by Whitney Otto
Will said, Afraid? Did I say I was afraid?
Laury asked, Don’t you think this is just the greatest place on earth to live? Didn’t our fathers fight in World War Two?
This ain’t no Good War, friend, said Will.
But Laury said, I don’t mind protecting something I love. Even you.
Which silenced Will, caused him to think, But who is going to protect you, Laury?
CORRINA AND HER HUSBAND, Jack, are proud of their Laury, although Jack has feelings about the war that he has never confided to Corrina. He is not altogether sure that this conflict requires the attendance of his boy. Of anyone’s boys. Corrina squeezes her husband’s hand and says, “Jack, Laury’s got to do what he thinks is right. I don’t have to tell you.” But Jack begins taking long, lonesome walks during which he can think about his oldest child in private. Alone in his fields, his fears are diffused, as if he were scattering them like seed across the grasslands.
When Jack is inside, enclosed in the warmth and intimacy of his home, his fear seems to gain in density and strength. During the hot weather, Jack takes to sleeping outdoors.
CORRINA TAKES TO painting their house. It is not unusual for people passing to see Corrina standing atop a short ladder in one of Jack’s old shirts and paint-spattered overalls. When Hy comes over, she sits on the grass (sometimes bringing a blanket, lying in her bathing-suit top and skirt) and chats happily with Corrina. Mostly, they talk about Laury and Will.
Hy saying, You must be so proud of that boy.
Corrina saying, Yes, of course. But I think we’d be proud of him whatever he decided to do.
Then Hy replies, If that is a reference to Will, you don’t need to mind my feelings. Away at that college, we just don’t know what the hell he is up to. We hardly ever hear from him.
And Corrina says something like, Joe is participating in a debate next Thursday, would you like to go with us?
Hy says yes, she’d love to, and does he miss his older brother very much?
Very much, says Corrina. She only brought up Joe to change the subject because she does not want to tell Hy that Will occasionally calls her during the day. And once, late at night, when he sounded drunk and it was lucky Corrina answered the phone and not Jack, who, she is sure, would have lectured him, then told the Dodds about it. Corrina is reasonably certain that Will does not want his parents to know he calls Corrina and Corrina feels no compulsion to tell them either. She thinks Will must know that about her.
When Corrina finishes painting the exterior of the house, she begins making plans to lay new linoleum in the kitchen. “But this is perfectly fine,” insists Jack.
Corrina only pats his cheek in passing, as she measures out the dimensions by placing one foot over the other. Jack catches her hand, midair, as she pulls it away, and he puts it back to his face. He holds it across his mouth, and for a split second Corrina thinks he may start to cry. Only he doesn’t. He shuts his eyes tightly.
EVERY NIGHT Corrina, Jack, and Joe watch the evening news with a kind of fixated horror. It is always during suppertime and they each find it personally amazing that they have learned to eat and watch at the same time. Each night they convince themselves that Laury is not a statistic in the casualty run-down. That he remains their living, faraway child. Their baby.
THERE ARE NIGHTS that Corrina wants to join Jack, sleeping outside, but she does not want to leave her house. She feels as if she can only keep her worrying about Laury under control if she can keep her home intact. But one night she does wander out to where Jack is lying on a chaise lounge. She wraps herself in a blanket and fits her body beside his.
“Come back inside, honey,” says Corrina.
“In a minute,” answers Jack.
“Look, he’s all right.”
“I miss him, Cor. I’m scared,” he tells her.
“Just come inside,” she says, tugging on his sweater as if to physically bring him with her.
CORRINA HAS THE PHONE cradled beneath her chin as she measures the new curtains while talking to Will.
“Tell me again why you aren’t in class right now. For god’s sake, Will, it’s the middle of the day.”
“They’re having a protest. About the curriculum. You know.”
“Oh, what, the administration building under siege?” Her words are garbled because she is holding a chalk pencil between her teeth.
“Yeah,” says Will, “something like that.”
“Why aren’t you there?” asks Corrina.
“I don’t know…it’s not my thing….I mean, they have a point but it’s just not my thing.” Will cups his hand over the receiver and Corrina hears him say, “In a minute, man.”
“Do you have to go?” She wishes they could end this soon. She really wants to get to these drapes.
“No,” says Will, then, “yeah, I do. But I’ll call you soon, okay?”
“Bye, Will.”
“Later.”
Corrina thinks it’s funny that Will calls her. It isn’t as if they ever talk about anything important or exchange secrets or, well, anything. And each time she has the sense that he is finally about to get to the point, to reveal his true reason for his phone calls—as if all these small, inconsequential ones are leading up to the Real Call. If only she wasn’t so busy with these drapes, she could sit down and write him a letter.
JOE IS LYING on the ground next to Jack, who is in his customary lounge, but without a covering; a good indication he will not be sleeping outside tonight. Jack is thinking that he and Corrina spend so little time with Joe, who, at fifteen, has his own life but is still not entirely grown up. Jack can tell when he sees the excitement in Joe’s face when he says that he and Corrina will be at the debate.
But Corrina is so busy lately. Reupholstering the sofa, retiling and grouting the upstairs bathroom, and he believes that he heard her saying something to Joe about wallpapering his bedroom, to which Joe replied, “Mom, everything is just the way I like it.”
“But nothing stays the same, honey,” said Corrina.
Jack wishes he could be as industrious as his wife; instead he feels lethargic, soporific, as if he simply doesn’t have the energy that his life requires anymore. He guesses he is getting old.
Poor Joe. Standing between a mother devoted, literally devoted, to her house and a father who suffocates at the thought of it.
AT THE TIME it seemed like a mistake not to marry Jack before he went to Europe to fight. Corrina took a job as a switchman for the railroad in Kern County, even though it meant long hours without seeing anyone except the waving hand of an engineer as he maneuvered his train from one track to another. She wore Jack’s old shirts to work, the same ones she put on to clean the house or read the newspaper, with its articles concerning the war effort and what all of us at home could do for our boys. Already two of her girlfriends had moved to Long Beach, doing assembly work. The pay was “pretty good, better than home,” and they urged her to come and join them.
No, she told them—she had to wait for Jack. He left her in Grasse and she wanted him to know that she was exactly where he left her. She could not possibly disrupt her life when his was so chaotic and uncertain. How would he feel getting a letter from her with a Los Angeles return address, a place not her parents’ home? Of course, if she told him that it was for the war effort, he would understand; but she was superstitious and had invented a structure where her life would remain unchanged in his absence so that when the war ended he could simply slip back into it, as if he had never left her at all.
THEN LAURY became an MIA. Jack made an ugly confession to Corrina: “Cor, I know I’ll be forgiven for saying this, but I hope our boy is never taken into an enemy prison.”
“You don’t mean it,” said Corrina. How could he say this, knowing Laury was missing? The gentle art of waiting and patience. Jack had no patience; he was new at this. “If he is taken prisoner, we’ll get him back.”
“No, it is better to be killed. No one survives prison, eve
n civilian ones. Physically, yes, but deep inside—I don’t want Laury home and gone at the same time.” Jack had formulated this thought during his wanderings, when his fear was diffuse and manageable. After all, reasoned Jack, I can scarcely tolerate the terror of being inside my own home; how is Laury going to survive a prison camp?
SO CORRINA SPENT her days and every third weekend (including the nights) in the switch house. She was allowed to listen to the radio and write letters. She saved her money to pay for the trip to Paris that she and Jack would take someday. His letter said, Paris is incredible, wonderful, it’s tops. Despite all it’s been through. It calls you to my mind. And: I want you to see the Eiffel Tower. It looks like iron lace, unfinished, piercing the sky. It looks like the structure of something it means to be one day. I want to stand with you at its peak.
Jack sent her a pair of ivory-and-silver earrings that looked very old, as if they had been passed down. And a pocketbook made of imitation leather.
He talked about the “great guys” he was meeting (she reads this in the solitude of her job), from all over the United States. He even met a couple of expatriates, who told him that they could not help but see Spain, France, and Germany in a different, confusing way. The expatriates felt differently about America, too, though Jack was not clear as to what they meant by that. He wrote her that the bread was unlike any he had ever had before, heavy, crusty, rich; the wine not too unlike California wine—though he had to admit he was hard put to tell the difference. They say my palate is too American.
WHAT HE DID NOT DISCUSS in his letters to Corrina was what he saw when his regiment liberated one of the concentration camps. He moved as if in a daze, as if he were looking through a window to another universe that resembled the earth and its inhabitants, but not quite. These people they found did not seem like the same species, their humanity transformed by their suffering and hollowness, making him feel foreign and embarrassed standing before them in his own good health. He could not properly identify the smell that skirted the camp.
Jack threw up behind a barrack. He was assailed by a gamut of emotions: He wanted to rush from this place, find a woman, make love to her, hold her close, and keep her safe. He wanted to gorge himself on food or void his bowels or sleep for twenty-four hours or run to the point of exhaustion. Witnessing the deprivation here, he was moved to excess.
As he stood, wiping his mouth, eyes, and nose on his sleeve, removing all traces of sickness, he wondered, Is this what the absence of God looks like? He could not believe that God did not exist—even with this vision before him—as much as it seemed that He had decided, inexplicably, to go underground for a while. If someone described this to me, I would not believe it, because he could not believe that God would watch and not act; he could not accept that.
Again, he was overwhelmed by the desire to caress a woman, push himself up inside her until his entire self was buried within her womb and he could be reborn innocent, pure, never having witnessed this at all.
CORRINA DID NOT PRAY for Laury. She had prayed before, when Jack was overseas. Her reserve of patience had been used up when Jack was in Europe; none was left for Laury, who remained unheard from. She could not pray because she wanted to shake her fist at God, at the unfairness of being forced through the ordeal of waiting for a soldier, not once in her life, but twice. She wanted to scream, How much am I supposed to endure? And because she questioned God, she could not ask for His blessing. Perhaps this was the curse of Eve.
Still, she went to church on Sunday with Jack and Joe; but she spent silent time, with head bowed, accusing and bartering with God and not really praying.
JACK, TOO, was aware that he was less than sympathetic to the war, but he would not show this to the citizens of Grasse, who regularly asked about Laury. It would not stand right with them and then there would be an argument and he could not argue something that held his boy in such danger.
He would prefer not to go to church with Corrina and Joe, but he would never mention this either. After his own experience in the war, he had been in conflict over his belief in God, unable to come to any resolution. He understood that the nature of spiritual faith calls for uncertainty, testing, and renewal, but the image of those prisoners seemed a greater testament to negligence than he could explain. And now that his own son was probably a prisoner somewhere, he could not help but see those scenes in vivid relief, Laury’s face in each captive.
WHEN JAMES and Hy Dodd open their front door to Corrina and Jack Amurri, they reach their hands out to them, as if to draw them into the house, as if they would be reluctant to enter if left to their own prerogatives. Corrina steps in before Jack, while Jack follows wearing the cool air on his overcoat. Corrina and Jack stand, as always, with a slight space between them, as if they are careful to leave it open in case their child would be back any minute to fill it, bring them closer again.
After they exchange social amenities, Hy says, “We wanted to tell you we never stop thinking about Laury. You must admire him.”
“Not like me,” says Will, who steps out from behind his father to quickly kiss Corrina’s cheek, dodging her hand before it comes to rest on his thin arm.
“He’s a little distraught,” confides Hy as Will leaves the room, to which James says, “We don’t know what the hell he does at that college of his and art—how do you major in art? What is the point of going to college if you are going to study art?”
It is clear to Corrina that Hy and James are puzzled, embarrassed, and displeased that Will has a college deferment and is using it to study something that seems like fluff. They can’t even say, “Well, he is going to be a doctor or engineer or architect.” No, out of the war and into art.
“We suspect,” Hy’s voice lowers, “drug use.”
“Now, we don’t know that, Hy,” says James abruptly.
“Of course,” says Hy, absentmindedly rubbing her husband’s arm. “You’re right.” But it has crossed Corrina’s mind as well. It’s all one hears about these days, and he is in school up at San Francisco State, with all those other students and their protests (Not my thing, he had told her during one of their phone conversations) and free love and doing whatever the hell they feel like doing when they feel like doing it, and none of them even knows her boy’s name.
Then, awkwardly, from James: “Corrina, Jack—look, about Laury, we heard—”
“And they want to tell you they wish I was half the man Laury is,” calls Will from the other room.
“Will—” says James roughly as Hy shakes her head and he stops. Just stops. It occurs to Corrina that she is witnessing Hy and James’s disapproval of Will mixed with the relief that, while he may be turning into some uncontrollable, disrespectful stranger, at least he is here. He is home and not in some foreign country fighting people who don’t even speak English. Or maybe that does not cross their minds at all; maybe that only occurs to her. And she tries to be fair—to ask herself which is worse, a son like Will, who comes home only grudgingly to treat his parents with undisguised contempt (and might be taking drugs), or one like Laury, doing the right thing in a distant land with names that she could not even pronounce until she heard them repeated daily on the television.
Corrina knows the answer: It is better to have him home. It is better to have him close.
Will looks terrible; long hair falling over his shirt collar, generally unwashed and unkempt-looking. Even his younger sister Gina seems to pull away from him. Gina is at the silent and sullen age of fifteen and appears to suffer all these adults and her awful brother. Gina bears no “hippie” trappings, instead looks like a fashionable young girl who pores over teen magazines (BEAUTY TIPS TO MAKE HIM SAY WOW). She tucks her long hair behind one ear with a bored sigh as she picks at her dinner. Will whispers something in her ear, which she answers by saying, “Oh, shut up.”
Hy is saying that a couple of girls from school are constantly calling him. “Imagine,” says Hy, “could you see us calling boys when we were their age?” To w
hich Corrina remarks, “We were practically married at their age.” Elicits a snort of laughter from Will. Corrina wonders about a girl that Will told her he was seeing. She asked him about it when he stopped mentioning her name; recalls his unhappy voice when he said, “Look, we don’t own each other. She can do what she likes.”
Will’s jeans are worn and faded, patched over with flower appliqués, peace signs, and angry, raised fists. He is sharply aware of all that goes on around him, despite the neglect of his appearance. As they make small talk at dinner, Corrina looks from Hy to James, her eyes crossing the distance between the two by way of Will, only to notice him openly staring at her.
Corrina can see, clearly, that he understands the waste of this polite conversation and the trouble she is having controlling what she really wants to say, which is that Will is here and Laury is there and there seems to be no love in the world because she had waited for Jack years ago as a lover and is now forced to wait for Laury as a mother. How she spent such long, desperate hours in the switch house, her anxiety bubbling so close to the surface that she terrified herself. And how these days, all she can do is tear apart and restore her house, with fury and with hope.
“I waited for Jack,” Corrina blurts out over dessert.
“Yes,” says Hy, confused, both hands holding her coffee cup midway between the table and her mouth.
“During the war,” she says, “I waited. I was a good girl. No one heard me cry because I didn’t cry, because I was so patient.”
“We all were,” says Hy.
“But, you see,” says Corrina, “I hated every goddamn minute of it.”