Dream When You're Feeling Blue (25 page)

“R
EAD IT AGAIN,” LOUISE SAID.
The sisters were in bed, Tish at the foot and all but snoring, but Louise and Kitty awake—Kitty because her sister kept tapping her shoulder and whispering, “Hey? Kitty? Are you asleep? Hey? Are you awake?”

Louise was often restless like this at night now. Margaret said it always happened that way, it was Nature’s plan. When it got close to the time for the baby’s birth, the mother didn’t sleep well anymore. “It’s to get you ready,” Margaret had told Louise. “You’ll be leaping up and down all night for many weeks.”

“I’ll help with him,” Tish had said, and Kitty had volunteered herself as well. But inside she was thinking,
Oh, no, I need my
sleep
!

She needn’t have worried: Louise had said she’d sleep in the living room with the baby at first; no sense in all of the family’s rest being disturbed. “Good idea,” Kitty had said quickly, and when Tish and Margaret had glared at her, she’d said,
“What?
It
is
a good idea!” But now Louise was wide awake and asking to hear again a certain paragraph she’d particularly liked from one of Hank’s letters.

“I’d read it to myself if you’d let me,” Louise said, and Kitty said nothing. Surely Louise knew why Kitty wouldn’t hand over this letter—or any of Hank’s—to her. There were too many personal things. Lovely, thrilling, personal things. Things that made Kitty soft at the center, that made her heart speed up. Things so wonderfully explicit they made her blush reading them.
And to feel your arms around my neck, your body moving beneath my own.
Oh! she couldn’t even think of it!

“I’ll read it one more time,” Kitty said, “but then you have to leave me alone.”

“I will,” Louise said. “I’ll go downstairs if I can’t sleep after this.”

Kitty tried to make a lot of noise, getting the letter from her dresser drawer. She wanted Tish to have to wake up, too. But it was no use. If that girl had been at Pearl Harbor, she would have snored right through it.

Kitty got the letter, settled in under the covers, and read:

“The other day, some old colonel told me, ‘Soldiers measure their lives in months, if they’re worth a damn as soldiers.’ In my experience, it’s more like days. One day. You might think that could suggest a terrible hopelessness, a disregard for life. Not so. Instead, you live for the day you’re alive. You are more fully appreciative of every single thing: the taste of a cigarette, the moon coming over the horizon, the smell of wood smoke coming from some farmhouse, some guy sharing chocolate from home. Despite everything, our hearts yearn to be lifted, and they will find a way.”

“Thank you,” Louise said, and Kitty told her she was welcome. Then Louise lay down and punched her pillow into shape. She sighed, and Kitty saw two tears roll down her cheeks. “Don’t you wish they could come home at night, though? Okay, go and fight all day if you have to, but just come home at night. Have a good hot meal and a bath and sleep in a bed. With us.”

“Louise,” Tish said sleepily.

“Yes?”

“Pipe down. And turn out that light!”

“Oh,
certainly,
Tish; yes, I will! Oh my goodness gracious, I’m so sorry for having awakened you.” Louise looked over at Kitty and raised her eyebrows. Kitty nodded.
“Now!”
Louise said, and the sisters each grabbed one of Tish’s legs and pulled her out of bed and onto the floor. An old trick, one that each of them had suffered many times.

“Judas Priest!” Tish yelled. “I told you guys I want to sleep! Now shut your heads and let me
sleep
!”

Here came footsteps down the hall. The girls leaped into bed, turned off the light, and lay quiet as stones.

“Not another word,” Margaret said. “If you can’t sleep, say the rosary. To yourself! One more sound from any of you and you’ll all be down in the basement doing laundry. I have a full box of Duz and a mountain of ironing. ’Tis sheets and men’s shirts, too!”

Now came a silence so thick you could almost slice it like bread.

O
N MOTHER’S DAY NIGHT, KITTY AWAKENED
to the sound of Louise moaning. She shot up in bed and looked for her sister but didn’t see her. “Louise?”

“What?” Louise said. And then “Ooooooh.
Ow!”
She was lying on the floor beside the bed, clutching her stomach.

Kitty pulled hard at the covers and hung her head over the side of the bed.

Tish made a half-growling sound and yanked the covers back over herself.

“Oh, jeez!” Kitty said. “Louise, what are you doing? Are you having the baby?”

Now Tish leaped up.
“Where?”

“Yes,” Louise said. “It’s coming!”

“Well…Well…” Kitty said, then hollered,
“Ma!”

“No!” Louise said. “Don’t call her! I don’t want to have it yet.”

“What do you
mean
?” Kitty got out of bed to kneel beside her sister. Again she hollered for her mother, then told Tish, “Go get her. Hurry!”

“No!” Louise said. And then she cried out again.

“MAAAAAAAAAA!”
Kitty yelled, and she heard Margaret call back, “I’m coming, I’m coming! Frank, telephone the doctor, Louise is having her baby!”

Now came the pounding of the boys getting up and coming out into the hall and the sound of Margaret yelling at them to get back to their rooms and don’t even think about coming out if they knew what was good for them, she’d tell them when they could come out, and they should stay in there without a sound, even if it took a month of Sundays, by God.

“Kitty!” Louise cried.

“Frank!” Margaret yelled. “Don’t come with me! Go downstairs and call the doctor!”

Then their mother was in the girls’ room and at Louise’s side, and her voice was soft and low. “All right, now, darling. What are you feeling?”

“Oh!” Louise said. “Oh!”

“I know, I know it hurts, my love. But let’s get you into bed, and we’ll stay right here with you, you’ll have your lovely baby soon, the doctor’s on the way.”

“I don’t want to have it now!” Louise put her hand to her belly. “Don’t! Go back!”

“Stop that now.” Margaret signaled to her girls to help, and they all lifted Louise back to bed.

“Oof!” Margaret said, blowing her hair off her face and rubbing her back. “That’s a big baby coming, God bless him!”

“But not now!” Louise sobbed. “Not noowwww!”

Margaret sat on the bed and took Louise’s hand. “Louise, darling. The baby’s coming whether you want it to or not. It’s all right. We’re all here, I and your sisters, and though we may not see her, the blessed Virgin Mary our mother, too. And the doctor’s on the way.”

“I want my baby to come to
mor
row!” Louise said.

Margaret told Tish, “Go downstairs so you’re there to let the doctor in. Open the door and stand there and don’t leave. Tell your father to put some coffee on. Hurry up.” Then, to Louise, who lay weeping, “Now, Coots, why don’t you want your baby to come?” She pushed her daughter’s hair back from her forehead and kissed it.

“It’s
Mother’s
Day,” Louise said. “I want him to have his
own
day!
Ow!”

“Now listen to me. What day could be better than this to have your baby? Take your mother’s hand and settle down now, sure ’tis as natural as rain having a baby. Here we go. Bend your knees and let me have a look, there’s a good girl.” Moaning, Louise bent her knees up, and Margaret stuck her head under the sheet.

“How long have you been hurting?” she asked, laying the sheet neatly back over her daughter.

“For an
hour
!” Louise said.

“Ah. Well, then, ’tis his own day the baby will be having, don’t you worry about that.” To Kitty, she said, “Tell your father to cancel the doctor. We’ve time to take her to the hospital.”

M
ICHAEL FRANCIS O’CONNER DID NOT HAVE RED HAIR;
it was black, like Louise’s. He did not have dimples; his fat cheeks were smooth and round. Nor did he seem to have a divine disposition: as Frank, Margaret, Tish, and Kitty stood crowded next to the other relatives looking at the babies in the nursery, they saw Michael screaming and kicking and waving his baby fists. His jaws trembled, and his face was red. Through the thick glass, they could make out his furious sounds—he was the only baby crying at the moment.

“Holy macaroni,” Tish said. “He’s
mad.”

“He’s only hungry,” Margaret said, and in a way that seemed involuntary, she rocked back and forth. “There now,” she said softly. “You’ll soon be with your mother.” She clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh, the darling, darling boy,” she said. “Frank, did you ever think we’d live to see the day?”

“Well, of course I did!” he said. “And see what a strapping young grandson we’ve got! Look at the size of him!”

Kitty didn’t know what her father was talking about. The smallness of the baby made her feel weak in the knees, made her dry-mouthed. How could anyone take care of someone so tiny, so utterly defenseless? She didn’t remember her brothers ever being so small. Surely they had to have been. But maybe looking at a baby as a sister and looking at a baby as a new mother—or future mother—was entirely different. Yes, that was it. One thing to hand over a tiny bundle to the one responsible for his care, another thing altogether to have that bundle handed to you!

Tish pressed her face to the glass and made loud kissing sounds. “Here we are,” she said, in a high, singsong voice that made others stare and that embarrassed Kitty.

“Hush,” she told Tish quietly, and her sister spun around and said loudly,
“You
hush!” and all the people laughed.

“I’m hungry myself,” Frank said. “Let’s go and tell Louise good-bye and get the uncles.”

Because they were not old enough to visit, the boys had stayed home. They’d been instructed to clean their rooms, and then they’d get to go out to lunch and to the Oriental for a movie. Suddenly, all the news the Heaney family was hearing was good.

L
OUISE WIPED TEARS AWAY FROM HER SMILING FACE,
then told her family gathered around her, “All right. I’ll read it to you now. I’ll try not to cry again!”

Louise had gotten a letter from Michael, the one he’d written after hearing about the birth of his son. She sat up higher in bed and read:

“May twenty-sixth, 1944

“Somewhere in England

“My darling Louise,

“So little time to tell you what might be the most important words I’ve ever said to you. I am so honored and so humbled at what you have done. You have given me a son, you have made us a family, and it is the thing I wanted most in my life from the moment I laid eyes on you. I cried when I heard, Louise, and I laughed, and I did a little dance and I whooped and hollered and I offered to buy every man in my unit a bottle of champagne, which of course is a pretty easy promise to make when you’re in the middle of nowhere. Oh, how can I tell you? You have all my love, all my love, my darling, and you and Michael Junior have the truly heartfelt good wishes of every man here. I’m not the only one who cried upon hearing the news. It’s funny how, in the midst of such darkness, our spirits could be lifted so high by news of this little fellow being added to our weary planet. Perhaps it’s wrong to say this, but it’s how I really feel: in him, it seems to me, lies all hope.

“I have to go, my love, and don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a little while. I’ll write again the instant I can. In the meantime, you tell our beautiful boy that his daddy holds him in his heart until he can hold him in his arms. And you, too, my darling, you, too, Louise.

“All my love, all my everything, forever,

“Michael

“Gosh, I hope you can read this all right. I got a doggone sliver in my finger and just can’t seem to get it out—makes it hard to write. Regards to your family.”

“’Tis a lovely letter,” Margaret said.

“Let me take another picture,” Frank said. “The boy’s awake now and not screaming, let me catch it quick.”

“Only one, and then Louise needs a nap,” Margaret said.

“I’m all right, Ma. I rested long enough. I can help make dinner.”

“You rest. I’ll tell you when you’re not tired.”

“Can I rock Michael to sleep?” Tish asked.

“Yes,” Margaret said, before Louise could answer.

“Can I keep the dog?” Binks asked. For days, he’d been asking if he could keep the little black dog that had come to live on the front porch of the house. The boys had fed him a few times, and now he wouldn’t leave. Binks had named him Fala, after Roosevelt’s dog.

“You don’t know if he belongs to someone,” Frank said. “You can’t just take a dog in without at least trying to find his owner.”

“But he just stays here! He doesn’t go home!” Tommy said. He, too, wanted the dog. In truth, all of the family except Margaret did. But now even she relented, saying, “Oh, all right, you’ll be the death of me with your constant harping on that little dust mop! You can bring him in, but before he takes one step in this house you put him in the laundry tub and bathe him. And then I want you to put up ads all over the neighborhood saying
FOUND DOG.
If no one claims him, you can keep him.”

Binks’s eyes grew wide. Then he ran downstairs yelling, “Fala! Fala! You can stay!”

Louise yawned, then settled into her pillows.

“You see?” Margaret said. “You need your rest!”

Tish took up the baby and began singing to him. Kitty watched her suspiciously, thinking this was just a ploy to get out of peeling potatoes. But it wasn’t. Next to Louise, Tish had suddenly become the most motherly woman Kitty had ever seen.

B
INKS FINISHED HIS LETTER TO JULIAN
and read it aloud to his sisters:

“You won’t believe it, but I got a dog. It wasn’t easy, too. His name is Fala and already he knows sit and come. When you see him you will like him a lot. He is real little. Joey Huggner has a big dog named Dandy and he joined the Dogs for Defense. His job will be barking to warn that someone’s coming. Also he can rescue people and he might even pull a machine gun carrier.

“I got a haircut and Pop had the bowl crooked and now I look crooked too.

“Everything here is good but we all miss you like crazy. See you soon. Write back if you can, but if you’re too busy it’s okay.

“Love, Binks.”

He looked up. “I could put in a picture if he has time to look at it.”

“I think he’d love that,” Kitty said.

“He definitely would,” Tish told him. “He loves the drawings I send him.”

Binks went to his room to draw his picture, and Tish read aloud from a letter from a medic stationed in an Army hospital in India:

“These Indians do anything and everything right smack-dab in the streets. They sleep. They shave. They eat and pray. And also they perform certain functions a gentleman like me wouldn’t describe to a lady like you. But they do it in the gutters or sometimes even on the sidewalks. The place is just full of beggars.

“Yet there’s incredible wealth among the squalor. And a lot of lofty religious thinking to counter the vice. Just these striking contrasts. There are beautiful mountains and stinking swamps. Wagons are drawn by Brahman bulls or coolies, but also there are modern streetcars and even Packards and Cadillacs. In a restaurant, I heard a native singer do ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ while the waiters ran around in their turbans and the busboys went barefoot. It’s like some crazy dream.

“The temples and the gardens are really lovely, and the hovels are worse than anything I could ever describe. A beautiful white marble mosque is in the middle of this filthy city. They make you take your shoes off to go in there—it kind of makes you feel shy. Inside the gate there’s a courtyard and a pool with goldfish and a fountain. People wash their faces with that water, and dip their fingers in it to brush their teeth. Inside, there are no pews or anything to sit on, and the people squat down, and then they bend and touch their foreheads to the floor. You know, when I saw that, I thought of this real fat lady who goes to my church, Mrs. Marion Effington, she calls herself by her whole name all the time, one of those stuffy old bats, but anyway I thought of how she would look bending over like that, her hat all falling off, and I started laughing and you can bet I got the evil eye.

“We live in bamboo huts with palm leaves serving as a roof. We have to put tents over our beds each night because the rain, rain, rain drips through—the mud is really something, too, because of all the rain. Quarters should improve as time goes on—cement floors, we’re hoping for.

“Meanwhile, we carry on. The food is good. We pretty much get what we want. But you know what they say: there’s no place like home. I’ve never understood how true that is until now.

“Well, cutiepuss, I’ve got to be off now. I sure do appreciate your letters. And I’ll never forget that send-off you—

“Well, never mind about that,” Tish said, and the color rose in her face. “Your turn, Kitty.”

Kitty read from a letter she’d received from a sailor named Ralph Dowdy. He was a tall, rail-thin, brown-haired man she’d danced with one of the first times she went to the Kelly Club. He had the kindest brown eyes Kitty had ever seen. “You look like a minister,” she’d said. And he’d laughed, astonished, and said that was what he was. “Didn’t want to tell you right away,” he’d said. “It scares some girls off.” Kitty had told him she wasn’t scared of ministers, but she was spoken for. And Ralph had said that figured. There’d be something plenty wrong with the world if a girl with her looks wasn’t spoken for. Kitty had agreed to write him, and now she unfolded his V-mail and read:

“You know the artists’ conceptions of ocean battles you see in magazines? Did you ever think they looked kind of phony? Well, I’m here to tell you that they’re not. In fact, those renditions are far more subtle than the real thing. You should see what goes on. Let me try to describe it to you.

“In battle, the sea looks to be full of geysers, just these towering columns of water. Bursting shells really do turn a blue sky pitch-black. Flames surround gun muzzles, and ships appear to be on fire. And the noise! It was funny, the first time I heard that kind of noise I kept humming to myself, though of course I couldn’t hear myself, I kept humming my favorite Chopin étude. It steadied me, somehow, in between visits I made to the men. Once, in the middle of what seems very much like hell, here comes a Jap bomber flying low and has the unmitigated gall to slide back his cockpit cover and thumb his nose at us! That guy got it, and I suppose from his point of view he went out in glory.

“Thanks for your last note, Kitty. I can’t tell you how much mail means to us all. Any and all letters we get are read and reread, with true appreciation. Sounds like everything is good as good can be back home, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. Pray for us all, and keep us in your thoughts as we hold you in ours.”

Kitty sighed. Such starkly differing images, the view here at her own kitchen table versus what she imagined, reading such letters. Once it had seemed so exotic and exciting; now it seemed mostly sad. She was weary of it. And if she was, how must the boys feel?

“What’s your letter from Michael say?” Tish asked Louise.

“This one I’m not sharing,” Louise said. “But the other one I haven’t even opened yet. It’s short—let me see what he says.”

Louise read the note to herself, then shared it with her sisters.

“June sixth, 1944

“Onboard ship

“Hi, honey—

“I sure hope this note gets to you. This will be the last letter for a while. Don’t you worry about me, though, I am absolutely prepared for anything that may come. That’s not because of my endless training, but because of you, darling.

“Keep sending those wonderful descriptions of our son, they’re even better than the photographs. I swear I can see him, Louise. I looked at my hand the other day, and I ‘saw’ his on top of it. So tiny! Keep telling me, darling, tell me every single thing about him and you, you know I can never get enough.

“Gotta go, sweetheart, my best girl. Take care of yourself and the baby, and remember I love you with all my heart and I always will.

“Yours, Michael.”

“Oh, Louise,” Kitty said and reached for her sister’s hand. He’d written the letter on D-day.

Louise pulled her hand away. “Don’t. He’s fine. I’m going to write him back now. I want him to have lots of letters when he’s got time to read them again. You and Tish write him, too, would you? And then before we go to bed I want you to set my hair like you promised, Kitty. I want mine just like yours, I like that style.”

Sometimes Kitty felt as though she and her sisters were walking together down a sidewalk, talking and laughing, oblivious to almost everything around them. But every now and then, the sidewalk disappeared, and before them was a chasm, deep and wide and black as the skies that young preacher described. Terrifying. But for the sisters, it was always temporary. However nightmarish the things they heard about in letters, or on the radio, or in magazines or newspapers, they awakened safe in their beds, the hope of morning upon them, and the peace. And in bed at night they talked about the men, yes, but mostly they talked about Sinatra and movie stars, hairdos and hemlines, ideas for what else to put in Louise’s hope chest. Kitty had bought her two more nightgowns, one black and one pink. She’d given her long white tapers to put on her dinner table. And she’d given her war bonds, so Louise wouldn’t yell at her about spending on the other things.