“In the middle of the night? What is going on?”
“How can you be so incurious about the war effort?”
“Jack and I prefer it that way. He writes me very little of it and I don’t ask. Technicolor movies. Bright and happy things. That gets me through or I’ll go mad with missing him and wondering.”
“General Eisenhower’s Order of the Day. I listen to it. It helps me to feel closer to Declan.”
I nodded. We were so different, Betsy and I.
“Today. Right now.” Her voice broke. She was not always cocksure and unflappable. “Several hours ago probably. I’m not even sure what time it is over there.” We stopped at a light on Los Feliz and she turned to me. “The invasion of mainland Europe began today.
“Jack is in England,” I reminded her reflexively.
“Maybe.” We pulled up to the church. “Maybe not.”
In the early morning hours, I assumed the church would be empty, that we’d be skulking alone in the dark like burglars stealing prayers. But there were others just like us. Women mostly. Some children and babies. Filing into the church in a steady stream.
All the votives before the Virgin Mary were already lit, a layered warm wave of flickering wicks. Fr. Tom was busy, setting out more votives throughout the sanctuary as fast as he could. Wherever a candle was set, there it was lit, a woman kneeling on the stone floor before it, her heart in her hands with her rosary, the soul of her husband, son, brother, fiancé, boyfriend in the light of that wick.
Below the second station, Betsy and I lit ten candles between us, one each for a brother, husband, and fiancé. Whether they were taking part in the invasion or stationed somewhere in the global theatre, we beseeched Our Mother for their lives and our hearts. Then we filed into a pew, grasped our rosaries and knelt, heads bowed.
“I believe in God…”
Epilogue
Sheila Drazen Residence, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA
December 25, 2035
“What happened?” asked Gabby.
They sat around the grand living room, four generations of the Drazen family in elegant loungewear or pajamas, sleep still on some faces, mimosas and bloody marys and baby bottles half drunk. Underneath the towering Christmas tree was a bare bed of quilted creamy tree skirt, the presents it held an hour before now lay naked and scattered throughout the room, its green and red and gold wrapping paper lay ripped and strewn like confetti over every surface. It was the hangover of a material Christmas orgy and they looked gutted by family and food and gadgets too loud and toys not assembled fast enough.
And the story.
“What happened to them?” she prodded. Gabby lay on the floor, her head in her mom’s lap while Monica absently stroked her fingers through her hair.
“Your great-grandpa Jack was at Normandy. And of course we know he survived,” her aunt Sheila said, looking at her 88-year-old father, pristinely dressed and still striking for his age. He nodded and she looked back at Gabby. “But your great-great uncle Declan died in Cherbourg a couple of weeks later. That’s why your grandpa’s name is Jonathan Declan and not Jonathan Seamus like it might have been. Like your dad.”
“Don’t forget Ned,” said Margie and Sheila nodded. “Your great-great uncle Ned died right near the end of the war in the Pacific. Heartbreaking. So close to the end and he was only 18.”
“Merry Christmas!” cried Jonathan and Jack Drazen as they flung open the front door and stalked into the living room. “What happened here?” They stood in the living room doorway. “It looks like a Christmas bomb went off and you guys are all stunned.”
Monica jumped up from the floor, Gabby’s head bouncing off with an ow!
“Mrs. Drazen,” Jonathan said, a mischievous smile on his face, anticipating a warm kiss.
But Monica only had eyes for her son, wrapping the 18-year-old with the round, unsteady features of a boy and the hard and handsome lines of his father in a smothering hug. “What are you doing here?”
Gabby dove into her father’s warm arms. “Missed you.”
Finally Monica turned to give her husband a kiss. “What is this? I thought you had an emergency in Switzerland.”
“First of all,” he said, pulling back to look at her, his arms still around her waist. “What kind of an emergency would I have in Switzerland? And second, you gave Jack permission to go on this ski trip and then you moped about it for a month.”
“Well, it’s Christmas and he’s my baby. He should be with us.”
“I know. That’s why I went to get him. And I need to keep looking for ways to top my Christmases.”
“I thought we were past that.”
“I thought when you let Jack go on this trip that we were, too. But maybe not. And I like making your Christmases special.” They kissed again.
“Puke,” said Gabby. “Get a room.” She turned to Jack. “You little shit. What are you doing here?”
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” said Jack.
“What? I was looking forward to having Mom and Dad to myself for a change. You threw a wrench in that plan when you were born.”
“Sorry?”
“You should be.”
“I don’t control Mom’s tour schedule.”
“Not even Dad controls Mom’s tour schedule. Fine,” she said low, all playful and put-upon, “I’ll deal with you. Bring me anything cool from Switzerland?”
“Me and Dad? Cool enough?”
She grimaced and shook her head. “Nah. You two are not cool.”
“I think Dad thinks he’s cool,” said Jack, wrapping an arm around Gabby’s neck in a rough, brotherly hug.
“I think Mom thinks he is, too,” said Gabby as they walked together towards their grandma.
The End
Author’s Note
The opportunity to write this story was posted on Facebook on the night of June 13, 2016. Seen by me the next day. Write a 10,000-word story using some of my characters or scenes and you can be a published author by July 28th. And, what the heck, I’ll use my name, CD Reiss – bestselling author – to get it read.
So I did it. I couldn’t not do it. Within twelve hours I had the framework of a story. Within twenty-four I’d started writing. Then, a bit of a wrinkle. Oh, and, by the way, the story’s not due on the 28th, it’s due on the 19th and they’d prefer it to be more like 30,000 words. No biggee. I had a small heart attack and moved on. The story had already taken hold and once a story gets under my skin, I’ve got to write it.
Where do you get your ideas? With this one, it was two things: a family piano that once sat in my granddad’s bar in the tiny town of Ghent (pop. 359) on the edge of the Minnesota prairie. One night a famous jazz trumpet player by the name of Doc Severinsen stopped by. He gave an impromptu concert and autographed the inside of the piano before he left. The piano now sits in my living room. The second is a photograph posted on Facebook many months before by my new friend, Jean Siska. An Art Deco building in LA and a what if about a Drazen ancestor. I thought, I’d like to write that story, but I never imagined there would be an opportunity to do it.
***
The Pullman Porter: After the Civil War, George Pullman set to introduce sleeping cars on passenger trains. He exclusively hired former slaves to work them. Jack calls the porter “George” and that or “boy” was generally how porters were addressed, a practice born in slavery, where slaves were addressed after their slavemasters.
While the pay was very low by the standards of the day, it was often the best job available for African-American men. “The worst job on the train and the best job in his community,” Pullman porters established the first black union in 1925, laying the groundwork for the Civil Rights movement and are widely credited with establishing the black middle class in America.
BUtterfield 8: Of all the bestsellers released in 1935, BUtterfield 8 by John O’Hara was a gift to this story. It is a frank depiction of class and race and sex in Depression-era America. Particularly important to my stor
y is how the Irish were considered criminals and inassimilable in America at the time. The tragic heroine of that tale loses her virginity to a man she met on a train. And of course, the phone extension.
The widely-panned film adaptation (1960) for which Elizabeth Taylor won her first Academy Award is considered the first film to use the word “slut” and treats the heroine’s sexuality in a more shameful way than does the novel.
The Ambassador Hotel and the Canary Lounge: Based on the real Ambassador Hotel that once stood on Wilshire Boulevard and the famed Cocoanut Grove nightclub housed within, it was the site of the 2nd and 12th Academy Awards and the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968.
The fictional talent show depicted in this story was based on a real modeling agency that was located within the hotel and a regular talent show where it is believed that a young Norma Jeane Dougherty, who later became Marilyn Monroe, was discovered.
The hotel was demolished in 2005.
Gen. Eisenhower’s Order of the Day – June 6, 1944: Gen. Eisenhower’s Order of the Day was broadcast at 3:32am on the east coast and 12:32am on the west; Americans of all walks and stripes went spontaneously to their houses of worship to pray.
Religious or not, imagine an entire country on its knees, sending prayers and positive thoughts to one grand effort. It blew my mind when I first learned of it as a girl. Still does. I wonder if such a thing would happen today. I hope it would. Here is a link to the complete transcript of the Order:
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=75&page=transcript
On Insensitive Language: It was important to me that my hero both discriminate and be discriminated against. Of course that makes him a more three-dimensional figure, but it also demonstrates the learned laziness of bigotry. As much as it pains me to depict insensitive situations and use insensitive language, as a lover of history, it pains me more to whitewash it. It was a different time. But we don’t do ourselves any favors by recalling it differently.
***
This was an origin story, my attempt at imagining answers to all the who’s and why’s that became CD Reiss’s addicting Drazen family. To experience more of The California Limited, please visit: https://www.pinterest.com/drazenworld/the-california-limited/.
I fell in love with this big Irish family that has everything but boundaries, all their kinks and cracks and mistakes and fears and ferocity and struggles and loves. If you’re ever in the mood for something modern and edgy and sexy and smart, you should discover them.
I need to thank my husband, Jeff, who loves me without restraint and created space in my life for me to write this. My mother, Karen Chalmers, who taught me to quiet the naysayers and go after the life I want AND was always willing to watch the boys so I could write. My editor, Cheri Johnson, who wields her red pen with a spoon full of sugar, turning a political speechwriter into a novelist. My friend, Kayte Haaland, who did my beautiful cover.
I was rewriting my query letter to agents for what felt like the millionth time when this chance came. If you’ve ever done this, then you know it’s a pride-swallowing siege. But I had been refusing to take my eye off the ball of getting my epic trilogy published, my hard-worked and heartfelt Ground Sweet As Sugar.
I don’t know if Christine realizes what a gift she gave me in inviting people to write a story for the Drazen World. Or if you, dear reader, realize just how generous a gift it was for a struggling writer. “Thank you” doesn’t feel like enough, Christine. Because nothing else would have propelled me to turn a corner I desperately needed to turn. That’s the best of life, really. Those corners.
Thanks for reading!
Kate
Hudson, WI
July 9, 2016
About the Author
Catherine C. Heywood writes “hardcore history.” Not your mother’s historic fiction. Raised in a strict Catholic family, she was once asked to participate in a panel discussion on why she didn’t become a nun. The answer she gave still makes her mom blush.
She seriously entertained the idea of becoming a criminal defense attorney and a stand-up comedienne, studying for the LSATs while taking improv classes. Instead she became a political communicator. Eventually she returned to the first love she remembered as a girl: writing stories.
She loves history, politics, and love stories and is a sucker for great conversation and happy hour, old architecture and British comedy.
She studied international politics, political theory, and Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh and has degrees in politics and writing from the University of St. Thomas and Boston College.
She lives in Western Wisconsin with her husband and boys.
To learn more about her or novels in the works, please visit her website at: www.catherinecheywood.com.
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