Dream When You're Feeling Blue (7 page)

She wondered what Louise’s letters to Michael were like. And his to her. Already, Louise had gotten four. The first one was practically a novel. Kitty knew where Louise kept those letters—in her underwear drawer. If Kitty could read one, she would be better able to write to Julian. She’d know the tone she should take, the things Julian might be longing to hear. Not that Julian and Michael were that much alike, but still…

“Louise?” she whispered to the still form beside her. Nothing. She sat up and looked at Tish, sprawled out at the bottom of the bed. “Tish?” Again, nothing. Slowly, she pulled back the covers, got out of bed, put on her robe, and tiptoed over to the bureau. Holding her breath, she soundlessly slid open the drawer and reached under a pile of Louise’s slips. There. A pack of letters, a length of blue velvet ribbon holding them together. She removed the letter on top and slipped it into her pocket, closed the drawer, and tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom. She locked the door, sat on the lid of the toilet, and pulled the onionskin pages from the envelope. She reminded herself to put the letter back exactly as she’d found it—the folded crease toward the bottom of the envelope. She hesitated for a moment, shame burning at the edges of her stomach. This was such an invasion of privacy! Really, if she were going to do this, she should read Tish’s letters. But those weren’t real relationships that Tish had. They were flirtations, distractions. Good for the men’s morale, Kitty agreed, but surely lacking the kind of thing that might inspire her to write more easily to Julian. Louise would never know Kitty had done this, and she would be glad if Kitty were better able to write Julian; she and Julian liked each other very much. And anyway, hadn’t Kitty readily shown Louise the letter Julian had sent? Fair was fair. She tucked her hair behind her ears, opened the pages and started to read, then stopped when she heard a knock on the door.

Hastily, she shoved the pages back into the envelope, the envelope into her robe pocket. “Yes?” she said.

“Is that you, then, Kitty?” Her father.

“Yes, Pa.”

“Well, hurry it up, girl, I’ve got a bit of an emergency.”

Kitty opened the door. Here and there, her father’s hair stood on end, as though he were being selectively electrocuted. His face was creased with elongated Xs, and his pajamas had shifted sideways. No one looked more comical rising from sleep than Frank Heaney. “Here’s our Tom, come home after his nightly catfight,” their mother said every morning. “’Tis our own Clark Gable,” their father always answered.

“I can let you go first,” Kitty told him.

“God love you. Ben Macalister, our venerable block captain, stopped over tonight. If that man were invited to a wedding, he’d stay for the christening. And me drinking the water and drinking the water just to stay awake.” He squeezed past her and quickly closed the door.

Out in the hall, Kitty rubbed her fingers along the rough edge of the envelope in her pocket. Was this divine intervention? Was she being given a chance to reconsider her imminent misdeed? She leaned against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, debating. In the corner, she saw a huge spiderweb, the owner and occupant hanging heavy in the center. Tomorrow, she’d clean it away, although she was frightened to death of spiders. Penance. And here came the sound of the chain being pulled and the toilet flushing. Yes. God had made a deal with her.
Go ahead in there and read it, now that we understand each other.

Frank came out of the bathroom and kissed her cheek as he passed by. “Night, darlin’. Give my regards to the wee ones.” The fairies, he meant; those beautiful gossamer creatures he used to tell his children would visit at night, but only after they fell asleep. Which made them struggle to stay awake, of course, hopeful of seeing one. Only in the last year or so had Binks abandoned sleeping with a Mason jar by his bed.

“Night, Pa,” she said, innocent as an angel. Really, she could be an actress. She wasn’t the only one who said so.

Seated again on the toilet lid, she pulled out the letter and read.

26 April 1943
Somewhere in England

Dearest Louise,

I knew I would miss you like bing, of course, but the severity of my longing is taking me a bit by surprise—my heart is quite literally heavy all the time. Guess I’m homesick in a big way: I miss you and my parents and you and steak and you and fresh fruit and you and the baseball games with the gang and you and Lake Michigan and you and movies and you and you and you! (Remember how I used to tell my English students to avoid redundancy? Never mind—don’t you know there’s a war on?)

The train ride was largely uneventful—extremely crowded, of course, and boisterously loud at some times, then strangely silent at others. A lot of guys lost inside their heads, I imagine, wondering what their fates would be, myself included. A couple of times, waking up disoriented from a nodding-off kind of nap, I came close to regretting the day that Julian and I decided to enlist together. (Honestly, we were not drunk!) But as I tried to explain before, there are some things I just have to do. I want to feel at the end of this thing that I did my part, and not by staying at a job deemed essential to the war effort. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, Louise, but I want to be on the front lines, with the infantry. If I’m going to be in this thing, then let me be
in
it. You can have all the air and sea support imaginable, but in the end a war is lost or won because of the foot soldier. I have a great deal of admiration for the Marines fighting at Wake Island who were being pounded by the Japs in ’41. Do you remember that story? How when the Navy was finally able to get through to them and asked if they wanted anything, they said, “Yeah, more Japs!”? I confess I am not so interested in dying in battle as they seem to be (some Marine sergeant is said to have bellowed to his badly wounded platoon, “C’mon, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?”), but they do have my utmost respect.

Anyway, I got off the train at the New York Port of Embarkation and onto a huge ocean liner, painted a cheerless gray. It was something being out in the middle of the ocean, knowing that here, there, or anywhere could be submarines with entirely unfriendly intentions. I spent plenty of hours with my nose in my Service Bible!

We docked at a port that’s about a day’s train travel from where I am now. We were given a lunch for the train ride, and in it was a pie. Well, I saved it for dessert, of course. Turned out to be
meat
pie, all cold and doughy—not the flaky apple and cinnamon concoction I was so looking forward to. I ate the thing for the sake of the person who so kindly made it, but it didn’t go down easy. I guess the English are real bad cooks. One guy said the way they served cabbage was to cook it a long time in too much water with not enough salt, serve it lukewarm in too much water, and if you’re lucky a caterpillar would be thrown in.

I share a barracks room with three other guys in my squad. It’s about fourteen feet square, and it’s stuffed full of equipment and clothes. We have one window that we black out every night when the sun starts setting. I’m the one up first every day to take down that grim reminder of what might happen to us during the night, and on mornings when the mist isn’t too heavy, there are the spring buds to greet me. Hitler can’t stop everything.

There are four bunks, two straight chairs, a fireplace, and a rickety old table that serves as a desk. On the walls are maps, greeting cards from home, and the usual assortment of cheesecake: Rita and Rosalind and Greer and Hedy and Betty and Marlene. But the most beautiful girl featured is y-o-u. One of my roommates, Ted Fletcher, spends an inordinate amount of time standing before you. “Those her real eyelashes?” he once asked, and I told him everything about you was real. Good thing he talks about his wife so much or I’d start to get jealous.

Our training is going well—sometimes it seems as though we’re really in combat. I may be using my antitank gun against mock tanks, but the explosives they plant in the field to get us used to shell fire are real enough. I know exactly when to give the “commence firing” command, and I’ve become a whiz at digging foxholes—so in case I don’t stop a tank it can’t roll over me. Sometimes when I dig, I find a piece of bone from the grave of some Roman soldier—I’m training on ground that’s been fought on for over 1,900 years. It makes you think, Louise, about the nature of man and the inevitability of war. It makes you wonder. I lie on my bunk on these dark nights and think about all the men who battled on this ground and who kept their own silent counsel during other dark nights so very long ago. I wonder if they lay there thinking about the women they loved. If they thought of their families and the life they lived before they came to fight. If they prayed or wept or cried out. I hope that they believed in what they were doing, that the cost was worth the price they paid.

But listen, hon, I don’t want you to worry about me. Nothing’s going to hurt me. I’m as well trained as I could possibly be, and I’m in the best shape of my life. On days we don’t practice battles, we go on twenty-five-to thirty-mile hikes through the countryside with sixty-pound packs on our backs. Little kids come out to beg from us, and we give them pennies and gum; they just love that gum.

I’ve seen some beautiful architecture in London. I’ve been to some pubs to play darts and argue with these blokes about who’s got the better country, but a lot of times I don’t go into town on leave—I’d rather stay here and read, or write to you. I want to save seeing London so that I can do it with you, in better times.

If I’m honest, I must admit I’m frightened of the real action to come—and I think it will be coming soon—but I’m also eager to get going. The sooner we fight, the sooner we’ll win, and with the U.S. now in this war, it will be won. And then I can come home to you. What a sweet word “home” is; it has always been a sweet word to me, but never more so than now.

Take care of yourself, darling, and remember every day how very much I love you. It’s for you that I do everything; I can’t wait to be with you and start our married life. Sometimes I think of my coming through the door into the house where we live with our little ones, and it’s all I can do not to cry. We will be so happy together, Louise. We were truly meant for each other. Here’s a kiss to your mouth, and one behind your ear, and one everywhere else on your beautiful face, and Well. I’d better stop here. I’d better go and take a walk, despite the rain. Gosh, it rains a lot here. I’ll write more as soon as I can.

All my love,

Michael

P.S.
Say, sweetheart, if you get a chance, go and see my mother, will you? She’s not been well and could use the company. Assure her that I’m fine now and
will continue to be—
Dad says she’s got an eye permanently trained on the front walk, fearful of the telegram. If anyone can take her mind off things, you can.

Kitty swallowed. Folded the pages tenderly. Put them back into the envelope. Used the toilet, as long as she was there. Washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror. She was a black-haired girl who didn’t know anything. A girl who’d betrayed her sister, never mind that spiderweb she’d promised God to clean away tomorrow. How could God have any time to listen to her now? Prayers must be shooting up to Him as fast and furious as a Fourth of July fireworks finale, times a million. Times a billion. More.

She had a different idea for penance. Monday, during her lunch hour, she’d run over to Field’s and put a Montgomery beret on layaway for Louise—her sister loved those hats and she’d look fine in it. Well, all the sisters would. But Louise would wear it first, and Kitty would take her picture in it, and Louise could send the picture to Michael. As for now, she’d put the letter back in the drawer, then wake up Louise and give her the ring. She’d bring her back to the bathroom for a private ceremony.

KITTY CREPT INTO THE BEDROOM
and successfully replaced the letter. She breathed out a quiet sigh of relief, then pulled open her own drawer. She put the ring box in her pocket, tiptoed across the room, and stood next to her sleeping sister. “Hey?” she whispered. “Louise?” She tapped her on the shoulder and Louise started, then cried out.

“Shhhhh!”
Kitty motioned for her sister to follow her.

“What do you want?” Louise whispered. “I’m
tired
! Tell me tomorrow.”

Kitty motioned more emphatically for Louise to come with her.

“Oh, all right!” Louise sat up and pushed her feet into her slippers. She pulled her robe off the chair and put it on, tying it neatly at the side of her waist. Kitty crossed her arms, clamped her teeth together, and waited. No point in trying to rush her. Louise had to get dressed for everything. Even as young girls in the middle of summer, they could never just fly out of the house barefoot and carefree—Louise would need to put on her shoes, and the laces had to be tied evenly. She would have to put bows at the bottoms of her braids. She’d have to step out onto the porch and test the weather to see if she needed a sweater.

Tish was always ready for action—she’d fly out of the house bare naked—but she was the baby. Nobody wanted the baby sister along, but there she always was. Sometimes Kitty and Louise, weary of caring for Tish, were cruel to her. As seven- and five-year-olds, they had taken scissors to Tish’s curls as she lay sleeping, for they believed Tish’s bright blond hair, so different from their own, was being too much admired. The wagon they were pulling her in would “accidentally” overturn. They would tell her they were playing hide-and-go-seek outside, then sneak inside the house to escape her, giggling as they watched Tish standing beneath the towering elm that was home base, calling around the thumb in her mouth, “I give
up,
now! Come
in,
now. Alley, alley in fwee!” Why must you treat her so? Ma would ask. She’s your baby sister! And Kitty and Louise would look at each other and struggle to keep from laughing. Exactly. She was a stupid
baby.