Angel Sister

by Ann Gabhart

  Mrs. McElroy laughed louder and smacked Victor’s shoulder with the flat of her hand. “Your little woman’s face is about to catch fire. You two are sure you’re married now, aren’t you?”

  Victor smiled back at the landlady, not minding her bawdiness a bit. “Yes, ma’am. Had the knot tied proper and all this very afternoon by a Reverend Barton.” He put his arm around Nadine’s shoulders and pulled her close against his side.

  Mrs. McElroy’s face changed, became wistful. “I remember being a bride. Seems a lifetime ago when I think about it. Ah, my Quinn McElroy was a fine figure of a man. He’s been gone these many years now. May the good Lord bless his soul.” She reached over and laid her hand on Nadine’s cheek and looked straight into her eyes. “Don’t you worry about a thing, dovey. When you’ve got love, everything happens like magic, and it ain’t a bit hard to see the two of you got love.”

  The landlady’s words proved true. Their wedding night turned out to be a magical time of love. Victor was as innocent in the art of lovemaking as Nadine, but that didn’t matter. The two of them shared poetry of the soul and body. Nadine remembered how the Bible said a man should cleave unto his wife and they would be one flesh. That’s how she felt lying beside Victor, skin touching skin, breath intermingling. No longer would it be Nadine alone or Victor alone. It would be Nadine and Victor together through whatever the days and years ahead held for them.

  Victor had no problem getting a job. The army was hiring all comers to get Camp Zachary Taylor built as fast as possible. The work was hard, the hours long, but though he came home sunburned and dirty, Victor got stronger every day and more at home in his skin away from Rosey Corner.

  He hadn’t enlisted. He planned to do that in August. That gave them two months. Two beautiful months. Two enchanted months. Two miraculous months. Nadine refused to think about August, about Victor being sent overseas to fight. The news of the war wasn’t good. German U-boats were sinking ships every day. The French army was near collapse. The German artillery was pounding the Allied soldiers. The Russian czar and his family were being held under guard in their palace as the government in that country was overthrown. Sometimes when Nadine read the newspapers, it seemed as if the whole world was falling apart.

  August was mere weeks away, and Victor was determined to step up to the recruiting table and answer Uncle Sam’s call. Yet in spite of this and the dire news of the war, Nadine rose up every morning with a song in her heart. A song Victor knew every word to.

  “You’re living in the moment, dovey,” Mrs. McElroy told her. “A fine way to live, it is. Fact is, I might go so far as to say it’s the only way. Not that I’ve always made a practice of it, but that don’t make it any less so. Even the good Lord told us that in the Bible. Live today. Pray today. Let the Lord take care of tomorrow, seeing as how he knows more about it than we do anyhow.”

  Mrs. McElroy had taken Nadine under her ample wing. The first two days after Victor started work, Nadine stayed cooped up in the attic room. She read the books she’d brought in the bottom of her case all the way through twice and devoured the newspaper Victor had bought for her. She’d written James Robert, Gertie, Victor’s mother, and considered writing her father but decided against it. It would do no good. She could almost see him stuffing it, unopened, in the drawer of the table by the door.

  By noon on the third day, the small attic room felt like an oven. Even the air coming in the narrow window that Nadine propped open felt as if it were blowing off a fire. She wandered downstairs, where Mrs. McElroy pronounced her a girl in need of something to do, shoved a broom into her hands, and pointed her toward the porch. Nadine took the broom gratefully. She had little experience with idleness and no comfort with the idea, since her father always preached that idle hands were an invitation to the devil.

  Maudie McElroy cut their rent in exchange for Nadine’s work, but she treated Nadine more like a favored daughter than hired help. She never asked her to stir the sheets in the boiling pot of water out behind the boardinghouse, but she did let her gather dry sheets off the clotheslines.

  “A little sunshine will do you good, dovey,” she said. “You’re altogether too pale. You wouldn’t be in the family way already, now would you?”

  Nadine blushed. “That’s not something you can know after only a week, is it?”

  Mrs. McElroy laughed as if Nadine had told the best joke ever. “Not all girls have a ring on their finger before they do some kissing and cuddling. While kissing and cuddling don’t exactly make babies, it can lead to that what does.”

  “Oh.” Nadine’s eyes opened wide as she realized what Mrs. McElroy meant. Mrs. McElroy was what the kinder ladies at church had always called earthy. Still, in spite of the way she could make Nadine blush, Nadine enjoyed the woman-to-woman way Mrs. McElroy talked to her.

  That was something she’d never had. No one back in Rosey Corner would dare say the sort of things Maudie McElroy said to Nadine. Not to the preacher’s daughter. But here in Louisville, Nadine wasn’t the preacher’s daughter. She was Nadine Merritt, Victor Merritt’s bride, and she refused to think about how fast the days were passing to August.

  She kept telling herself perhaps the war would be over before Victor enlisted, or if not by then, before he was trained and ready to be shipped overseas. She said a prayer every morning and every night that there would be peace. That the Central Powers would surrender. That the Allies would prevail now that America was throwing all her resources behind them and General Pershing was on his way across the ocean with the first American troops.

  But the battles went on. More ships were sunk. More men died. More artillery shells exploded. Neither side seemed to make any gains as they hunkered down in the trenches that snaked across miles of the French countryside.

  Yet even as men were dying across the ocean in this war, she and Victor were blissfully dancing to their song of love. She and Maudie were laughing in the kitchen as they peeled potatoes for the night meal. Old Mr. Benson, the hard-of-hearing boarder, kept on complaining about the summer heat as he sat on the porch and whiled away the hours fanning himself and swatting flies. The neighborhood kids still rolled hoops down the street in front of the boardinghouse. And the days passed even as Nadine tried to cling to them and make them linger.

  On the Fourth of July Victor had the day off. The city celebrated the day with a parade and a street fair. Early that morning Maudie helped Nadine pack a picnic lunch.

  “Grab all the fun you can, dovey,” she told Nadine. “Because nothing lasts forever.”

  “Love does,” Nadine countered.

  “You could be right. I still carry the love for my Quinn in my heart, but his time here with me didn’t last near long enough. Ah, the two of us should have gone on more picnics, but the good man was working and I had the little ones.”

  “You have children?” Nadine had never heard Maudie mention children.

  “Five boys. One died as a wee child. The others are off seeking their fortunes in the West. The youngest promises to send for me as soon as he strikes it rich, but I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen.” Maudie wrapped a ham sandwich in newspaper and put it in the basket. “Ah, but it would be nice to have some grandbabes climbing around on my lap.” She looked up at Nadine. “I’m sure your mother feels the same way.”

  “My mother died in childbirth when I was just a girl,” Nadine said as she stuck a couple of apples down beside the sandwiches. She kept her eyes on the basket and felt the familiar stab of sadness. “The baby died too. A little girl.”

  “Ah, some hurts never fade. The same with my little Leslie. Four years old he was. A pot of boiling wash water spilled on him. I would have laid down and died on the spot if it would have kept him breathing.” Maudie put her rough hand on Nadine’s shoulder. “But we can’t change the things that happen. We just have to keep going. And your sweet mother is surely smiling down on you because you’re so happy. She wouldn’t want to put a shadow on the day, and n
either do I. You two children go and have fun.”

  It was a beautiful day. The sun was bright and hot, but a nice breeze kept the flags rippling and the red, white, and blue banners flapping. Everywhere they walked they could hear a band playing “Over There.” Nadine and Victor found a spot in the shade near the courthouse to eat their lunch. Later, after the parade, they strolled hand in hand through the park. As evening was falling and they turned back toward the boardinghouse, Nadine couldn’t keep her mind from counting the days to August.

  “You don’t have to enlist in August,” she said. “You don’t have to sign up for the draft until you’re twenty-one. The war might be over by then.”

  He didn’t say anything or even look at her. Just kept walking along, but she felt him pulling away from her even though he still held her hand. Where a moment before the absence of words between them had been comfortable and right, now it felt tense and wrong.

  She tightened her grasp on his hand and said, “I’m scared for you to go.”

  He stopped and pulled her to the side of the walk. He stared down into her eyes. “I know. I’m scared to go, but I have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. The only thing I can do. Can you understand that?” He peered down into her eyes.

  “But we’re so happy here.”

  “You wouldn’t stay happy married to a coward who didn’t step up and answer the call of his country to fight for freedom. I have to go.”

  She stared up into his face, oblivious to the people passing them on the sidewalk. Finally she said, “I know. I love you, Victor Merritt.” It was the first time she had ever told him she loved him without his saying the words first.

  A smile broke out on his face, and he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her right there beside the sidewalk.

  A woman passing by them said, “Young people! No sense of decorum.”

  A man’s voice answered her. “Oh, let them be, Wilma. They’re in love. It’s a good day to be in love.”

  On August 1, Victor signed up for the army. He reported to Camp Zachary Taylor two weeks later. Nadine stayed at Maudie’s until he climbed aboard the train a month later to go east to ship out to France. Then they were one of the couples trying to cling to each moment before the war ripped them apart.

  “The war can’t last long now.” He stood very close to her, their legs touching in the midst of the swirling confusion of the train station.

  She was trying very hard not to let the tears welling up behind her eyes come out where he could see them. “Why is that?” she asked.

  “Those German Boches will take one look at this new doughboy and lay down their guns in surrender. It’ll be Victor the Victorious.”

  She smiled just as he’d intended. “You will be careful.”

  “As much as any soldier can be. But better I’ll have your love as a shield to protect me.” He stared into her eyes as if he could see to the depths of her soul. “Every night I will look up at the stars and tell the brightest one in the sky how much I love you. All you have to do is look up at the same star and you will hear those words in your heart.” He touched her chest above her heart.

  “The echo you hear in return will be my words coming back to you.” In spite of her best efforts, a few tears were spilling out.

  He kissed the tears off her cheeks. “Be brave, my beautiful Nadine, for nothing can keep me from returning to you. You are my love, my joy, my life.” He placed his hand on her belly. “And if we have made a baby, my hope. Now give me a smile to carry away with me.”

  “How can I smile when you’re leaving?”

  “I think bravely might be the best way.”

  “I’m not that brave.”

  “Oh my Nadine, how wrong you are. A braver heart I have never known, and I will carry that heart with me, but I must also have your smile.”

  The train whistle blew and panic swelled inside Nadine. How could he expect her to smile now? She clutched his sleeves and turned up her lips as best she could.

  “Sadly won’t do,” he said. “You want me to stand on my hands and wiggle my toes in the air?” He started to pull away from her.

  She grabbed him and laughed. “Don’t you dare.” It was a trick he often did in the morning to pull a sleepy smile from her. The train whistle blew again. “You don’t have time to take off your shoes, and with your shoes on, I couldn’t see whether your toes were wiggling or not. Besides I’d much rather have a kiss.”

  “Then a kiss it will be, my beautiful bride.”

  As their lips met, she wanted to crawl inside his skin and go with him. But she could not. He pulled free and touched her cheek one last time before he ran for the train door just as the conductor was pulling up the steps. She ran alongside the train to the end of the platform and then watched the train until it disappeared up the track. The tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks as she walked back to the boardinghouse.

  She thought about staying in Louisville. Maudie said she could stay in the attic room, but then three days after Victor left, Nadine got her one and only letter from her father. Come home. Louisville is a wicked town. That was all he wrote, but Nadine read more into the words because she wanted to.

  She wouldn’t go home. She couldn’t live in the same house with Carla, but she would go back to Rosey Corner. A person needed family even when that family wasn’t always easy to love.

  19

  ______

  As the days passed and her mother didn’t come home, worry hung in dark clouds over Kate. Not just about Grandfather Reece, but about Lorena as well. Every time there was a knock on the front door, Kate’s heart jumped up in her throat and she froze wherever she was until she found out it wasn’t Ella Baxter come to take Lorena away.

  Kate simply could not fathom why anybody could think Ella Baxter would make a better mother than Kate’s own mother. Anybody with any sense knew that wasn’t true. Why, if a little kid got close to Mrs. Baxter with sticky hands at a church dinner, she nearly went into hysterics. Then there was that time last summer when Paul Whitton threw a caterpillar at some girl out in the churchyard and hit Mrs. Baxter instead. The woman had screamed like a banshee, grabbed Mr. Arthur’s cane, and started whacking Paul. Almost broke his arm before Grandfather Reece got the cane away from her. Paul wasn’t but ten, but Mrs. Baxter spoke up at the next business meeting and wanted to vote him and his whole family out of the church. All over a worm.

  The woman didn’t like dirt. She didn’t like bugs, and she didn’t like kids. Kate couldn’t imagine what had made her decide she wanted Lorena. If they were going to pick a mother simply because a woman hadn’t been blessed with a child of her own, Aunt Gertie would make a better mother than Ella. Ten times over. While Aunt Gertie might be a little set in her ways and prone to headaches, at least she liked kids. But the intention of the people of Rosey Corner had been plain enough at the church on Sunday. Grandfather Reece’s stroke had delayed that, but Kate wasn’t sure it had changed anything.

  In fact the stroke made it that much harder to change. Kate had stood up ready to fight for Lorena in the church, and Aunt Hattie had stood up to fight beside her, and look what had happened. Everybody said it was Aunt Hattie’s fault that Grandfather Reece had a stroke, but Kate had been the first to speak up against him. She knew who was really to blame.

  Daddy said neither one of them was to blame. That sometimes strokes just happened, but everybody knew they happened faster when people got upset. Else why would people keep telling each other not to have a stroke when something was going wrong? And things had been going wrong.

  Sometimes the unworthy thought sneaked into Kate’s head that Grandfather Reece had the stroke because he was going against the Lord’s own plan for Lorena. The Lord had picked Kate to find Lorena on the church steps, not her grandfather. And then Kate would practically melt with shame for even considering the thought that the Lord might look upon her with more favor than he did on Grandfather Reece after a
ll the faithful years her grandfather had served the Lord. If anybody knew what the Lord wanted, it would be Grandfather Reece and not Kate.

  By some kind of miracle, her grandfather hadn’t condemned her for causing his stroke. Instead he had taken her hand and smiled at her when she had told him how sorry she was. At least he’d smiled as best he could. He wasn’t happy. Nobody could be happy lying there so helpless with no way to know if he’d ever get better.

  The doctor didn’t even know that. He said Grandfather Reece’s condition might improve, but then he pulled Mama aside to warn that a second stroke could be even worse and that they needed to keep Grandfather Reece from getting upset again.

  Kate didn’t know how the doctor expected them to ever do that. Grandfather Reece got upset each time he opened his mouth and the words didn’t come out right. He couldn’t get out of the bed and walk. He couldn’t even take a drink without half the water spilling out the wrong side of his mouth onto the bedcovers.

  Rosey Corner Baptist Church was praying for him. So was the Christian Church. They held a special joint prayer service the Sunday night after he had the stroke, but Grandfather Reece didn’t sit up and start talking so people could understand. The deacons told Kate’s mother not to lose faith. The miracle would surely come in the Lord’s own time. That’s what Grandfather Reece had always told them when they prayed for something that didn’t come right away, whether it was for rain or healing.

  The Lord’s own time. Meanwhile they didn’t have any choice but to keep doing the best they could to take care of him. Miss Carla wasn’t any help. She was still having sinking spells and telling anybody who would listen that she wasn’t well enough to stand up under the strain of caring for her husband. Every day Kate’s mother looked as if she was having a harder time standing up under the strain herself.

  On Wednesday when Kate went over to see if there was anything her mother needed from home, she grabbed Kate with a look that verged on frantic and jerked her into the sickroom. “You can sit with your grandfather for a little while,” she said.