by Cat Gardiner
Will, I know you are busy and have many things on your mind, but I pray you have not forgotten me. We have much to discuss. News, good news. Well, news that makes me happy but I don’t know what to do about it in your absence. Please, please send me even a short note with your new A.P.O address if that is the reason my letters are going unanswered. Have you left for England? Is that the delay in the post?
I know the bookmobile is keeping you busy, and I’m so proud that it is, but I cannot imagine that it has consumed all your attention. I have written you my new A.P.O address, so I cannot imagine what the delay is.
Ducky, I’m trying to be an optimist, truly I am, but it has been nearly six weeks and still no letter from you. There are important decisions we have to make. What we did during our time “together” has resulted in something that I am so over the moon about and I know you will be too! I miss you more than you can know, and it feels more so because of your silence. I’m worried beyond measure for you AND for me. I love you and I need your advice!
Are you not at Meercrest or have my letters fallen into another’s hands in an attempt to separate us? Could your father be at the heart of my not having received letters from you in over seven weeks? I cannot imagine that Army mail, even with a change of airbase to England, is this slow. Although I just arrived, I have been told that the Eighth Air Force receives mail with frequency, yet I wait and hope to receive something from you. Nothing has come since I received your Christmas card! I’m worried. I’m frustrated and I’m not focusing on what I need to focus on. I miss you so much, baby. Every day, I see these B-17 bombers come back to the airfield battered and beaten. And although we Marauder Men have not yet gone for our first mission, there is a need for your brilliant effervescence that is missing with every mail call. Please, if only just to tell me that you are safe – WRITE TO ME!
Will, please don’t abandon me. Please don’t leave me. I fear the worst every night when I lie awake with my hand resting upon my tummy. You must be alive. You must come home. We’re having a baby. You promised we would be together forever!!
I can’t bear this pain. Was it all a game to you? You got what you wanted—a roll in the hay with a “Flyboy.” You’ve ditched me without so much as an explanation. I truly did not think you capable of this, but I suppose that in the end you just proved your kind. High society, hoity-toity girl who loves a good time without consideration of the feelings of another. I can’t believe that I wasted my time on you!
What should I do? I have waited for word, even writing your mother to inquire of your safety, but have heard nothing. My heart is breaking thinking the worst—that she is so grief stricken she cannot bear to tell me. I thought of going to Brooklyn directly, but I have been so ill, morning, noon, and night I cannot travel. So, I will write her again. Please tell me you are safe. My whole life is you, Will. We had dreams of seeing Rome and Venice, of sharing our love under the stars, and of a family to raise together. You can’t be dead. You must be safe. You must see your child grow! I love you!!!
I have loved you with every fiber of my being. I have carried your laughter in my heart to propel me forward. I have given you everything a man deeply in love can give to a woman. I proposed to you all the way from England on a record and hoped to raise a family with you. I purchased a home for us to spend the rest of our lives together. The ring is being specially made. I gave you my trust and heart!! But you have cast all my dreams and me aside. I had foolishly thought they were your dreams, too. We burned bright, hot, and fast—but you never intended to share my future, did you? I hope you are satisfied, Lizzy Renner, that you have broken my heart, shattering it into a million tiny pieces of shrapnel. I hate that it may take me time to forget you, but rest assured that in time I will. I hope that if I return and I see you one day on the street or at the future home of your sister and my brother, that I can look upon you with indifference. ~William Martel
Will, I love you and I love our baby. I am overjoyed to bring our child into the world, but I must keep it safe. To be unwed and in this particular house, given the knowledge that my father and sister have of your faith and his confirmed “interests,” I must make a decision. I need to hear from you. I have waited and waited and now our child shows itself. Johnny has asked for my hand, pledging his protection of the baby. He wants to do this and he can provide for us the only hope I can see. I shudder to think that you have been killed. G-d No! My love, this is truly the only option for me because I can never love another as I love you. You are my every breath taken, and our baby is the embodiment of what we share for all eternity—even in death. I can’t stop crying. Life without you just won’t be a life at all, but it’ll be our baby that will keep me from joining you where we could marry in heaven.
She picked up one of the letters she had just read. This time she blubbered, fresh tears uncontrollably flowing. Unable to control the pain, she cried out, “He had proposed!—my G-d, he proposed! Oh … my … G-d!”
Now, realizing fully the agonizing hurt she had unknowingly inflicted on that impetuous night in ’49, the emotional words tore her wound open again. Their liaison must have been all the more painful for him when she left like a thief before the dawn while he still slept. Seemingly abandoning him for the second time in his life, breaking his heart, and leaving him with only renewed memories that tormented her, too.
After many painful minutes, clutching a letter to her heart, her tears finally ceased. Laying it aside, she rose from her cross-legged position, and then stepped over the scattered missives to the velvet glove box still open on the coffee table. The aging postcard of the swans in Lake Mirror brought back her promise to him. Yet she couldn’t stop her thoughts from traveling to Kitty and her deceit. She dearly loved her sister. They had come through so much together. When all hope seemed lost, Kitty had emerged from the ashes as Katherine who could walk again and live life as she had dreamed. Lizzy, too, had been reborn as Elizabeth—mother, dutiful wife, and philanthropist.
For four hours, her tears had flowed. Bloodshot eyes and a rubbed-raw nose were now joined by a growling stomach. Lizzy looked over at the letters again. The only thing she could think of was a glass of wine—several glasses, in fact, and, perhaps for medicinal purposes, that box of Whitman chocolates stashed in the pantry. She was numb and all cried out.
After carefully replacing the precious postcard in its treasure vault, she emerged from the safety of her bedroom and descended the dark stairwell. The house was quiet, with only a thin slice of light from the kitchen seeping into the den and breaching the entry hallway. Kitty must have left it on before her tear-filled dismissal. Lizzy sighed, torn between raging anger and confused compassion.
She stopped abruptly at the kitchen threshold, startled by her sister’s presence at the table scattered with used tissues. Her eyes were equally bloodshot. It was apparent that for the entire four hours past, she, too, had embarked on a pity party. Lizzy resisted the urge to voice her opinion but “good” was on the tip of her tongue.
Bitterly, with the frost of barest civility, instead, she said, “I thought I told you to leave.”
“You did, and I ignored you. You’re not the only obstinate one. We can’t leave things unsaid between us.”
Lizzy sauntered toward the kitchen cupboard, head held high, purposefully aloof. “We didn’t leave anything unsaid, at least I didn’t. I’ll repeat it if you didn’t hear me earlier: You ruined my life, and I gave you yours. You’re sorry, and I’m livid. What more can we say to one another besides don’t let the door hit you in the ass?”
“You’re right. Of course you’re right, and I stayed because I am expecting you to kick me out of your life after reading the letters, then certainly your condemnation. Although knowing what may come torments me, it is deserved. It would have been too easy for me to leave you to deal with the fallout and the suffering, just as I did in ’43 when you took me to Minnesota. Leaving after giving you the letters would only demonstrate, once again, my inherent proclivity to prot
ect myself, and it’s time for me to face the consequences of my actions. If for no other reason than to atone, I need to help find a way to make this right between you and William.”
Lizzy removed two wine glasses from the center shelf. Beaten and fatigued she stated, “You can’t give back the fifty years you took from us. There’s nothing you can do or say that would change that.”
A large photo album lay open on the table and Kitty slid it away from her. “Then I’ll go if that’s what you want, but not before I apologize for earlier, handling this so poorly by further wounding you with accusations. It was wrong of me and none of my business. None of it was. I was at fault for keeping Annette from her real father; the fault rests solely upon my shoulders.”
Lizzy sighed, closing her eyes before barely breathing a whispered, “Don’t go.”
As though relief washed over Kitty, she burst into tears the likes of which Lizzy had never seen. The palms of her hands flying to her face, her head dropping to their concealing shelter as her body bobbed. Sobs poured forth, mixing with words.
“I can never forgive myself for having hurt you. You were right, there was no excuse … no excuse for having never told you all these years. I’m so sorry.”
Lizzy walked to the refrigerator and removed a bottle of Chardonnay. She uncorked it with painstaking precision, allowing her sister’s reprobation and self-loathing to thicken and hover while she remained stoic, ignoring her instinct to comfort. In her mind, she questioned whether she could ever forgive such a heinous act perpetrated by the one person she was sure would never hurt her. Feeling devastated by Kitty’s betrayal was an understatement.
She glanced over her shoulder at her sister’s silvered white head moving up and down, face covered with delicate fingers adorned only with a slender gold wedding band. Lizzy recognized the opened photo album chronicling Annette’s first year, as well as, noticing the not so well hidden, half-empty box of chocolates beside Kitty’s arm.
A signature raised eyebrow accompanied Lizzy’s requisite snarky comment about the half-eaten box of Whitman’s. “You can add the theft of my chocolates to your dastardly list of sins.”
Kitty looked up and their eyes met. A tinge of humor graced Lizzy’s voice, and Kitty responded in kind, in spite of the oppressive tension between them. “Then you should have hid them better.”
“Hmm, well, just like my letters they weren’t meant to be taken.” Lizzy stood over Kitty, placing two filled wine glasses upon the table. She glanced down at the album and smiled thoughtfully at the images, unable to maintain cold aloofness when faced with the joyful purity and innocence depicted in Will’s adorable daughter.
She reflected with a tender smile, “I haven’t looked at these pictures in years.”
Kitty’s heart clenched, as she studied the album, viewing the events she had missed, both joyful and sad. She wasn’t there for Lizzy’s postpartum depression, nor when Annette had suffered with the croup and the only family Lizzy could turn to were the Robertsens. She missed the adoption of Henri, the birth of Danny, all the skinned knees, all the ballet lessons, even the foundation’s launch. Her sister had given everyone life—sacrificing everything—because of her. Furthermore, Will had missed all of it, too. That fact was the most contemptible. Fresh tears of contrition rolled down her cheeks.
Still angered, Lizzy ignored the newest deluge of tears, instead commenting on the snapshots in the book. “G-d, Annette loved that damn birthday cake. Like a sugar fiend, she shoved the icing in her mouth with both hands, absolutely gleeful. Unfortunately, right after that photo was taken, Mother dropped her rocks glass smack into the cake and became madder than blazes. The woman went ballistic at her own clumsy drunken loss of gin. She actually, somehow blamed Annette, who cried for thirty minutes straight. John had to physically remove our dear drunken mother from the house.”
“I never told you, but she hit me once,” Kitty confessed, wringing her hands.
“Annette?”
“No. Mother did. It was just before the Christmas Ball of ’42. You had gone to the doctor and Ingrid had said something terrible to me. I can’t remember the exact words, but it was along the lines of how I would never be announcing an engagement—that I should never procreate. I told mother that John was better off dead than marrying her.”
“You never told me!”
“She slapped my face. And no, I did not tell you. I was terrified.”
Silence fell between the sisters as they slowly continued to turn each page, the old photos producing the only shred of joyfulness that either woman could cling to in the awkward air. Without realizing it, they chortled simultaneously at John’s silly face as he played puppeteer with that lopsided Daffy Duck hand puppet his mother had made.
“John loved Annette so much,” Kitty reflected.
“He did. They had a special relationship. She was his daughter and even when Henri and Danny came along, she remained his little duckling.”
“I wish I could have been here to celebrate these milestones with you.”
Lizzy took a seat beside Kitty but kept an unwavering distance. “You were. Both you and Will were never far from me even in your absence, but thank G-d for John because I don’t think I would have survived my depression after she was born.”
“But you looked so happy here.”
“Oh, I was, but my heart hadn’t healed and I certainly still grieved Will’s death.” She smoothed her index finger over Annette’s image then sighed. “Kitty, you have no idea what your actions precipitated. You have no conception of the depth of my heartache, and I imagine, Will’s as well, especially after some of his letters I’ve read just now. John knew how I suffered, and he never said anything, just cared for her and me with such kindness.”
“That was his way.”
Kitty’s hand stilled upon hers, but Lizzy withdrew. She was seething yet trying so hard to feel forgiveness, but it was too raw. Perhaps it would always be raw, and most likely they would never have the same relationship as before. With her own tears spent, she felt cold and exposed. She couldn’t forgive Kitty—not now.
Her sister’s face was pleading and ashamed. “Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me for what I’ve done?”
“No. I’m not sure if I can—I don’t know. Not yet. I need time to digest what you did to us, but if Will forgives you, then maybe I can. I do remember how frightened you were. If I hadn’t felt your fears were warranted, hadn’t seen for myself the need to get you far away from Ingrid, Frederick, and that nurse he had hanging around, I might not have taken you to Sister Kenny as soon as I did. As pregnant and sick as I was, your safety was my first concern. For you not to have trusted me, hurts so deeply. And I’m sure Will felt the pain just as acutely from actions he assumed were mine, but were actually yours.”
Kitty felt seventeen again, chastised and riddled with deserved shame, but she strangely welcomed it. There was no explanation or argument to defend, only honest penitence. What she felt was deeper than remorse and sadness, and her heart broke for hurting Lizzy.
“I disappointed you, I know. I disappointed me and have never been able to reconcile the guilt. It was my punishment and I’ve carried it every day as my torment. I loved Lillian, but you were my only family, really. You were the only one to care for me, and, by my selfishness, I hurt the one person who I loved the most in this world.”
“Well, that’s an understatement,” Lizzy replied wishing she had more strength in her to give her another set down. “And if it were only selfish and immature—if that was all I considered it, I might be able to say that I forgive you right now. Kitty, you betrayed me—you betrayed Will, and that’s something … something altogether different.”
Lizzy sipped her wine, observing her sister’s reaction from over the rim. As expected, another tear fell.
Placing the glass down, she continued. “I can’t help thinking that if you had only been honest with me, even after I had married I would have written to Will, at least to let
him know that I married and why I did so. I know I would have written him about Annette. When I felt up to it, then I could have gone to his parents, to let them see their grandchild. He proposed on that record but when he never received anything from me, he thought I had dumped him and he stopped writing. Your actions, not mine, broke his heart, and I don’t think I can ever forgive you, especially for that. All these years … all this time … and you never said, not even after John’s death.”
“There was so much time, but never the right time. With each passing year, it just got harder to say anything, and you seemed happy, truly content in your life when I returned to New York. The last thing I wanted to do was confuse you or throw mayhem into your family.” Renewed tears flowed, and she picked up one of the used tissues. “Oh! If only we could go back in time! With the maturity and knowledge of these five decades, I would have done things differently, Lizzy.”
“No, I don’t think you would have. Neither of us would have. We were young, so damn young and naïve about everything.” She shook her head, recalling her own headstrong, oftentimes, immature optimism. “But in truth, what if Will had been killed, even after months of correspondence and knowing about the baby? I still would have been an unwed mother. You and I were scared and desperate. If I had gone to his parents, we still would have been a burden at their time of extreme stress and, eventually, their knowledge of Frederick’s actions might have made them hate us.”
“I pray I can help make this right, Lizzy.”
Lizzy released a deep sigh. “Me, too.”
Kitty nodded, truly understanding that her misguided actions were irrevocable.
“This family has kept too many secrets, each one of us,” Lizzy finally voiced after long minutes of contemplative silence between them.