“Maybe I just don’t have that much to prattle on about.”
“I bet you do.”
She leaned back on both elbows again, letting the cigarette smoke slowly rise from her mouth. I could see the outline of her breasts, her nipples pushing through her dress. “Do you believe in love at first sight?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, rather too quickly. “Or something awfully close to it.”
“Is that how you felt about your wife when you first met her?”
I blushed. “No, I mean not exactly.” I tried to find the right words. “I was attracted to her. She seemed nice. It was a more gradual process. It’s funny that you ask because the guys in our squad had endless debates about love and romance. You have to realize we had a lot of time on our hands.”
“Sounds like an unusual group of men.”
“The best.” I thought of Giles and Tometti and Lawton and Daniel, of our late-night talks curled up in a dugout or on duty or marching, all the funny stories and laughter and dirty jokes and hopes and longings and loneliness. “I think that’s what saved me.”
“And what did you all decide?” She was smiling.
“About love? Well for starters we decided we all wanted to fall in love at first sight, like Daniel had with you.”
She looked momentarily flustered.
“But we couldn’t decide whether love at first sight could last, whether that feeling, that intoxicating attraction, that passion, could be sustained, or whether it just wore off. Nonetheless, we were desperate to find out.”
“I guess I’ll never know that now.” She took another slow drag of her cigarette, then extinguished it in the grass. “Tell me, did you have a girlfriend during the war?”
I suppressed the urge to lie. “No. To be honest, I was envious of Daniel.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t. I’ll bet you were quite popular growing up.”
“What, are you kidding? Pudgy Paddy?”
“Pudgy Paddy?”
I winced. “It was a phase. My mother used to make these cookies… ”
“Pudgy Paddy. It’s catchy. I was called Pinky.”
“Pinky?”
“I had pinkeye on and off for most of sixth grade. It went from one eye to the other and then back again. It was quite charming.”
“I had pinkeye the night of the high school dance.”
“You didn’t.”
“Fortunately, I didn’t have a date.”
“You didn’t either? Aren’t we a pair?” She brushed her hand against my forearm.
I studied her face. She didn’t know the power she held.
“I always kept to myself at school,” she said. “I never really felt comfortable with other kids. They seemed so unpredictable to me. And I was teased because I couldn’t afford the right clothes. Little girls can be quite cruel.”
“Another loner,” I said, smiling to myself as I pulled off another piece of bread, added a slice of cheese and began eating it.
“I prefer loners,” she said. “They’re the most interesting people.”
“If you can get to them.”
She laughed. “Before I met Daniel I didn’t know you didn’t have to be so alone.”
Was I lonely, even with a wife and son? I was, and I hadn’t even noticed.
She rose to her feet and brushed herself off. “It’s hard to find the right person, isn’t it? Someone you can love without losing yourself?”
I nodded and stood up, feeling cornered by her questions. What if I simply told her what I felt? Would that scare her? Would she feel sorry for Charlotte? How could I explain to her that it wasn’t just a physical attraction; that I wasn’t another lecherous husband on the make? How could I tell her the truth without overwhelming her?
A biplane passed overhead, low and droning. I felt an instinctive chill of fear. We both watched it until it disappeared. Then Julia turned to me, looking suddenly serious, and said, “How did you let go of the war; of the things you saw and did?”
“I’m not sure that I have.” I looked at her and she held my gaze. Her eyes looked curious, as though she were searching for something.
“How often do you see the other men, the ones who came home?”
“Used to be once a year. We’d drink ourselves into a stupor. But now people are starting to drift off. Either they don’t want to be reminded of the war anymore or they’re just too busy trying to raise families and make a living.” She was now standing close to me.
“The saddest part is, it’s not the same even when we are together. Most of the guys are so different now; preoccupied. I hardly recognize them.”
“Life does that,” she said, plucking a bright red leaf from a nearby branch and running her fingertips along its surface, as if memorizing its texture. I imagined her fingertips running across my skin.
I lit a cigarette, shaking the match hard before tossing it to the ground. “You know the strangest part of it all, the war I mean? I’ve never felt so alive in all my life. Everything: my hearing, sense of smell, my vision, my taste buds; it was all so magnified. I noticed everything.”
That was the secret delight of war, wasn’t it? That at least for once in your life, everything was on the line. Everything mattered.
“That probably had something to do with being shot at.”
I laughed. “But doesn’t it seem a little pathetic, that we have to have a gun to our heads to fully value life?”
“Yes, come to think of it, it does.”
“Actually, I believe that falling in love has the same effect—without quite so many downsides.”
“Oh really?” Her full smile pressed her cheeks back toward the outer corners of her eyes, lifting her nose slightly.
I imagined holding her face and kissing her lips, her eyes, her chin. Was I falling in love? No, I’d already fallen, from the first moment I’d seen her; her eyes and nose and hair and laugh and hands and her smell and the things she said and the warm tone of her voice and the shape of her ears and her gestures and her easy smile. Especially her smile.
I reached for the wine bottle and poured more wine.
“Do you mind if we stay longer?” she asked. “I’d like to paint some more if you don’t—”
“Not at all.” I handed her a glass and we stood facing each other. Above, plump white clouds slowly crept past and the air felt cooler. In the distance I saw several cows clustered on the slope of a hill. “I’m curious, have you always wanted to be a painter?”
She nodded, then took a sip of her wine. “Somehow it makes me feel better. After Daniel died it’s all I wanted to do.”
She was standing so close to me, her head tilted slightly up toward mine. I longed to reach out and grab her in my arms. Couldn’t I? No, I couldn’t. So many reasons why I couldn’t. Yet none seemed convincing. I leaned forward and kissed her quickly on the lips, then stepped back to look at her face. I thought she seemed to blush as she dropped the leaf she was holding. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then stopped herself and turned and walked back to her canvas.
I WAS SITTING in the lounge this afternoon when I looked up from my book and noticed that I was surrounded by the No Names. The No Names are people who no longer talk; people whose souls have long since fled and whose eyes are like the vandalized windows of an abandoned farmhouse, the grass coming up through the porch steps and the front door half open, leading to cluttered darkness. They just sit all day, sucking air in, and breathing it out. Just breathing. I call them the No Names because I can’t bear to learn their names. Not after they’ve already died. Who wants to acquaint themselves with a name that no longer registers?
I closed my book and hurried back to my room.
YOU’VE AGED well, Patrick.
You think so? I don’t. This place depresses me. All these old people, most of them long dead only they don’t know it.
I want to ask you something.
Please. Anything.
Just one question.
I’m ready.
Well, after all these years, after everything you’ve seen, do you still think life is a tragedy?
Oh yes, Julia, I do. But there are some very funny moments. This just isn’t one of them.
GILES AND I sat in a listening post near the ruins of a farmhouse under a full summer moon, straining to distinguish one sound from another. Coughing. A tap of metal on metal. Creaking wood from the duckboards. Laughter. And much farther, the braying of a mule. We’d been up against the Germans for three weeks with little rest and our nerves were completely frayed.
“What’s that?” asked Giles.
“You mean that?”
“That.”
“That’s behind us. That’s our lines.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Just after four a.m. the Germans fired a few rounds above our heads. I heard them slap into the parapet of the trench behind us. Bullets sound different when they hit flesh. A thouk, thouk, thouk. Then maybe a scream or a low groan.
No word yet from the Maxim somewhere off to the right. They do talk, fast and guttural, their angry messages tapped furiously in a Morse code that translates: HATE HATE HATE HATE. Sometimes, as the bullets sweep back and forth, I hear them inquire, “Where are you, Patrick? We’re coming for you.” When I first heard them, they reminded me of the woodpeckers we had out behind our house. They don’t anymore.
Artillery doesn’t talk, it just screams, convulsing the earth with grand mal seizures. But not tonight. Tonight the 75s and 77s and 155s sounded like muffled barks in the distance; the persistent cough of some primordial beast lurking in the forest, unable to sleep.
“Wouldn’t some venison taste good about now? Say with a side of—”
“Don’t even start.”
He shrugged, then rubbed his jaw. “Did you see that Chaplin picture at the Y last week?”
“Missed it. Any good?”
“Pretty damn funny stuff.” He scratched his crotch, then his back, then his crotch again. “I’ve been thinking about opening a motion picture theater back in Cleveland. Wonder what it would cost?”
“Hell of a lot more than we’re drawing sitting here. ’Course if the war lasts another dozen years or so, you might just have yourself the down payment.”
“Guess I might need some partners.” He scratched himself again, then coughed quietly into his sleeve. I imagined him back in Ohio, all dressed up and standing out in front of his new theater on opening night with a line of people waiting to buy tickets. Even if it failed he’d find something else; Giles was like that, always scheming on ways to get rich. He’d already started a lucrative trade in German souvenirs and French brandy and was constantly trying to befriend the storeroom clerks at the Red Cross canteens. “I just want to be comfortable,” he’d say. “I watched my parents sweat every day of their lives and for what?” His mother died when he was eleven; his father was now bedridden and cared for by John’s younger sister and her husband, who worked the family farm.
“Look at that moon, just sitting there staring at us,” I said. It looked much closer than I remembered the moon being, like a big piece of fruit hanging just out of reach. Squinting, I made out craters and gashes but I couldn’t see the face. I never saw the face on the moon. Under my breath I hummed, “I see the moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees somebody I’d like to see… ”
“Shhh, listen.” He crept up on the firestep.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Shhh.”
A footfall against dirt? I raised my rifle so that the tip of my bayonet was level with the top of the trench line. The sudden nausea and pressure in my bladder. Giles pulled out a grenade, his fingers fidgeting on the serrated metal grip. We waited.
“It’s okay, it’s nothing,” he said, relaxing. “It’s too bright out for raids. They’d have to be fucking crazy.”
“They are fucking crazy.” I slumped down against the side of the trench.
He pulled out his pistol, wiped it down, and placed it back in its holster. A few minutes later he said, “You know what I miss?”
“What?”
“My dog. I miss my dog.”
“What kind?”
“A mutt. Named Scratch.”
“Scratch?”
“Her fleas have fleas.”
“Ought to name you Scratch.”
He jabbed me with his elbow. “I’m serious. I really miss her. She’s gonna go nuts when I get home.” He smiled broadly.
I thought of Chester and how we buried him near the base of an elm tree out in the woods behind our house. Katherine and I made a wooden cross painted white with large red lettering that said, “Chester, 1904-1910.”
“Shh.”
“What?”
“Did you hear something?”
“No, I didn’t hear anything.”
WHERE WAS I? The portrait, that’s right. Let me sit a moment and close my eyes. It’s easier that way, to drift back.
Back to when things were so clear.
AFTER LUNCH I asked Julia if I could look at her painting but she told me to wait a few more hours. Had I ruined everything with the kiss? And what was she thinking? I studied her face for clues but found none. I lay on the grass daydreaming for an hour and then tried to read a newspaper she had brought along, but I was too distracted.
“You’re being awfully patient,” she said, after a while. “Oh I don’t mind. I like it here.”
“You can come and look now, if you want. It’s not nearly finished, but I won’t do any more today.”
I stood and walked over to the easel. She took a few steps back and watched me.
It was Daniel. He was walking across a meadow, looking right at her. I could see the damaged church steeple in the background and in the foreground I could see the corner of our picnic blanket. Daniel was in his uniform, dirty and slightly bent under the weight of his pack. He held his helmet in his hand and his rifle was slung over his shoulder. But what was that look in his eyes? I couldn’t tell if he was sad or happy, but I didn’t dare ask.
Julia asked me what I thought but I couldn’t say anything at all so I just looked at her and nodded and she nodded too.
Calm fell. From heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”
—Thomas Hardy, “And There Was a Great Calm.”
I CARRIED THE painting of Daniel back to the car. It was hard to hold it, trying not to smudge anything as we carefully picked our way alongside the stream and past clumps of barbed wire and more piles of shell casings and then back across a long pockmarked pasture to where we had parked.
We got back to the hotel at dusk. In the lobby I handed the painting back to Julia. She turned it right-side up and offered a weak smile that suggested either sadness or exhaustion.
“It was kind of you to come with me today,” she said.
“I enjoyed it.”
“I promised myself I’d write some letters tonight.”
“Yes, well maybe I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
She turned and headed for the stairs. Everything she carried looked so tremendously heavy that I wanted to help. And I couldn’t let her leave without trying to explain myself.
“Ah, listen, about this afternoon… ”
She turned. “Don’t,” she said, shaking her head and holding her hand up. Then she smiled.
We stood in silence, looking at each other. Then I said, “I thought I might drive to Verdun tomorrow. I was wondering, would you care to join me, if you’re not busy?” So nervous. Did my voice sound strange? It did to me.
“Verdun?” A pause. Her just looking at me. Not staring, just looking. And that painting of Daniel walking toward me across the meadow. “Yes certainly. I’m glad you asked.”
THANK YOU.
&nb
sp; I’VE BEEN TRYING to draw Julia for years. Not that I have any talent. I took some classes long ago and I sign up whenever they offer drawing here at Great Oaks. Most of my efforts are so embarrassing that I tear them up immediately. A few I tuck away in my drawer, only to destroy them upon later scrutiny. The instructor says I lack a sense of perspective. Everything is a bit off, as though viewed through the funny mirrors at a county fair. But I keep trying, if only from obstinacy. Sometimes I draw landscapes, usually French scenery plucked from my memory. But most of the time I try to draw Julia. I haven’t been able to get her right yet; not the eyes and the smile. But I haven’t given up. I’d just like to once before my mind goes. That way I wouldn’t have to worry about losing her forever.
I sketch some of the nurses too. And not always properly clothed. The truth is, I’m in love with three of them, or more honestly, I’m in love with one of them and smitten by the other two. At my age you may figure this is a mere case of high affections, a grandfatherly crush on “women young enough to be your grandchildren!” It is not. This is pure hot lusty love celebrated in every nook and cranny of this facility, at least in my head. It’s longing until you want to claw at your chest and fall to your knees and beg for just one pouty-lipped kiss and a slight press of the loins.
My favorite is Sarah, who strikes me as one of those rare women who could fulfill both the wife and mistress fantasies on the same date. A divorced mother-of-two with a sleek black mane, dark blue eyes and the softest hands in the nursing profession, Sarah is the Florence Nightingale of Great Oaks, relentlessly cheerful and optimistic (except when it comes to her own life), with the rare ability to convince you that she actually likes being around old people. Not quite as sexy as Janet, the young blonde on the west wing, but so sincere, so absolutely honest and right there in front of you, her hand on top of yours and those eyes examining you to make sure you’re okay and what can I do for you? And she’s got the best laugh, a throaty chuckle that doubles the size of her smile and causes her to bend slightly at the waist, which makes me wince. The amazing part—this really kills me—is that her husband walked out on her, like maybe Marilyn Monroe was waiting for him offshore with champagne on ice.
Losing Julia Page 11