The French War Bride

by Robin Wells

  “What did you feel like afterward?” I asked.

  “Drippy,” Minxy said.

  “And clean,” Helen added. “As if everything I’d ever done wrong had been washed away and I had a fresh start.”

  We were all silent, thinking Helen had depths the rest of us lacked.

  “You’ve got to be saved to go to heaven,” Minxy said, brushing her bangs.

  “Never mind heaven.” Darla leaned toward the mirror and practiced a sultry Scarlett O’Hara pout. “You’ve got to be saved to go on the high school mission trip this summer.”

  Minxy, Helen, and I both swung toward her. “There’s going to be a trip?”

  She nodded. Darla’s mother volunteered in the church office, so she often had inside information. “The high school students are going to a small town in Mississippi to help paint the old church, and we’re staying at a nearby church camp. And as incoming tenth graders, we’ll get to go.”

  “Whoopee!” Helen jumped beside her on the bed.

  “But you have to be a baptized member of the church,” Darla said. “That’s one of the stipulations.”

  “Just girls, or boys, too?” Minxy asked.

  “Both,” Darla replied.

  “Oh, wow,” Helen breathed. “I wonder if Jack O’Connor will go.”

  “Ooh, handsome Jack!” I said.

  “I doubt it.” Minxy patted her hair in the mirror. “My father said their farm is just about to go under.”

  “Go under what?”

  “He means economically. They have a mortgage on the land, and the bank called in the note.”

  “What does that even mean?” Darla asked.

  “It means they have money trouble,” Minxy said.

  “I’m so sick of hearing about money trouble!” Darla said.

  “Me, too.” Helen nodded. “It’s all my parents talk about. Anyway, Jack is taken.”

  “Not anymore,” Minxy said authoritatively. “Beth Ann and her family moved to Iowa or somewhere a couple of months ago. Maybe he’ll go on the church trip to look for a new girlfriend.”

  My thoughts snagged on this information. Around me, the conversation went on.

  “Ooh, what about James? He’s going to be the quarterback this year!” Helen said.

  “Yeah. And what about Leon?”

  “Oooh, long, tall Leon!”

  As my friends discussed the merits of all the high school boys in our church, my mind was occupied by one looming thought: it was time to make the walk.

  —

  The following Sunday, I headed down the aisle on the first verse of the invitational hymn. Pastor Hasten fairly glowed as he clasped my hand in both of his.

  “Brothers and sisters in Christ,” he announced to the congregation when the song ended, “the prayers of Katherine Thompson’s family and friends have been answered. She has finally accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior.”

  Finally? As if I’d lived a long, depraved life! My face burned. Had my holdout caused people to whisper behind my back? I was mortified—and to make my mortification complete, I had to stand at the front of the church after the service while the entire congregation came by and shook my hand, congratulating me on my decision.

  The only mitigating circumstance was the fact that the high school students came by, too—including Jack. Good heavens, but he was good-looking! He looked me straight in the eye with a gaze that was like a little piece of sky, and I felt myself go weak in the knees.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “It was smart of you to wait until you were old enough to be sure of your decision.”

  I was too stunned to do anything but nod. I must have shaken a dozen more hands after his, but I could still feel the heat of his fingers against mine.

  —

  “That was it? That was your romantic moment?” Amélie’s expression is incredulous.

  “That was the moment it began,” I say. “Jack later told me that it was when he first really noticed me. Before that, he’d thought I was just a junior high student who ran in a pack of girls and didn’t know my own mind. When I went down the aisle by myself, it showed him I had substance.”

  “But you didn’t.” Amélie is nothing if not blunt. “You just said you only did it so you could go on a trip.”

  I swear, this woman is so tedious! I wave my hand. “What matters, in terms of our romance, is that Jack thought otherwise. And I wanted to live up to what he thought of me.” That had been a key part of my relationship with Jack, I thought. He made me want to be a better person, to become the person he thought I was.

  “Was Jack there when you were baptized?”

  “No, thank heavens. He couldn’t attend every Sunday because of his farm. But the Sunday after that, he came up to me after church and said hello. I said hello back. He said he was interested in talking to my father about becoming a doctor, and wondered if I thought he’d mind answering some questions.

  “‘Oh, no, I’m sure he’d love it,’ I said.

  “I took Jack right over to my father, and they shook hands. Daddy remembered Jack from an encounter a few years earlier when Jack had helped a sick friend.

  “‘I’m interested in becoming a doctor, and I’d like to talk to you about it when you have time,’ Jack said.

  “Just like that”—I snap my fingers—“Daddy invited him to come home with us for Sunday lunch. Unfortunately, Jack couldn’t come; he had to take his sister home.

  “‘Why can’t your mother take them?’” I’d asked him.

  “‘She’s at the Methodist church with Mr. Brandon. They’re courting.’

  “‘Your mother and the banker?’ It had boggled my mind that people so old would be interested in romance.

  “‘Well, then, can you come back later this afternoon?’ Daddy asked. ‘You and I can talk, and then you can join us for supper.’

  “‘Sure,’ Jack said. ‘I’d be delighted.’”

  1937

  Three of my friends came over to my house and helped me prepare for Jack’s arrival as if it were a date.

  “You need to look older,” said Minxy. “Do something different to your hair.”

  “No,” said Helen. “You don’t want to look like you’re trying to impress him.”

  “When he talks, you need to ask lots of questions,” Carol said. “You should act as if everything he says is absolutely fascinating.”

  “No,” Helen protested. “You need to act bored. He’s probably sick of girls fawning all over him.”

  As it ended up, I stayed dressed in my Sunday best, my hair styled as it had been that morning. After all, that was my finest look.

  I sat at the dinner table across from him, my stomach too knotted to eat, while he and my father talked and talked. They talked colleges, they talked specialties, they talked about medical schools. My mother occasionally tried to introduce another topic.

  “So, Jack—what is your favorite subject at school?” Mother asked.

  “I’d have to say biology,” Jack said. “Although I really enjoy chemistry, too.”

  That was the first—and maybe only—time I’d heard the words enjoy and chemistry used in a sentence together by a high school student.

  “Those were my favorites, too,” Daddy said. “Chemistry is the foundation of everything.”

  “I’m especially intrigued by electrochemistry,” Jack said.

  “Oh, me, too!” Daddy said. “There’s some very exciting work being done with electrophoresis.” Then he was off and running on the topic.

  Mother ventured to break into the conversation a few minutes later. “Jack, have you seen any movies lately? Kat just saw Topper and thought it was wonderful.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have time for movies,” Jack said politely.

  “Surely you have some spare time. What do you do wi
th it?”

  “Well, I read,” Jack said.

  “Kat loves to read, too,” Mother said. Bless her heart, she could tell I was smitten with Jack, and she was trying to help my cause. The truth was, I seldom read anything except magazines. “What type of books do you like?”

  “Anything on anatomy, physiology, and medicine,” he replied. “But I’m afraid I’ve exhausted the public library’s supply.”

  “Oh, I have bookshelves full of textbooks and medical journals,” Daddy said. “I’ll be happy to loan some to you.”

  After dinner, I helped Mother clean up, while Daddy and Jack went into Daddy’s library. After a while, Mother went in and suggested that Jack might like to join me on the porch for lemonade and cookies.

  He gladly acquiesced. Together we perused one of the books Daddy had loaned him. Jack exclaimed over a diagram of the nervous system, and I pretended to follow what he was talking about. I was content to just sit beside him and listen.

  The following week, Jack returned the books, and Father loaned him more. They spent more than two hours talking, then Jack joined us again for supper. Once again, Mother shooed Jack and me out onto the porch together.

  It became a Sunday ritual. He and Daddy would talk medicine for hours, then Jack and I would go to the porch, where we would peruse one of the books.

  I knew that Jack was there to see Daddy, but I suspected he liked me a little, too. I caught him gazing at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. The problem, I felt, was that he thought I was too young for him.

  At the urging of my friends, I finally put him on the spot about it. We were sitting in the porch swing of my parents’ home. I held a silk pleated fan. “Next Sunday is the Fourth of July picnic,” I said. “Are you taking anyone to it?”

  In Wedding Tree, going to a town event with someone was public acknowledgment that you were a couple. I watched the tops of his ears get red.

  “I, uh, hadn’t really thought about it.”

  “Well, time is running out.”

  He looked directly at me. “Are you hinting that I should ask you?”

  I glanced away, taken aback by his forthrightness. “Maybe.”

  “Don’t you think you’re a little young to be dating a high school senior?”

  “You’re only going to be a senior because you were skipped ahead in grade school. You’re just one year older than me.” I waved my fan in front of my face. “My daddy’s five years older than Mother.”

  “Hmm,” he said.

  “Wasn’t your father older than your mother?”

  “By eight years.” He studied the painted porch floor. “I’ve wondered if that was part of the reason they didn’t get along so well.”

  This was news to me. “They didn’t?”

  He shook his head. “They were too different. Mother was used to a refined life in Charleston, and Pop was a farmer always scrambling to make money.”

  “Sounds more like a difference in ways of life than of age.”

  “I suppose that was part of it.”

  “Well, you and I don’t have that problem.”

  His eyes lit with amusement. “No?”

  “No. We’ve grown up in the same town, we go to the same church, and we’ve gone to the same schools.”

  “Except I’m in high school and you’re in junior high.”

  “I am not! I’ll be a sophomore this fall, which means I’m a high school student, same as you. And I’m very mature for my age. Everyone says so.”

  “Is that right.” He smiled at me, his blue eyes laughing.

  “It most certainly is.”

  “Do your parents think you’re old enough to date?”

  I had no idea. I’d never been asked on a date before. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Of course.”

  “Well, then, seeing as you’re so old and mature, would you like to go to the Fourth of July picnic with me?”

  I’m sure my smile was ear to ear. I felt as though the sun were shining on my insides. “Why, Jack Bradford O’Connor, I’d be delighted.”

  —

  “Jack was always direct, yet charming,” Amélie says, jarring me out of my reminiscence. “It’s interesting that even at sixteen, he was that way.”

  Isn’t it just like her to remind me that she’d had Jack for most of his adult life! I lift my chin. “He later said that asking me to that picnic was the best decision of his life.”

  At that, Amélie falls silent. She is probably wondering if Jack thought marrying her was even better. I hope not. I hope nothing they ever had together equaled the thrills of first love that Jack and I shared.

  But I need to find out. I need to know what happened. “So that’s how our romance began. Tell me how yours started.”

  “I was leading up to it.”

  I wave my hand. “I really don’t need all the background information about you before the war.”

  “Yes, you do. None of it makes sense without it.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”

  She inclines her head. “I will tell it my way, or not at all.”

  I should have known that she would be difficult. “All right, all right.” I sigh. “Continue.”

  5

  AMÉLIE

  1939

  I was out of breath from rushing when I arrived in the reading room at the Sorbonne library the next afternoon. I paused in the entryway to gather myself. With its soaring ceilings, elaborately carved millwork, and long tables that resembled pews, the room looked more like an ornate church than a study hall. The walls were covered in green silk damask and the ceilings were edged with gold. At the front were three enormous paintings of the world’s great thinkers set behind a curved archway that looked like a chancel. Even the silence in the room was church-like. All that was lacking was a cross and an altar table.

  I found Joshua sitting at the end of a table by an enormous paned window, backlit by the setting sun.

  He was not particularly handsome, and he certainly wasn’t well dressed—he wore a hand-knitted sweater in rough, undyed wool, and the cuffs of his shirt were frayed—but something about him—his bearing, his wide shoulders, his thick unruly hair—sent a thrill straight through me.

  He rose to his feet when he saw me. “You’re here,” he said in a hushed tone.

  “So are you,” I inanely replied, my heart pounding wildly. He pulled out the chair next to his, and I sank into it, grateful to be off my suddenly wobbly legs.

  He closed the book he had been reading. “Which school do you go to?”

  I was crestfallen that he didn’t just assume I went to university. I’d hurried home after class and changed out of my uniform, not wanting him to know I was still in lycée. “I don’t think I should tell you,” I said in what I hoped was a flirtatious tone. “You warned me to be careful what I said.”

  “Only if you think it might incriminate someone.” His brown eyes were amused. “Do you fear incriminating yourself?”

  My face heated. “Of course not.”

  His gaze stayed on me. “I’m guessing that you don’t want me to know how young you are.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “No? So what’s your age?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.” He looked me up and down. “I think you’re no more than fourteen.”

  “Fourteen!” The word came out as an outraged squeak, louder than I intended.

  “Aha!” He grinned. The expression totally transformed his face. “You just gave yourself away. If you were eighteen, you would be amused that I guessed so low, rather than insulted. My real guess is that you’re about sixteen.”

  So much for appearing worldly and sophisticated. I reluctantly nodded.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m just seventeen, myself.”
>
  “Really? You seem a lot older.”

  His mouth tightened. “I feel older.”

  “Because of what happened in Austria?”

  “That, and what is about to happen here.”

  “Taisez-vous!” ordered the library monitor, a tall, thin whippet of a man who patrolled the room, making sure no one defaced the books or disturbed the tomb-like quiet.

  “Let’s go get a coffee,” Joshua whispered.

  “D’accord.”

  He slung his book bag on his shoulder, then took my elbow and led me to the exit.

  I thrilled at the touch of his hand on my arm. It was such a manly, possessive thing to do, to take my elbow. He had the manners of the wellborn, my mother would have said.

  Outside, the air was cold. “How did you know I was lying about my age?”

  “Aside from how young you look?” He grinned at me as he guided me past a bicyclist.

  “Yes.”

  “You showed all the signs of untruthfulness.”

  “Like what?”

  “Your voice changed. You looked away and no longer met my gaze. You straightened your posture and stuck out your chin.”

  “How did you know to look for those signs?”

  He lifted his shoulders. “Some veterans of the Great War have been teaching me things that will be useful if the Germans invade.”

  “But why . . .”

  “So many questions! It’s my turn to ask about you,” he said with a smile.

  “Okay,” I said, realizing I had done nothing but quiz him since we’d left the library. “What would you like to know?”

  “Well, first of all, how have you been lucky enough to have Professor Chaussant for a tutor?”

  Lucky wasn’t the word I would have used to have described the grueling twice-weekly tutoring sessions, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “His family and my family are very good friends. We live across the street from each other, and my father is also a professor at the Sorbonne. So my father tutors Yvette Chaussant and my brothers and me in English and German, and Professor Chaussant tutors us in higher mathematics. This has been going on for years.”

  “So you speak German? That will come in very handy if they overtake this country.”