by Robin Wells
Jack nodded. “I understand. Thank you for your generosity.”
The judge rose. So did Jack. I took back the fussing baby so the two men could shake hands.
“We’ll see you in two or three weeks,” Jack said.
The judge nodded. “Take care of that little one.”
“Will do.” Jack headed for the door.
“I realize it’s none of my business,” the judge called, making Jack stop and turn around. “But in my opinion, you two should consider staying together. You make a really nice little family.”
Hearing the hope I hadn’t dared admit to myself voiced aloud made tears form in my eyes. I had learned during the war not to think about things that I could not have. Thinking about them set up longing, and longing led to yearning, and yearning would lead me right back into tempting Jack to do what he was determined we must not do.
We were silent on the way out of the courthouse and on the taxi ride back to the hotel. Once in the room, Jack took Elise’s temperature under her arm—her cheeks were bright red again and her eyes were glassy. “Her fever’s up again,” he said. He gave her some aspirin and fetched a cool washcloth, his hands so gentle as he placed it on her forehead that my throat grew tight with emotion. Then he turned to me and crushed any seeds of hope.
“I need to call Kat and my mother. I haven’t spoken to them since we left New York, and I know they’re worried.”
“Of course.”
“Are you okay with the baby by yourself for a little while?”
“Yes.”
He went down to use the pay phone in the lobby again, while I held Elise against my chest and tried not to want what I could not have.
60
KAT
2016
I remember that phone call. I remember every word of it.”
“I would be interested in hearing about it.” Amélie has moved to the kitchen and is pouring us coffee. I take the cup she offers me, then settle back on the sofa and into the past.
1946
I had been waiting for a call from Jack for well over a week. And what a week it had been! Mama had had the maid stay at the house to answer the phone when we were gone, because we’d spent more time at the hospital than at the house.
I answered the phone in the kitchen, grabbing it up after the first ring. “Hello?”
“Hi, Kat—it’s Jack.”
He didn’t need to say his name; I knew his voice well enough. In retrospect, it was odd that he did. It spoke of a space between us that hadn’t existed before.
“Where have you been? Where are you? We’ve all been frantic.”
“I told you I had to go to Montana. Now I’m in Reno.”
“Heavens to Betsy! Are you on your way back here?”
“Well, that’s what I called about.”
I could tell there was a stall coming, and I didn’t even want to hear it. “Jack, something terrible has happened. Daddy’s had a stroke. He’s in the hospital.”
There was a heartbeat of silence. “How bad?”
“Well, we think his left side is paralyzed, and he can’t talk, and he’s asleep all the time. Mama is beside herself.”
“Holy Jesus, Kat—I’m so sorry.”
I had never heard him use the Lord’s name like that.
“He’s at the parish hospital? Who’s his doctor?” Jack demanded.
I answered his questions, then said, “There’s more news. Have you talked to your sister?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, your mother’s in the hospital, too. She went in with pneumonia—it started out as flu; half the town has the flu, and there’s no doctor here, and everyone is in a state, and . . .”
“Tell me about my mother,” Jack cut in.
“Well, like I said, she’s in the hospital with pneumonia. That’s about all I know.”
Jack was silent for so long I thought we might have lost our connection. And then he asked, “Who’s her doctor?”
“I—I’m not sure.”
“Is she in the parish hospital, too?” His voice held a sharp note.
“Yes.”
“Did they do an X-ray?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
I’d never heard him sound that impatient with me. It occurred to me for the first time that I should have been shown more concern for his mother’s condition. “I—I—I’ve been so distraught with Daddy. Jack, you need to get back here as soon as possible.”
He blew out a hard sigh. “Yeah. Sounds like it. Look, I’m going to hang up now and call the hospital and my sister.”
“Okay. Call me back with your travel arrangements.”
“Will do.”
“Jack—I love you.”
“Yeah. Look, I’ve got to go.”
I hung up the phone. Mother was looking at me funny, so I tried to act like everything was fine, but it wasn’t. Something had changed. Jack was different. He’d never not responded to an I love you without at least saying, Me, too. But I had just told him some bad news, I reasoned; he probably needed some time to let it sink in. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself.
“What did Jack say?” Mother asked.
“He was upset.”
“I imagine so. Is he coming home? Where is he?”
“In Reno.”
“Reno, Nevada? What in mercy’s sake is he doing there?”
“I didn’t get a chance to find out.”
“That’s one of those gambling towns. I hope he didn’t pick up a vice overseas.”
“Mother, don’t be ridiculous. He probably was just passing through on his way home.”
Mother rolled her eyes. “I see why you got that C in geography.”
I went into Daddy’s library and pulled down an atlas. Sure enough, Reno was even further west than Montana. I stared at it and frowned. I remembered he’d said something about going there to do some training, but he hadn’t planned on doing that until after he came home. I should have asked him what was going on, but I didn’t get the feeling the question would be welcomed—and he didn’t really give me a chance. He’d been different—distant, detached. Like a stranger, almost.
Well, it didn’t matter why he was in Reno, I decided. He was coming home.
I didn’t go back to the hospital with Mother that evening. I stayed by the phone, waiting for another call about when he’d be arriving. Why, oh why hadn’t I asked where he was staying so that I could call him? I had so many unanswered questions.
That night, I slept downstairs on the sofa so I could hear the phone in the kitchen. It never rang. But the next morning, I got a telegram:
On the way. Meet me at the station in Baton Rouge on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.—Jack.
“Baton Rouge is an hour and a half away,” Mother grumbled. “If he can take the train to Baton Rouge, seems like he could take it to Hammond.”
“I reckon he just can’t wait to see me,” I said.
“Well, he needs to get home as soon as possible, that’s for sure,” Mother said.
61
AMÉLIE
1946
Jack was gone a long time, far longer than it takes to make a phone call. When he came back to the hotel room, almost two hours had passed.
His expression was wooden when he walked through the door. He did not say hello—in France, we always say hello and good-bye—and he moved more like a machine than a man.
“What is wrong?” I asked.
“You mean aside from the fact my mother is in the hospital with pneumonia and Dr. Thompson has had a stroke that has left him in a coma?”
“Oh, Jack! Your mother is ill?”
“Yes.” He sank onto the edge of the bed. “She caught the flu, and it went into pneumonia.”
“The flu!”
Despite what Jack said, the flu, in my mind, was worse than cancer. “Oh, Jack, I am so sorry! And—you said Dr. Thompson had a stroke?”
“Yes.” He put down a brown paper bag on the bedside table. I saw that it held a bottle of whiskey. He rose and strode over to the baby bed. He gazed down at Elise, who, thankfully, was sleeping.
“How bad?”
“Very bad. I talked to his physician. He may live, but he will never be able to practice medicine again.”
“Oh, Jack!”
“And his patients . . . the flu is rampant, and there is no doctor within thirty miles.”
My heart turned over in my chest. I knew immediately what I must say. “You must go to Wedding Tree immediately. Elise and I will stay here until the annulment goes through.”
“How will you care for Elise by yourself?”
“I will manage. I managed after the war.”
“You had Nora. You can’t even carry Elise and a suitcase at the same time.”
“I—I could get a stroller. And if you will loan me just a little money, I will find a place to live—perhaps at a boardinghouse. I will get a job. We will be all right, Jack.”
“How will you work and care for her?”
“I will find someone to watch her. That has always been the plan.”
“What about when she is sick, as she is now?”
How did he expect me to respond to questions that had no answer? “I will manage.”
“And if you’re pregnant?”
“That is very unlikely, yes?”
“That is hard to say. Given the timing and the broken condom, it may be just as likely as unlikely.”
“Well, we will deal with that if the need arises.”
“No. We must deal with it now.”
I didn’t know what he was saying. Was he suggesting I get some kind of procedure—the procedure I knew some women underwent to terminate an unwanted pregnancy? Because if he was suggesting that, there was no way—no way under heaven!—I was going to agree. “We can just wait. Two or three weeks isn’t that long.”
“Damn it, Amélie—in two or three weeks, Dr. Thompson might be dead.”
“I told you to go home. You must be with him and your mother and the flu patients as soon as possible.”
“I can’t just leave you here—not with Elise so sick. It’s possible you’ll get sick, as well. How will you care for her if you’re ill?”
“I will be fine. You are borrowing trouble.”
“Here’s the bottom line, Amélie. I have to go home, and I can’t leave you here. You have to go with me.”
“But . . .”
“Listen to me!”
I had never heard him sound so commanding, so authoritative. I sank onto the bed.
“I’m in a real pickle here. I’ve been walking and thinking, thinking and walking, wrestling with my conscience. If you are pregnant, I intend to stay married to you so that we can raise our child together. I would, of course, want to raise Elise as my own, as well.”
Oh, my traitorous heart—how it leapt in my chest!
“If you are not pregnant, well, there is another matter that I have been loath to address, but address it I must, if I am to live with myself in peace and consider myself an honorable man.” He took in a long breath and slowly blew it out. “I took your virginity. The way I was raised, if a man compromises the virtue of a woman, he marries her. And the fact of the matter is, I compromised your virtue—even though I had no idea I was doing so at the time, no idea at all, which strikes me as incredibly unfair. But—I did it. It is done.”
“Jack, you don’t need . . .”
“Don’t tell me what I need and don’t need! You’re not my conscience!” His brow was furrowed, his voice angry. He strode back and forth, pacing the room.
“If I must stay married to you—and it is now clear to me that, either way, I must—it will be far easier for everyone in Wedding Tree to accept you and Elise if they believe that she is my daughter. There would be no questions of Elise’s fatherhood or legitimacy, no questions of your moral fiber, if they think we married for love and she is my biological child. This is not a story that can wait two or three weeks’ time; it is a story we must present from the very beginning.”
“But what—what will you tell Kat?”
“The same story we tell everyone else.”
My mind whirred. If he was expecting everyone to believe Elise was his child, then a year and a half had gone by. “What about all that time? All the letters you wrote to Kat?”
He blew out a harsh breath. “That’s the worst part. That’s what I can’t explain. It makes me sick to think how deceptive that will look—responding to her questions about wedding flowers and so on.” He looked up, his eyes hard. “It sickens me, it really does.”
I swallowed, miserable. It was all my fault, and he blamed me. “I understand.”
“Oh, do you?” The sarcasm in his voice stung. “You understand being sick about deception?”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Oh, yes, I do.”
My response seemed to take the heat out of his anger. He sat down beside me on the bed, his shoulders slumped. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to let Kat down gently, and I can’t find one. I’ll just tell her that I met you and we married, and I will apologize. It’s better for her to think me a cad and a coward. That way she’ll get over me more quickly.”
“Oh, Jack . . .” I put my hand on his arm.
He shrugged me off and rose. “Don’t try to comfort me. I’m so angry that you duped me that I don’t know if I can ever get over it. You’ve been a bad influence on me from the beginning. I stretched one rule, and then another, until I was in a hole so deep that I couldn’t climb out. Just looking back and seeing how far I’ve fallen leaves me reeling.” He blew out a hard sigh. “I am not the man I was before I met you.”
“Perhaps you are better.”
His eyes flashed. “How on earth can you say that?”
“Well, you are following your heart instead of your head. Your heart is a truer compass of what is truly right.”
He looked at me as if I were deranged. “I sometimes wonder if you are completely depraved.”
“You are upset—and it is no wonder. You don’t have to make permanent decisions now.”
“Yes, I do. I already have. We are to stay married.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Are you refusing?”
What, really, were my options? I had no idea how I would care for Elise alone. And even with his anger—I couldn’t deny that I was secretly, inwardly thrilled. “No,” I whispered. “I will do whatever you think is best.”
“It’s settled, then.” He shot me a heated glare. “But don’t think for one minute that this will be a real marriage. A real marriage is based on truth and trust, and I don’t trust you any further than I could throw a locomotive.”
62
AMÉLIE
1946
By the time we arrived in Baton Rouge, we were both as frayed as worn washcloths. It took us nearly three days to get there. We slept in a regular public Pullman car with bunk beds. Jack was pale and had dark circles under his eyes. Elise was still ill, but better, better enough to squirm and whine and generally be difficult. I was so tired that I felt as though I were sleepwalking when I was awake, and when I was asleep, I still felt half awake.
Jack’s demeanor toward me was cold verging on icy. He was distant but polite except when dealing with Elise. When it came to her, he was caring and tender and warm. He barely talked to me, except when conversation was essential. At dinner, he might say, “pass the salt, please,” but my attempts at conversation—including benign comments about the scenery—went largely unanswered. He had little appetite. I was worried that perhaps he was coming down with Elise’s illness.
As Baton
Rouge neared, I sensed a growing nervousness about him. “What do you want Elise and me to do when we disembark?” I asked. “Should we pretend we don’t know you?”
His look cut me to the quick. “Is your first reaction always one of deception?”
My face heated. “You know that is not true.”
“Do I?”
I bristled. “Yes, but it makes you feel better to think the worst of me. I was simply thinking of Kat’s feelings. It might be a worse shock for her to see us together before you have a chance to explain things to her.”
“She won’t think we’re together. She’ll think you’re simply a fellow traveler I’m helping off the train.”
“And once we’re off the train? Should Elise and I just stand beside you?”
I think he finally saw my point. “No. Just . . . just step aside or have a seat on a bench or something and let me talk to her.”
The porter called out the approaching stop. We gathered our suitcases and belongings. My heart roared in my ears like the train wheels on the tracks.
The brakes screeched as the train ground to a halt. I peered out the window, looking for a young woman. I didn’t see her until I actually stepped off the train, Jack right behind me.
When I did, my stomach felt as if I’d swallowed a cannon ball. She was a beautiful blonde with perfectly coiffed shoulder-length hair, wearing an immaculate white wool coat. I couldn’t imagine the luxury of a white coat! She looked like a movie star or beauty queen as she raced toward Jack.
So this was Kat. Oh, mon Dieu, what an exquisite creature! I caught a smile as wide and bright as sunshine and a whiff of soft perfume. Jack set down the suitcases—mine and his—as she hurled herself at him. He caught her, and she clung to him so tightly—or perhaps the clinging was mutual, it was hard for me to tell—that her feet left the ground. He set her down quickly, then averted his face as she aimed her lips at his.