by Andie Newton
“But the rain, Michelle,” Evelyn said, pointing to the clouds. “I don’t think this is a smart idea at all. You could ruin your set!”
“Mom,” Michelle said. “I already told her. Besides, I thought Dad might like it too, and the other veterans here.” She looked to the sky as she set the rabbit ears on top of her television set. “The weather will be fine.”
Hazel scooted to the edge of her seat, happy as a clam, and Evelyn closed her eyes. Of all the luck, she thought. The very last thing she should be watching today was suddenly in her face.
Evelyn’s husband had just walked over and placed his hand on her shoulder. “Honey?” he said, and Evelyn looked up.
“Can you help me inside?” Evelyn felt sick. She held her shaking hands out in front of her. She thought she could hide it like she’d done for so many years, that nobody would know something was wrong with her, but she wasn’t sure if she could hold it together after the day she’d had, and especially now with the D-Day anniversary program about to play out before her.
“Yeah, yeah…” Her husband set down his paper plate, which was top-heavy with ribs and pasta salad, and tried helping Evelyn out of the corner she’d wedged herself in. He leaned down and whispered, “What happened today?”
Evelyn looked helplessly into her husband’s eyes without a word to say, just as Michelle turned on the television. The guests quickly crowded around the table with the thought of watching TV outside, and Evelyn was absolutely, and unfortunately, stuck.
Michelle spun the dial. “Found it! Tom Brokaw—D-Day anniversary special.”
Evelyn’s husband shook his head, oh so sorry, mouthing that it would be all right and to look away. So, Evelyn closed her eyes again. She even covered her face. But little could be done about the volume, and while everyone heard Tom Brokaw talk about the beaches, Evelyn heard wounded soldiers crying out for her in her mind, begging for morphine.
“Lord, there were girls on the beach?” a man said, and when people chuckled, Evelyn felt as if she was floating in a thin fog, waiting for it to be all over, counting the seconds, wishing time would move faster. Then, just when she thought she might catch some relief, thinking a commercial was about to cut in, her husband gave her hand an urgent squeeze, forcing her to look.
Evelyn nearly fell out of her chair. A black and white group photo of the 45th Field Hospital shown on the screen—Evelyn recognized herself right away even from so far away, sitting crisscross on the ground with her medical kit in her lap. She couldn’t believe it. After controlling her surroundings for so many years and protecting herself from this very thing, she’d stepped right into the past.
She grappled for a lie to tell in case anyone recognized her, so she wouldn’t have to talk about her time in the war, but when the camera zoomed in and focused on Kit’s face, showing all her features, Evelyn hadn’t a story to explain it away. Even at twenty-two the resemblance was still striking. Michelle spun around, looking just as shocked as her mother.
“Mom, is that you?”
*
Evelyn sat with her husband in the back seat of Michelle’s car on the way home. No words were exchanged, and Evelyn thought Michelle might not bring it up, but about halfway home, she adjusted her rearview mirror to look at Evelyn in the back seat.
“How come you didn’t tell me?” Michelle said. “You lied to me all these years—a nurse in France? You said you were a nurse after the war.”
Evelyn and her husband looked at each other.
“Mom?” Michelle said as she drove, but Evelyn didn’t know what to say.
“I’m surprised you’re upset,” Evelyn’s husband said. “You knew she was a nurse. You’re making it a bigger deal than it is. So what? Your mom was a nurse in France.”
“I’m not upset, Dad. I’m confused! Mom’s always told me she worked in a hospital after the war. Maybe she didn’t tell me specifically it was in the United States, but she’s always made it clear that she’d never been to Europe, never left the country. Kind of a big deal. Why hide it?”
“Does it matter?” Evelyn’s husband said. “I was in the war, you know that, but I don’t talk about it much, and you’ve never asked me for details.”
“Yeah, but at least I know,” Michelle said. “Mom, why keep it a secret? And how come you’re not saying anything?”
Evelyn didn’t know how to answer her without sounding brash, but quite frankly she just wanted the conversation to be over, so she said what she thought was necessary in order to get her daughter to drop it. “Oh, Michelle, I’m sure there’re things about you we don’t know. Give it a rest, all right?” she said, but that only ignited Michelle’s curiosity.
She pulled over unexpectedly into the gravelly road shoulder, whacking her hazard lights with a flat palm before coming to a complete stop. She twisted completely around in her seat and faced the both of them. “Sorry, I love you guys, but I can’t let this go. None of this makes sense,” Michelle said. “It’s weird.”
“I’m the same person,” Evelyn said.
Evelyn’s husband reached for their daughter’s shoulder from the back seat. “We love you too, honey.” He looked at Evelyn. “The reason we kept it—”
Evelyn shook her head sternly. Michelle knew she was in Europe; that was enough. She didn’t need to know everything.
Michelle’s face fell. “Shit, what?” Her fingers dug into her leather headrest as she twisted even more in her seat. “You’re not going to tell me I have a French sibling out there, are you? I know soldiers do things in war—”
“No!” he said. “It’s not like that.”
Evelyn’s eyelids fluttered. “If only it was that simple,” she mumbled, and Michelle’s mouth fell open. Thunder boomed overhead unexpectedly and a light trickle of rain tapped on the roof of the car. All three of them looked up, but it was Evelyn who saw the dark storm clouds brewing directly above them.
Her heart instantly ticked up. She put a hand to her pounding forehead, feeling the worrying chill of the impending downpour and the whip of wind that was sure to follow. First the television special, and now the rain? “Take me home,” Evelyn said just as the surge of fear she’d been hiding all day had caught up to her, rolling visibly over her body like a crashing wave.
Michelle yelped, her eyes both shocked and horrified from seeing her mom this way.
“Hurry!” Evelyn’s husband said, and Michelle slammed the car in gear and sped back into traffic, wipers swishing back and forth.
Evelyn closed her eyes. There was only one other time she’d seen that heartbreaking look on her daughter’s face, and she had vowed never to see it again. She remembered the year and the day as if it was last week—October 20, 1966.
*
At first, Evelyn didn’t hear the weekly television report over the whir of her Electrolux and vacuumed her carpets in relative ignorance. But something had caught her eye, a flash, someone running, and when she looked up at the television, her heart sank.
War had come, yet again.
Evelyn turned off the vacuum, sitting down on the edge of her recliner near the television, fingers pressed to her lips in utter disbelief, watching soldiers dressed in those damn olive drab fatigues she knew all too well disappear into the jungles of Vietnam with a reporter by their sides, running into the war.
She’d heard about what was going on in Vietnam, but this was the first time she saw war on television, and it threw her mind and body into a place netted in dark and danger.
A shuddering wave of nausea rose from her toes up to her head with the bap, bap, bap of gunfire echoing in her living room. She could almost smell the bomb smoke and taste the acrid grittiness of it in the back of her throat. Evelyn reached for the screen, dropping to her knees and crawling to the television. Silent tears dripped off her cheeks.
Evelyn felt incredibly small, no voice of her own, when she heard a muffled whimper behind her where Michelle had walked up unexpectedly, clutching her dolly under one arm with her little eyes fi
xed on what was playing before her on the television.
“Michelle!” Evelyn scooped her daughter up in her arms, ashamed she’d allowed her to see war on television. “I thought you were in your bedroom.” She held her daughter close, trying to hide her eyes as she rushed into the other room.
“Mommy,” she said, pointing at the television as Evelyn rounded the corner into the kitchen. “Were you there?”
Evelyn wiped her tear-driven face, scrambling for words. “No,” she said. “I wasn’t there.”
“But on the phone… I heard you say you were in the war.”
Evelyn closed her eyes tightly. Michelle had overheard her calling numbers out of the phone book she’d loaned from the library. “I was trying to find a friend, sweetheart.” She set Michelle down and held her hands, looking into her daughter’s eyes, which had welled with tears. “I wasn’t in a war. I was a nurse.”
“Oh?” Michelle sniffed, holding her dolly close to her chest while Evelyn played with her daughter’s pigtails, twisting them around her fingers, but Evelyn saw the uncertainty in her eyes, an expression that said she was still scared and worried her mom had been in a war. “A nurse?”
“That’s right, sweetheart. I wore a little white dress and clicky little heels.” Evelyn felt a bubbling of emotion near her eyes, thinking of Gail and the first time she met her—and that cape, that damn blue cape. A lump formed in her throat. “Don’t worry, all right? Men fight in the war. I served coffee to the wounded after the war in a big hospital.” Evelyn said the words for her daughter, thinking it would set her mind at ease, though inside Evelyn felt her heart twist with such a blatant lie.
“Did you find your friend?” Michelle said.
Evelyn’s gaze trailed to the window and her mind thrust into the dirt patch outside, spinning out of control through the field and up into clouds of angel hair.
“Mommy?”
Evelyn’s attention snapped back, and she hugged Michelle, burying her face into her daughter’s shoulder where she smelled of baby powder and soap, still hearing the bap, bap, bap of gunfire in her living room even though the program had changed.
*
Michelle turned onto the long farm road, tires drifting over wet gravel to get to the house as quick as she could before lurching to a stop near the front porch. Lightning cracked overhead followed by a booming roll of thunder, which felt like a zap to Evelyn’s heart.
Michelle threw the car in park.
“Stay here,” Evelyn’s husband said frantically to her, hand on the door. “I’ll get an umbrella!” But when he jumped out of the car so did Michelle, and they argued in the pouring rain. Evelyn watched and heard them through the tracks of rain on glass.
“What’s wrong with her?” Michelle said, near crying. “Dad, tell me. No more secrets!” She threw a pointed finger at the car. “Something serious is happening!”
“You don’t understand,” he said to Michelle. “She gets like this when it rains. She’s always hid it. From you, from everybody!”
Evelyn’s throat closed up and she found it hard to breathe. She looked to her husband for help, trying to get his attention through the rain-splattered window, her arm lifting and falling on the seat as he talked to Michelle.
“I have to get the umbrella—your mother!” he said, but before taking a step toward the house, he looked through the window and saw Evelyn crumpled on the seat. “Oh my God—” He threw open the door, and rain spat into the car. “Honey!” he shouted, arm outstretched. “Take my hand…”
Evelyn’s arms tingled just before every muscle in her body locked up. To Evelyn, the rain drilling on the car roof was bad enough, but to step out in it? Feel it hit her skin? Her mind told her it would be all right—it was only water—but it wasn’t just water. It was a memory—and even though her rational mind said it couldn’t happen, she had the overwhelming fear that the rain would split her open like a cherry, spill into her insides and drown her.
“Mom! Take my hand,” Michelle cried, and it was her daughter’s touch that allowed Evelyn to answer.
“I can’t.”
8
KIT
Our tent turned deafening quiet, so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. I don’t think any of us were ready for what the doctor had proposed. Gail especially, who looked as if her head had been played for a gong.
“Pardon?” Gail said, shaking her head a bit. “What was that?” She looked at us, cupping her hand behind her ear. “Where’d he say?”
Nobody answered her; we were still trying to process the news ourselves.
“This is dangerous,” Doctor Burk said. “I’m not going to lie. A secret detachment—a surveillance convoy crossed enemy lines, only they were found out. One made it back alive. The rest are waiting to be saved, all badly injured.”
Roxy bolted to a stand, holding her head at the temples. “Whoa! Wait a minute, will ya?” She walked to one end of the tent. “You want us?” She spun around. “A secret mission to save some of our boys?” she said, and the doctor nodded. “Kit, will you get a load of this?” She could barely contain the smile on her face. “Boy, is this a change or what?”
“It’s across enemy lines, Roxy,” Red said.
Roxy looked us over, Gail still with her hand cupped behind her ear, and me with my jaw slung open. “What’s the matter with ya? It’s our boys we’re talking about,” Roxy said. “Wounded boys. Saving them is what we do.”
“Don’t be such a fool,” Red snapped. “Think about what he’s asking!”
Roxy folded her arms. “Red, I don’t see—”
“Why us and not the medics?” I said, finally able to speak. Seemed like the logical question to ask.
“Yeah,” Roxy said, followed by Gail, who nodded. “Why us?”
“This isn’t something that can be covered up easily, four nurses and a doctor missing from our hospital,” I said. “I mean, someone will ask about us. Won’t they?”
“You won’t be missed,” he said.
“Hey!” Roxy moved her hands to her hips. “Who says we won’t be missed around here?”
“That’s not what I mean.” He closed his eyes briefly. “The medics could get caught too easily. Nobody would suspect women, and that’s why we’ve been asked. We have a unique opportunity—a window of time while the Third is refueling. As I said, the battle is in reprieve—five days at best. Rumor is Patton is taking Nancy next. Our men will be stranded indefinitely, if they survive that long.”
“Stranded,” I repeated. The doctor seemed sure of this, his voice very clear and direct as if he’d spoken to Patton himself, and I had to admit I was surprised by this turn of events, which I was sure he could see on my wondering face. “But… but… the quickest way to Berlin is to continue east.”
“This is what I heard,” Doctor Burk said.
Red had shut down completely, hunched over, elbows on her knees.
“What condition are the wounded in?” Roxy said.
“We have to field-operate,” the doctor said.
I gulped. One of the worst things was to operate in the field. “Amputation?”
He nodded. “We’ve been asked to prepare for it, and I know the others need fluids. My hope is that we get there in time to save them, and their mission.”
I walked around the tent, hand to my forehead, thinking about those men—our boys—stranded without any medical. “How would we get in? There must be German patrols all over. And pillboxes!”
Doctor Burk drew a map in the dirt between the floorboards, and for the next several minutes we listened to him explain some of the details. “We’ll drive a few miles east where transport is waiting, which will take us to a secret single-track path leading us to a village.”
“But what if we get lost, Doctor?” I said. “Shouldn’t someone from the OSS be leading us?”
His eyes trailed upward. “I am OSS.”
Red threw her hands up with this secret information and slapped her thighs—now the entire thing with
Sergeant Meyer made more sense.
Roxy stood up after studying the plans in the dirt, swiping her hands together. “So! We waltz across enemy lines, fix up some of our boys and then walk back over?” she said, and he nodded. “I’m in.” Roxy plopped down on her cot and crossed her legs at the knees, swinging one foot back and forth while talking to herself. “Me,” she said, “on a secret mission? Well, I declare. Nonna’s not going to believe this story when I get home, let me tell you… and then there’s my good-for-nothing brothers, Rico and Charley, both those chumps can take their bets and shove them up their—” She popped the collar up on her uniform. “Well, someplace unpleasant, that’s for certain.”
Gail stood up next, looking at Roxy and smiling nervously. “I’ll go too.” She rolled her hands into each other.
“Kit?” Doctor Burk said. “What about you?” He stood up slowly after having knelt on the ground.
There was only one answer. “I’ll go,” I said, and Red walked to the far side of the tent where she folded her arms. “Red?” I said, and she half-glanced over her shoulder, shaking her head slightly, and for the first time since knowing her, after sharing more blood between us than either one of us cared to admit, I didn’t know what she was thinking. I took her into the corner so we could talk privately.
“Think about what we’ve already done,” Red whispered. “The German and now this. It’s too risky. Listen to what the doctor’s suggesting.”
“Dolls?” Roxy called out, and Red gathered us into a small circle, taking Roxy’s hands.
“Listen to me for a moment.” Red swallowed. “Us, behind enemy lines? Nobody will know where we went. Nobody will know how to save us if we get in trouble.”
Roxy slowly pulled her hands away. “Yeah, Red, but our boys…”