“I—I can’t. I keep thinking… Well, what if he did love me? What if his last words were of adoration, and longing, and…”
Or, what if he knew, had guessed from her veiled letters that she hadn’t loved him back? “I can’t bear that, Caroline. I already stare at the rafters every night and ask what kind of woman hopes the war won’t end? What kind of woman hopes with everything inside her that her fiancé doesn’t come home?”
The kind of woman who deserved Caroline’s expression.
“See?” She shook her head. “If he loved me… Oh, Caroline, that makes me even more of a scarlet woman, don’t you see it?”
“A scarlet woman to whom?”
“To…myself.” Esther’s voice shook and she lowered it, looked away. “Myself.”
Caroline stood there, saying nothing.
The music changed, slowed, and the band leader added romance with the bittersweet crooning of “At Last.”
At last, my love has come along…
From the open window the fragrance of spring, a lilac heavy with bud, perfumed the night.
The men at the café table rose.
“I need to get to work.”
“Stay for one song, Es.”
“Not this one.” She got up, backing away just as the two men approached. One, she recognized as having spent a month in the ward. He seemed to be walking well, his fractured leg healing.
I believe he may have shattered all the bones in his leg, including the thigh bone or femur and both bones below the knee, the fibula and tibia.
What if Linus didn’t die, but came home without a leg? Or a face like Charlie’s? Could she love him then, if she didn’t love him now, her memories of him still whole?
She imagined him, lying in the darkness, the medic, Peter, beside him, packing his wounds, shivering. At least he hadn’t been alone.
“Would you like to dance?” the soldier she’d seen in the ward asked. Esther shook her head, hating the disappointment on his face.
“I have to get to work.”
That tempered his expression, and she cast a look at the girls around the punch table. The GI followed her gaze—and her hint.
On the floor, Caroline danced well in the arms of her partner, her smile fixed, her feet light. In truth, Esther missed dancing.
She wrapped her arms around her waist, smiling into the music, the memory of the USO club, the American flag turning the club patriotic, the room packed with the servicemen with chili-bowl haircuts, their youthful arrogance creating a wartime magic, the air rich with summer recklessness.
Can I have this dance, ma’am? In her memory, Linus swaggered up, leaned against the pole beside her.
Me?
“No, the hairy ape behind you. Of course you.”
Yet, the slightest hue of hesitancy in his voice, even the texture of fear in his eyes caught her, more than this attempt to be suave. Snappy in his pressed green-gray army jacket, the knotted tie, the shiny gold buttons—even his shoes gleamed. Yes. She let the soldier cajole her to the floor, let herself wrap her arms around his shoulders, let herself ease into his arms.
“You know how to dance,” she said with a smile as she caught his lead.
“Years of lessons.” Linus moved her out into a lindy circle, back in, back out, then into a closed jitterbug hold. “My mother told me she didn’t want me to embarrass her at the community socials.”
“Your mother seems like a smart woman.”
“That or just calculated.” He smiled, twirled her out, back in. She laughed, and even in her memory, the twinkle in his eyes charmed her stomach into a swirl.
She placed him a couple years younger than herself, although they all seemed too young. But he made her laugh with stories about basic training and the other yanks on his squad. And after the dance, walked her back to the Red Cross dormitory, properly, without a kiss.
The scoundrel.
He showed up every Friday and Saturday night for a month.
Kissed her on week three, and the night he got his orders, showed up in a borrowed, shiny 1942 Ford Coupe and whisked her away to the Flamingo Ballroom.
The band played “At Last,” a song she had yet to dislodge from her head.
At last, my love has come along. My lonely days are over. And life is like a song…
The fact she’d received her own orders from the Red Cross that afternoon contrived their undoing.
Are you sure?
I don’t know—
“Can I have this dance?” The question jerked her from the past. Another soldier stood before her, his hand extended. She stared at it, the lines of his palm, then back up to his face. He seemed a gentleman.
Didn’t they all.
The band hooted out “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and she froze.
Linus had leaned close, sung the words into her ear during this song.
You leave the Pennsylvania station ’bout a quarter to four…
“No—no, I’m sorry. No.” She brushed past the poor man, beelined for her coat.
Caroline met her there. “Where are you going?”
“I think—” She shook her head, picked up her coat. “I need to get to the hospital. Check on Charlie.”
“Charlie’s fine. Stay and dance. I saw that GI ask—”
“I can’t dance!” She rounded on Caroline, cut her voice low, affixed a smile. “I can’t dance. What if the Hahns found out?”
“How?”
Esther scanned the room, the dancers swinging to the beat. Her suitors had found other partners. Perhaps no one would care—after all, they were celebrating, right? She began to unbutton her jacket, but then she caught Rosemary, now standing on the sidelines, watching her from across the room.
Esther had always thought Rosemary had such dark, poignant eyes. Now, they seemed to bear something else, something Esther couldn’t quite name.
“I can’t stay.”
But Caroline wrapped her fingers around her wrist. “The longer you wait to tell the Hahns the truth, the tighter the noose around your neck. Linus is gone, and you’re free to dance.”
Esther stared at her, the too-red lipstick, her sunken, painted eyes. “I’ll never be free, Caroline. Not really.”
She hugged her friend then stepped out into the night.
A thumbnail moon hung above, the Milky Way blurry with the cover of clouds. She shoved her hands into her pockets, moving out of the nook of the dance hall.
Out of Linus’s disastrous embrace.
The hospital always seemed most despairing in the last hours of the day, when visitors had returned to the living and only the skeleton staff remained to endure the long vigil of the night. She hung her coat in her locker and slipped the deck of cards from the top shelf. If Mrs. Hahn caught her with a deck at home…
Well, even her own mother would cringe at the way Esther knew how to shuffle and deal out a deck of cards. But she’d learned for the troops. For Charlie.
Esther closed her locker, checked her watch. An hour until her shift started. She had time for a quick game with Charlie.
They’d moved him to a semi-private room two days ago, needing the beds in the surgical unit. Her shoes clipped down the hallway, and she ducked her head as she passed the nurses’ station.
Vacant. She tried not to let her mind wander to where the night nurse might be. With the advent of V-E day, people had begun to forget their priorities.
Yesterday she’d found a group of nurses in the break room, pining over two of the soldiers in the convalescent ward.
Someone had opened the curtains in Charlie’s room, let the wan light of the moon wax the floor, turn the metal bed to ice. Charlie lay, his head still bandaged, his leg still in traction. He’d begun to breathe on his own, but his gaunt form now turned him into a teenager. In the shadows his scars seemed less brutal, and she could make out the features that had once made him handsome. She had the crazy urge to run her thumb down his cheek. He needed a shave—another neglected duty from today.
Pulling up a stool, she fitted a new blade into the razor and set it on a towel on the table. Then she dipped her brush in the water and worked the soap in the shaving mug into a lather. She wet his face then coated it.
“I promise not to nick you,” she said quietly. Charlie, of course, didn’t move. She shaved one cheek, cleaned the blade, then shaved the other cheek.
“You know, all the girls have been asking about you. They miss your crazy jokes.” She lifted his chin, ran the blade up his neck, avoiding his scars.
She washed the blade. “I went to a dance tonight. But I didn’t dance.” She finished up along his jaw.
“Why? Because I shouldn’t—you know that. I mean, Linus hasn’t even been declared dead. At least not by the army. And—well, what if he’s not even dead? Oh, I don’t know.”
She doused the razor again. “No, I don’t think I’m overreacting. Listen, I’ve already brought enough shame to his family.” She picked up the towel, wiped his neck. “Of course, it was his fault too. But it doesn’t exactly feel that way.” She leaned back. “Oh, Charlie, see, this is why you’re such a lady killer.”
She took the razor and bowl to the sink, dumped out the water, rinsed the razor, emptied the blade into the trash. “And no, Mr. Nosy, I haven’t told them. I mean, I don’t know anything yet, so it would just hurt them.”
Returning to the bench, she closed the shaving kit. “I don’t know what I’ll do. Caroline suggested the management program. But, well, that would mean more studying, and I’m already away from Sadie too much.”
She pulled out the pack of cards, unwrapped the rubber band. “Best two out of three?” She shuffled then dealt out his hand. Hers fanned out to a flush of hearts, a pair of tens, with the jack of clubs odd man out. “You open.”
She picked up his hand. Two useless flushes with a ten of diamonds. She discarded it. “I don’t know, Charlie, your hand’s a mess.”
She drew a queen and tucked it next to the jack, discarding a four of clubs. “You know, I wrote to that soldier, Peter. He was with Linus when he died. He’s a medic. I think he must be home on leave, although he’s stationed at Fort McCoy.”
She picked up the four, added it to his flush of clubs, and discarded a two of hearts.
“I keep thinking, he didn’t mention any injuries, but maybe he’s up there in the VA hospital, just like you.”
She added the two of hearts to her hand, moved the ten of clubs to join the jack and queen, and discarded the ten of hearts.
“I mean, what if he doesn’t have family either? What if he’s—well, not as handsome as you, of course, but maybe…” I confess, I try to revisit that night as rarely as possible. “Well, it’s difficult. You know.” She retrieved his hand, rearranged it. “I just keep thinking about what you said on the roof, about being alone, and of course, you’re not, but what if he feels the same way?”
She picked up the ten, added it to his hand. “Oh my goodness, you have a straight flush here. I’m in trouble.” She discarded his king of hearts.
She stared out the window to where the clouds moved over the cutout moon.
“I was thinking I might write him back. See if he needed anything. Maybe a care package. We have those extras in the Red Cross closet.”
She picked up her hand. Oops. “I’m honestly not trying to win here, but you’re going to have to learn to be more cagey.” She picked up the king and placed it between her ace and queen. “Gin. Better luck next time.”
She gathered up the cards. “I’m just getting better, you have to admit it.” She sighed, shuffling. “Okay, fine. I’ll write him one more letter, and just ask him straight out, so we know for sure—did he watch Linus die?”
“Linus died? Linus is dead?”
The voice, the shrill of it, rocked Esther off the chair. She turned.
Rosemary, still dressed in her red siren’s dress, her hair tied up in a snood, wearing a flower at her lapel, stood in the doorway. Her painted lips trembled. “Is he… When? When did you find out?”
“Rosemary, what are you doing here?”
“I followed you from the dance. I knew there was something wrong. You…” She advanced into the room, her dark eyes lit. “You tramp. You took him and now he’s gone. And he’s never coming back—and…” She closed her eyes, shook her head.
“Rosemary… Listen, I don’t know what’s going on—”
“Sadie should have been my child!”
Oh.
“I—oh, I’m so sorry—”
“Just stay away from me, just… You came here, and you destroyed everything. He was supposed to come home to me when he was on furlough before he shipped out. But he didn’t come home. He stayed in Atlantic City. With you. And now—”
“He’s not dead!”
Esther didn’t know exactly from where the words issued—or why—but they spat out of her, a wave of desperation rather than assurance. “He’s—I don’t know if he’s dead, okay? I got a letter from this soldier who said he…. Well, he thought he died, but we’ve never received a telegram, okay? Nothing. Not even an MIA. So, I don’t know.”
Rosemary stared at her, unblinking, as if trying to comprehend her words.
“I–I’ll find out, okay? Just don’t say…anything. Please. I don’t know, and I don’t want anyone to be upset. To jump to conclusions. You can understand that, right? Think of the judge and Mrs. Hahn. Think of their grief if it isn’t true.”
Rosemary continued to stare at her, or through her, her eyes fixed.
“I promise you, I never meant to hurt anyone.”
That shook the woman back to herself, and for a second: the words seemed to find a soft place, because her breathing hiccupped, as she held her hand to her mouth. Then she closed her eyes…
Took a breath.
Opened them.
“You might not have, but you did. And if Linus is dead—” Her breath caught, her hand behind it. But her jaw tightened, her voice lethally quiet. “I promise to make you pay for what you stole from me.”
CHAPTER 4
June 1945
Ripon, Wisconsin
Dear Miss Lange,
It was with great horror that I read of your confusion over your friend’s passing. I cannot believe the gross neglect of the United States military, and I deeply apologize for the crudeness of the information I conveyed. I know it could only have caused deeper pain as your confusion increased.
As to a direct answer to your question. No. I did not see your friend Linus pass from this life to the next. I do know that by the time more medics arrived, he’d lapsed into a non-communicative state, and his pulse had turned thready and weak. His constitution began to fail, and in my estimation as a doctor I cannot see how he survived long enough to reach an aid station.
Yet, the silence as to his fate, from all parties including himself, makes me question whether the medics even reached their field destination. You must remember, we were in the middle of a siege, the artillery and mortar stirring a fog so thick that a man could barely see his weapon, let alone where to point it. It is possible the medics who carried him fell, alongside Linus.
I am so sorry. I truly understand the biting ache of not knowing the fate of the ones you love. I myself left family in a precarious situation when I went to war, and I pray for them daily. I can only hope that my dedication to my task has made them proud, and that in the end, it will benefit them. I miss my family greatly, and without information as to their health, the wound festers.
My father is a doctor, much beloved in our city. I grew up watching him tend the wounds of Iowa farmers, sturdy stock that they are. I even assisted him as he turned to veterinary medicine one day and delivered a breeched calf. I sat in the straw, holding the birth-slick animal as it struggled in my arms, and a piece of light burned in me, so fresh, so vivid I could taste the heat in
my mouth. I knew then I would be a healer, someone who comforts. Alas, I barely passed my exams before the government pressed me to war.
Enough of those brutal memories. You asked me if you could contact my family. Thank you for your kind offer, but I fear they have moved, the war demanding that they find relatives that might harbor them. I cling to a fragile hope they are safely moored on my uncle’s farm just south of the border, in Iowa. You may write to my cousin, Dorothy Hess, there, and ask her, perhaps. Unfortunately, I don’t have their address, having left it in my supplies on the battlefield. I dream, however, of returning home, to my mother’s kitchen, savory with the scent of onions and fried cabbage. She makes a kuchen that could call me from distant lands.
I had forgotten how beautiful Wisconsin is, the rolling hills, like waves upon the horizon falling over sandstone ravines. I stood in a field of peas today, agog with the color of oaks and cedar against a cerulean sky. Black Angus lounged like boulders, and I wished, for a moment, the world might stop and breathe in the peace of the unblemished morning. The other man inside of me could have been a farmer.
Do you live on a farm, perhaps? I am sadly ignorant of the cities in Wisconsin. Is Roosevelt large?
Finally, you asked about my health. I am uninjured, in the basic sense of the word. Of course, can one endure the loss of comrades without bearing wounds? And I fear I will never again lay my head on my pillow without hearing the thunder of shelling or the brutal staccato of machine gun fire. Perhaps, indeed, I shouldn’t.
I will admit that your letter surprised me. And selfishly, I hope you will write again. But more, I pray that your friend Linus returns safely home to you, and that all of your grief will be for naught.
Regards,
Peter
“‘Peter never stopped running or looked behind him till he got home to the big fir tree. He was so tired that he flopped down upon the nice soft sand on the floor of the rabbit-hole and shut his eyes.’”
Sadie placed her hand over the page before Esther could turn it. “I want to live in a rabbit hole, mama!”
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