The Memory of Us: A Novel

by Camille Di Maio

  Germany had just ordered Jews to add the name “Israel” or “Sara” to their first names to make it easier to identify their ethnicity. Along with the rest of the country, I was increasingly alarmed at hearing these kinds of things, and I couldn’t help but think of people our family knew—friends, neighbors—who might have to endure this injustice if Hitler gained power in Britain.

  Listening to government radio addresses in the evening was becoming a favorite pastime of Father’s. Although he clearly didn’t want war to break out, he also had to position his business for what would certainly be an increased demand for his services during wartime. His warehouses would be very valuable, with their proximity to the Liverpool port. But they could also be targets.

  At least his anti-German rants had distracted him from his Catholic ones, and I no longer heard about the IRA.

  Kyle tried to talk to me about war—men seemed to be electrified by the topic—but he would stop when he saw how much it upset me. I remembered my father talking about the countless boys lost in the last war. It was not only for Kyle that the dread of the topic unsettled me, but the thought of another generation of our young men fighting once again.

  It was the British way to grin and bear it, though, and I was not going to let faraway hostilities dampen our enthusiasm for the charity event ahead. I stayed over at Lucille’s house the night before the festival, and she let me experiment with hairstyles. It was her turn to participate in the auction, but she wasn’t looking forward to it as much as she had expected to. Ben was now in her life, and although he had promised to bid on her, she was worried about someone else winning. Even if it was only for an afternoon, she didn’t like the idea of being paired off with anyone other than him. She thought about dropping out of it, but he called her a silly goose and told her not to worry. Lucille capitulated when we found her a stunning red gown to match the garnet necklace from last year and started to enjoy the idea of dressing up and taking part.

  Festival day started much the same way as last year. Lucille and I checked on the booths early on and ran off to enjoy it all with our beaus. I ached to hold Kyle’s hand as he walked two steps away from me, but although Father was in Paris for the global freight conference, Mother was flitting about. Kyle and I had argued once again about talking to my parents, but he’d agreed for me to put it off until after this event, as I’d just begun to rebuild goodwill between my mother and myself.

  But for tonight Ben and Kyle were in high form and kept throwing each other conspiratorial glances. They looked innocent and bewildered whenever we asked them what they were up to.

  Leaving them behind, we made our way to the church hall before dusk, but not before seeing Maude Parker, round with pregnancy, dethrone Alice with her banana bread in the contest. Domesticity suited her, and I smiled to recall the days that Kyle and I had spent working together on her wedding.

  Lucille looked beautiful in her gown and upswept hair, with wispy tendrils cascading to her chin. Like last year, we secured each other’s jewelry. My attire was far simpler, since I wasn’t in the auction, but Kyle couldn’t take his eyes off me all night. It must have been all the decorative lanterns. The dim lighting worked wonders on one’s complexion.

  After kissing Lucille’s cheek and betting her that she would surely raise the most money tonight, I ran off to join Kyle and Ben and watch the proceedings.

  This year there were fourteen girls, and Lucille was number four.

  The now ex–Lord Mayor Denton emceed the event again this year, back by popular demand, and he overpowered us with his thundering voice. The first offerings were modest, with Ruby Haught fetching the most of the three.

  “And now we have Lady Number Four, Miss Lucille Morris. She enjoys backgammon and movies, and will be attending Edge Hill Training College to study teaching in January.”

  A polite clap from the crowd.

  “Do I hear twelve shillings?” He had upped his ante since last year.

  I saw Kyle slip an envelope to Ben, and when I looked at him with inquisitive eyes, he shrugged, placating me with a kiss to the forehead. The bidding went back and forth between several young men, but none of them were Ben. Just as the bidding was about to end at two pounds, four shillings, Ben waved his hand. “Six pounds, two shillings!” We all looked at him in disbelief, except for Kyle. Lucille froze in place on the stage, and Denton asked him to repeat his bid, thinking that he had heard incorrectly.

  “Six pounds, two shillings,” he shouted again.

  A cheer rolled around the stage, and Denton pounded the gavel like a judge keeping order in a court. Encouraged by the crowd, Ben leapt to the stage to claim his girl.

  Kyle was grinning. I glared at him for still not explaining all of this to me beforehand. However, I only pretended because, for one thing, I could never be angry with him. And for another thing, I was deliriously excited for Lucille to be gaining the highest amount ever in the history of the auction.

  After some time the roar died down. Lucille and Ben left the stage, and Denton started with Lady Number Five. I felt sorry for her. That would be a tough act to follow. Kyle took my hand and led me from the crowd over to the woods behind where the band was playing.

  Putting his arm around me firmly and taking my hand in his for the dance, we moved slowly, and I longed for the day when we could be on the floor with the other couples. I still shivered when he touched me, and I took a breath of anticipation whenever he leaned his face close to mine. We swayed there, not talking at first, enjoying this intimacy. No doubt, we were both thinking how different this year was from the last one.

  In a gesture reminiscent of our time in the gazebo, he leaned over to kiss my neck softly and moved his way up to my ear. “I have something to tell you,” he whispered. He didn’t say anything else, making his way down to my neck again. He knew that he was torturing me, and he loved it.

  “What?” I asked weakly. I didn’t want him to stop kissing me, but on the other hand I wanted to know what he was going to say.

  Switching to the other side of my neck, he did the same thing. Making his way up to my ear, he taunted, “You’re going to like it.” And back down to my neck.

  I couldn’t take the suspense, nor could I let him continue kissing me without crossing some major social boundary.

  “Kyle, what?” I pulled him away to look in his face. “You have been full of secrets lately.”

  “Oh, tonight is full of secrets. And I’ll let you have three guesses.”

  Abertillery

  The children quieted when Father McCarthy entered the room. I could only hear the muffled sounds of his voice from where he’d left me at their dead mother’s bedside, but he seemed to calm them with his words.

  I would have liked to go home now, but the only exit was through that crowded room. I felt claustrophobic and blamed it on the house. But truly it was my own mind closing in on me. As though the static from a radio program was fragmenting the voices trying to come through:

  “. . . don’t like the deception . . .”

  “. . . twenty thousand things . . .”

  “. . . I forbid . . .”

  “. . . secrets . . .”

  “. . . I’m enlisting . . .”

  “. . . be safe here . . .”

  The memories these words carried were unwelcome, but they assaulted me anyway. Like artillery, they pounded the remains of my fortress, leaving holes that let the past escape piece by piece.

  The people I’d loved, the people I’d left, their voices came back to me in a rising tide until, overwhelmed, I crumbled down onto the floor and wept with abandon. The tears burned my skin, and I made no attempt to wipe them away. I was supposed to suffer—my eternal punishment—because of what I’d done. Maybe this was just the beginning.

  I heard the priest return to the room. I didn’t need to see his face to finally acknowledge the evidence. The voice. The ring on his finger. His reassuring presence. My Kyle was in front of me. What was I going to do about it?
>
  Chapter Eighteen

  Three secrets, three guesses.

  Did he think it was funny to drive me mad like this? Obviously, he did.

  I could play that game.

  We stopped dancing, and he took my hand to lead me farther off among the trees. We sat on a large fallen trunk and enjoyed the privacy that it offered.

  “Three guesses, right?”

  He nodded.

  “You found out that I’m running away with Reverend Parker because I’m determined to be with someone in the clergy after all.”

  “Very funny. I happen to know that he’s already married and way too old for you. Try again.”

  “All right. You made the winning banana bread and let Maude take the credit for it.”

  “Did she tell you?” He put his hand on his mouth in feigned surprise, then dropped it. “I’m glad it’s out. Chopping all those walnuts, mashing the bananas—I deserve the credit!”

  “Ha, ha. OK, number three. But if I get it wrong, are you going to tell me?”

  “I promise.”

  “You and Ben are spending your evenings luring ships to their doom in Wallasey and pirating them.”

  “A fellow has to make a living.”

  “I’m out of guesses. What are you up to?” I scooted in closer to him and feigned a menacing look.

  “You win. Secret Number One. I have been drawing up landscape plans and submitting them to firms in London. One of them has accepted my work and hired me. I’m moving to London with you.”

  My mouth hung open, as he had answered the very question that had been pestering me. What was going to happen when the new term started? I hugged him tightly, teeming with elation and kissing him all over his face.

  “Kyle, Kyle, oh, that’s wonderful news. I can’t believe it! Oh, it’s wonderful!”

  He pulled me back before I mauled him and held me by the wrists. “Easy there, gorgeous. It’s just an entry-level position, and I’ll have to work for years before I design anything on my own. But it’s a start, and it means we can be together.”

  “I don’t care if you move to London to clean the king’s toilets! I’m just happy that you’ll be there. I didn’t know what I was going to do without you.”

  Kyle sat back and grinned at my exuberance.

  When I had at last calmed down, I said, “I don’t know how anything can be better than that, but what is Secret Number Two?”

  “Secret Number Two, coming up!” He paused, letting the drama set in. “Did you see the envelope that I passed to Ben at the auction?”

  “Yes I did, but I had forgotten about it. What was that all about?”

  “Ben saved hard to bid on Lucille in the auction, but he was worried that it wouldn’t be enough, so I contributed four pounds, seven shillings.”

  He waited for that to sink in, but I knew I was missing something.

  “That’s how much I should have spent to win you last year, sweet girl, but I didn’t. So I figured that I owed some money to a good cause and I helped out a friend at the same time.”

  I blushed and thought of how much easier everything could have been if last year had been different. But then again, a year of longing never hurt anyone.

  “I love it! That was so considerate of you. And how fantastic for Lucille to receive so much attention for once. No one deserves it more. Thank you. You’re the best.”

  “That’s not the rest of Secret Number Two.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Yes, but you can’t tell anyone.”

  “Isn’t that the very definition of a secret?”

  “I suppose so.” He hunched in, as if he was going to pass along treasonous information. I felt the heat of his breath on my ear, and it dizzied me. But he didn’t say anything.

  “What?” I sat back and looked right at him. “Kyle, what? You’re killing me here!”

  “At the picnic Ben’s going to propose to Lucille.”

  I let out a scream that made people on the dance floor look off into the trees.

  “He is? Oh my goodness, Lucille is going to be so happy!”

  Kyle folded his arms and listened bemusedly, watching me as if I were some kind of sideshow. I think so many weeks of forced reserve were getting the better of me. Realizing I was beginning to sound like Lotte—bletch—I again forced myself to relax.

  “OK,” I said. “Secret Number Three. Let’s have it.”

  “Nope,” he said resolutely.

  “But you promised!”

  “Based on how you reacted to the first two, I’m afraid you’ll drop dead of a heart attack if I tell you any more.”

  I assured him that I’d keep myself in check, over and over, until he gave in. I knew what he was going to tell me all along, and he knew it, too. He was just going to drag this out for fun.

  “You win. Secret Number Three.” He leaned in and held my hands. “So Ben is going to propose to Lucille, right?” Sliding down to his knee before I even realized it, he said, “And I am proposing to you now.”

  Putting my hands over my mouth, I stared at him in disbelief. It shouldn’t really have been surprising to me. It was something that I thought about all the time, and it was the only natural path for us. But I hadn’t expected it tonight, and I couldn’t find the words.

  Still kneeling, Kyle took my hands away from my face and kissed each fingertip before looking at me with those malt-colored eyes.

  “Julianne,” he said softly, “before I met you, the path for my life was set. And it was a good one. Then you came along, with your charming ways and your love for your brother and your regard for my father, and a hole appeared that I didn’t even know existed. It grew wider and deeper every time we talked until it hurt so much that I couldn’t study, I couldn’t focus. I knew that it would never be filled, and I could never be fully at peace, until I was with you. You are my vocation. I was made to love you, protect you, through the good and bad, and through every vow that will be asked of me. Will you, then, make me a whole man and marry me?”

  I don’t know how long I looked at him, speechless. I just stared at him, barely breathing, finding it hard to believe that someone loved me enough to say such things.

  Arching his eyebrow in the way that always made me laugh, he said, “And your answer is . . .”

  I shook off my daze and smiled and hugged him. “Of course! Of course!”

  From his jacket pocket he pulled out a tiny black bag and dropped a ring from it into his hand. He took my left hand and slid it on my finger. It was a small, round diamond set in gold.

  It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, but he apologized. “I promise, when I can I’ll buy you something bigger, something you deserve. But I wanted you to have a ring now.”

  Tilting his chin up, I looked at him in earnest. “I don’t want something bigger. This is exactly what I want.” I kissed him slowly, and he came to sit next to me on the trunk again.

  We stayed there until the sun began to fall, in the haze of new love, thinking that nothing could ever be better than this moment. We agreed to save the wedding details for another day.

  On Tuesday we took a walk to one of the lakes in the park and rented a boat for the afternoon. I remembered looking at the couples here only a few months ago, envious of their bliss. And now I was one of them. I loved this summer. Lucille had been right on New Year’s—1938 was turning out to be just about perfect. Save for the fact that everything perfect about it was being done behind my parents’ backs.

  We talked about all that had to be done. We decided that we wouldn’t tell Lucille about our engagement until Ben had a chance to ask her. That was only days away, and I was confident that I could hold it in, difficult as it was. Kyle would keep my ring until everything was out in the open. I missed it on my finger already.

  I agreed, quite apprehensively, that Kyle would ask my father for my hand. I think we both knew what the answer would be, but Kyle said that it was the right thing to do, and he wasn’t going to shirk his part of
it. He declined my offer to accompany him. I was hoping for a miracle, but we’d agreed that we were going to be married, blessing or not.

  We set a date for that Wednesday evening, since I wanted a few days to prepare. Kyle’s question to my father was sure to change things forever, for better or worse, and I needed a little time to collect myself. It didn’t hurt that the Richard Robbins Comedy Hour was on Wednesdays, and it might put Father in a good mood. I suggested that Kyle arrive after the show. When the appointment time arrived, my nerves were no less edgy.

  “Why, Julianne, you’re wearing the scarf I bought for you.” It wasn’t really one of my favorites, but Father had picked it out for me in Paris. Anything to be in his good graces.

  “Of course! I just love it.” I even did a little twirl before joining him on the couch. Like when I would show him a pirouette after ballet class.

  “Did you catch the bit that Richard Robbins did last week about the elephant and the motorcar salesman?”

  “I didn’t. Lucille and I were working on the festival details.”

  “Oh, that’s right. It was a stitch. You should listen more often, like we used to.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He patted the spot right next to him. I scooted over, tucking my legs up next to me, and laid my head on his shoulder. He smelled like peppermint and pipe tobacco. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, memorizing his scent just in case this was the last time we’d sit like that.

  “Is something the matter, Princess? You’re very fidgety tonight.”

  He was right. My hands were clenched and my feet were tapping up and down on the sofa. I wanted to tell him right there, to let him hear it from me first. To believe that my father would love me enough to trust my heart. But if things went poorly, Kyle would be stepping into a disaster, and I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Oh, you know, just winding down from all of the activities of the weekend.”