by Sarah Sundin
“You coward. Get out of my house now!”
He set his lips in a thin line and headed for the front door. “I’m leaving.”
She followed to make sure he left. He retreated down her front steps, and she stanched the pain at the sight of his back, which had felt so strong under her hands only moments before. But she was wrong, always wrong. Ray was weak. “Don’t ever come back.”
He looked over his shoulder, his eyes narrowed to slits in the moonlight. “I won’t.”
Helen slammed the door, her knees wobbled, and a low moan rose in her throat.
She stood alone with her memories. They had lurked offstage in the wings, ever present but never acknowledged. Now they slinked onstage and assaulted her.
She buried her face in her hands. “Oh Lord, take them away. Take them away.”
“What on earth happened?” Ray marched home for his swim trunks and towel.
“She’s crazy, Lord. Crazy. The woman’s stark raving mad. To think I contemplated a life with her.”
He puffed air into his cheeks and let it vibrate over his lips, as if he could blast off her kisses—first so passionate he thought he’d better marry her within the week, then something new, fierce, almost hostile.
He shrugged off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder.
Helen sounded desperate for him to stay, as if her sanity depended on it.
Ray expelled another puff of air. “Too late.”
Helen picked up Jay-Jay’s Daddy book from the coffee table and stumbled down the hallway, her left foot drooping. She had work to do.
Everyone thought the world of Jim Carlisle, and that’s the way it had to be. Jay-Jay must never know what his father was like, and therefore, no one else could know, including Helen. She had to forget again.
Of course, Ray knew now. But he’d never tell and he’d never be back. A fresh shard pierced her heart, and she grasped the doorjamb to her room for support.
Even if he forgave her—and how could he?—she couldn’t take him back. He knew. For Jay-Jay’s sake, she could never have him.
She stripped off her dress, which smelled of Ray, slipped on the lilac silk nightgown Jim loved, and studied herself in the mirror. The gown fit as it had in the early days of their marriage. On Jim’s last furlough in June of ’42, it had been tight from weight remaining after Jay-Jay’s birth. Jim rhapsodized over certain parts of her fuller figure and belittled her for others.
She slammed her eyes shut. No, she needed to chase Jim’s dark side back to the wings where it belonged. For that, she needed light.
She pulled two candles and a box of matches from the top dresser drawer, and pressed the candles into the stupid Carlisle heirloom candlesticks, wobbly things. She twisted each candle for good measure.
Jim loved candles. He loved fire, didn’t he? Loved to use it, loved to burn her, loved to slam her hand onto the stove burner if she messed up dinner or forgot to serve pork chops on a Friday night.
Helen whirled toward the bed. Only the good things. Only the good things.
She lay on her stomach on the bed, propped the Daddy book on pillows before her, and opened it to a picture of Jim in his sailor suit holding three-month-old Jay-Jay for the first time. His elbows stuck out at an awkward angle, and his face shone with wonder.
This was the Jim she needed to preserve, the man with the disarming grin and quick joke, the man who crooned love songs in her ear and died for his country.
Helen turned the pages and filled her mind with the chosen past, the sanitized past, the false past, but the memories refused to leave stage. They spewed vile lines at her and rehearsed every hit and kick.
“Lord, help me.” She slumped to the pillow, her hand on the wedding photo, her scarred body curled around the book of lies, and she yielded to her grief.
“A coward?” Ray stomped across the deserted beach around a small cove on the San Joaquin River. The moon cast sparse light on the charcoal ripples.
After he stashed his clothes and towel under the willow tree, he took a running dive into the water. Boy, did that feel good. He slicked back his hair and washed off the feel of Helen’s caresses.
“A coward?” He plunged forward and divided the water with strong strokes. Lord, you said, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and that’s what I am. How does that make me a coward?
With powerful kicks, he propelled himself across the cove, faster than he’d ever swum. How many German or Japanese dragons did he have to slay to earn respect? He did his part. He wore the uniform and contributed to the war effort.
Cowards feared death and war, but not Ray.
His body drooped under the weight of the lie.
He surfaced to tread water.
He didn’t fear death, but he did fear war. He didn’t want to cause pain and destruction, to kill someone even by accident, to smell blood, to see death, to experience the adrenaline pressure of attack. What if he couldn’t handle it? What if he was hiding behind his age and his pastoral calling and his supply position?
What if he was a coward?
On the far side of the river, a black band of hills separated the sky from its reflection. Before tonight, Ray’s view of himself was as clear as the star-strewn sky, but now, mirrored over the blackness of Helen’s accusation, his image wavered like the stars on the river.
“Lord, am I a coward if I don’t confront my fears?”
He dunked his head and spat out river water, nauseated at who he was and what he had to do to change it.
13
Jim held Helen’s hand over the candle on the dresser top, lower and lower.
She screamed and writhed, powerless to stop him. The flame seared the palm of her hand. How would she explain this wound? Another cooking mishap?
“Promise you’ll stay home when I’m at work.” Jim’s cool voice contrasted with the heat enveloping her hand.
“I promise. I promise.”
“No phone calls, no guests, and no visiting when I’m gone, you hear?”
“Yes! Yes!” With her scream, she blew out the candle.
Jim cussed and threw her onto the bed. Her shin cracked against the footboard. She curled up in pain, clutched her blackened hand to her chest, and screwed her eyes shut against the heat.
So much heat. An orange glow shone through her eyelids. A crackle, a crash.
Helen opened her eyes, panting. It was only a dream. Jim was dead. She uncurled her right hand to reveal the glossy silver-dollar scar. The heat remained, the orange glow, the pall of smoke.
Smoke?
Helen sat up and gasped. Flames licked up the wallpaper around the dresser and the door frame. One of the candles had fallen from its candlestick.
“Oh no!”
Despite the heat, a chill stopped her heart. “Jay-Jay!”
She sprang for the door, but the flames beat her to it.
“Jay-Jay, wake up! Get out of the house.” She’d have to go around to rescue him. On the other side of the room, orange tentacles groped for the curtains.
“No!” She scrambled over the bed and tugged back the curtains. “Jay-Jay, get out of the house!”
Helen flipped open the window latch, coughed, and swatted away a cloud of acrid smoke. She pushed up on the sash with the heels of her hands, but it didn’t budge. She screamed out her frustration. Jim never fixed the fool window, and he never let her hire anyone else to do it.
She grabbed the ceramic table lamp and heaved it at the window. The lamp shattered, but the window remained intact.
Helen screamed until a fit of coughing doubled her over.
“Lord, please.” Her gaze ransacked the room for something, anything to break the window.
Nothing. Everything was too big, too little, or too soft.
Every breath burned. “Please, Lord. Please get me out. Save my baby.”
Ray toweled off and jiggled his legs to warm up. A dip usually soothed him, but he still reeled from Helen’s outburst.
A shudder ran up his spi
ne, and he slipped his trousers over his damp trunks. “Wow. What an outburst.”
Tonight he’d seen a whole new side of Helen Jamison Carlisle. She’d never been angry at him before. She always forgave him easily, as if she’d do anything to avoid a fight.
His stomach constricted. Of course, she did. Jim beat her.
Was that why she cowered from Jay-Jay’s tantrum? Sure, she overreacted, but when Jay-Jay acted like his dad, Helen might have been thrown back to the terror of her marriage.
Then tonight she flinched when he reached for her, not the first time she’d flinched.
Ray groaned. “Why didn’t I put this together before?”
She showed classic signs of a battered wife—avoiding conflict, flinching from contact. And those scars didn’t come from cooking accidents and clumsy spills but from a wife-beating jerk.
Did he restrict her activities? Sure. He didn’t let her go to college, did he? She gave up her volunteer work when they married and picked it up after he died, not to keep herself busy but to return to her heart’s work. Jim kept her away from it.
What about isolation from family and friends? Didn’t everyone say Jim and Helen kept to themselves? That they loved privacy? Hardly. Jim just wanted to control her.
Ray shook sand off his shirt, harder than he had to. “I’m so blind. What kind of pastor am I? I was so intent on fitting her into my empty slot for a wife, I missed it all.”
He punched his arm through the sleeve of his khaki shirt. His dream of a healthy marriage to a healthy woman lay in tatters.
Now what? She needed help, but Ray wasn’t the man to help her and a romance wasn’t the means. Romance made it worse.
He sighed and headed to town without buttoning his shirt.
A red light pulsated over the buildings and treetops in defiance of blackout regulations.
A fire.
Ray let out a low whistle. “Lord, get those people out. Send your protection over them.”
Thick black smoke roiled above Helen, and flames unfurled toward the window, her only exit.
“Lord, help me!” She hefted up the nightstand, but even in her panic, she didn’t have the strength to raise it high enough, much less break the glass. Tears streamed down her cheeks, worsened by the stinging smoke.
She ducked below the smoke and filled her lungs with precious oxygen. The drawer!
“Please let this work.” She yanked it out of the nightstand and dumped the contents. With both hands and all her might, she swung the drawer at the window. A crunch.
Again! Harder! The drawer broke through and jammed. Helen pried it free, put her face to the hole, and sucked in cool, sweet air.
“Fire!” she yelled. “Help! Fire!’ ”
She rammed the drawer at the triangles of glass until her arms shook. A jagged rim remained around the frame, but now was no time to fret about new cuts and scars. Grasping the sash overhead, she hoisted her hip onto the sill, swung her feet outside, and jumped.
Pain sliced into her bare feet, and she crumpled to the ground. She pulled out chunks of glass. “Not now.”
Where was everyone? Where was the fire truck? Mrs. Llewellyn spent all her time spying on the neighbors. Why did she choose to sleep now when her nosiness would be useful?
Helen stood and winced at the pain in her feet. She ran and stumbled and screamed. “Fire! Help! My baby!”
Her cries sounded feeble against the crackle and roar. She rounded the corner of the house, ran up the stairs, and tugged open the door. Smoke filled the living room.
She charged ahead, but flames slunk down the hallway and flicked into the living room. “No! Jay-Jay!” The scream seared her throat.
She’d have to get him out through his window. Helen spun for the door, past the mirror where she’d primped in another lifetime, before the wedding, before taking Jay-Jay to Betty’s house.
Helen ground to a stop. Betty’s house?
She pressed her fingers to her forehead. The wedding was tonight—yes, tonight, and Jay-Jay . . .
Yes! Jay-Jay was at Betty’s.
“Thank you, Lord.” She raised her eyes. Flames raced overhead.
“No!” She whirled around and stared into the mouth of a dragon descending on her with foul breath, longing to devour.
Helen lunged for the door. So did the dragon.
Ray jogged south down McElhenny Road toward the throbbing glow and the column of gray smoke drifting east. No fire truck clanged, no volunteer firemen shouted, no plumes of water shot through the air.
“Fire!” he bellowed. “Fire!”
He turned right on Sixth Street. He stubbed his toe on a crack but kept going. If someone remained inside, he could be a hero without going to combat.
Ray groaned. “Stop it, Novak.”
He passed the little hospital at the corner of A Street, and his heart thumped harder. The fire seemed to be in his neighborhood. His family? His friends?
Not his parents’ house. He tossed his towel and jacket on their lawn. “Fire! Fire!”
To the west, clangs and sirens broke the night’s silence. Finally, someone had called.
The flames rose a bit south, close to Helen’s house.
Although sweat ran down his temples, his insides turned to ice. He’d left her in an unbalanced state. Could she have burned down her house in a fit of madness?
He broke into an open run. “Helen!”
Each step churned up nausea. It was Helen’s house, he knew it in his mind and his heart, and when he wheeled left onto D Street, his eyes confirmed it.
“Helen!” He sprinted down the street. Flames danced on the bungalow and taunted him. A roar, and a section of roof caved in, sending up a fountain of sparks and flames. Thank goodness Jay-Jay wasn’t there.
“Lord, help me save her.” He took the stairs in two steps, but the heat repelled him. Strange thing, fire—translucent. The doorknob sat in sight only three feet away, but might as well have been in the next county.
A creak overhead. Ray leaped down the stairs as a timber crashed to the porch.
“Helen!” How could he rescue her? Even if he got in, would she cooperate?
“Water.” Maybe he could douse himself with a hose, cover his mouth with a wet cloth—his shirt. He ran for the house next door.
At the side of the house, a lady bent over the spigot.
“Helen!” In his joy he reached for her, but the memory of how they parted stopped him. “Thank goodness you’re safe.”
“Gotta—gotta.” She fumbled with the hose. “Fire—there’s a fire. Gotta get the—the faucet, hose, nozzle. The—the fire. Gotta—gotta.”
“I’ll help.” The garden hose wouldn’t do any good, but Helen was in shock. She needed to do something. He lifted the hose from the rack and turned on the water.
She tugged the hose to its full length and raised a limp stream of water. When she pressed her thumb over the end, the water sprang to life. The outermost drops sizzled in the flames.
In her futile effort Helen stood brave and determined, a black silhouette against the flames. Her hair hung in tangles to one shoulder while pinned up on the other side. The firelight glinted off her bare arms and around her curves in that dangerous nightgown.
Ray longed to take her in his arms, but she wouldn’t let him.
“Need longer—longer.” Helen dropped the hose and ran to her backyard.
He followed, but the fire truck pulled up, men scrambled out, and neighbors gathered in bathrobe-clad clusters.
Ray ran to the truck. “She’s out. It’s all right. Helen’s out.”
“Her baby!” Mrs. Jeffries sobbed.
“It’s all right. Jay-Jay’s at George and Betty Anello’s tonight. He’s safe.”
“Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus.”
He left the crowd and ran behind the house to find Helen. Poor thing. What did she think she could do? The entire fire department couldn’t save her house.
She staggered out of the garage. “No hose. N
o hose. Rubber drive.”
“It’s all right. The fire truck’s here.”
She passed him. “Gotta get the book.”
Ray jogged alongside her. “The book?”
“Daddy book. Jay-Jay’s.”
“You can’t.” A section of wall collapsed, and he pulled her away from a burst of flame and hot air.
“No!” She shook him off and limped to the front yard. “I need it.”
“You can’t go inside. It’s too late.”
“No! It can’t be.” She ran faster, stumbling, face twisted. “Jay-Jay needs it. It’s all we have of him. All we have.”
Ray picked up his pace. Did she really think she could go inside? “Stop, Helen.”
“I have to. I have to.” She rounded the corner of her house. She wasn’t going to stop.
“Helen, no!” He burst forward and flung his arms around her waist.
“No!” She flailed fists at his sides. “Don’t! Don’t stop me.”
“It’s too late. It’s gone, honey. It’s gone.”
“No-o-o.” Her voice and her beating trailed off, and she raised her face to her home and her life going up in flames. “No-o-o.”
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said in her ear. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s gone. All gone.” Her body went limp.
He struggled to hold her in the silky nightgown, and he eased her down. She crumpled over her knees.
Ray knelt beside her and stroked her back. “I’m sorry, honey.”
“It’s all gone. All I have of him is gone. He’s gone.”
Giant plumes of water arched overhead, and droplets rained down on them, rained down the truth. The man beat her. He was dead. And he still controlled her.
Ray’s hand settled on Helen’s soot-streaked hair. He couldn’t compete with a ghost. Not as he was.
14
Monday, May 15, 1944
Helen lugged the secondhand suitcase down Sixth Street with Dorothy Wayne alongside. The only good thing about losing her home and all her possessions was the work. She even had to apply to the Office of Price Administration for new ration books. So much work. But work kept her mind off the losses, the memories that refused to retreat, the shame of what she’d said to Ray, the pain of driving off the man she loved, and the worry of how she’d manage Jay-Jay and her volunteer duties while working.