this opportunity. But what if it failed? Would he be grimmer than if it hadn’t been dangled before him? If only she could talk to him before the surgery, to find out what he was thinking.
“Can he have visitors tomorrow?” she asked her mother.
“I doubt it. Why don’t you plan on going day after tomorrow? Oh, but that’s Saturday, and weren’t you and Barbara going to take Linda shopping for a dress?”
“Oh, Mama, Lloyd’s more important than that.”
Emilie looked at Walter and at Ursula as if she were reminding them of something.
“Well, he is,” Helen asserted, though no one had said anything. “Barb
ara can find Linda a dress perfectly well without my help.”
“You’ve never liked Barbara’s taste in clothes,” Emilie said.
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care how your flower girl is going to look?”
Helen scowled at her mother.
“No, I don’t.”
Emilie looked again at Walter.
“Helen,” he said, “you’ve been a great lift to Lloyd. We’ve all seen it. His family is very grateful, I’m sure. But young men … especially soldiers who’ve had a rough time of it … they can mistake kindness for …”
“What are you saying, Papa?”
“It appears to us that Lloyd may be a bit sweet on you.”
Helen was mortified. Apparently, she and Lloyd had been a topic of conversation among her parents and grandmother. Was the Mackey household conjecturing, too? Had any of this absurd notion reached Billy?
“Lloyd sweet on me? That’s ridiculous,” she said.
But as soon as she’d said it, she realized it might not be ridiculous. With a sinking sensation, she recognized a vein of guilt vibrating beneath her annoyance. Her family’s distressing observation was not so far off from her own puzzlement over Lloyd and the undeniable pull between them. She’d been disinclined to give that pull a name. She knew, intuitively, that Lloyd would never openly tackle it, either. But now the task had been taken away from them. Now, in self-defense, she’d need to find her own designation for feelings she’d been content to leave unnamed. Why couldn’t people just let things alone? Especially things they obviously didn’t understand, things that didn’t fit neatly into labelled boxes on numbered shelves.
“You and Lloyd aren’t children anymore,” her mother was saying. “That changes things. It’s why you don’t really see men and women being friends.”
“You’re wrong, all of you,” Helen replied hotly. “Lloyd is my friend and he’s in trouble and I’m going to see him on Saturday no matter what anyone says or thinks or imagines. And I won’t be ashamed of it, either!”
“No one is talking about shame here,” Walter said in a steely voice.
“Such fussing!” Ursula interjected. “I think it is what the young people call the jitters. For you, Helen, and for all of us. Our girl grows up. It is a good thing—the only thing—but we don’t always like it so much.” She raised her hands in a gesture of futility. “We are a little, perhaps, afraid. But the world, it does not stop for that. Especially now. The war won’t let anyone stop to think two times about anything.”
“That’s not so, Nanny,” Helen countered. “The war makes you think about a lot of things that maybe you never would have before.”
“About being ashamed, Helen …” Emilie said. “We don’t doubt your character, or Lloyd’s. But you have to consider appearances.”
Helen looked at her mother, then at her father and grandmother. She didn’t have the heart to keep arguing. Nanny was right about one thing. Soon the interplay among them all would be revised. Though she’d still be living with them, she’d be Billy’s wife, a state that would confer a certain independence, a stronger right to be her own boss than getting older or graduating from high school or even becoming a successful medium had given her. These, then, were the final days of her being their child, or, at least, of that being her chief position in life. She didn’t want to mar the time with strife.
“Nanny’s right,” she said, dropping her embattled tone. “I’ve got the jitters. It makes me touchy, I guess.”
“Just bear in mind, Helen, what your father said,” Emilie told her. “That’s all we ask.”
Helen nodded and got up to start clearing the table. Bear it in mind, she thought sourly. How would she ever get it out of her mind? Nevertheless, she would go to visit Lloyd on Saturday. For now, she wouldn’t think past that.
On Saturday morning, Helen was at home alone. Her father was off rehearsing songs for the wedding with two men from the Sängerbund, and her mother and grandmother had taken a roasted chicken to a sick friend in Carlstadt. She was writing a letter to Billy, telling him she was going to see Lloyd that afternoon, expressing her hopes that the operation had worked, though they wouldn’t know anything for a while. Mentioning Lloyd to Billy did not feel awkward or phony, and Helen took this as proof that her feelings for Lloyd were not imprudent and wouldn’t have to be disowned.
The doorbell rang. Helen was expecting a neighbor’s boy to stop by for the stack of newspapers sitting just inside the front door. The Oritani was admitting kids free to a special matinee if they brought in bundles of newspapers. But when she opened the door, Barbara was standing there. She was coatless and hatless in the frigid wind, and she was crying.
“Barbara, what is it? Did something go wrong for Lloyd?”
“I came right over. My mother said I should wait ’til I calmed down, but I just couldn’t.”
“What’s happened?”
“Oh, Helen.” Barbara put her face in her hands and began crying harder.
“Come into the kitchen,” Helen said, taking her by the elbow.
Barbara sat at the kitchen table while Helen put on water for tea. Then Helen sat down opposite her and waited while Barbara wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and struggled to gain control of herself.
“It’s Billy,” she said, staring down at the table.
“Billy?”
Helen couldn’t fathom what she might mean. Billy was in North Dakota. Billy was going to be home in less than a week. What could he possibly have done to upset his sister so?
Barbara looked at Helen and let out a long, shuddering sigh.
“There was an accident,” she said, unfolding a crumpled telegram that she must have had wadded up in her hand all this time.
“An accident?”
Alarm was flooding in. If Billy had been in an accident, she’d go to him. Right away. He mustn’t be left to languish in a hospital so far away, with no one to sit by him and cheer him along. She stood up.
“I’ve got to pack. I’ve got to find out which train—”
Barbara reached up and put a staying hand on Helen’s arm.
“Helen,” she said, “he’s dead.”
Helen’s sight went black. Behind her, the kettle began to whistle, its shrill piping rising quickly to a scream. Trembling and nauseated, she staggered against the edge of the table. Barbara jumped up to steady her, then lowered her to a chair. The kettle kept screaming. Helen looked at it and started to rise.
“I’ll get it,” Barbara said, crossing to the stove and turning off the gas.
“The telegram doesn’t say much,” she explained when she’d returned to the table. “His plane crashed during a training exercise. They … they’re sending him home in a few days.”
“Oh, God, oh, God,” Helen said.
Her heart was galloping. Her insides had liquefied. Her body felt clumsy and hot. Everything in the room was flat and unreal. She felt mocked by the stove and the dish cabinets and the clean counters, all audaciously unaltered, stolidly awaiting use, no difference to them by whom. Billy was gone. How could that be? Billy was gone. It was torture sitting still while within her a maelstrom whirled, dragging her down into a bludgeoning darkness. She got up and paced the room in quick steps, round and round, wringing her hands, pressing her fists to her temples, swallowing down terror.
Barbara interrupted her wild circuit and put her arms around her. Immediately, Helen began to sob.
“No, no, no, no,” she moaned. “Not him, not him.”
Barbara was crying again, too. Helen held on to her tightly. The bony press of Barbara’s shoulder against her face and the firm circle of her thin arms were the only things keeping Helen from the full dominion of the heaving inside her.
She didn’t know her father had entered the room until Barbara twisted around to hand him the telegram. She heard his voice, but not what he said. She felt herself transferred from Barbara’s arms to his. She smelled the pipe tobacco in a pouch in his jacket pocket. S
he felt more comforted by his big, familiar embrace than she had by Barbara’s. She leaned into him like a weary child. He couldn’t help her—no one could—but she felt safer with him there. She didn’t feel as much that she was falling, falling, with no bottom in sight.
The crying was coming more quietly now, like an idling motor. She didn’t care if it ever stopped. She wasn’t falling anymore. That was enough. As much enough as anything could be.
CHAPTER 34
MARCH 1944
The day of the funeral was a blur to Helen. Her mother shepherded her through the viewing at the funeral home, the church service, the cemetery rituals, the reception at the Mackeys. Helen was sorry that the Mackeys chose to have Billy buried in his uniform. He’d been a soldier such a small portion of his life. But maybe it’s what he would have wanted. She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t his widow, however much she might feel like one.
Helen did request that the Mackeys put some of Billy’s cherished model planes next to the casket in the funeral home and display others around the living room during the reception. Mrs. Mackey hadn’t wanted to do it. A plane had taken her son’s life. But when Mr. Mackey brought back a message from Lloyd that he thought it was a good idea, she gave in. Lloyd, still recuperating from surgery, couldn’t attend the funeral.
The first few days after the funeral were less blurred, but they had the same boundary-less quality. It was morning, then it was afternoon, then it was evening. Meals happened, though Helen ate sparingly, lacking appetite or feeling full after only a few bites. She performed small household tasks. She slept a lot. She sat on the front porch and watched the mailman come and go, the milkman, the bread man. Children passed on their way to and from school.
Helen was keeping her bedroom curtains closed. The window looked out on the Mackeys’ backyard, where scarcely a square foot stood without memories. Among many other things, it was there Billy had kissed her for the first time.
The newspaper was a minefield. War news was impossible to read, and seemingly benign sections like the funnies or sports or the society page could also waylay her. Lil Abner, Blondie, and Popeye presented her with the comic trials of coupledom. Sports stories reminded her of Billy’s days on the high school track team. The society page described engagements and weddings and births, and showed pictures of groups of smiling women at teas. Even the obituaries made her feel strangely left out. Old people had died of illnesses. Soldiers died in battle.
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