He was nodding vaguely without responding to their mother’s questions: Was he on leave? How long would he stay? Frankie kept reminding herself to go and telephone Margo, but she couldn’t move somehow.
As Mike approached the end of the table where their father was sitting, Joe reached out his hand, almost reluctantly. Mike’s wrists thrust out from the threadbare cuffs of his uniform like polished sticks of wood. It must be what the desert does, Frankie told herself. The desert had polished him down to the bone. Frankie watched him grasp their father’s hand and, bending over, bring it to his lips and kiss it.
For a few seconds the air was still. She heard plates clatter in the kitchen, bits of a radio program in French. The dining-room aroma of crystal, salt, lemon oil.
“Are you on leave or aren’t you?” their father demanded.
Letting go his hand, Mike pulled out a chair and sat down, and Frankie started breathing again. “My orders say report to Rockcliffe Station, but I figured I was due a little unofficial leave.”
Rockcliffe was the big airbase at Ottawa, and from the thrust of his jaw Frankie knew their father didn’t like the sound of “unofficial leave.” Light from the chandelier blinked in his spectacles like Morse code; she knew what he was thinking: the war doesn’t send home good news, ever. A boy she remembered from kindergarten had drowned when his destroyer sank in the Strait of Belle Isle. The twins across the street had both died at Dieppe — she had heard their mother’s screams. Montreal held only the sickly and the lame and the most devout French-Canadian nationalists, along with resplendently uniformed middle-aged businessmen and plenty of zoot-suiters and black marketeers. The best men were in bombers over Germany; in convoys on the North Atlantic; in England, training and waiting; or in Sicily, fighting.
Helen lay a place setting in front of Mike. Helen’s fiancé was a corporal in the RMR. Their previous maid, also West Indian, had quit to follow her boyfriend, a quartermaster corporal in the Lincs and Wellands, to a training camp in Ontario. Men were moving further and further out of sight.
Where was Johnny Taschereau at that moment, while the daughter he’d never seen slept upstairs? Frankie pushed back her chair. “I’m going to call Margo.” Her sister was on duty at the canteen she ran in Windsor Station. Before he went overseas Johnny had rented a flat for them on Northcliffe Avenue, but Margo had moved back to Skye Avenue when Maddie was born.
She decided to use the telephone in her father’s study.
“What news of Johnny?” Mike was asking as she left the room.
~
Their father’s study was stifling and dim. Canvas awnings folded the light of the summer evening in half. His ticker-tape machine had long since been extracted. He had a radio so he could listen to the war news while fussing over stocks and bonds and bank accounts and Iseult’s committee accounts and ledgers.
Mike’s letters had all ended up in a green metal filing cabinet, in folders meticulously arranged by date. Joe had wanted to file Johnny’s letters as well but Margo insisted on keeping those in her room. His walls were covered with survey maps of southeast England, the Middle East, North Africa, and Sicily, red pins marking where Johnny Taschereau had been stationed, blue pins for Mike. Along another wall, three charts fitted together showed the coast between the mouth of the Kennebunk River and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Pencilled lines and pinpricks marked the courses Joe had sailed along the Maine coast, the bearings he had taken.
She knew the telephone number of Margo’s canteen by heart. A troop train was coming through tonight, three battalions of a western brigade on their way to Halifax and England. Or possibly Sicily. The soldiers would want their free doughnuts and coffee, and Frankie had promised her sister she would go down and lend a hand — there were never enough volunteers for night duty. Sometimes the men were rowdy, especially if they had been on the train for days, but usually they were shy, and grateful for the coffee and doughnuts. They might have been heading off to work on the wheat harvest, or up north to the mines or the logging camps. Swagger had gone out of style, perhaps never had been the style in the towns and farmlands much of the Canadian army seemed to be from.
The phone rang and rang and she was about to hang up when one of the volunteers answered.
“No, you can’t, she’s busy,” the girl replied, when Frankie asked to speak to Margo. “Try later. We’re just getting a whole brigade in.”
“This is her sister. I need to talk to her. It’s important.”
There was a pause. “Oh, jeepers,” the girl said. “Not bad news, is it? Not about Johnny?”
“No. Can I speak to her, please?”
“Hang on a sec.”
While she waited she rummaged in a desk drawer and found a pack of her father’s cigarettes. She shook one out and lit it. Everyone smoked now: it was the signature of the war.
What she needed was a man her own age, someone to take her to the Normandie Roof for supper and dancing, and Ruby Foo’s afterwards for jazz and Brandy Alexanders and scrambled eggs. Scanning casualty lists for names she recognized was no fun. There weren’t many Montreal boys in Sicily but there were some. She needed a man present and available, not four thousand miles away fighting Germans.
“Frankie, what’s wrong?” Margo sounded tense.
“Mike’s home.”
“What? No. He can’t be, he’s in North Africa.”
“He came over in a bomber.”
“Does he have news about Johnny? Was he in England? Have they sent him with news about Johnny?”
“What?”
“Frankie, is this some trick to get me home?”
“No, no, he doesn’t know anything about Johnny. He’s just come home, that’s all.” Frankie could hear her sister breathing.
“If there ever is bad news, you tell me right away,” Margo said urgently. “Don’t ever wait. Tell me right away, promise?”
“Sure.”
Another pause. She listened to Margo exhale.
“I put Maddie down at six,” Frankie said. “Hasn’t been a peep.”
“Oh, Frankie, I’m shaking. Maybe the war’s almost over, maybe Johnny will be coming home soon. I’ll find a cab and come right way.”
~
Margo had awakened Maddie and brought her downstairs, and Mike held the sleepy little girl on his lap while he told them about sailing from Sicily to Portsmouth with hundreds of wounded soldiers, on a ship that had once carried cargoes of frozen meat from Argentina to France.
“Orders came in and I had to leave so fast, most of my kit’s still in Catania. I’ve got shaving gear and an extra shirt, that’s about all.”
Frankie glanced at her sister. For all anyone knew, Johnny’s regiment, the 22ième — the Van Doos — was in Sicily and Johnny might already be wounded or dead, might have been for days. Sometimes it took that long to find out. She’d heard of people getting the telegram weeks later.
“Why’d they send you back to England?” their father demanded.
Mike was touching Maddie’s hair, his fingers gentle but quick and nervous. His khaki uniform was shiny at the knees and frayed at the cuffs. Frankie didn’t recognize most of his ribbons. The wings on his chest signified that, desk job or not, he would always be a pilot.
Frankie now wondered if there was something wrong with him after all. His dark, latigo-leather skin reminded her of the men who had come to the kitchen door before the war, asking for handouts, odd jobs. Exhaustion was built into his every word and gesture; he seemed tired the way very fat people were fat. It had accumulated steadily and was a part of him.
He kissed the top of Maddie’s head and Margo reached for her. He gave her up, then turned to their father. “Who knows? On staff you get shifted around.”
“Did you hear anything about the Van Doos?” Margo said. “They’re still building up in England, aren’t they?”
“What are you supposed to be doing in Ottawa?” their father said.
“Haven’t the faintest.”
“When do you report?”
“Tomorrow afternoon will be soon enough.”
“I’ll drive you up.”
“I can take the train, Dad.”
“No. I’ll drive you.”
Their mother took sleepy Maddie from Margo. “Let’s go upstairs, Joe. Let the children talk.”
Their father stood up slowly and gazed at Mike. “You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“I was sick and tired of North Africa,” Mike said. “I was getting sick and tired of Sicily. Otherwise I’m fine.”
“Good,” said their father.
~
After their parents went upstairs the three of them shifted to the living room. Margo switched on the radio, keeping the volume low. Jazz was playing from a ballroom near an army base in Manitoba. The CBC news would come on in a few minutes. Mike offered them English cigarettes, Senior Service. Frankie preferred her Camels but she took one. She crossed the room and switched on a couple of lamps, then kicked off her shoes and curled up in their father’s armchair. The yellow damask silk had stripes in alternating textures, satiny and smooth. Layers of Persian carpets in maroons and golds and purples gave the living room a dark, intense glamour. “Daddy ought to have been a Turk,” Margo had said once. “He ought to have a harem. Instead he’s got us.”
Mike stood with his back to the fireplace; it hadn’t been lit in months. Margo sat on the sofa, legs tucked beneath her. “I think we could all use a drink,” she said. “How about manhattans?”
“Most definitely,” said Frankie. “Do we have cherries?”
“Of course,” Margo said. “Mike?”
They usually had cocktails in Margo’s room before dinner while the maid gave Maddie her bath. Occasionally their mother joined them. Margo kept bottles of black market Scotch, vermouth, and rye on the floor of her closet beside her shoes. Ice, mixes, and lemons were in the kitchen.
“Glass of ginger ale for me,” Mike said.
Margo cocked an eyebrow. “Surely you jest.”
“I’m pretty tired.”
“Comme tu veut, mon capitaine.” Margo left the room in her stocking feet. Frankie heard her going lightly up the stairs. Mike walked over to the sofa and sat down.
It was strange that no one in her office had noticed her brother’s name on a passenger list. They always had a cable manifest from Prestwick listing transatlantic passengers, because one of her duties was fixing up VIPs with connecting flights to Washington or New York or wherever they were going.
He had pulled off his brown shoes and now swung his feet up and lay back on the cushions. Jazz blew softly from the radio. She could hear Margo come downstairs and go into the kitchen to fix their drinks.
“Daddy’s building a sailboat for you,” Frankie said.
“Oh Christ.” He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were closed. There were veins like worms at his temple.
“It won’t be finished until after the war.” She could hear Margo cracking ice into glasses. “So how come they flew you home? Are you a Very Important Person?”
He lay on the chintz sofa like someone who’d had all the war beaten out of him. She thought of their uncle coming back from his war, throwing himself into the Lachine Canal, if that wasn’t just a story. It sounded more like something their father might have done — he who’d always been capable of actions mysterious, self-destructive, and passionate.
Margo came in with drinks on a tray. Frankie took hers and immediately plucked out the bright red cherry and ate it. Cherries soaked in rye and vermouth were a food she could live on, though a girl she knew who nursed at the army hospital in Lachine had pointed out that cocktail cherries were exactly the colour of fresh blood.
Mike sat up and took one sip of his ginger ale, then put the glass down on the floor and started pulling off his blue necktie and unbuttoning his khaki shirt. Frankie watched, fascinated, as he pulled the shirttail out of his pants. He undid the last buttons and turned to face his sisters, pulling the shirt open and exposing his chest. In the soft glow of silk lampshades Frankie could see four or five raised scars on his chest and abdomen, small thick stitchings, pale against his dark skin. Each approximately the size and shape of a cigarette.
“Oh, Mike,” Margo said.
Would everyone who came home come with wounds? Why must he show Margo his scars? She’d only be imagining her husband’s body torn and punctured.
“Feel this,” Mike said, touching one of the scars. “Healed up pretty good. I was pretty sore but the swelling’s gone down.”
“But you were wounded last year,” Margo said. “There’s nothing wrong with you now.”
“I’ve had trouble breathing. It gets clogged up for a while, then clears. They thought it was asthma. I finally saw a Canadian army doc in Sicily. He did X-rays and saw something in my chest, a piece of shrapnel. That’s when they sent me back to England. Feel,” he said. “They don’t really feel so bad.”
Margo stood with her drink and cigarette in one hand, her other hand cupping her elbow. She didn’t move. The CBC news had started but they weren’t listening. Frankie put down her drink, got up and walked over to the sofa, and knelt on the floor. Her brother took her fingers and guided them. She touched a rippled scar and the dark skin underneath, hard and firm.
“I was boarded in London. The air force docs said, get up to Scotland and hitch the first ride home you can. I hung around Prestwick three days before there was room.”
Margo knelt beside Frankie, and he took Margo’s fingers and guided her. “My lungs are infected. I read my file on the plane. They think I’m going to die.”
Margo said, “That’s crazy.”
“You can read the file if you want, Margo.”
“Air force doctors are quacks. Daddy’ll get you a real doctor.” Margo jabbed her cigarette between her lips and started buttoning up their brother’s shirt. “If you’re sick, Daddy can get you into a real hospital. You’re tired, that’s all. You’re home now. We’ll take good care of you.”
Mike reached out and took the cigarette from Margo’s mouth. Frankie could see the cork tip reddened from her sister’s lipstick. Mike took a puff. “Maybe you’re right,” he told them. “I feel pretty good right now.”
WESTMOUNT, AUGUST 1943
Displaced Person, Part II
Margo O’B. Taschereau
10 Skye Avenue
Westmount, P.Q.
15th August
Dear Jean,
Still no word from you, will you please drop a line, we’re all terribly worried.
Are you in Sicily? We think you must be.
Mike is home, and very ill. He flew across from Scotland and walked in the door the night before last. Daddy is having him seen by Wilder Penfield. He was never properly treated after being wounded last year.
As I wrote in my last, Madeleine and I are very happy here at No. 10. It suits us. But things are a bit hectic here now . . . Daddy’s arranging for Mike to be removed from the air force hospital and sent to the Royal Vic . . .
I know you wanted us to keep up the Northcliffe flat but it was just too bleak there, Jean, you really wouldn’t have wanted me to stay. We couldn’t get anyone to clean the place and N.D.G. is not my cup of tea. Never was, never will be. After the war we’ll find something much nicer. Mother and Frankie are such a help with Maddie. At this very moment Frankie is giving her a bath, I hear her splashing. She’s a lucky little girl to have her aunt and grandparents taking care of her while her papa is overseas. This morning at breakfast Daddy was feeding her scrambled eggs off his plate. Very sweet! I only wish you could have seen it.
I hope you’re safe wherever you are, dearest.
Please, say a prayer for Mike . . .
The things you put in your letters . . .
I understand how hard it is for you to be separated from the people you love.
You’re a passionate man.
When this is over and we’re together once more I’ll be able to show you that I love you.
All you expect of me, all you want — I’ll try to be all those things but I don’t know if I am able. If I fail your expectations, what will you do then? In some ways my life is easier now that you are so far away. Wartime. A perfectly good excuse not to bother each other.
Our girl is good and sweet. She is in love with balls, any sort — balloons, tennis balls, golf balls, baseballs, rubber bouncing balls. She saw the globe in Daddy’s study and reached out shouting ba, ba, ba.
Listen Jean I’m cold without you. Whatever it is in you that throws me out of whack, I need that now. The days are the days are the days.
Mike is awfully thin and brown as a negro. Are you so thin? Oh Jean sometimes I want to scream at this letter paper, or lick it, chew it. I’d like to destroy my own weakness. I want to snap the pen in half and throw it out the window.
Will we ever travel? I want to see Rome. France. I want to see Paris with my husband, who was an officer in the War.
I hope the doctors can help Mike. Frankie read his charts, he had malaria.
You were always complaining that I was not affectionate enough, that you were made to feel unsure of my love, that my feelings for you were small and inaccessible. And I remember you saying any number of times that I did not understand myself.
As if you did, Jean.
It made me angry to hear you say those things and I was afraid you could be right. But now I know I must have you in a life of trouble. And lately I feel inside a sense of luck about everything, and an openness, Johnny, that wasn’t there before.
Before you went away I felt this way only once or twice, when you were inside me. I tried to tell you but you weren’t prepared to listen because you were a man going off to the war. Now it’s with me almost all the time, this feeling, the very opposite of foreboding. I don’t know where it comes from, Johnny. Joy. All the things the nuns said about you, most of the warnings were true, but I still don’t care. I know now that you are going to survive and come home. I have seen in dreams, don’t laugh, you and me and Maddie together. I’ll be everything for you and we’ll make more babies won’t we. When the war is over and you’ve come home we’ll go away for a good long time. We’ll go down to Maine, or up north. I’ll want you to tell me everything you have seen and felt. And then we’ll leave the war behind us and walk into the rest of our lives.
The O'Briens Page 31