by Julie Kibler
She pulled her hand away, but a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her. She and James were destined to be together—even if my actions had accelerated their plans.
“Starting a family soon?”
Nell pressed a palm to her abdomen, just below her ribs. Her belly swelled no more than mine now, and she seemed stunned, as though I’d guessed she was expecting, though it was only lucky fishing for information on my part. I didn’t press for details. “Congratulations. I’m thrilled for you, Nell. And … your mother?” I no longer felt entitled to use Cora’s first name casually.
“Momma’s okay. Got a position over in the new places, up the hill here in Cincy. They treat her fine, but it’s a long trip two times every day.” Though Nell’s voice was tinged with accusation, I was happy Cora hadn’t been entirely blacklisted from the only kind of work she’d known.
I knew Nell wouldn’t bring up that final name, the one she surely knew was the hardest for me to say—the one I was most curious about, however deep my affection and concern for his family. And after a painful silence, neither could I in good conscience. I remembered the conversation with his mother before I began to show. I remembered the unspoken warning from my father. I remembered my debt to Nell’s family.
“Well,” I said. “It’s wonderful to see you, Nell. I’m pleased you and your mother are doing well. And I’m sorry. For everything.” I turned away before she could see the tears that wet my eyes and threatened to overwhelm me.
But she surprised me. She caught my elbow as I began to step away, and I turned slowly back to face her. “Robert, he’s joining the army soon as he finishes up school in Frankfort. Maybe in just a year. They’ve got special programs to speed things up for enlistees.”
Every sinew stilled, in my hands, my spine, my face. I was thrilled he’d returned to school and could finish so soon, but this other? It was the last thing I’d expected. The news of war in Europe and rumors that we’d be in it soon had led to a peacetime draft, and now young men were joining up in record numbers, on standby and waiting to plunge into the fray. But I’d never pictured a life in the army for a young Negro man. What would it be like? What would he do? How would he be treated? If there was a war, would he live?
“He’s hoping to serve as a medic, but he’ll take what he can get—picky’s not allowed.”
I finally spit out words, all lies. “That’s … wonderful. I suspect he’ll be happy if he can start his medical training while he serves.” Nell’s chin tilted, showing her uncertainty. “And I suppose the girls will be lined up to see him off. Maybe even a special sweetheart to wait for him to come back home.” My words stung my throat. I couldn’t ask outright, but I had to know. Did he think of me still?
“I expect you’re right,” she said, and I’m sure she sensed my gasp, though I fought to keep it inaudible. She lowered her eyes, and now she turned to leave. The moment had grown too awkward for both of us. I watched her, though. Eventually, she paused at a greengrocer’s stall, pretending, I could tell, to inspect a bunch of broccoli before exchanging a coin for it. Her evasive response and her body language was clear. Robert had moved on—in more ways than one.
32
Dorrie, Present Day
I REFUSED TO believe Robert had forgotten her so soon. If he’d soldiered on as if he no longer cared, if he’d taken up with another girl, it was only to dull the pain of losing Miss Isabelle.
It wasn’t even lunchtime when we crossed into Cincinnati. We could have checked into our bed-and-breakfast early—after all, Miss Isabelle had paid for the night before. But she asked if I’d like her to show me some of the places she’d talked about along our journey. I hesitated, wondering, once more, whether this would make her feel better or worse. But she said she wanted to see how they’d changed in all the years she’d been gone. She pointed me this way and that with little hesitation. The streets of old Cincy were narrow and congested, the houses tall, skinny, and crowded together, many with only a few inches between if they didn’t share a wall.
We slowed in front of one. Miss Isabelle pondered it for a time. The last time she’d seen it, she said, years after she’d lived there with the Clinckes, the paint was peeling off the trim in strips and there’d been a stack of cinder blocks for a front stoop, the orginal bricks having disintegrated from neglect. Long before, when the neighborhood had started to turn, Rosemary Clincke had moved her family to a small house in the suburbs. The new house looked as though it had been shaped with a cookie cutter, then baked, Miss Isabelle said, with only the surface decoration setting it apart from the ones on either side. But it was safe and had a yard for the children.
Many of the houses in the Clinckes’ old neighborhood had been subdivided into apartments or cheap rooming houses, but they were gradually returning to loving hands, being restored as single-family homes. Now their old house had bright paint, neat trim, and flowers tucked into boxes hanging below the windows, like it had when Miss Isabelle lived there. She showed me a window on the top level. A modern fire escape ladder dangled nearby. “Mine for almost a year.”
We drove up and down hilly streets to a neighborhood between the newer suburbs and the older parts of Cincinnati and stopped before a red brick house with a peaked roof and a porch running halfway across the front. On the other half, metal awnings shaded two windows like green-and-white-striped eyelashes. A skinny drive led to a one-car garage in the back. The houses on this street, tended well over the years, must have looked much like they had more than fifty years earlier—though massive trees rose before and behind them. Miss Isabelle said they were Cape Cods.
“I thought Cape Cod was on the East Coast,” I said, letting the car idle because NO PARKING signs lined the street.
“It’s Cape Cod style.”
“And you lived in this one?”
“This isn’t just a tour of the architecture.”
Her reaction here was mixed. She looked sentimental, tender, as she studied it. But a note of frustration and bitterness tugged at her face, too, doing funny things to her cheeks and lips—and then mine, too. I’d been having too many of these unexpected urges to cry the last few days. I coughed. “So that was … after the Clinckes? Did you live here with another family?”
“Yes. Another family,” she said. “For five or six years before we moved out to Texas.”
“We?”
She didn’t elaborate then. Instead, she asked me to drive on so we could find some lunch. She pointed me toward a little restaurant—the Skyline Chili Parlor. At the counter, she suggested I order a Cincinnati four-way—a big plate of chili over spaghetti noodles, covered with cheddar and onions. Apparently, chili was more than just a Texas thing. It was a Greek thing, too. The chili was different—I kept tasting hints of cinnamon … or chocolate. And the funniest part? After I ordered that mess, Miss Isabelle chose a Coney—a plain dog on a bun, half the size of a regular one. She preferred Dixie Chili, she said, but that was on the Kentucky side of the river. Plus, she’d never sleep that night if she ate something spicy. I shoveled my four-way like an obedient child, then groaned in the car while she found her directions to our bed-and-breakfast.
Miss Isabelle was drooping by the time we entered the fancy secluded neighborhood back in Cincy proper. The owner apologized for charging us for the previous night, but policy was policy. Miss Isabelle graciously shrugged it off. (She would have been gracious to Mr. Night Manager, too, if he’d been gracious first.) The innkeeper offered us a complimentary night at the other end of our stay if nobody else had booked it, but, of course, we wouldn’t need it.
While I moved our luggage, I insisted Miss Isabelle relax in an odd little corner jutting off the edge of our room, where two easy chairs sat catty-corner.
The room held two double beds covered with puffy white comforters and pillows printed with blue drawings of old-timey ladies wearing long skirts and carrying umbrellas. After the generic hotel beds we’d slept in, they looked like heaven. I couldn’t wait to sink into one, but bed
time was hours away. We had things to take care of, places to be. First on my list, though, was convincing Miss Isabelle to rest awhile, even if I wouldn’t. The longer we’d been in town, the tenser she’d grown.
“Come sit over here.” I pointed to a low-backed chair in front of the antique vanity. “It’s been nearly a week since I touched that hair. We need to give her a face-lift before we go back out in public.”
I couldn’t give Miss Isabelle a shampoo and set, but I could certainly freshen up her curls with my curling iron and brush. Getting my fingers on her head and massaging her scalp and temples and the back of her neck might loosen muscles stretched so tight I could see them.
She moved, dazed, not bothering to speak. She sank into the chair. “I’m tired, Dorrie.”
“I know,” I said, brushing gently through tangles that had managed to make flimsy nests in her silver hair in spite of the old-fashioned silk case I’d stuffed her hotel pillow into each night on the road. “What’d you do with that slide, Miss Isabelle? Did you hang on to it?”
“I’m not sure why, but I did. I kept it in my old handkerchief, always tucked in the back of my dresser, no matter where I lived. It comforted me, as if I had a portrait I could study when I felt lonely for Robert and the baby.” She closed her eyes and settled into the cushioned chair while I worked. She nodded off. I watched in the mirror. Her lids twitched as her eyes moved back and forth beneath them. I only wondered what she was dreaming. It was easy enough now to guess whose faces she’d see.
33
Isabelle, 1940–1941
NELL’S NEWS MEANT my spirits sank even lower, but soon after I saw her, a girl I’d met in a lunch diner invited me to attend a public weekend dance with her. Dancing didn’t interest me. All that interested me was getting through each day, paying my room and board, and counting the minutes until I could forget my heartache during the few hours I slept deeply.
My new friend persisted. “Think of all the handsome guys that are sure to be there,” Charlotte said—not knowing it made me even less inclined to go. But she added quickly, “It’s mostly soldiers on their way to Fort Dix.” America’s first-ever peacetime draft meant men were leaving in hordes, with little advance warning. “The point is keeping their spirits up before they leave home,” Charlotte said, “or maybe so they can find some gals to write to. It’s just for fun—you wouldn’t want to get too attached.” She’d noted my disinterest in dating, though I’d never expressed the reasons for it. But the part about soldiers caught my ear. I knew I’d never see Robert at these dances. From what Nell had said, he was still safe at college in Frankfort—not to mention he was colored and wouldn’t be granted entrance to them. But I desperately hoped to learn something, anything, about how life would be for a Negro in the army.
With the naïve reasoning that going with Charlotte to the dances might be the way to hear such things, I threw myself into the frantic parade of young women who primped and preened and attempted to catch the attention of the freshly barbered conscriptees.
It was also a strange relief—when I listened to the bands, when I danced. The men didn’t care who I was or where I’d come from. They cared only that I was someone they could hold close and imagine thinking of them if they went overseas. Some offered scraps of paper listing their names and general delivery military addresses. I promised to write—along with the others they asked.
Some dreamy-eyed girls met their soul mates—after one evening. They were ready to march to the altar with young men they’d only seen cleaned up, dressed up, and on their best behavior. I thought they were fools.
Every now and then, a fellow became too attentive, asking me to dance too often, pressuring me for my address or a photo, hinting he’d enjoy care packages—or a little more than dancing that very evening. I’d laugh, promise to write while crossing my fingers behind my back, and insist I wasn’t interested in a long-distance relationship.
One night, a skinny guy in a plain flannel suit asked me to dance, once, twice, and later again after watching me from the refreshments table while I danced with others.
I figured it was time for the brush-off. But he surprised me. He admitted he wasn’t a soldier. He’d failed the physical because of a mild heart murmur. “Don’t tell anybody, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then why are you here?” I asked. “Most fellas are trying to line up as many girls as they can before they go off to Dix.”
He shrugged. “Oh, you’d be surprised how many aren’t soldiers. It’s as good a place as any to meet gals. The draft is twenty-one and over. You think all these guys are that old?”
He was a fake. Like me. I answered his shrug with my own. He wasn’t strictly playing by rules. Neither was I. “You’re right. It’s a free country. Who’s to say who’s allowed or not? You just took me by surprise.”
Max—that was his name—often surprised me over the next couple of weeks, showing up consistently, asking me for a decent but not overwhelming number of turns around the dance floor. We grew comfortable together. I looked forward to seeing him, not in the fluttery, rumble-in-my-stomach kind of way I’d looked forward to seeing Robert in the old days, but in the sense of recognizing a friend. Someone reliable. Someone to shoot the breeze with if Charlotte had a whirlwind of dance partners while my card was mostly empty.
He asked to escort me home each time, and finally, I agreed. But on the short walk to Mrs. Clincke’s, I felt a keen sense of betrayal toward Robert—though I hadn’t encouraged anything other than friendship with Max. Or so I’d told myself.
He reached for my hand, and I gazed at our clasped fingers. This was well beyond the scope of a standard brush-off now. I’d allowed him to court me without realizing it because I’d enjoyed our casual no-strings-attached friendship. “I’m sorry, Max. I’m in no shape to be with a fellow right now. You wouldn’t want me like this, I promise.” I looked at him, helpless, hoping my eyes conveyed genuine apology.
He dropped my hand gently and shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m not in any hurry. Remember? I’m not going anywhere.”
So there he was, a friend walking me home, but with something new implied: He was patient and would wait for me to be ready.
He began asking me out to weekend movie matinees; for walks, munching Busken’s pastries along the fountain esplanade; for rides up and down the Mount Adams Incline on the cable car because it was too cold to visit the zoo. I felt lucky. But worry still nudged my conscience when I caught him studying my profile. I knew he was falling for me. And I was empty. Max’s attention filled me in a small, if temporary, way.
“Someone must have hurt you real bad,” he’d say as we walked home in the progressively colder evenings. “You gonna keep that heart of yours closed up tight forever?” He asked gently, never pushing, and he seemed content with my shrugged response.
What should have been my first wedding anniversary passed in the midst of a record-breaking January snowstorm, with me bundled in bed to stay warm—and where my misery could go unnoticed. The next day Mr. Bartel and I struggled through icy drifts to wait on customers, but not a single one came. I went straight to bed again that night after telling Mrs. Clincke I wasn’t feeling well, then cried myself to sleep. I rose the next morning to face the cold, numb again.
Saturday afternoon, Max wouldn’t identify our excursion ahead of time. The snow wasn’t expected to melt for days, but people were beginning to emerge again. Life had to go on.
The January sun, though bright, did nothing to warm us as we hurried along the street after Max arrived. He tugged me up into one of the new trolley coaches that were slowly replacing the old double cable cars, then down again at a city park. He presented a sledding hill, crawling with adults and children alike, rosy-cheeked and enthusiastically climbing the slope and sliding to the bottom.
Max wrapped torn rags around my boots to keep my feet warmer and drier, then pulled me up the hill. We soared down on a rented sled. We likely appeared in love, like other young couples on
the hill. How could the crowd know my heart was as cold and still as the frozen snow we traveled? I was only physically present, attempting to match my facial expressions to Max’s while my mind drifted to another January day.
Eventually, Max pulled me over to a concession stand an entrepreneurial citizen had rigged and settled me on a bench with a cup of warm cocoa between my gloved fingers.
Silently, we watched the merrymakers. Toddlers fell in the snow and pulled themselves back up without complaint, drawing smiles from even my cold lips. Max studied my smiles, as if gauging my mood according to the degree of their arcs.
Finally, he took my gloved hands between his, rubbing vigorously, ostensibly to warm them—a rare physical contact he could initiate without my awkward rebuke.
He stopped, though, his hands still wrapped over my fingers, and I studied them together. Robert’s hands could completely encase mine. Max’s fingers, even in their bulkier men’s gloves, were hardly larger than mine. Robert’s hands could awe me with their power, make me shiver at their touch. Max’s instilled a simple sense of meeting halfway, stirring nothing in my heart beyond gratitude for our friendship. But for Max, I suspected, the time had come. Friendship no longer sufficed. When I saw how far he’d fallen—in his eyes, in his smile, even in the set of his shoulders—I knew it was unfair to string him along.
“I’ve been patient, Isabelle,” he began. I nodded miserably. “I’m a good man. I’d take the best care of you.”
I could only reply with silence. I knew what would come next. Our quasi-courtship was ages old in the context of our time—some couples we knew of had married overnight. The threat of war sped everything up, even for civilians. But I feared the tentative steps I’d taken back into life were about to be reversed and that I’d sink back into the misery from which I’d risen at least a few feet. I breathed the frigid air, the fragrance of muddy sled blades. The cold breath caught in my chest.