Dream When You're Feeling Blue (13 page)

“Well, if you don’t even know what you wrote to Hank, what are you so excited about?” Louise asked. She scratched her arm agitatedly. “Jeez.”

“I told you she liked Hank better,” Tish said. “Didn’t I say so, a
long
time ago, didn’t I tell you?”

“First of all, it wasn’t so long ago,” Kitty said. “And, no, I don’t like him better.”

“Poor Julian,” Tish said, sighing. Then she sat up straighter and blinked. “Gosh, but really. Poor Julian!”

Louise snatched away the letter that was in Kitty’s hand. “It’s from Hank,” she said and began reading aloud. Kitty had a thought to grab the letter back, but the truth was, she wanted another opinion. Even from Tish, whom she also wanted to choke.

“Dear Kitty,”
Louise read.

“I believe there’s been an error of some sort. I have received a letter addressed to me, but the salutation is to ‘Julian.’ I would like to say I am a man of such outstanding character that I stopped reading right there, but alas—”

“Alas?” Tish said.
“Alas?”

“Quiet!” Kitty said. “He doesn’t mean it like that!”

“Like what?” Tish asked.

“It’s not…It’s just sort of tongue-in-cheek!”

“Be quiet and listen,” Louise said.

“Alas, I shall, most eagerly,” Tish said.

Louise looked at her. “That doesn’t even make sense. If you say ‘alas,’ you’re not doing it eagerly.”

“I know that!”

“No you don’t,” Kitty said.

“Do you want help fixing this problem?” Louise asked, and Kitty nodded.

“Then…” Louise raised her eyebrows.

Tish folded her hands on the table. All right. She was done, now.

“I would like to say I am a man of such character—”

“Out
standing
character,” Tish said, and then, when Louise looked daggers at her, “Sorry! But say it all! Just in the interest of accuracy!”

“of such outstanding character that I stopped reading right there, but alas, I did not. I read the letter through, and I hereby send both it and my most sincere apology back to you. May I assume that Julian got a letter intended for me? If so, I certainly can’t complain if he read it, but will hope that he, too, will make an effort to have the right man receive the right missive. I await, rather anxiously, I confess, for same.”

“What’s he talking about missiles for?” Tish asked.

“Missive,” Louise said.

“What’s that?”

“It means ‘letter.’”

Tish sat back in her chair, exasperated. “Well, then, why doesn’t he just call it a letter? I don’t like this guy. He’s a big show-off.”

“He’s just a good writer,” Louise said. “He was using alliteration.”

“For what?” Tish asked. “It’s a letter! What, is he trying to get a good grade or something? Oh, poor Julian, being jilted for such a creep.”

Kitty opened her mouth angrily to speak, then shut it. And then, suddenly, something occurred to her. “Tish? Do you have feelings for Julian?”

“He’s your
boy
friend!” she answered.

“I know,” Kitty said. “But do you?” Image after image was popping up in her brain: Tish hanging on Julian’s arm and begging for a ride in his car; Tish lighting his cigarette; Tish pointing out how the two of them looked alike, her hand lingering on top of his blond head. Once, driving away from the house with Julian, Kitty had looked back and seen Tish standing at the bedroom window, watching them go. Kitty had smiled and waved gaily at her, but Tish hadn’t waved back. She hadn’t been smiling, either.

Louise was rereading Hank’s letter and shaking her head. “Boy. It’s going to be interesting to see what Julian writes back.”

Tish bent her face to the letter she was holding. “Listen to this,” she said. “This guy in combat? He put on a clown hat, instead of his helmet. He said it made him look nuts and the Nazis are afraid of crazy people, so he thought he wouldn’t get shot at. But he did. He got shot in the shoulder.”

Louise spoke softly, staring into space. “He’ll come home then. He’ll get to come home.”

“Is Mrs. O’Conner the same?” Kitty asked. She knew her sister was thinking of Michael coming home.

“She was worse. I was going to tell you guys about it later. She can’t…She doesn’t talk anymore. Mostly she sleeps. Gosh, she’s gotten so thin. I don’t see how she can go on much longer. And poor Michael, having no idea.” She read from his letter:
“I’m going to bring you breakfast in bed every morning. You always said that was a dream of yours, and darling, I’m going to make it come true. Two eggs, bacon, and toast every day but Sunday, when I’m going to bring you waffles and a real rose. Guess you have to teach me how to make waffles first, though.”
Louise smiled sadly and put the letter down. “He wrote this before he heard,” she said. “I wonder what he’ll say after he hears.”

“’T
IS ENOUGH, NOW,” MARGARET SAID
at dinner the next evening. “You’ve got to eat more, Tommy.”

“I did,” he said. “I ate as much as I could!”

“Eat more,” Margaret said. “You may not like it, but—”

“I like it, Ma. I do, it’s real good. I’m just full.” But he picked up his fork.

“May I join the Marines?” Tish asked.

A shocked silence. Then, “No, you may not join the Marines,” Frank said.

“You free up the men to fight when you do!”

“Wonderful,” Frank said. “No.”

“You train at a college, and if you’re an officer candidate, you get to go to Smith or Mount Holyoke!”

Frank raised his eyebrows, made a noise deep in his throat, and chewed, chewed, chewed.

“The base pay for officers is up to two hundred and fifty dollars a month!”

“Really?” Kitty asked.

“All right,” Frank said, putting down his napkin and pushing himself from the table. “I’ll say this once and once only. None of my girls will join any branch of the service. ’Tis bad enough, Kitty doing a man’s job at a factory.” He held up his hand to silence Tish. “And don’t be asking me can you do that, either, for the answer is another resounding no, spelled capital ‘N,’ capital ‘O.’”

“I don’t want to work in a factory, I want to be a Marine.”

“You’re not even old enough,” Kitty told her.

“I will be in January!”

“And by that time, you’ll be suitably employed at Carson’s cosmetic counter, just as you planned,” Frank said. “You’re lucky you’re being given the opportunity. Your job now is fine for the summer, but come fall, you’ll take that paying position. We all must do our part for the family.”

“Pop, may I just ask you one more thing?”

He sighed. “If I say no, you’ll only ask me why not.”

“You’d be proud of your sons if they enlisted, wouldn’t you?”

“With God’s help, they won’t have to. But yes, I’d be proud indeed.”

“So why—”

“It’s a man’s place to fight the war. And that’s all. Now pass me the beets and let’s talk about something else.” He pulled his chair back up to the table. “Who’s got a scintillating nugget to inspire conversation?”

Silence.

“A pithy idea from one of my gifted offspring!” Frank said.

Silence but for the slurping sound of Binks drinking his milk.

“Some uplifting anecdote! A heartwarming story about a boy and his dog!”

“Are we getting a dog?” Binks asked. “Oh, boy! Are we getting a dog, Pop?”

“No, son.”

Margaret cleared her throat. “Well, here’s something I’d like to talk about. I’m getting awfully tired of Imogene Samuelson needing a pat on the girdle every time she bothers to come to a Red Cross meeting. And her the treasurer!”

“Ah!” Frank said. “Girdles! There’s a captivating subject if ever I heard one. Now, who do you think came up with that idea?”

“Not a woman, I can assure you,” Margaret said.

“Absolutely right!” Frank said. “’Twas a French designer, and he—”

“May I be excused?” Tommy asked, and Margaret nodded, then watched him go outside. The last few evenings, he had taken to sitting on the front steps after dinner, quietly watching the boys in the neighborhood play stickball in the street, rather than joining them. “I’m asking Dr. Brandon to come over, and look at him tomorrow,” Margaret said. “He’s not eating enough and he—”

“The lad’s all right,” Frank said. “He’s just going through a reverse growth spurt. Sure, Kitty did the same thing at almost the same age. And weren’t you worried to death then, too, nothing for it but Dr. Mayfield had to come right over, and then it was nothing. Nothing at all. Do you remember?”

“No.”

Kitty recalled Dr. Mayfield putting his cold stethoscope to her chest, how embarrassed she’d been at him seeing her new little breasts sprouting there. “I remember,” she said.

“There you are,” Frank said. “And now, Margaret, may I have some more of your fine…?”

“Cabbage Delmonico,” Margaret said and smiled primly in spite of herself. But then she said, “Still, Tommy’s so quiet, Frank, and—”

“Margaret! The boy is fine! He’s always been quiet. He’s sensitive, our own family philosopher. He’s worried, that’s all. He takes everything too much to heart. Don’t let him hear the radio anymore. Next Sunday, we’ll go on a family outing. We’ll take him somewhere and get his mind off things.”

“Hey, Pop,” Billy said. “Did you hear about that boy who enlisted in the Army Air Force when he was fourteen?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“He went on twenty-one combat missions over North Africa and Italy and won four citations, and then he retired, at sixteen. Now he’s working at an airplane plant until he’s old enough to enlist again!”

“That’s not true,” Frank said.

“It is!” Billy said. “Anthony cut it out of the
Chicago Daily News.
June sixteenth. He showed me the article; he saved it.”

Frank laughed. “You don’t say. I’m sorry I missed it.” He laughed again and shook his head. “There’s a young man I’d like to meet!”

“How did he enlist when he was underage?” Louise asked.

“False ID,” Tish said. “I hear about it all the time. Guys change the dates on their birth certificates. Hey, Pop, did you hear about the USO shows in North Africa, where some of the girls went onto the battlefield with the boys? One even fired a mortar shell at the enemy.”

“Both Greer Garson and Bette Davis were basket cases just from doing bond drives,” Margaret said. “And Rita Hayworth, she broke down, too. Show business isn’t all it seems.”

“Well, they’re not strong,” Tish said. “They’ve gotten soft from all their pampering. I’m strong. If I—”

Frank spoke with his mouth full.
“No.”

K
ITTY SAT OUT ON THE FRONT PORCH
steps in the heat of the late July evening. The family had gone to a novena together, then come back to hear FDR deliver another fireside chat. It was always soothing to imagine him sitting there in his cardigan with his cigarette holder, to hear him speak calmly and with great assurance about events that were so very frightening. He had a way of making you feel as though he were in the room right with you, reaching over to put a steadying hand on your shoulder. People all over the country wrote to him as though he were their friend: “Take lemon for your cold, I keep telling you!” one man had reportedly written him. “If you could just send us thirty-five dollars,” wrote another. Margaret always said that, next to the rosary, FDR was the best tonic for the times.

Kitty liked Mrs. Roosevelt even better. She was so intelligent—and so honest! Her monthly column for the
Ladies’ Home Journal
was called “If You Ask Me,” and in it she had vowed to answer whatever question she was asked—about anything. Sometimes the questions were about etiquette. Sometimes they were about relationships. Once she was asked about her taste in music. (She preferred classical, but only because this was the music she’d been raised with; it was most familiar to her.) This month, a woman had sent her a letter asking if soldiers from the midwestern states, which were normally Republican, were sent into combat zones before soldiers from Democratic states. Mrs. Roosevelt began her response by saying, “I have never heard anything so idiotic as your question.”

Tonight, the president had announced that, with the invasion of the Allies into Sicily, the first crack in the Axis had come. Hitler had abandoned the Italians in Sicily just as he had in Tunisia—more than 250,000 Axis troops were captured there. The Russian front was advancing and the Pacific front, too, with its Liberators flying from Midway to continue bombing the Japanese on Wake Island. Louise felt sure Michael had been part of the Sicilian invasion, for he’d been transferred to Tunisia from England. Kitty thought Julian would be involved somehow with the push of the Japanese from the Aleutians to New Guinea. Both women were worried for their men; neither spoke much about it. It was their job to, as the song said, “accentuate the positive.” Little tolerance was given to women who behaved hysterically, to those who wrung their hands and wept over a lack of letters or complained about their lonely Saturday nights, or the way their babies were known to their fathers only by wallet-worn photos.

The president had explained how long military operations took—a little over a year since they planned the North African campaign, six months since they’d planned the one for Sicily. “We cannot just pick up the telephone and order a new campaign to start the next week,” he’d said. Thousands of ships and planes guarded the sea-lanes and carried men and equipment to the point of attack. Here at home were the railroads that carried men to the ports of embarkation, and factories that turned out the necessary materials. (At this, Frank smiled at Kitty, and she smiled back—she
was
proud.)

Roosevelt made them feel better about rationing: gas for a single bombing mission was equal to 375 A-ration tickets—enough gas to drive one’s car five times across the continent. The initial assault force on Sicily involved 3,000 ships that carried 160,000 men together with 14,000 vehicles, 600 tanks, and 1,800 guns. And this initial force was followed every day by thousands of reinforcements. Kitty thought of one blond-headed young man squeezed onto the deck of a ship, talking to another soldier as they stared out at the water. With so many men, so much equipment, did they feel safer? Or were they nervously awed at the sight of it all, wary of what such vast numbers of weapons portended? You could see different attitudes reflected in the letters the sisters got—cockiness, boredom, loneliness, but never did the men really complain. They made inquiries about the well-being of their loved ones and disregarded their own. They seemed to share a certain pragmatic philosophy: if your number was up, you’d get it; if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t. Tish had read aloud from a letter written by a soldier saying that he’d once gotten the creeps bad, he felt sure he was going to get killed that night. He told her he’d started to shake, even his teeth were chattering. His buddy in the foxhole with him had told him to think of some dame and he’d feel better. So the guy had done it, and he’d stopped shaking, just like that. He said he’d thought of Tish in her blue strapless dress with all the sparkles across the top (Kitty knew the dress; Tish had borrowed it from a friend and brought it home in triumph), and he had thought of how her shoulders were so smooth and white and had smelled so good, and he had stopped shaking.
So thanks, kid,
he’d written.
Thanks for being so beautiful.

The president had praised the great increase in merchant shipping, saying that “tonight we are able to terminate the rationing of coffee.” Frank stood and cheered so loudly the family almost didn’t hear that in a short time more sugar would also be available.

What stuck most with Kitty from FDR’s speech tonight was what he said about the home front: “No one can draw a blue pencil down the middle of the page and call one side the fighting front and the other side the home front. For the two of them are inexorably tied together.” Kitty understood this with her head and her heart and her hands. But what she wished for on this hot summer night was an instant return to normalcy.

It was stifling, still up in the eighties and humid, the air so close it felt like hands around her throat. She sat alone, trying to cool herself with a pleated fan she’d made out of newspaper, her skirt hiked indecently over her knees, her blouse opened two buttons down. The fireflies were out, and they lit on and off, on and off, regular as a heartbeat. She watched them, weary and mesmerized, and each time they lit up there seemed to come another scene of a more innocent summer, scenes from her childhood: Pop churning strawberries into ice cream, his white shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows and his forehead beaded with sweat. Cabbage roses grown so large and fragrant you could smell them a block away. Woozy the cat stuck up in a tree, Kitty’s brothers at the base forlornly calling her. The plunk of the first blueberry into the silver bucket. The thrilling leap of grasshoppers in high grass baked warm and sweet-smelling by the sun. The plunge beneath the surface of the cool green water of the lake on North Avenue Beach. Disembodied voices from people’s darkened front porches, offering greetings as the family walked home from a movie. The Fourth of July, babies asleep on their laid-out blankets while above them fireworks spread across the sky like giant chrysanthemums. Margaret’s canning steaming up the kitchen windows, her apron gaping at the bosom and her hair escaped from her bun in wild, wet tendrils. The scent of outside captured in sheets pulled up to Kitty’s chin by her parents before they kissed her good night. Kids standing out in the yard and calling,
“Ohhhhhhhh, Kiiiiitty!”
for her to come out and play kick the can. The musical concerts played by bands under ivy-covered gazebos, the goat cart they used to own pulled by the unimaginatively named Nanny. Once Nanny ate a pair of Margaret’s underpants right off the line, and they’d all laughed, even, finally, Margaret. All of the family lying out in the backyard and wishing on stars. And what had she wished for then? A best friend who was not her sister. Free candy. The retirement of Mrs. Hornbuckle, a teacher as mean as her name suggested, before it was Kitty’s turn to have her. All wishes so very different from what she’d wish now.

Kitty looked up and down the block. Nobody out. Everyone in, undoubtedly thinking about what FDR had told them this evening, including the fact that there was no telling when this would all be over. She looked up into the heavens and wished on a star for the safe return of Julian and Michael. And Hank. Then she went inside to write her letters.

Kitty sat at the kitchen table with her sisters and nervously opened the letter from Julian that had finally come that day. She read to herself quickly, biting at her lip.

Say, kid,

I think you goofed up here. I got a letter addressed to me, but you meant it for some guy named Hank. Who’s that? Seems like you know him pretty well, but I don’t remember anybody by that name. This isn’t Henry Small, is it? Doesn’t sound like Henry. You asked him what he was like as a little boy. I remember you asked me that once, too.

I hope you got the job you wanted. I guess life goes on back there, huh? Here, it’s kind of hard to describe, which is why I hardly ever try. But I’ll give it a shot. You know those movies we used to watch where they showed islands? Palm trees blowing in the breeze, the big moon and the gentle waves, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour? These islands aren’t like that. They’re not like that at all. We’ve got coconuts aboveground and rats and ants below. And is it wet! The rain and humidity on these islands is awful—everything molds. We’ve got insects all over the place, and a lot of guys get sick with malaria and other diseases—fungus all over their feet. So far, I’ve escaped that. Hey, did I tell you that some of the guys here started a victory garden? Some guy’s mom sent seeds from home. Who knows how long we’ll be here to tend it, but it gives us something to do.

Sure wish I could fire my bean-shooter at old Schicklgruber himself and turn out his lights. That would move this thing right along. Then I’d come home, put you in my barouche, and you wouldn’t see us for dust—I’d like to drive you all the way to San Francisco, it sure is a nice place.

Keep on writing me. You know what they say, we like our letters real cheerful and real often. Funny to say you feel bored when you’re fighting a war, but when I’m not scared out of my wits, I’m awful bored and the letters do help. Some guys carry them around and reread them so often they fall apart. One guy got a crayon scribble from his kid he’s never even seen, and when it disintegrated the guy cried—didn’t even care that we all saw. We move around quite a bit, but the mail always finds us eventually. How are your sisters. Maybe you could tell them to write me, too. Some guys get fourteen, fifteen letters a week.

Love,

Julian

“What’d he say?” Louise asked.

Kitty handed her the letter.

Louise read it, then handed it back.

“Well?” Kitty asked.

“Seems like he’s trying hard to write more.”

“Let me see.” Tish took the letter from Kitty, read it quickly, and sat up straighter in her chair. “I’ll write him; I’ll send him ten pages!”

Kitty looked coolly over at her. “Will you.”

“He asked me to!”

No arguing with that. Kitty began her own letter:
Dear Julian, I sure was glad to hear from you.
She paused, holding her pen up over her paper. Then she changed the period to a comma and added,
sweetheart.
She stole a look at Tish. Julian was
her
boyfriend, not Tish’s. Let Tish go ahead and write to him, she couldn’t call him sweetheart.

It seems like years since you left,
she wrote.
You’re right, things are going along as usual at home. The only unusual thing is that I’m reading a book. Can you believe it?

Kitty read what she’d written, then read it again. What to say about the book? What would he care about the book? In truth, what did she care about the book?

She blew all the air out of her cheeks and began to jiggle her heel. Back again to this awful inability to say something. What was
real cheerful
? She looked at her sisters, their heads bent over their letters, writing swiftly, smoothly. Sometimes Louise would smile or Tish would giggle, and when that happened, Kitty’s frustration mounted.

Never mind something cheerful. Maybe she needed to try something daring, something that might spur Julian into some kind of action, some kind of admission. Maybe the trouble was that, in her heart of hearts, she didn’t know what her relationship with Julian really was. Oh, she knew she was his girl, but always it came back to her wondering: what did that
mean
? They’d never been great talkers, not like Louise and Michael, who could sit out on the porch swing and talk for hours. Kitty and Julian weren’t like that. Truth be told, she’d mostly been dazzled by his good looks: the gold flecks in his green eyes, the sweep of his blond hair, his strong, lean body. Once when they went on a picnic out in the country and were lying together on a blanket, Julian had picked up her bare foot and kissed the instep. She’d shivered at the almost indecent intimacy—and longed for more. But what had they ever talked about? What did she really know about Julian, or he about her? Well, here was an opportunity for them to learn something about each other. Somebody had to go first to try to make this relationship more romantic—it was what they both wanted, and men were no good at this kind of thing. Julian’s way of saying he wanted to be intimate with her was to say, “Hey, kid, let’s go swap saliva.” He needed an example set for him.

Her mouth set determinedly, Kitty wrote that she loved Julian like peaches and that she hoped he loved her, too, that she dreamed of the day they’d be married. She knew what their Hotpoint kitchen would look like, with its Mixmaster and electric dishwasher and white ruffled curtains and cheerful decals everywhere. Their bedroom would have matching pale gold quilted satin spreads and blond nightstands with lamps with ruffled shades. She knew just how she’d feel when she heard his key in the lock, how she’d melt a bit inside. She wrote that she wanted to go to sleep with him and wake up with him. Take that, Julian Stanton.

She reread the letter, addressed it, and sealed it shut. She saw Julian in the bathroom, shaving his handsome face; herself in the kitchen, cooking unrationed bacon, her hair tied back with a length of blue satin ribbon.

Next she wrote to Hank, and again asked him,
What were you like as a little boy?
It would be interesting to know. There was nothing wrong with asking him that; it was something she might ask anyone. Then, as long as she was getting things straightened out, she told him that he must not misinterpret her writing to him, to remember that she was all but engaged, that her relationship with him was only a friendship, and she knew he would have no trouble finding a girlfriend worthy of him, for he was one swell fellow. Really. Exclamation point. There. She couldn’t be any clearer than that about her intentions toward him. She addressed the envelope and sealed it. Then she held it in her hand a long moment before she dropped it into the pile of letters in the center of the table.