by Dean Hughes
“That was the worst year of all,” Anna whispered, glancing toward Alex.
“I want you all to tell me where you were that year,” Bea said. “And what you were doing. What you were thinking about—and what you were hoping for. Bobbi, you start. And then let’s go around the circle and say what we remember.”
Bobbi nodded. Richard was sitting next to her, on the floor. She reached to touch his shoulder. “I had to work part of the day at the hospital, at Pearl Harbor, “ she said. “And then I went to Ishi Aoki’s house for dinner. Richard was at sea, and the last I had known he was safe, but I hadn’t heard from him for a while. Ishi’s husband, Daniel, was fighting in Italy, and he was in danger every day. So the four of us, Ishi and I and her two little children, spent the evening together.” Bea saw Bobbi’s eyes go shut. “It was a scary time. We made the best of it, but we were worried. I read in the papers about Alex’s division in Bastogne, so I was terrified for him, and I was worried about Wally. It was a very hard day. I don’t like to remember it, even now. But I remember I prayed all day—just little short prayers in my mind, over and over.”
Richard hadn’t looked at Bobbi. He was staring at the floor. But when Bea spoke his name, he said, “I was at sea—like Bobbi said. We had seen some action, but that day was quiet. We ate a nice dinner and relaxed a little, but everyone knew the hard days were still ahead. We were moving closer to Japan all the time. The truth is, it didn’t seem very likely that I would get home. No one on our ship ever said that, but I knew we all felt that way.”
“Did you pray that day that you would get home?” Bea asked him.
“Sure. I prayed every day about that.”
Alex was sitting next to Richard. Mom looked at him and nodded. “Well,” he said, softly, hesitantly, “that was the worst year. That Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, in Bastogne, were two of the worst days I can remember.”
“We know that, Alex,” Mom said. “But you’ve never really said much about it. What was going on?”
Bea saw Alex take one of his long breaths, the way he seemed to do so often anymore. “It was cold. Really cold. I thought I would never get warm again. We were in foxholes—two guys to a hole—and I was with a kid from Idaho named Howie Douglas. We made it through those nights by . . . I don’t know . . . it’s not something that’s easy to talk about. We huddled up together like little puppies.” He stopped for a moment. “Some guy started singing Christmas songs, and it almost killed us.”
Alex took another breath and everyone waited. “We got through. That’s all I can say. But then Howie got killed a few days later.”
Bea hadn’t known that. She knew about the cold, had even heard Alex mention Howie, but she didn’t know about his being killed.
“Right after that, we got inside for a couple of nights. That’s when my mail caught up to me, and I found out that Anna was expecting. That brought me back to life a little.”
Bea kept watching Alex. She thought it was a good sign that he would talk about this, but she didn’t like the way he was gripping his fingers together, squeezing so hard. “Alex,” she said, “did you try to imagine this day, back then?”
“Not that much. I thought about Anna, in England, more than anything. I wanted to get back to her. But something like this seemed impossible. It just seemed like, sooner or later, we were all going to die. After Howie got hit, my friend Duncan took a bullet in the throat. I didn’t know if he was alive or not. We’d been together from the beginning, and after he got knocked out, it just seemed like it was my turn.”
Everyone in the room knew what it was costing Alex just to say this much. The silence seemed almost sacred.
Bobbi finally said, “Alex, are you okay now? We all worry so much about you, still.”
It was a surprisingly open question, and simple, but Bea didn’t like Alex’s response. He looked at the floor. “I’m trying,” he said.
“Are you still having bad dreams?”
He didn’t answer, but Anna did. “Not as often, I don’t think. But I still have to be careful about walking up behind him and touching him. He’s almost knocked me down a couple of times.”
“I’m doing all right,” Alex said, not very convincingly. He didn’t look all right. But Alex seemed to sense that that was what everyone was thinking. “It’s been good to be back in college,” he said. “I feel like I’m moving forward now.” He glanced around, as though to reassure his family, but Bea didn’t see his eyes focus on anyone.
“Anna,” Bea said, “what do you remember from that Christmas?”
“I was pregnant, and sick, a little.” She glanced at Alex and smiled, asking a question with a little nod of her head. He nodded back. “Just like I am again now,” she said, and she let herself laugh.
“Oh, Anna, really?”
“Yes. We’re expecting another baby.”
Beverly let out a little screech, and then a whoop, and everyone laughed. “I’ll tend the baby any time you want. And Gene too,” she said. “I’m a very good aunt.”
Anna reached to her and patted her hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll let you do that all you want.”
Bea leaned down and whispered to Al, “Things just keep getting better and better for us.”
He looked up from the baby, who was still asleep. “I know. But I always want more,” he said. “I’m a greedy man.”
“When is the baby due?” Bobbi wanted to know.
“In July—maybe for the twenty-fourth.”
Gene slipped off Aunt LaRue’s lap and walked to his mother. He climbed onto her lap and snuggled up against her, almost as though he understood this conversation and sensed a rival. But he looked tired now, his little eyelids seeming heavy.
“Oh, Anna, that’s such wonderful news,” Bea said, and from around the room, everyone was voicing their congratulations.
Lorraine took hold of Anna’s hand. “That’s so good,” she said. “Gene needs a little brother or sister.”
By then Bea had picked up on something else. Bobbi had turned to Richard and was whispering something in his ear.
Richard laughed and then said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “You’re the one who wanted to wait a while before you told everyone.”
“Oh, Bobbi, what?” Bea asked. “You too?”
“Yes. But not that soon. I’m just starting out. I shouldn’t really say anything so early.”
Beverly jumped up from the floor, ran to Bobbi, and grabbed her around the neck. “I’ll tend your baby, too,” she said. “Every night, if you want.”
Bea was thrilled. She waited her turn, hugged her daughter, and felt a kind of kinship she didn’t know how to express. She knew what a lifetime of change was coming for Bobbi, the little girl she had raised. For all Bea’s joy, there was a sense of awe, even a touch of something like sorrow, that the cycle would now repeat itself, and Bobbi would take on this new responsibility—never be simply Bobbi again.
Somewhere in the middle of all the noise, LaRue said, “Well, I might as well break the news. I’m pregnant too.” But only LaRue seemed to think that was funny.
Al said, “LaRue, don’t joke about something like that.”
But Bea saw more than a joke. LaRue certainly had to be saying, “Notice, everyone. I’m not the same as the rest of you. I’m the one who doesn’t want to be a mother. I’m going a different direction.” And the idea frightened Bea much more than Bobbi’s new condition.
“I’ve been sick too,” Bobbi was admitting. “I feel all right this morning, but yesterday I lost my breakfast and felt pretty sick all day.”
For a time, all the talk was about morning sickness, about the births in the summer, but finally Anna said, “I think I got us on the wrong subject.”
“That’s all right. We liked the news,” Bea said. “But do tell us about your Christmas that year.”
“What I remember was that my father was in Germany, and we got word that he was alive. But we were very worried about him, and we had no idea where Peter w
as. He told us, later, that he was in a bombed-out building, in East Prussia, I think, and someone told him it was Christmas. He was so sick and so cold that he couldn’t even think about it. He was expecting to die any day. But Mama and I, we prayed so hard that day—for Alex and Papa and Peter. I think the Lord had mercy on us.”
“Think how much we all prayed that day,” Bea said. “That’s really what I want you all to remember. Where were you that day, Lorraine?”
“I was here in Salt Lake, and I came to see you that day. I wanted to know about Wally. I wanted him to come home—to you—and I told myself that’s all I was praying for. But I wanted him for me, too, whether I said it in my prayers or not.”
“And Wally, what did you pray for that day?” Bea asked.
“I worked in the mine that day—all day. I was in fairly good health right then, and I figured I could hang on for a while. But every Christmas we’d say that we’d be home by the next Christmas, and I remember feeling that day that I just couldn’t hold out for another year. I’m glad I didn’t have to. I went through some really bad times after that.”
“Did you think about being here with everyone?”
“That’s what POWs do for Christmas. We’d eat Christmas dinner—in our minds—and we’d live out the whole day at home, from memory. What I always wanted was everything that’s here right now. Good food. All of us together. But a day like this always seemed too good to be true—like some dream that you didn’t quite believe in anymore.”
“Did you pray?”
“Oh, yes. I prayed.” He laughed. “I also gave someone a present that day.”
“Who?”
“Our guard, down in the mine.” He laughed again. “Those guards loved to get a lot of work done. The more we accomplished, the more their superiors liked them. So that day, for a gift, I worked during the lunch break.”
“You skipped lunch?”
“Well, not exactly. We would eat all our food in the morning so that we’d have enough energy to keep us going. So at noon there was nothing to eat. What I skipped was my resting time.”
“Weren’t you exhausted at the end of the day?”
“I was always exhausted. But I liked what I did. The guard didn’t understand. He probably thought I was nuts. But I just liked the idea of giving someone something. That way, I felt like it was Christmas.”
“I’m glad you told that, Wally,” Bea said. “That’s our Christmas speech. That says everything we need to say.”
“What did you do here at home that day?” Wally asked.
“It was a quiet day,” Bea said. “Kids, what do you remember?”
Beverly said, “When all the Thomases came over, they were talking about Bastogne, and about Alex being surrounded. I didn’t know about that until then. So I asked Dad about it, and I wanted Dad to say that everything would be all right. But he told me he didn’t know for sure, because things looked pretty bad over there. I felt grown up because he would admit that to me, but I was scared. That whole day, I just remember being scared.”
LaRue said, “I remember that Dad and I had a good talk. I’d been really mad at him, but he talked to me that day, and he listened to me, and I sort of even liked him a little—just not very much.”
Al nodded. “Yes, I do remember that. But I’m like Beverly. What I remember more than anything was feeling that one of my sons was gone, and the other two were in mortal danger. And my daughter wasn’t exactly safe. I remember feeling that if I lost everyone, I just couldn’t deal with it, no matter how strong I had always tried to be. I kept thinking about my great-grandfather who lost his entire family, and I didn’t want to find out whether I was as strong as he had been.”
“That’s how I was, too,” Bea said. “And so we had a family prayer, and we asked for this day—a Christmas when we’d all be together. And we got more than we asked for. We couldn’t have imagined that Lorraine would be part of us, and Anna would be here, with a grandson, and Bobbi and Richard together—and more babies on the way.”
Bea had not wanted to cry, and she was fighting hard to smile now. “I just think we need to remember how hard we prayed, and stop and say to ourselves, ‘We got what we asked for, and more.’ We just can’t forget to be thankful. Al, is there anything you want to add to that?”
“No. But I’m glad we stopped to think about all this. I just hope we can stand the prosperity. We can’t let success ruin us any more than we let the hardship get us down.”
“We got Dad’s speech after all,” Bobbi said, and everyone laughed.
It was time to end the meeting. Bea had made her point, and she didn’t want to belabor it. Gene was asleep now and needed to be put down for a time, and some of the couples needed to go visit in-laws. So Dad, by popular demand, said a prayer for the family. He was not as eloquent as he sometimes had been, and he didn’t say a great deal, perhaps because it had all been said, but he did thank the Lord in that strong voice of his, and to Bea, this was the voice of the family, the clear guide they had all depended on. She was glad she had called the little meeting, but she was even happier that Al had established the tradition long ago. She didn’t want him to be ashamed of it, no matter how much teasing he had taken over the years.
But there was still one more thing to do that day. Bea had engaged a photographer to come to the home, and he arrived before the larger family gathering late in the afternoon. By then, all the children had returned. First, Bea asked the immediate family to sit together in the living room—she and Al and the five children. Then she invited the spouses to join them. But Bobbi said, “Mom, I was just thinking. Before we get everyone into the picture, why don’t you have one with you and Dad and us kids—and with Gene?”
Everyone knew immediately what Bobbi meant. Anna brought Gene and gave him to his grandpa, who held him on his lap. And the photographer took the picture. But it was not easy. Gene was squirming, not sure he wanted his picture taken, and everyone else was struggling, trying to smile.
Chapter 25
Bobbi was kneeling on the bathroom floor, her head over the toilet. She was hoping that she could vomit one more time, and that that might make her feel better. But it was never quite that simple. This was not an upset stomach that got better once she threw up. What Bobbi had wasn’t going away for a long time.
She finally did vomit one more time, and she did feel a little better for the moment, but it was 5:30 in the morning, and she was deeply tired. She cupped her hand under the faucet in the sink, washed out her mouth, and then trudged back to bed, where she fell instantly asleep. But twenty minutes later everything started again, and she jumped up and hurried to the bathroom. The only problem was, there was nothing left inside her, and even though she gagged, nothing came up. After a time Richard came into the bathroom, knelt down beside her, and put his arm around her shoulders. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
“Yes. But you already did it. Now get away from me.”
Bobbi had intended some humor in that, but it didn’t sound that way, and the truth was, she really didn’t want him fawning over her at the moment. She just wanted to be left alone. But she wasn’t prepared for his quick retreat, and now she wondered whether she hadn’t hurt his feelings.
This time, when Bobbi made it back to the bed, Richard immediately rolled out. “Where are you going?” Bobbi asked.
“To take a bath. I’ve got to get going.” It was January 2, and the plant had been shut down the day before. Bobbi and Richard had spent part of New Year’s Day with her family,
and the men had talked about how much they had to do to keep up with the orders that were coming in faster all the time.
“This early?”
“I’ve got a big day ahead of me.”
“Richard, I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?” he said. It didn’t exactly sound like a question. And he certainly didn’t wait for an answer. He merely walked on into the bathroom and shut the door. In a moment, the bath water began to run.
Had she insulted him with that little jibe? Or was he just tired? Most mornings he seemed not just quiet but depressed, even cranky. He was perfectly willing to fix his own breakfast, to express pity for Bobbi, but he would give her a little smack of a kiss and then leave with a look on his face and sound in his voice that seemed to say, “I hate what I’m doing; hate where I’m going to spend my day.”
By evening he was always much more pleasant to be around, but Bobbi was now seeing some of what she had always feared from him. He was quiet, sometimes silent, for long stretches of time, even in the evenings. He liked to come home to his newspaper, and he liked to read, after supper. What he didn’t seem to understand was that Bobbi was spending a great deal of time alone these days. She couldn’t visit her mother, since Bea was working, and while she spent a certain amount of time trying to prepare baby clothes, diapers, and the like, she really wasn’t much of a seamstress. She had borrowed her mother’s old treadle machine, which she had finally learned to coordinate, but she could never sew a seam quite straight, never get anything to turn out the way it looked on the pattern cover.
Nor did she like to sew. She tried to busy herself around her pretty new house, but there was nothing to clean—except for a few breakfast dishes and a bed to make. So what she did most often was lose herself in Victorian novels—Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope. There was a certain addiction in this kind of escape, especially during the hours when her stomach wasn’t rolling, but the reading usually led to little afternoon naps, and that to difficulty sleeping at night, and then again to the round of nausea in the morning. She had spent too many years working hard, involved with people, busy. This life was becoming not just tedious but almost frightening. She felt as though she were losing contact with the world, even with herself. Maybe it was the nausea and the tiredness that made her feel so detached, but she also wondered what she was doing home all the time. “Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty to do once the baby comes,” Richard liked to tell her. But Bobbi still wondered. What would she say to a baby, or even a little child, all day? And why was it that when Richard got home he seemed so uninterested in the things she had to say to him?