Unmentionables

by Laurie Loewenstein

  “Are you sure I’m not bleeding?”

  Parting the dark hair, Marian examined the bump. It was a fierce purple. “No, but you’ve got a good goose egg. Let me see your eyes.”

  Nezzie’s lids drifted closed again.

  Marian jiggled her shoulder. “Try to stay awake. You could have a concussion.”

  Through the gap between the flaps, large snowflakes had given way to a finer, steady sifting that promised a thick covering by morning.

  From the bit of Red Cross training she’d gotten before shipping over, Marian knew she needed to keep Nezzie alert until it was certain the lump wasn’t growing and the girl’s pupils returned to normal.

  “Let’s see if that canteen of tea in your satchel survived,” Marian said loudly. “That will help things, don’t you think?” When she got no answer, she squeezed her patient’s arm.

  “Yes,” Nezzie said irritably.

  Sorting through the bag’s jumble of sewing packets, Marian unearthed the canteen, which she shook; it sloshed satisfactorily.

  “Just a few dents. Like you,” Marian announced with false cheer, unscrewing the cap. “Nothing to worry about. Let’s get some of this in you.”

  She pulled Nezzie up so that the girl was leaning against her shoulder and Marian brought the spout to her lips.

  “No,” Nezzie protested, pushing it away.

  “Dizzy?”

  “Swimming.”

  “Just a little.”

  Nezzie drank and flopped back onto the pallet.

  Marian took a small sip. “We’re about five miles away from the château. We’d just crossed the tracks when the first bomb hit. It’ll be a hike in the morning.” She decided not to mention the heavy snow piling up outside.

  The flashlight wavered. She snapped it off. “Dad blam it. I forgot about saving the battery.”

  “Dad blam it?” Nezzie giggled groggily.

  Marian flushed, laughing nervously. “Guess I’m a little out of date.”

  Inside was blackness, but through the slits in the flaps, moonlight reflected off the snow in silvery tones of gray and slate. The black hulk of the truck, Marian suddenly realized, must stand out clearly among the snowy fields. We are exposed. Exposed and vulnerable. A gust of wind snapped against the truck. Tiny rooftops of snow were forming inside the back flaps. Marian tucked the blanket around Nezzie. Frigid air leeched up through the floorboards.

  “Did we decide on a name?” Marian’s voice was still falsely bright.

  “Lulu?”

  “Guess that’s appropriate now, with the banging and all. More tea?” Marian held the canteen to the girl’s lips. Nezzie managed two mouthfuls. “Better?”

  Nezzie propped herself on an elbow and surveyed their surroundings. “Less dizzy but I must have hit hard. My right hip aches to beat the band.”

  Rolling up another one of her scarves, Marian tucked it under Nezzie’s side. “This might help.”

  “Thanks. Are those your teeth knocking?”

  “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “Lay down with me. We can keep each other warm, huddle up. Like cattle.”

  Marian gratefully lowered herself to the pallet. Nezzie lifted up one side of her blanket. “Scooch closer.” Her breath fell on Marian’s cheek, her bundled form a great warm bolster.

  After a time Marian snapped on the flashlight. “Let me check that bump again.” Her fingers busily parted the brown hair. “I believe the swelling’s gone down a little.”

  “Can I go to sleep?”

  “Not yet. Why don’t you tell me about how you ended up in this broken-down truck a dozen miles from the front?”

  A bark of laughter issued from Nezzie’s throat. “Is this some sort of test?”

  “Just want to know if you can put two sentences together.”

  “My father is a minister. Believes everyone has a calling. One day he announced that mine was teaching. Not what I had in mind. But he was willing to send me to college. So I became a teacher. Then the war blew up and Fielding formed this unit. I joined immediately. Pops was furious but I told him they needed teachers and, since he’d pronounced that was my calling . . .” Nezzie expelled another harsh laugh, a puff of frosty breath jetting out toward the roof.

  “And after this is over?” Marian asked.

  Deep beneath the blankets and coats Nezzie shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t know. I’m not going back to the schoolhouse. I know that.” She yawned noisily. “So, now can I sleep?”

  “Let me check your pupils.” The small black vortexes shrank satisfactorily in the flashlight’s glare. “Five more minutes.”

  She snapped off the torch and lay down, her head flat against the floorboards. Above, the roof struts creaked under their burden of snow. Jeannette’s fingers were plucking reflexively on the white sheets pressing down, muffling, smothering. The words suddenly rushed out of Marian’s mouth, the whole story about Jeannette’s death. When she finished, tears were running down her face, encircling her neck.

  “Maybe it was just her time,” Nezzie murmured. “You’ll never know for sure.”

  Marian scrubbed her face with the sleeve of her coat. The canvas shook above them, admitting a spray of snow. She pulled a hankie from a pocket and blew her nose. “I don’t know why I fell apart like that.”

  “Bombs will do that.” Nezzie laughed quietly before adding, “Sorry, gallows humor.”

  Marian didn’t respond. She was thinking of the people in Emporia and the ancient postman and the housewife in Canizy. It takes courage to spend a lifetime with people who know your entire history, all your blunders, she thought. Marian shifted in the blankets. Deuce was brave. He took a stand and risked losing everything. Much braver than I, who was always spouting off and moving on.

  The young woman yawned again. “It’s been five minutes.”

  “All right. Get some sleep.”

  “Thank you,” she said in a small voice. Her eyes closed.

  Marian listened to Nezzie’s warm, steady breathing. That, and the spatter of snow hitting the canvas, were the only sounds. At least, she thought, if another bomb falls in the night and crushes the life out of me, I’ll not die alone.

  The sweet smell of tea on Nezzie’s breath mixed with odors of damp wool, iron, sweat, and something else, something warm and familiar. The waxy scent of the truck’s canvas roof and walls sent Marian back to the Chautauqua tents. Her mind drifted to her first night in Emporia, the wash of faces in front of her like the smudge of fingerprints on the window of a train car—smudges that the eye looked past as it contemplated the distant hills. When had she stopped looking at the horizon and become aware of Deuce? Maybe she’d spotted the thick waves of silver hair, the head bent like a schoolboy over his writing pad. Suddenly an intense longing for him, the touch of his hand, the plucked strings of his Midwestern accent, opened inside her. His image slid beneath her lowering lids. Breath, warm and even, washed in and out of her ear; fingers swam across her skin. Abruptly she jerked awake. I can’t go back there.

  Nezzie was groaning in her sleep. Marian fumbled to find the flashlight. Illuminated, the lump had grown no larger. The blanket had slipped to one side. She tucked it around the girl and lay back down. It would be a long night out in the open fields. But eventually dawn would come and the two would crawl stiffly from the truck and hike back to the château, the hems of their coats starched with snow, bracelets of ice encircling their mitten cuffs. A world away from the baking August heat.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DEBITS AND CREDITS

  As you asked how to reach me, I am sending the address. As noted below, it is VERY IMPORTANT to include “In care of the American Red Cross, 2 Place de Rivoli, Paris, France” on the envelope. Don’t forget, because otherwise your letter will never reach me. The crossing was extremely rough, but my fellow volunteers are pleasant. None are much older than Helen. Our days are long. Every village shelters nothing but heart-breaking stories. As you suggested, I am keeping a diary with the
thought of publishing something after the war. On the rare evenings when the guns on the front are still, I smoke a cigarette in the château’s courtyard. One gets very sentimental during wartime.

  DEUCE READ MARIAN’S LETTER FOR the third time that day. She had poured out a great deal of vitriol on the uniform she was forced to wear, while on the next page she’d described a tender scene of a young boy crawling into her lap to have a story read to him. Under all that outrage . . . He smiled, tucking the letter into his desk drawer, and turned back to the jammed typewriter. Two of the secondhand Underwood’s sharp-edged struts had crossed yet again. He gingerly inserted his finger. Jesus, the damn thing bit me! He sucked blood from the cut, which wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined.

  Sighing, he toed off his shoes and slid his chilly feet under the desk, seeking out the warm fur of Jupiter’s belly. The dog, deep in sleep, didn’t stir.

  Outside the storefront’s tall panes, swollen snowflakes eddied. Might as well be snowing in here, it’s cold enough, he thought. But I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to shovel any more coal into the furnace two hours before closing. Once in his rooms upstairs, with the oil stove cranked up for hash and eggs, his toes would thaw. It was really coming down out there. A tall figure, head ducked against the flakes, strode past. Deuce sat up hopefully, but saw it was Judge Batt. No chance of him stepping through the door.

  Deuce’s eyes followed the judge’s rigid back as it moved off down the street. And what the hell? Was that a scratch in the gold leaf lettering he’d just spent a small fortune on? Deuce jumped up, startling Jupiter. The “S” in gothic font proclaiming The Garland Weekly and Print Shop was definitely nicked. Deuce’s irritation was forgotten, however, when Mrs. Meyers, the butcher’s wife, hurried into the office, brushing snow off her caped shoulders and woolen skirts.

  “Good afternoon,” she said in a warm tone, although Deuce saw that her face was strained and her clothes hung loosely from her once-sturdy frame. She had lost a three-year-old boy to typhoid. Hers had been the first letter of thanks that Deuce had received when the stories about adulterated milk were printed. Now that the Garland Weekly was up and running, Mrs. Meyers, and most of the other families whose children had died that terrible summer, backed him by buying subscriptions and placing small advertisements.

  Mrs. Meyers glanced at Deuce’s stocking feet, but made no comment.

  He hurried behind the counter. “How are you today? Any word from Willy?” The Meyers’s oldest son had been called up a month before.

  The woman raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Still at the Springfield cantonment, thank the Lord. I’ve been worried to death and he’s not even over there yet.”

  Deuce nodded. “Nobody worries like a mother.”

  “But he is a good shot,” she added, dabbing her nose with a hankie. “Even as a small boy with only a popgun, he had good aim.”

  “So you see?”

  She smiled faintly.

  “What can I do for you?”

  She and her husband owned Meyers’s Meats, a cramped butcher shop three doors down. Its cases displayed stew beef, ham hocks, and other cheap cuts that the Meyers’s clientele could afford. Emporia’s prominent families patronized the Quality Butchery two blocks over.

  She inhaled damply and readjusted her cape. “The mister and I would like to run an advertisement. Just a small one, but regular. Every week.” She glanced around the storefront’s two desks, single chair, battered coat rack, and, at the back, the letter press. “How’s business?” she asked, eyebrows lifted.

  Deuce answered in a light tone, “Coming along, coming along. They say the first couple of months are the hardest for a new concern.” He pulled a sheet of newsprint from under the counter. “Why don’t you take a minute and jot down what you were thinking of. I’ll get a mock-up ready for you to look at first thing in the morning.”

  As Mrs. Meyers bent over her task, Deuce stared out the window where the snowflakes had slowed and were now swirling hypnotically. His thoughts flowed to Marian’s letter. It had also been snowing where she was.

  “. . . along these lines, I think,” Mrs. Meyers was saying. Deuce snapped back to the task at hand.

  Running his finger along her script, he saw it had too much copy for a small ad, but it could easily be shortened.

  “Thank you for your patronage. It means a lot.”

  Mrs. Meyers nodded briskly. “It’s the least the mister and I can do. And we’re not the only ones who feel that way. You stepped up and did the right thing, even though it was too late for our little Albert.”

  After she left, Deuce settled back on his chair, wedging his feet under Jupiter’s belly. “Thank God for the Mrs. Meyerses. They’re keeping us fed and housed, old boy.”

  Deuce flipped open the canvas-bound accounts book to that day’s entries. Only three new subscriptions, two orders for business cards, and the Meyers’s ad. Christ. He pushed back from the desk in disgust, disturbing Jupiter, who rose to his feet, circled twice, and lay back down. Outside, the snow had spent itself, draining away the remaining daylight and leaving only a steely twilight. Deuce began adding up the week’s credit column but hurriedly slapped the book shut when Stroh walked in a few minutes later.

  “No luck on that bridge repair lead. You sure about it?” Stroh asked, tossing a notebook on the other desk. He and the pressman were the Garland Weekly and Print Shop’s only two employees besides Deuce. Stroh’s drooping lower lids lent his otherwise bland visage an air of ennui that suited a city reporter. Great poker face. When he’d blown into town a month before from Peoria, where he’d been fired by his editor for stepping on the mayor’s toes, Deuce had felt like he was manna from heaven.

  “Sorry. I thought I’d overheard something about that bridge over at the Rainbow. The lunchtime crowd is so darn noisy; I might have got it wrong.”

  “Not like dining with the Elks, eh?”

  Deuce snorted.

  After the blow-out over the editorial and resignation from the Clarion, Deuce had abruptly found himself eating alone at the lodge. No brother would share a table with him. And when his terms came up for renewal, he’d been quietly dropped from the church membership committee and the Macomb County Board of Elections. After that, he stopped participating in the organizations that had been such a large part of his life for so many years. He assumed he was no longer wanted. However, several months later, the commander of the Knights of Pythias telephoned Deuce and said he hoped he would see him at the next meeting. Grinning into the receiver, Deuce had replied, “You certainly will. And thanks.”

  Stroh poured a shot from the whiskey bottle in his bottom drawer, raised his glass to Deuce, and tossed it back. “So, how’re we doing dough-wise?”

  Sighing, Deuce rubbed his forehead. “Better pour yourself another and take a seat. I’m not sure I can make payroll tomorrow.”

  Stroh’s brows twitched upward a fraction of an inch. “Again?”

  Deuce raised his hands. “I know, I know. You’ve been more than patient. It’s just taking longer to build up the subscriptions than I thought. How about you bunk with me upstairs for the next week? Save you from paying for lodging.”

  Stroh folded his arms and asked, “And how are things going to be different in a week?”

  “I’ve got a long-standing loan that I’ve called in. That will be more than enough to pay you and Jake for the next two months. By that time, the Weekly will be rolling. I’m sure of it.”

  The lip of the bottle tinged against the edge of the glass. Stroh threw another back.

  “All right. I’ll bring my stuff over tomorrow. But if that payment you’re counting on doesn’t come in, I’m out of here. That daily in Findley has been after me. You know that.” He shoved the bottle in the drawer and strode out.

  “Damnit, Clay,” Deuce muttered to himself. Since the night of Tula’s party, since Clay had shouted what seemed to be the most vile of slurs at him, Deuce never again wanted to lay eyes on the man. Not easy in a small t
own. Actually, it was impossible. But getting back the money that Clay owed him would go a long way. Earlier that morning, Deuce had sent Clay a letter demanding that the photographer’s loan be repaid in one week. Or I’ll be forced to turn the matter over to the courts, Deuce had written. No more free rides, you good-for-nothing. He didn’t know how Clay would come up with the money. Didn’t know and didn’t care. Let him sell every one of those cameras. Let him sell his automobile.

  In the fall, when Deuce sold his house to start up the Weekly, he’d thought the proceeds would be enough to get the business on its feet. But the Garland Weekly was a slow starter and now Deuce needed that $1,200. The only reason he hadn’t pushed Clay harder was for Tula’s sake. There was no way around it now. But he’d make sure Tula was taken care of. She could work here if need be.

  * * *

  While Deuce was talking with Mrs. Meyers, Tula was struggling along State Street’s snowy sidewalk, making her way to Jasper Watt’s photography studio. It would have been nice to take the trolley, but there weren’t enough coins in the change jar for the fare. It had taken her most of the day to work up the courage to make this trip. She was unaware of the ultimatum that Deuce had sent Clay but understood that her brother’s business was in deep trouble—there was the unpaid loan but also, more telling, the lack of customers. Every time she tried to discuss the status of the studio’s books with Clay he snapped, “I’m handling it,” and abruptly left the room. Last night, when he’d finally gotten home, Tula had heard what sounded like a shoe slam against the wall between their rooms.

  For some time she had thought about approaching Mr. Watts to ask if he might want to purchase some of Clay’s equipment. She’d even suggested this scheme to Clay, but he’d brushed the idea aside. “How am I going to make a living without my cameras?” he’d asked irritably. In Tula’s mind the most important thing was to pay off the loan to Deuce. When the business closed, as it surely would, she and Clay could likely get clerking positions somewhere in town, what with all the young men leaving for France. Those sorts of jobs wouldn’t cover all their bills, but maybe if she also took in a boarder, they could get by. That back room where Marian had stayed was empty. But she knew he’d rather die than work in any position he deemed “inferior.” These thoughts kept her awake night after night, along with the flushes of heat that raged over her body like a prairie fire. She was undergoing “The Change,” as the ladies called it. While she picked her way through the snow toward Mr. Watts’s, Tula’s neck and chest were suddenly aflame. She unbuttoned her coat, unwound the blue scarf. Fortunately, there was no one to comment on her little performance since the sidewalk was almost deserted.