The French War Bride

by Robin Wells

  “Are you going back to Louisiana?” Dan asked.

  “Yes. But first I have to spend six weeks in Reno to get some extra training. In fact, we’re catching a train there this afternoon.”

  I looked at Jack, startled. This was the first I’d heard of this.

  “So soon?” Gustie asked. “But you just got here.”

  “We really can’t stay. But I did want to come meet you and tell you what a fine man you’d raised.”

  Gustie’s eyes grew wet. Even Dan’s looked suspiciously moist. “Well, we appreciate that.”

  “You said on the phone that you had something from Doug for us?” Gustie said. “A surprise of some kind.”

  “Yes.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of bills wrapped with a rubber band. “He wanted me to give you this.” He handed the bills to Dan.

  The large man thumbed through the thick wad of bills. “But how . . . how on earth did he get this much money?”

  “Doug became quite a poker player. He routinely cleaned the table. And he kept his winnings—said he was saving up to help you get some new equipment, I believe. And, well, he asked me to see that you got this.”

  Dan’s heavily wrinkled eyes widened. “There’s twelve hundred dollars here!”

  “Like I said—he was quite a poker player.”

  “And he wanted us to have it?” Dan’s voice quavered.

  Jack nodded. “I wanted to give it to you in person.” His voice, too, shook with emotion. “Your son saved my life. I owe him—and you—a debt I can never repay.”

  “Thank you.” Gustie dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her apron. “That means a lot.”

  Dan sniffed and cleared his throat, then rubbed his eyes with his thumbs.

  “He was an excellent medic. He did a lot of good and helped a lot of people,” Jack added.

  Dan nodded. Gustie wiped her eyes again.

  “Well.” Jack’s chair squeaked on the linoleum as he pushed it back. “If it’s not too much trouble, can you take us back to the train station? There’s a train that leaves at three thirty that we need to be on.”

  “Sure, no problem.” Dan looked at the clock and put down his coffee cup. “I need to go feed the cattle first. Would you like to come?”

  “I’d love to,” Jack said. He shot me another warning look. “Ne fait pas quelque chose stupide en mon absence.”

  “D’accord,” I said sweetly. “I adore you, too.”

  “Your English is really quite good,” Gustie said.

  Thank heavens, I thought, I can’t say the same about your French.

  59

  AMÉLIE

  1946

  I didn’t get a chance to ask Jack about our future plans until we were on the train and pulling away from the station, because he deftly avoided being alone with me at the farmhouse. I waved to the Claibornes as the train began to move, then turned to Jack, who was seated across from me. We were in a Pullman car, but it was once again a double bunk, as on the first leg of our trip. We sat opposite each other in an alcove formed by the folding bottom mattress.

  “Are we really going to stay in Reno for six weeks?” I asked.

  “That’s the required residency time to get an annulment. I have a doctor friend there, and I’m hoping he can pull some strings so we don’t have to wait that long.”

  Merci Dieu—apparently he wasn’t going to send me back to France or put Elise into foster care! “So you don’t have to be there a full six weeks to complete the training course?”

  “It’s not a course, exactly. My friend specializes in wound care. I can learn a lot from working with him.”

  “You made it sound like a formal program.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes, and you know it.” It felt like a small victory, catching Jack misrepresenting the truth.

  “Well, then, your bad habits must be rubbing off on me. The sooner I’m rid of your influence, the better off I’ll be.”

  His words hit me like a blow. “Am I really so awful?”

  He hesitated so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. At length he blew out a long sigh. “No. I don’t think you’re awful. I just can’t trust you.”

  “Is there anything I can do to restore your faith in me?”

  “At this point? No.” He rose from his seat. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a walk.”

  —

  We hardly spoke to each other the rest of the day. At dinnertime, Elise was fussy. She refused to eat, and her cheeks looked flushed.

  “I think she feels a little warm,” I said to Jack. “Do you think she has a fever?”

  He took her temperature under her arm. It was 99.9.

  “It’s a little high, but babies tend to have higher temperatures than adults. She looks like she has a little cold.”

  I didn’t think she looked well. She cried, her eyes were red and her nose was running. She didn’t even want to drink her formula or juice.

  Jack took the upper berth. Elise and I bunked down in the bottom one. I was so exhausted that I fell right asleep, but Elise woke me up crying in the middle of the night.

  “Jack,” I called.

  He climbed down immediately. “Yes?”

  “Elise is burning up.”

  He took her temperature. It was 104 Fahrenheit. “Let’s see if we can get her to drink some fluids. And I’ll get a damp washcloth to put on her head.”

  He headed for the lavatory at the end of the railcar. I rocked the crying baby, smoothing back her hair, trying to tamp down a rising sense of alarm. She had never been seriously ill before. She’d had the sniffles, and she’d had a short-lived little stomach bug, but she’d never had a fever like this. I felt helpless. I was relieved when Jack returned.

  He put the washcloth on her head. “I’ll give her a little aspirin,” he said, rummaging in his doctor’s bag.

  He sat beside me on the berth, and helped me coax some apple juice down her. I rocked her, singing her a French lullaby.

  “That’s very pretty.”

  “It’s a song my mother used to sing to me.” I looked at him. “Do you think she’ll be okay?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m sure she will.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  “It’s too soon to tell—probably some kind of virus. It could be the flu—or possibly the measles or chicken pox. We’ll have to wait and see if she develops any other symptoms.”

  “Oh, I hope it’s not the flu!” I bit my lip, trying to hold back my tears.

  Jack’s gaze was gentler than it had been in a while. “Most people recover from it just fine. You said your friend was in a weakened state.”

  I nodded. If anything happened to Elise . . . The very thought made my chest feel as if it were strapped with steel bands.

  “She’ll be fine,” Jack said. “Why don’t you go to the upper bunk and try to get some sleep?”

  “I don’t want to leave her.”

  “You won’t be of any use to her if you get sick, too. It will be a long night. We’ll take turns. I’ll watch her for a while, then I’ll wake you and we’ll switch places.”

  If it had been anyone else, I couldn’t have left her, but Jack was a doctor. I nodded. “Okay.”

  I crawled into the upper bunk. The pillow smelled deliciously of Jack. I clutched it and fell into a deep slumber. When I awoke, dawn glinted through the edges of the window shade.

  I scrambled down the ladder as quietly as I could. Jack and Elise were both asleep on their backs on the lower bunk. The sight of them made my heart rise and swell like leavened bread. What a picture they made! Elise, small and helpless and perfectly formed, cradled in Jack’s arm—her long lashes dusting her chubby, fever-pinkened cheeks, her cherub mouth puffing out tender breaths.

  His hand looked so large and
masculine against the pale pink of her romper. His hair was black against the pillow, a perfect contrast. I gazed at him, enraptured by the opportunity to let my eyes drink their fill of his straight nose, his high cheekbones, his cleft chin, his sensuous mouth. It occurred to me that Jack either didn’t know or didn’t care that he was incredibly handsome. His indifference to his own physical attractiveness was part of his appeal. Most good-looking men capitalized on the effect they had on women, but not Jack.

  This, I thought, was a truly good man—perhaps the best man I’d ever known.

  The weight of all I’d done to him settled heavily on my chest. I had lied and deceived and tricked him. Worse, I had compromised and possibly even corrupted him. I had brought him nothing but grief.

  The question Jack had asked me earlier echoed in my brain: what kind of person was I? I had not meant to harm him. I had not meant to harm anyone, ever—except the Germans, and that was while we were at war.

  Elise whimpered, then opened her eyes. She saw me and stretched out her arms. I was leaning over to pick her up when Jack’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Bonjour,” I said.

  His expression, so relaxed in sleep, grew wary. It was like a fresh dagger to the heart. Mon Dieu—does he distrust me so much? But then, how could he not? If the circumstances were reversed, I would no doubt feel the same way.

  —

  Elise grew progressively more ill as the day wore on. She developed a cough. Jack peered into her throat with a light and said her throat was red. By the end of the day when he checked her again, Jack said she had tonsillitis and possibly strep.

  By evening, she was limp and listless. We tried to cool her brow and the back of her neck with wet washcloths, and Jack kept her on a constant round of aspirin. It was hard to get her to drink anything, so Jack bought her Coca-Cola, which she loved.

  When we got off the train in Reno, we checked into a small hotel a block from the station. For economy’s sake, we shared a room with two beds. The hotel provided a crib for Elise. As Elise and I settled in, Jack wrote a prescription for penicillin, cough medicine, and a painkiller on his army hospital stationery, then left to find a pharmacy. He returned with two bottles of medicine and a syringe.

  It was the first time Elise had had a shot. I loosened her diaper so Jack could have access to her little bottom, then held her. I cried when she let out a howl of pain. “How can you bear to do that?” I asked Jack.

  “I think of the outcome.” He wiped the injection site with another swab of alcohol, then attached a small bandage. “It is a necessary evil in order for her to get well, far better than the alternative.”

  “A necessary evil.” I had never heard the term before. “Like the lies I told you to get her to America. They, too, were a necessary evil.”

  His look was withering. “It’s hardly the same thing.”

  “Isn’t it?” A sense of outrage swelled in my chest as I rocked Elise, trying to console her. I had done wrong, yes, but was it really so heinous?

  “No,” he said, sounding infuriatingly certain, as if he were the voice of God.

  “Oh, you are right; there is one major difference.” Over Elise’s head, I shot Jack a look that I hoped was as scalding as the indignation boiling in my chest. “Elise will forgive you.”

  —

  Thanks to the codeine in the cough syrup, Elise had a more restful night. I did not. I heard trains rattle by, and a neon sign across the street leaked flashing light around the edges of the curtains. I finally nodded off, and awoke around two in the morning to see Jack beside Elise’s crib, propping her up to give her her aspirin dissolved in Coca-Cola. He gave her several more sips, then tenderly laid her down and covered her with the blanket. He stood beside her, his hand on her tummy, for long minutes until her breathing resumed its slumbering rhythm. His gentleness with her made me weep. He was such a wonderful, kind, caring man—to everyone but me.

  I awoke a couple of hours later and checked Elise for myself. As I withdrew my hand from her forehead—she felt cool, thank God—I felt Jack’s eyes on me. When I say I felt them, I mean his gaze touched me like a hand, making me turn around.

  Sure enough, he had raised up from his pillow to watch me. His eyes were different. I realized I was standing there in just my nightgown—a worn pink flannel that had been washed so many times it was nearly translucent. The neon sign outside flashed bright, and his face was clearly lit for a moment. The expression in his eyes—I recognized it. There was no mistaking it; it was desire. I could not breathe, I could not think. I stood there, staring back. He did not look away for the longest time. We stayed like that, gazing at each other in the night, for what seemed like forever.

  And then he rolled over onto his side, away from me, his head back down on his pillow.

  I stood there a second longer, then crawled back into my bed, my back to him. I lay there, awake, wondering what would have happened if I’d walked over to his bed. I alternated between hating that I had not done so, and then hating that I had even considered it.

  —

  The next morning, Jack went out and brought us breakfast. Elise had a croupy cough. Jack said it was good she was coughing, because her lungs sounded a little wet, which worried me.

  Jack went down to the lobby—back then, not all hotels had phones in every room—and called his doctor friend, who contacted a judge he knew at civil court. Arrangements were made for us both to appear in his chambers at two o’clock.

  Judge Sanders was a tall, middle-aged man in a gray suit, wearing something I found quite bizarre around his neck—a thin, silver-tipped rope run through a piece of jewelry with a large aqua stone. I later learned this was called a bolo tie and that the stone was turquoise. It was not unusual attire for a man in Reno at that time. The judge also wore a large silver watch and several rings. I was not accustomed to seeing so much jewelry on a man.

  He shook Jack’s hand, then nodded at me, as my hands were busy holding Elise. He regarded the baby somewhat curiously as we sat down in the two chairs in front of his large, ornate desk. Elise cried fussily and reached out for Jack. Jack took her from me, and she calmed in his big arms.

  The judge cleared his throat. “I understand from Dr. Forrester that you two would like an expedited annulment.”

  “That’s right,” Jack said.

  The judge raised his eyebrows. “Looking at the little one here, it seems a divorce is more in order.”

  “No, it needs to be an annulment. The child—she’s, um, not mine.” Jack’s ears were turning red, the only sign that he ever gave that he was embarrassed or flustered. “Amélie already had her when we met.”

  “I see.” The judge rested his elbows on the table and tapped his fingers together. “On what grounds do you seek this annulment?”

  Jack patted Elise’s back. “It is, um, not a marriage in the true sense of the word.”

  The judge leaned forward. “I am afraid I need to put this in very blunt terms. The law requires that I ask you this, and you have to be willing to put it in writing, under oath: has the marriage been consummated?”

  Jack and I looked at each other for a heartbeat.

  “No,” I lied very quickly.

  Jack closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and exhaled it in a sigh. “Well, yes—but only once. It hasn’t—and it won’t—happen again.”

  “Hmmm.” Judge Sanders tapped his fingers together and looked from one of us to the other, his gaze settling on me. “Is there any chance of a child resulting from this union?”

  I didn’t understand the question. “Pardon?”

  “Could you be pregnant?”

  “Oh, no,” I said quickly, knowing it was the answer he wanted.

  Jack turned to me. “You’re absolutely sure?”

  Whose side was he on? “How would I be sure?”

  He looked at me incredulously. The
judge suppressed a chortle.

  “Excuse us for a moment,” Jack said.

  “Certainly.” The judge grinned.

  Holding Elise in one arm, Jack used the other to pull me out into the hallway. “When were your last menses?”

  “My what?” I was unfamiliar with the word.

  “Monthly bleeding. Surely you know that’s related to conception.”

  I was indignant. “Well, of course! I did not know the word, that is all.” Menses wasn’t something listed in vocabulary books or taught by my father. “It is too soon to have missed a monthly.”

  He said the English word for merde. Elise stirred in her sleep. “When did you last bleed?”

  “I was on the ship.”

  There was that word again. So uncharacteristic for Jack. “When, exactly, did the bleeding start? How many weeks ago?”

  “About two and a half, I think.”

  His jaw went tight. “So when we made love, it was two weeks later?”

  I nodded.

  He said a worse word—the one that means copulation, the word he had uttered when he’d learned Elise was not Doug’s baby. He paced three steps, turned around, and paced three more. He raked his hand through his hair. “That is the most fertile time. And the condom—I don’t know for certain, but I fear . . . I mean, there is at least a fifty-fifty chance—no, probably more likely sixty-forty, or seventy-thirty. Hell, maybe even eighty-twenty—that it broke while we . . . when we . . .” He ran his hand down his face and he drew a deep breath. Elise squirmed, picking up on his tension.

  He resettled her in his right arm, then opened the door to the judge’s chamber with his left. He nodded his head, indicating I was to walk in before him. I did so, then sat back down.

  He sat as well, settling Elise, who was now awake and whimpering, in his lap. “We won’t know for sure for two or three more weeks.”

  Judge Sanders sat still for a long moment, then tapped his fingers on his desk. “Here is what I am prepared to do. As a friend of Dr. Forrester’s, I’m willing to fudge on the dates you’ve been in Reno. I’m even willing to overlook your, uh, single marital act in order to grant you an annulment.” He splayed his hands to the table and leaned forward. “But I must know for certain that no children will result from this union before I dissolve it. Come back when you can tell me that.”