“Come on, Jack.” Red followed in his mother’s wake. “Let’s go change into our uniforms and get our bags while Mom makes up those sandwiches.”
After the boys left, Amy plopped down, a glum expression on her face. “I hate this nasty old war. Will it ever get over?”
“I don’t know, Ames. I’m sure it will, but I wonder the toll it will take on all of us.”
They sat and rocked in silence until the boys returned in their uniforms, bags in tow. Mrs. Lake followed them out the screen door.
As if in a funeral procession, they walked to the car. Everyone appeared solemn and spoke little. At the station, several GI’s milled around waiting for the train. Some with families clinging to them, others stood alone or in clusters.
The guys waited until the last minute before hopping on. When the conductor made the last boarding call, Red gave everyone a hug and a kiss on the cheek then climbed aboard a loaded passenger car.
Tears ran down Amy and Mrs. Lake’s cheeks. They swiped at them uselessly with the pads of their fingers.
Fran felt cold inside. It didn’t seem real.
Jack hugged Mrs. Lake and Amy. He thanked Amy’s mom again and kissed Amy on the cheek saying something to make her perk up.
He moved to Fran, took her hands in his, and squeezed lightly before slipping something cool and hard in her palm. He closed her fingers around it. “And you . . .” His lips edged up warmly, his eyes dark with emotion. “Be good, or at least try.” He hugged her and whispered in her ear, “Don’t forget me, Frannie Girl.” Then he kissed her cheek and stepped back.
The train hissed as the brakes released. Jack grabbed the handrail and hauled himself aboard just as the wheels began to roll.
“Bye.” Everyone on the platform yelled and waved at their departing friends and family members who hung out the train’s windows. A few people ran alongside the train, waving and calling out, refusing to let go until the very last moment.
Fran stood stock still, her fingers clasped around the cool piece of metal in her right hand. She wanted to know what Jack had given her, but rather than draw attention to herself, she slid her hand inside her pants pocket instead. She would wait until she got home to see what it was.
Chapter 10
February 2013
Sara pushed open the hospital’s main entrance door then grimaced when the icy snow pelted her face and neck as she stepped out into the dimly-lit parking lot. The street lamps gave off a haze of light as swirls of snow muffled their glow. She flipped up the collar of her wool-lined, London Fog trench coat, thankful she’d had the foresight to drag it along with her on the flight from Florida. The coat warmed her like the welcome hug of a long-lost friend, buffeting her from the sharp Nor’easter that cut like a knife.
The new, beige, knit gloves she drew from her pocket reminded her of the fingerless ones she’d bought a lifetime ago in Scotland. She’d pondered their practicality but found the gloves had kept her hands surprisingly warm. She’d worn them until the threads began to unravel around her fingers, as the threads of her life had begun to unravel around her.
Sara’s right foot slid on the slippery pavement jolting her back to the present. Her arms flailed in an attempt to keep her from landing on her butt in the snow. A strong hand clamped around her sleeve catching her.
“Steady as you go,” a male voice said from over her shoulder as he used his solid weight to hold her upright.
Thankful for the strong, supporting arm, she regained her footing and glanced at the tall, lean figure wearing jeans and a hooded parka, and froze. Shit. Paul Anderson, again. “Uh, thanks,” she managed to mutter, hoping it too dark for him to notice her embarrassment. “These shoes aren’t made for this weather.”
His white teeth lit up the dark-shadowed face peering out through the hood’s opening. “I’ll follow you to your vehicle if you don’t mind. Make sure you get there safely.”
Physically and emotionally drained, she numbly followed beside him, anxious to make it to her car without another mishap. She slid to an awkward stop by her silver sedan and removed the keys from her pocket. Her finger hovered over the panic button in case her instincts misled her about her escort. Once she grasped the door handle, she turned to Paul who stepped back as if attuned to her wariness.
“I’d drive real slow and careful. The storm’s a right nasty one. If you’re going far, you might consider staying in town tonight.”
“Thanks for the concern, but I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
His dark eyes seemed to pierce her for a moment. Then he nodded and turned to leave.
She pressed the unlock button, climbed into the freezing car, and turned over the ignition. After flicking on the wipers, she watched Paul Anderson trudge through the layers of ice and snow, back toward the hospital’s neon-lit entrance. She wondered briefly about him, but then shrugged. It didn’t really matter. He was just another stranger passing through her life. She shifted the car into reverse and eased it out of the parking space, being careful to prevent the sedan from sliding into another parked vehicle.
Once clear of the Brockport city limits with its well-lit, well-sanded and salted streets, the driving on the wide-open country roads became more treacherous. Not only were the roads covered with ice and snow, but the raging wind blew the blinding white powder from the bare farm fields across the road, causing whiteout conditions. Fighting panic, she reduced her speed to a mere crawl until the outside light of Kelly’s gray-shingled Cape Cod pierced the white haze, shining like a beacon. She decided to stop and update Tom and Kelly on Gram’s condition.
After giving her a hug hello, her sister started a pot of coffee and produced a container of Tim Horton’s donuts that Tom had picked up earlier.
Sara took a seat at the table across from her brother-in-law and selected a jelly-filled one.
“How’s Grams?” he asked.
“Barely hanging on, I think.” I spent most of the afternoon and evening with her. She managed to stay alert long enough to tell me the story of the wings and Jack. I’m not sure if I’ll get to hear the end of it though.
“What wings, and who’s Jack?” Kelly asked.
“It’s a long story. Let me have another donut, and I’ll tell you.”
By the time she finished relating her grandmother’s tale and answered all her sister’s questions, it had gotten late. Thankfully, the storm had eased and within twenty minutes she reached Gram’s unplowed driveway, braking to a slippery stop. Snow surged up around the car. She guessed she knew what she’d be doing in the morning.
In the darkness of the moonless night, the old ramshackle house with mismatched siding and peeling paint, illuminated by the neighbor’s barn light, appeared worse for wear. Sara waded through the snow drifts to the front porch and reached under the top step feeling for the lone key that hung on a rusty key chain.
She inserted the key into the lock and jiggled it several times to make it work. Finally, the knob turned and the door gave way under the pressure of her shoulder. The silence struck her. Soon the house would be permanently empty and with increasing anxiety, she realized this could be her last visit home.
Her mind, numb with fatigue, shut down, refusing to continue along that depressive vein. She moved instinctively to her grandmother’s room—the warmest in the house. On the way, she slipped off her coat and draped it across her grandfather’s favorite recliner. She tried not to think of his absence in it.
Now acclimated to the Florida weather, the drafty house chilled her bones. The faded cotton curtains drawn over the bedroom window rose and fell with the whistling wind. Sara crawled into the double bed, switched on the electric blanket, and snuggled down between the flannel sheets with their faint scent of talcum powder. Ah, it’s good to be home.
The morning rolled in with a vengeance. The sun’s brilli
ance, reflecting off the snow-covered fields, lit the darkly paneled room. Sara tugged the comforter over her head to block out the light streaming through the thin curtains. The grogginess from the sleeping pill she swallowed the night before seemed worse than usual. Lethargic, that’s what she felt, weak with exhaustion. She had no desire to get up. Yawning, she stretched then flung back the covers. It was obvious there was no more sleep to be had.
Her grandmother’s plaid flannel robe with its ragged edges hung from the nail stuck into the side beam of the door-less closet. Sara lifted it from its crude hook and shrugged into it. She wished Grams wore size eight slippers. The hardwood floors were cold, chilling her toes as she went to the bathroom and then to the kitchen to put on some coffee.
The pale-yellow walls appeared drab in the light and needed a fresh coat of paint. Out of habit, she moved to the refrigerator and opened it, gazing inside. Spying the remains of a crusty loaf of Gram’s homemade bread and a half-eaten jar of her strawberry jam, Sara’s mouth watered. No one made bread and jelly like her grandmother. Certainly, no modern-day bread machine or Sara herself. Her one attempt had produced a brick-size doorstop. On the verge of closing the fridge, she spotted the twisted, half-empty bag of chocolate chips tucked in the bottom shelf of the door.
Ah, just what she needed. Chocolate. She loved chocolate. Didn’t matter what kind—dark or milk, cheap or expensive. She couldn’t think of a better way to start the day than chocolate washed down by a good cup of coffee. Well, except for maybe good morning sex, which in her case, chocolate was the easier to be had.
While the coffee brewed and two slices of her grandmother’s bread toasted, she carried one of the mismatched, wooden chairs from the kitchen table and stood on it to reach the top shelf in the hallway closet. She tugged down an old, dust-covered, chocolate candy box—the five pounds for five dollars brand you used to see every Christmas at your low-end department store. The sides of the box buckled, and she almost tipped over the chair to keep the loose black and white photos from spilling from the makeshift photo album.
She hopped down with both hands wrapped around the collapsing box. Carrying it into the kitchen, she set it on the table while she buttered and spread homemade jam on the toasted bread. The smell of the freshly perked coffee woke her senses and her stomach grumbled painfully.
She stacked her plate of toast and coffee, and of course, the chocolate chips, onto the box of photos and carried them into the living room. Then returning to the bedroom, she rummaged around for a pair of knit socks to warm her freezing feet.
After finishing breakfast, she sipped her coffee and sifted through the box of old photos of her mother’s relatives—smiling at some, crying at others. Her favorites were the pictures of her grandmother and her Great-Aunt Dorothy dressed in Dorothy’s husband’s army uniforms—pointing and smirking at the droopy seats of their britches and saluting smartly for the camera. By the time she reached the bottom of the box, she’d set a number of photos aside to keep. The rest she returned to the closet. Although she’d enjoyed the snapshots, she had not found what she had been searching for. There was no one wearing a Navy uniform.
The morning sun glistened off last night’s snowfall causing Sara to squint as she peered out the window. Her thoughts wandered back to Grams and Jack. What happened? she wondered. Did Jack forget about her? Did he die in the war? Obviously, her grandmother had loved him deeply. She must have been devastated when it ended, yet she kept his wings for over fifty years. Why? How did she dare to love again?
Now in hindsight, Sara had a better understanding of the dynamics of her grandparents’ relationship. Why there always seemed to be something missing between them. They both had been wonderful parents in place of her own, showering her sisters and her with much love, and yet Sara couldn’t recall them displaying any affectionate gestures toward each other. Her grandmother kept house and took care of the family. Her grandfather went to work and came home to read the newspaper and watch the news. As she got older, Sara had assumed it was just a sign of their generation, but now the sadness she had occasionally glimpsed in her grandmother’s eyes and her grandfather’s withdrawal into his garden painted a different one—a sad one.
Perhaps her grandmother hadn’t moved on after all. A notion Sara could understand herself, for she certainly hadn’t done so in her own life. Her marriage and subsequent divorce left something inside her frozen, iced over, her wings essentially clipped, although she had to admit that recently she’d begun to feel a stirring of an emotion she thought long gone. A sense that maybe, just maybe, there could be more if she were willing to reach out and grasp it. The image of Paul flashed in her mind. Hm, now there was a delicious possibility. She pulled back from the thought and sighed. Bad timing.
She glanced at the wall clock, finished the last dregs of her coffee, and groaned at her upcoming chore. She wished she had a four-wheel drive parked in the driveway about now, then she could skip the shoveling and head directly for the hospital. A fatigue pervaded her bones, and she realized by the amount of snow that had drifted in around her car, she’d soon be even more exhausted.
Placing her mug in the sink she gazed out the kitchen window across the long white expanse to the farmhouse next door. There were no signs of life—no one home. Her Aunt Dorothy was most likely in the city with her daughter, too frail now to live alone. The loss of her great-aunt’s presence hit home almost as hard as the absence of her grandmother. They were the last of a generation.
Sara took a shower in the lukewarm water that drizzled out of the iron-rusted, semi-plugged showerhead. “Give me good old, chlorinated, city water anytime,” she muttered, turning around a half-dozen times in an attempt to rinse off all the suds.
Leaning over the bathroom sink with its stained metal ring, she applied a light coat of face powder, followed by a few swipes of eyeliner, mascara, and her favorite rose-colored lipstick—nothing too heavy. Except for her sisters, she wasn’t apt to run into anyone who knew her, or at least anyone who would recognize her after all this time. The image of Paul Anderson popped into her mind, and she picked up the mascara tube again.
After slipping on an old worn winter coat and a pair of black Wellies one of her sisters must have discarded and left in the breezeway, Sara went outside to work. She hadn’t shoveled snow in ages and long since forgotten how grueling it could be. Good thing she lifted weights three times a week at the gym near her office. With her back to the road, caught up in her work, she didn’t pay attention to the heavy vehicle coming up behind her until it rumbled to a halt.
“Need some help?” a voice filled with humor called out.
Startled, she whipped around and grinned at the orange, stocking-cap covered head thrust out through the massive plow’s rolled-down window. “Hey, Ben.” She stuck her shovel in the snow then trudged over to speak to her cousin who was the closest thing to a brother she ever had. “Nice of you to stop by when I’m almost done.”
He flashed her a smart-assed grin. “Figured a big city girl like you sitting behind a desk all day could use some fresh air and exercise. Wouldn’t do to let your butt get too big.”
Sara rolled her eyes.
Ben chuckled then became serious. “How’s Aunt Fran?”
She shook her head. “Not good. She won’t be coming home this time.”
Ben nodded, turning to glance over the steering wheel for a moment before looking back at her. “Sorry to hear that.”
“Always knew this time would come.” She paused. “But it doesn’t make it any easier.”
Ben shook his head. “Well call if you need anything.”
“Thanks.” And before she could say more, he rolled up his window and revved the throaty diesel engine.
“Hey, wait a minute,” she yelled before the glass snapped shut. “What about my driveway?”
The window cracked back down. “Now that,
” he said with a straight face and a twinkle in his eye, “Would be classified as misuse of government property, and I know you wouldn’t want to get me fired. But hey, you’re doing a great job. Keep it up.” Grinning, he saluted as he dropped the blade of the plow and drove off.
“Jerk,” she muttered, not really meaning it.
Compared to the previous evening, her drive to the hospital flew. The roads were clear with only a few drifts remaining. Once she reached the hospital, she strode in and went straight for the cafeteria. Picking up a Styrofoam cup, she poured coffee from the large metal urn, added a dollop of cream, then snapped on a plastic lid. Taking a swig, she grimaced. Not the best, but not the worst either.
She glanced around at the people sitting at the tables and booths. Those dressed in scrubs were clearly hospital employees. The ones with grim, beleaguered countenances were no doubt visitors of the sick. She wondered if she appeared as glum.
Over by the window staring outside, she recognized Paul Anderson’s military-style haircut. She should thank him again for being a Good Samaritan. She disregarded the thought. He was a complication she didn’t need right now. She handed the cashier a buck and a quarter. If only Starbucks was as cheap.
Drawn by an inexplicable need to glance over her shoulder, she did just that.
Paul inclined his head in her direction.
She nodded back awkwardly. He seemed in need of company, but anxious to get to her grandmother’s room, she ignored the thought, turned and left the cafeteria. If Grams is awake, Sara didn’t want to miss the chance to speak with her again, to hear the rest of the story—about the wings—about Jack.
She kept her fingers crossed and sighed with relief to see her grandmother propped up in bed. Sara hugged her.
Cherished Wings Page 7