by Lyn Cote
Bette took her place beside the railroad tracks among the suited men and Curt drove away as quickly as he could. The migraine took possession of the right side of his forehead in a tourniquet of blinding light and pain. Bette’s forbearance and her agreeing to reconcile were further debts that were nearly impossible for him to swallow. I brought this on myself. I have no one else to blame. What he wouldn’t have given to see Bette look at him the way she used to. But the chances of that were slim, less than slim.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A month later just as the eleven o’clock radio news was about to start in the Lovelady townhouse where she stayed nights during the work week, Bette stood phone in hand, unable to speak. She couldn’t believe the words she’d just heard. Suddenly hollow, she clung to the receiver and stared down at her black pumps.
“Bette, did you hear me?” her mother asked.
“Curt tried to commit suicide?” Bette repeated the impossible words.
“Yes, he left Linda with your housekeeper and went to his family’s garage, supposedly looking for some tool. His mother left him there while she went into town, but she forgot something and came back. She found him.”
Mrs. Sinclair had always been so sweet. How awful for her. The earth seemed to shift under Bette’s feet. She leaned back against the staircase for support. “How?”
“He shot himself in the chest with his service revolver.” Bette tried to blot out the picture this brought to mind. “But it didn’t kill him outright,” her mother continued. “He might die at any moment. He’s asking for you. You must come.”
Bette wanted to argue with her mother, wanted to say anything to keep from going home. “Isn’t there any hope that he’ll pull through,” she began. She couldn’t put it all together. She and Curt had been having a rough time. She’d expected that. She hadn’t expected this.
“No. He’s asking for you. You must hurry.”
Bette knew this was only right, but she wished she could do anything to make this not real. “How is Linda?”
“She’s fine. Curt’s parents are just holding her and holding her. All this has hit them . . . very hard.”
Bette’s heart clenched, thinking of what they were suffering. Curt was their only son. “Tell them I’m coming. I’ll borrow a friend’s car.”
“I will. I love you, Bette. I know you will do what is right.”
Bette did not like the last sentence. She wanted to run out of this house—run far away and never come back.
It was nearly midnight when Bette walked into the hospital. The familiar hospital, where years before her brother Rory had had his right arm set and where Linda Leigh had recently been born, was dim and quiet in the night with that peculiar hospital odor hanging over all. Bette stopped at the nurse’s station and in murmurs was directed to Curt’s room. When she stepped inside, she found the small, silent room filled with people—her parents, Curt’s parents and sister, and Dr. Benning. Linda Leigh—innocently untouched by what was happening around her—slept in her Grandmother Sinclair’s arms. She glimpsed Curt between the people grouped around his bed.
Her mother rose and came to Bette and put her arms around her. “You’re in time.”
Bette couldn’t reply, couldn’t draw breath.
Dr. Benning gave her a doleful look. “We took X-rays. A bullet’s lodged in his heart. We tapped his chest fluid. He’s filling up with blood.” He shook his gray head. “I can’t fix it. He’s slowly bleeding to death internally.” Each word battered her, one after the other, like powerful fists. Lights danced before her eyes and her knees weakened. She reached out. Dr. Benning gripped her arms. “I don’t know how long he has.”
With a glance to his parents, Curt said with obvious effort, “Please, may Bette and I be alone?”
His parents looked as if they wanted to lie down on the gray-speckled linoleum and die. They didn’t want to leave; that was obvious from their expressions. But they moved toward the door. Each of them patted her shoulder as they passed her—a silent appeal for mercy. Her parents and Dr. Benning followed them out and Bette moved to Curt’s side. It felt as if the air in the room had thickened, become difficult to move through. She reached for the back of the bedside chair to steady herself. She could only remember feeling this shaken on the night she’d gone with Drake to rescue Ilsa.
This shouldn’t be happening. The man before her had been her first love, her husband, the father of her child. And he’d put a bullet into his heart.
She forced herself to sit in the bedside chair and to look into his face. He was pale, almost waxen. His lips were blue and sweat dotted his brow. How long did they have? An hour? Minutes? Only Curt mattered now. She took his trembling hand in hers. She shivered at his touch—so cold, so weak.
“Why did you do this, Curt?” She didn’t like that her words chided him, but she had to know. “I thought we were making—”
“The principal of the school in south Baltimore called me,” he interrupted her as if he couldn’t waste time. “His board had rejected me for the job. He said I should have mentioned our—I mean my—marital difficulties when we met. The board had heard some unsavory facts.”
“Unsavory facts?” Bette couldn’t stop herself from asking, even though she knew what she’d hear.
“Somehow they’d heard about Maurielle.”
The news stunned her. How did gossip fly that far?
“I realized then that it was hopeless.” His voice became thin, but words came fast. “The truth would always follow me. And I didn’t blame them.” Curt’s voice rose. “Any man capable of that type of behavior would be a poor example to students.”
“Stop, Curt.” She squeezed his arm. “Stop.”
“I had no right to teach,” he went on anyway, “and I couldn’t face— It would be like this every time I interviewed. I’d never be able to support my wife and child. I saw myself—a man reduced to living off my wife, who despised me for my weakness.”
Then there was silence between them as Bette absorbed this. How could he do this to them? Hadn’t she suffered enough from his bad choices already? This isn’t fair. But he lay before her utterly defenseless, visibly fighting a fierce agony. Inside her, anger and pity vied equally. But time was passing—passing too quickly for her to vent all her feelings at this moment. Later, she would walk from this room. The man in the bed wouldn’t.
“I wish you hadn’t done this, Curt. It might not have worked out between us.” I should have told him I forgave him, should have tried harder. Huge hands of regret dragged at her heart. She had trouble taking a breath. “But there was still your daughter. Somehow we would have managed together for her sake.”
“I know.” He gazed at her hungrily, his face haggard and aging with each moment. “This isn’t your fault. As soon as I pulled the trigger, I knew I had done wrong—again. I just keep hurting you. But the guilt and loss . . . I tried to deny it, but they were crushing the life from me. I started to think that our daughter would be better off without me.”
He gasped for breath between phrases. Sweat trickled down the side of his face. “When you were at work . . . I’d sit and think about all the guys . . . the good ones who’d died in France. I’d managed to get out . . . alive only to make a mess of everything. I should have died . . . and one of them should have lived. I didn’t deserve to live.” He shivered sharply and then gasped with the exertion.
She pressed his hand. Dear God, help him, us. “Lie still.”
“You did the best you could under the circumstances,” he continued in a hollow voice. “I’m the one who broke our vows, our trust, destroyed my reputation. I shouldn’t . . . have even asked you to try again. If our roles had been reversed . . . I would have felt just as you did.”
She wanted to tell him to save his strength. Instead, she clung to his hands. Why was everything between them so clear now? She stroked his cool cheek. She’d thought he killed all her love for him. But all her warm feelings for this man that had lain dormant over the p
ast year came welling up. It took her back to their beginning. She rubbed her cheek against his hand. “I remember the first time we spoke—that day in the chemistry lab. How embarrassed I was to have you overhear those girls. How I hurt for Gretel.”
“I know. You were wonderful.” He implored her with his eyes. “So pretty and such a faithful friend to Gretel, so brave. I couldn’t . . . understand how anyone could say bad things about you.”
It was painful to watch him force out the words. Each one appeared to cost him the same effort he would have used to heave a large stone. “Don’t talk, Curt.”
“Must speak now. Our time . . . short. I’ll never see Linda Leigh grow up.” He shuddered with pain. “I hope she will . . . never know that I did this.”
“I won’t tell her and I won’t let anyone else.” Tears began to gather in Bette’s eyes. “You just had an accident with a gun.”
“Please don’t tell her about Maurielle. I understand now. Dying brings everything into focus. You see . . . I saw you in Maurielle. She was beautiful and so brave. And she had suffered so. She was so frail. She needed me. I wanted to save her . . . Stupid.”
Bette found that hearing the name Maurielle did not bring that sharp jab of pain followed by trickling acid, as it had over the previous months. And she understood what Curt had said. Yes, it was just like him. After all, he’d been her champion. She squeezed his hand, rocking back and forth in the chair with the tension of the moment.
“When Maurielle died, I saw everything so clearly then.” Curt was hoarse and trembling with the effort of speaking. “But I was a coward. I stayed in France . . . couldn’t face you or our child. If Maurielle had lived, I would have . . . married her. But would it have worked out? There would have been the shame of divorce . . . There would have been a stepdaughter.” His voice thin, his words poured forth, unstaunched as if he’d been saving them up for a long time. “Money would have been tight. She wouldn’t have been welcome here . . . And I would have wanted to live near Linda Leigh.” He began wheezing, straining for air. “So in the end, I couldn’t face my own stupid mistake—my own failures . . . Not yours.”
Bette turned to call for the doctor. Curt stopped her, clawed for her hand. “Please forgive me.”
She leaned down and kissed him. It was like kissing one already dead. She recoiled. No, no. “All is forgiven. Linda Leigh will never know. I’m sorry if I’ve done anything that may have caused you to do this.”
“Not you.” He gasped for air. “Not you. Me.” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it.
She leaned over, again forcing herself to kiss his pale, cool cheek. “No more talking. All that needed to be said has been said.”
He nodded and then grimaced as a pain-drenched moan escaped his lips. It hurt her to see him die like this, in so much agony and remorse. She searched for something comforting to say to him, something to give him hope. Then that day from long ago when they’d been young and so in love, attending church together came to her mind—as clear as if it had been that morning. She stroked Curt’s hand and then pressed it between hers. “Do you remember all those Sundays in D.C.? How we’d go to church and then spend the day walking around and when the tourists would give us a moment, you would kiss me and hold me close?”
Curt smiled through his pain. “Yes, I was so proud . . . you were mine.”
She went on recalling event after event they’d shared and she took comfort in the strained smiles that she drew from him. She could only imagine the pain that riddled his body. Then she noted he was faltering more and more. She stood and called softly, “Mother and Father, everyone, come back in.”
Curt looked up at her and understood. His time was short and his parents needed to say farewell. She leaned down and whispered, “I always loved you and I always will.” She took Linda from his mother and laid their baby in his arms. Then she stepped back into the shadows, letting his parents and sister hold him and weep.
Her mother and stepfather stood one on each side of her, bolstering her, showing their love. She gave them each a hand to hold and they waited, waited to hear Curt draw his last breath. Her understanding of what had happened between her and Curt had cleared. Why is it that sometimes life only comes clear when death puffs away the mist?
Tears flowed from her eyes. As she watched her first love pass away, it was more than flesh and blood could bear. Her heart cried out to God for strength. She had none left of her own.
Curt was buried in the churchyard two days later. To avoid the stigma of suicide, Dr. Benning cited heart failure as the cause of death. After all, he said, that was what had killed Curt. Who needed to know why Curt’s heart had failed? And he’d sworn the medical staff to secrecy. The story was that Curt had been cleaning his service revolver and had an accident.
The funeral was well attended—a soldier had come home and then died. Others who had lost sons in the war came to comfort Curt’s family and also to talk of their sons who’d been buried far from home. Curt’s love affair with a French girl was forgotten.
Bette’s mother held a buffet luncheon afterward at Ivy Manor. The downstairs of the old house echoed with voices as Jerusha, in uniform for the occasion, kept the buffet dishes filled, retrieved used plates, and ferried them to the kitchen. Rory and Thompson were unnaturally quiet. Curt’s mother sat in the parlor, holding Linda Leigh and trying not to weep. Bette felt powerless to comfort or be comforted.
Two months later on a warm July Saturday afternoon, Bette opened the door of her white bungalow with a wide front porch and well-tended lawn in Arlington and there stood Ted, as handsome as ever. Her heart jerked and then cantered a moment, before complete shock overran her. A very pretty redhead was on Ted’s arm.
Going against her pride and better judgment, Bette had gambled and invited Ted to come over. But he hadn’t come alone. That thought had never even entered her mind. “Hello, Ted,” she said, trying not to faint.
“Hello, yourself.” He stepped inside, pulling off his fedora and dropping it on the small entryway table. “This is Julia, a secretary at Headquarters and my fiancée.”
Remembering to draw breath, Bette forced her frozen face to bend into a smile. “Julia, best wishes.” Her throat was so dry she nearly gagged on the words.
Julia thanked her and managed to flash her tasteful diamond engagement ring.
“So this is your new house?” Ted said, looking around.
“Yes, I just moved in this week.” Bette wished there was some polite way to end this now. But of course, there wasn’t. She’d invited him. He’d brought along his . . . fiancée. It was over between them. She’d lost Ted.
And I have no one to blame but myself. I was a fool and evidently I still am or I’ve would have taken him at his word.
She couldn’t think of another thing to say aloud. Or rather she couldn’t think of a thing she’d be allowed to say. She longed to say, “Ted, I love you. I know that now. Please give me another chance.”
“I was—I’m sorry to hear about Curt passing.” Ted didn’t look at her as he said this phrase she’d heard too many times already.
“Yes,” Julia added, holding Ted’s arm casually but possessively. “Ted told me about you losing your husband. And you’ve got a little girl, too. It must be awful.”
Bette tried to look appropriately appreciative of their sympathy. Evidently, Julia was the kind of woman Ted wanted. Julia certainly looked like the type most men wanted. And Julia would be no trouble to Ted.
Not like me. Ted’s words came back to her: “Do you know how long I’ve loved you?”
It’s too late. He said so and I should have accepted that.
Ted sauntered into the dining-living room of the bungalow. “Where’s your little girl? I want to meet her.”
Bette led them to the small nursery next to her bedroom. In a pink romper, Linda was just making baby wake-up noises and kicking the slats of her oak crib as she stared at the bunny decals on the headboard.
“She’s cute,
” Ted said. He gathered up the yawning baby and held her close. “Hello, Linda Leigh. I’m Ted.”
Bette was suddenly transfixed by the sight of Ted grinning at her daughter and then trailing a finger under the round baby chin. She nearly reached out to brush her fingers over his golden hair. She jerked herself back to reality. “I better take her. She’ll need changing. My nanny has the weekend off.”
“I’m an uncle,” Ted said. “You never knew that, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” Bette said.
“Oh, Ted, I didn’t know you liked babies,” Julia cooed, looking over his shoulder. “I want us to have at least four.”
Bette felt defeat overtaking her. She’d gambled and lost. The rest of the brief visit passed in a haze of yearning and despair. Then she was smiling painfully and closing the door as Julia called back, “Thanks for inviting us. You have a lovely little baby. ’Bye!”
Holding Linda close, Bette walked to the rocking chair beside the small fireplace and sat down. “Well, it’s just you and me, kid.”
Using the word kid unleashed a rush of memories of Ted. Bette sucked in tears and rocked Linda. She began humming softly to comfort her baby—or was it for herself?
Arlington, Virginia, September 1947
Bette stepped into the elevator at the CIA offices and nearly choked with shock. Ted stood nonchalantly inside. The door closed, sealing them inside, alone and together, going down. A sudden hope that he’d come to see her blossomed. “Hi,” she managed to say. “What brings you here?”
Ted looked her over thoroughly, giving away nothing. “Running an errand for the Chief. We picked up some information we thought Souers should know.” He paused, then shrugged. “How’s the baby?”