by Sandra Hill
Phillipe just smiled, anxious to get back to Louise. Every waning moment was precious now. Looking around, he decided to buy Louise one of those Whitman Samplers, the fancy kind. She’d told him just last night that the one she stored his letters in was overflowing. The one he was eyeing now was wooden with a scene painted on top of a bird perched on a branch with lilies or some such flowers. It wasn’t cheap, but the look on Louise’s face when he gave it to her was well worth an empty pocket and equally empty ration book.
And now it was New Year’s Eve, and they were going to the ball being held at the USO near Fort Polk. He was wearing his dress blues, and she was dressed to the nines in a red gown of some material she called chiffon.
After a few hours, Louise looked up at him…they’d been slow dancing to “Till the End of Time”…and said, “This is fun, Phillipe. Can we leave?”
“My sentiments, exactly.”
Back at the cottage by midnight, they were soon in bed. The lovemaking now was desperate, but slow, as the clock ticked down. They probably wouldn’t sleep this night.
In between their bouts of lovemaking, they talked.
“When I get back to base, I’m naming you as next of kin,” he said.
“No! Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s just a formality, sweetheart. Besides, I haven’t got two dimes to rub together. So you’ll never get rich off me.”
She didn’t laugh at his little joke because she knew, as well as he did, that this technicality meant that she would be informed in case something bad happened.
“Will you take the pin-up pictures with you…wherever you’re going?” He hadn’t told her that he was off to London, but she probably guessed he would be there eventually. All the newspapers mentioned it as a launching point for many U.S. troops. Europe was, after all, where the fighting was taking place.
“Are you kidding? They’ll be with me wherever I go.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you…my roommates and I are going to pitch our money together to have a phone installed. Will you be able to call me?”
“I should. It might be difficult sometimes, but we’ll work something out. That is great news, honey.”
“Do you want me to take your car back to your parents’ place for storage?”
“Nah. Belle is on her last legs. You drive her till she gives up the ghost. I don’t think she’s worth any more repairs.”
And then, with all the practical things taken care of, he turned to her and said, “You’re not the only one who reads books, darlin’. Have I mentioned that we Cajun men have a secret talent, passed down through the generations? Especially if we’re lucky enough to have a Cajun girl.”
“Oh, really?” she said, always game for something new. “And would this talent involve a certain body part?”
“Um, not at first. Well, not the one you’re referring to…what did you call it…Le Buche.”
She glanced downward. “The log appears to be sleeping.”
“Not for long,” he promised. “No, this talent involves a secret erotic place on a woman’s body.”
“Oh, boy!” she said. Then, “Are you makin’ this up, sugar?”
“Not at all.” He made a cross mark over his heart. “It’s called the Cajun C-spot, and it can only be found with the tongue.”
Pillow talk followed later, softly spoken words mixed with sleepy caresses. They didn’t mention marriage, but it was understood that a big Cajun wedding would be held on his return. Hopefully, by September which was Louise’s favorite month for a wedding.
“Who knew women had favorite months for weddings? Guys just show up for the event and hope there will be enough booze at the reception,” he teased her.
“As long as you show up,” she countered with a growl, which he found kind of sexy and which led to other things.
The time for gaiety ended eventually, of course, and he told her, “I will love you forever, Louise. Till the end of time.”
“I’ll be waiting here for you. Always.” She tried her best not to cry, so her voice was wobbly.
And then he left.
But it turned out he was to see Louise again before the big mission. His pawpaw died in April, and Phillipe was given a short liberty to return to the states for the funeral. He was able to spend a few precious hours with Louise at her cottage after the funeral and before his departure at the airport.
This time when he left, he had a bad feeling. He couldn’t put a name to it, but if he did, it would be foreboding.
Chapter 8
I’ll never smile again…
Over the next few months, Louise worked hard, both at the Higgins plant and out at her mother’s cottage. She still wrote to Phillipe every day and received numerous letters from him, and occasionally they talked on the phone. She now knew, or guessed, that he was in England because the operator who put through his staticky calls had a decided British accent.
Rumors abounded about what was happening with the war, and the news was not promising. She prayed a lot, and her mother was saying novenas for both Phillipe and Frank, from whom they still had no word.
At the beginning of June, she had a disturbing phone call from Phillipe.
“It will be over soon, sweetheart,” he told her.
“Can I start plannin’ a wedding?”
“No. Don’t want to jinx anything. But soon. I look at your pictures every day and wish I was there with you.”
“Me, too. I’m readin’ lots more books, if ya get my meaning.”
He laughed. “Just so you don’t practice on anyone else.”
“Never.”
“Pray for me…us, will you, Louise?”
Shivers swept over her body at his request. “Of course.”
“Love you forever, baby,” he ended.
A few days later, in the middle of the night on June 6, one of her roommates awakened her. “What? What is it?”
“My cousin just called. General Eisenhower is about to make an important message on the radio.”
Louise grabbed a robe and rushed to the living room where all three of her roommates were huddled around the big console radio. Everyone had a friend or family or loved one involved in this horrid war.
The general said, in what was termed the Order of the Day:
Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory!
Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.
Tears rolled down all their eyes as they pondered the ominousness of the commander’s words. Unable to sit still, Louise grabbed a coat and found herself heading toward St. Louis Cathedral on Jackson Square where dozens, maybe hundreds of others, had a like idea.
The next day, the newspapers were full of stories about what was called D-Day, the most important battle of the war which was taking pla
ce at that moment on a beach in Normandy. She went to work where everyone was speculating about the outcome of today’s actions, predicting enormous casualties.
Four days later, on a Saturday, Louise was ironing a blouse in the kitchen when the doorbell rang. One of her roommates, Sonia Dullen, the only one home, called out, “I’ll get it. I’m expecting a package.”
Since silence followed, Louise figured it was the expected delivery. She soon found out that it was a delivery of another sort.
“Louise, can you come here, please?” she heard Sonia say.
She put the iron in its metal rest and made her way toward the living room. Halfway there, she put a hand to her throat and moaned. “Oh, no. No, no, no!” she whimpered.
Standing in the open doorway was one of the “Angels of Death,” a telegram delivery boy. The look on his face said it all.
Phillipe was dead.
For the first time in her life, Louise fainted.
The Big Grief begins…
For the next month, Louise felt like one of those movie zombies. She held herself together until after Phillipe’s funeral service, but her body was numb. She became a wooden, emotionless creature who performed everyday duties: bathing, eating, working, but just barely.
Her mother made the trek into New Orleans one Saturday in late July, hitching a ride with a neighbor who had a doctor’s appointment. She found Louise in her bedroom, where she often stayed when not at work, lying in a fetal position. She was tired, always so tired. Her roommates had gone to some parade being held in the French Quarter for returning soldiers. They’d given up on urging her to come out with them.
“Girl, this has got to stop. Get yerself up off that bed and straighten out.”
“I doan want to, Mama. I just want to sleep.”
“I got word about Frank,” her mother announced. “He died in some prison camp.”
She realized that her mother’s red-rimmed eyes weren’t just for Phillipe then. Her only son was gone. “Oh, Mama!” Louise forced herself to sit up. “I’m so sorry.” She’d never been close to Frank, who was so much older, but she felt for her mother’s pain. Would the death and destruction from that horrid war never end?
“I suspected he was gone, when we dint hear from him fer so long, even when the POWs were released right after the war. Still…” Her mother swiped at her eyes with a handkerchief and sat down on the bed next to her. Putting an arm around Louise’s shoulders, she tugged her close and said, “We’re all we got now, of our family. Jist you and me.”
“Will there be a service?”
Her mother nodded. “Next week. You’ll be there, won’t you?”
“I will,” Louise promised, although how she would garner the energy, or be able to sit through another funeral Mass with all its reminders of Phillipe, she had no idea.
“Lots of people have lost loved ones in the war, honey. They grieve, but they go on. Thass what we have ta do, both of us.”
“My grief is too big. It surrounds me, it’s inside me, it consumes me.”
“Oh, chile, why doan ya come stay with me fer awhile? The bayou is the best place fer healin’.”
Louise shook her head. “We need the money from my job.”
“Trust in God, thass what I allus say.”
“Where was He when Phillipe was dying on that beach? Or Frank was dying in some prison camp?”
“Hush, child! You know better than that.”
She wasn’t going to argue religion with her mother. Not now. But back to that other question. “I can’t quit my job, Mama. Every penny counts, you know that.”
“We can get by on less. We’re Cajuns, honey. Survivors.”
“No, Mama. Maybe sometime later, but for now I have to hold onto this job.” In truth, she didn’t know what she would do without it. Just sleep all day? Or stumble through the streets where she’d walked with Phillipe? Pass the hotel where they’d first made love? No, too many memories!
Louise did straighten out after that, to some extent, except she took what she now thought of as her Big Grief in a new direction. It started one night when her roommates talked her into going out with them to a popular club. Staring at herself in the mirror of the bathroom medicine cabinet, she used a pair of shears to clip off all the wavy tresses of her dark hair. Phillipe had loved her hair long. Then, donning the tightest dress she owned and the highest pumps, she vowed to forget her past, if only for one night.
After that, she became a loose woman, drinking until her brain shut down. Sleeping with men, lots of men, nameless men. On the outside, she looked like a wilder, more outrageous version of her old self. Fun-loving. Reckless. Inside, she was sick.
She hated herself and what she was doing, but she couldn’t stop. Until one morning she awakened in bed with a snoring man she didn’t know. They were both naked, lying on a bare mattress with stains she didn’t dare examine too closely. With a pounding headache and so nauseated she had to clap a hand over her mouth, she barely made it to a filthy bathroom and vomited the contents of her stomach. She’d been doing that a lot lately, and losing weight at an alarming rate. Even her roommates had noticed and urged her to see a doctor.
I don’t need a doctor to tell me I’m dying, bit by bit. Of heartbreak. She wasn’t suicidal, but life had no meaning for her anymore.
Looking down at the toilet, which hadn’t seen a brush since the Civil War, she recognized this as a new low for her. Rinsing out her mouth, not bothering to comb her unruly hair, which was a cap of dark curls these days, she donned the wrinkled clothes from the previous night that lay about the floor, where she noticed a cockroach scurrying across the linoleum. Welcome to my world, bug, she thought. An Army uniform lay over a straight-back chair, and that felt like a betrayal of sorts to Phillipe…that she would give herself to another soldier. Can I feel any lower? The man, whoever he was, was still snoring when she left.
Still feeling the effects of last night’s alcohol—Did I really down eight Sazerac cocktails on a challenge from someone at Buster’s Beer Garden?—she stumbled her way outside, recognizing the street, one of the seedier ones in the Quarter. With no apparent destination in mind, she found herself in Jackson Square, facing St. Louis Cathedral. She sank down onto a stone bench. She couldn’t face entering the church at this point, even if she had the inclination, which she didn’t. God did not fit into the parameters of her hopeless life anymore.
“No one is hopeless,” a male voice said.
Huh? Was I talking out loud? She turned and saw that a man was sitting beside her. When had that happened, or had he been here first?
She blinked her bleary eyes, which were irritated by the bright sunlight. It must be almost noon. She couldn’t remember what day it was, but that would come to her, in time. No, she knew. It was Saturday. No work today. Thank God!
“And so thou should thank God. For many things,” the man remarked.
Now this was getting ridiculous. She knew she hadn’t spoken aloud that time. Giving him a closer look, she almost laughed. The guy wore a long white robe, tied at the waist with a rope belt. And he had a long wooden walking stick, longer than a cane. A staff, that’s what it was. How she knew that, she wasn’t sure, and her brain was too sodden with booze to care.
“Are you a priest?” Didn’t some priests wear robes like this under their vestments? Cassocks, they were called. He must have come from the cathedral. “Or are you in a choir or something?”
He shook his head. “Neither. I am an apostle.”
And I’m Betty Grable. “What’s your name?”
“’Tis Jude. Jude Thaddeus.”
Oh, this is just great, on this day of new lows, I have to meet up with a wacko. And what was with the “thou” and “’tis” language? “St. Jude?”
He nodded.
She laughed.
He didn’t even crack a smile. “Some say I am the patron saint of hopeless cases.”
“Well, you certainly came ta the right place. That’s me. Miss Hopeless.�
�
“Tsk-tsk-tsk! When will people understand that nothing happens but what God wills?”
“Bullshit!” she swore, uncaring if he was a saint or a crazy escapee from an asylum. “Are you sayin’ that God willed Phillipe ta die?”
He shrugged.
“I’m not buyin’ it.”
“Mayhap someday thou wilt understand. But verily I say unto you, the life God wants for you is not down the path thou hast chosen. He has a plan for you, child.” He gave her a head-to-toe scrutiny that was not complimentary.
She must look a mess, and she probably smelled. “I doubt that.”
“As did Thomas.”
“Huh?”
“Phillipe sent me.”
Louise gasped. “How do you know…what do you mean?”
“Phillipe is in a good place, but he worries about you.”
Oh, this was cruel. A cruel joke.
“Not a joke,” the man said, placing a hand over hers.
Once again, she knew that she hadn’t spoken aloud. How had he read her mind? And what was it with that odd warmth emanating from his hand to hers? She edged away from him on the bench, suddenly frightened.
“Fear not, Louise. God has blessed you.” He was gazing at her belly.
Was he trying to say…? Was it possible…? “Oh, no! None of that immaculate conception stuff!”
“Hardly applicable in your case,” the man…Jude…said with a note of wry humor.
“Are you saying I’m pregnant? I mean, Phillipe always used…” She didn’t finish her sentence but he knew what she meant.
“Only God is infallible. Didst not learn such in catechism class?”
If she was pregnant, what if the child wasn’t Phillipe’s? Louise bowed her head. “I feel so hopeless.”