All She Ever Wanted (21 page)

Eleanor sighed again. “Rick finishes his training in two weeks. We’ll have one more Saturday night together. He’ll get a three-day furlough to go home and see his family, then he’s being shipped out.”

“Oh, Ellie. You poor girl.” Cynthia turned to give her a hug. Eleanor usually seemed uncomfortable with such emotional displays, but she accepted Cynthia’s embrace with a sniffle. They rode in silence for the remainder of the trip, then hurried through Riverside’s deserted streets to the funeral home. Eleanor still seemed troubled when they reached their room.

“Cynthia…? Can we talk?” she asked.

“Of course. I’m your best friend. You can tell me anything.” Cynthia sat down on the sofa and gestured to the place beside her, but Eleanor remained standing, too upset to sit. She hesitated for a long moment, as if afraid of something.

“Rick wants us to be together on his last weekend,” she finally said. “I don’t know whether I should or not.”

Cynthia stared at her, not comprehending. “Why wouldn’t you want to be together?”

“Not
together,
like we are every weekend,” Eleanor said with an irritated frown. “He wants to sleep with me before he ships off.”

“Oh.” Cynthia looked away, embarrassed by the subject matter—and
by her own nai
. “I think that’s a bad idea,” she finally said.

“I know, I know,” Eleanor said as she paced across the rag rug in front of Cynthia. “I’ve been telling him no because of my—never mind. But I keep worrying that something terrible will happen to Rick and I’ll never get another chance to be with him. I would regret it for the rest of my life.”

“Listen, I know I’m pretty nai
ve,” Cynthia said, choosing her words carefully, “and I’m not nearly as knowledgeable about these things as you are. But the girls in school always said that a boy wouldn’t marry a girl who gave in to him. And what if you get pregnant?”

“I know, I know. But so many men are dying, and… and I may never see Rick again… and I want to know what it’s like to be with him. I love him so much!” She bit her lip, trying to stop her tears.

“Everyone can see how much you love each other, Ellie, but it’s still not a good idea. I know this sounds old-fashioned and all that, but the Bible says it’s wrong to do it if you’re not married.”

Eleanor’s shoulders slumped, and she sank down in the armchair as if the nervous energy that fueled her had abruptly discharged, like a pinpricked balloon. “I know. That’s the main reason why I’ve been saying no. I was brought up in the church, too.” She must have seen Cynthia’s surprise because she added, “Leonard stopped going to Mass when we were in high school, so I eventually stopped, too. But I do believe in right and wrong. And I know that there are always consequences when people break God’s laws. I’ve seen it in real life.” She paused, then added, “But I love Rick so much! I wish we could get married right now.”

“You’re both so young, Eleanor.”

“I’m almost twenty. Rick has never been with a girl… that way. He knows he could die, and he wants to know what it’s like. … And he wants it to be with me. I don’t want to make him mad, Cynthia—not now, not right before he leaves.”

“If he gets mad that’s his problem. Besides, he’s wrong to use anger to talk you into this. Stick to your principles. He’ll respect you for it.”

“You’re right,” Eleanor said with a sigh. “Thanks for your help.” She braced her hands on the arms of the chair and stood. But she still looked preoccupied as she put on her pajamas and climbed into bed, and Cynthia couldn’t help wondering what she was really thinking.

The following weekend, as Eleanor was preparing for her last Saturday night date with Rick, Cynthia decided to bring up the subject once again.

“Please don’t do it, Eleanor,” she urged. “It would be a mistake that you could never undo.”

“I won’t. I know you’re right.” Eleanor smiled, but it seemed forced. “Listen, don’t wait for me at the bus station. Rick says he’ll bring me home.”

Cynthia worried about her friend all evening. She rode the bus back to Riverside alone and was in her bathrobe, pacing the floor long after midnight, when she finally heard Eleanor’s key rattling in the downstairs door. A moment later Eleanor burst into the room, dancing with excitement. She grabbed Cynthia’s hands and whirled her around in a circle saying, “Guess what? Guess what? Guess what?”

Cynthia was afraid to guess, worried that she had given in to Rick after all.

“Rick and I are getting married!”

“Married? After the war, you mean?”

“No! Next weekend. He has a three-day furlough before he ships off, so we’re going to go before a justice of the peace and get married. Rick says we can renew our vows with a priest and get the blessing of the church when he comes home.”

“Are you sure you want to do that? You’ve only known him a short time.”

“I’m positive. If the war has taught us anything, it’s that life is very short and time is precious. If something should happen—well, at least I’ll know what it was like to be his wife. And Rick says it will get him through all the rough spots ahead if he knows he has a life with me to look forward to after the war.”

“And what if you don’t feel the same way about each other after the war?”

“We will! What a dumb thing to ask! I want to spend the rest of my life with Rick. I can’t imagine living without him.”

“Is he this certain, too? Are you sure it’s not just a way for him to… you know?”

“No! For pete’s sake, Cynthia! How could you think that of Rick?”

“I’m sorry. I’ve never been in love, so you’ll have to excuse me. I don’t know what you’re going through.”

Tears filled Eleanor’s eyes. “It hurts so much whenever we’re apart; it hurts to breathe and to eat and to sleep. … I feel like I’m only half of a person without him. But when we’re together… oh, the world is such a wonderful place, and I feel like I’m bursting with life! I never imagined that falling in love would be this terrible and this wonderful, did you?”

“My parents never talked about love very much when I was growing up. They believed that people got married so they could work together and raise kids. I never saw much affection or anything between them.”

Eleanor gazed into space as if she’d forgotten that Cynthia was there. “My mother told me once how much love hurts, but I didn’t believe her. She was crazy about my father and would have licked his shoes clean for him. I never wanted to be so hung up on a man that I would lose myself that way. And now, here I am—completely lost! Oh, I don’t think I could live without Rick—” She covered her face and wept.

Cynthia gathered her into her arms. “Hey, there’s no time for tears. We’ve got a wedding to plan—one week from today, right? You’ll need a marriage license and a dress and a place to honeymoon. … I’ll be your maid of honor or your flower girl or your best man or whatever you want me to be. Just name it.”

Eleanor laughed through her tears and hugged her in return. “Thanks, Cynthia. You’re the best friend I ever had.”

A week later, Cynthia witnessed Rick and Eleanor’s vows as they stood before a justice of the peace in Bensenville. They looked deliriously happy as they gazed into each other’s eyes and promised to love each other, for richer or for poorer, until death parted them. Three other couples waited in line behind them, and the grooms were all soldiers from Rick’s military base, about to be shipped overseas.

Mr. Tomacek had grudgingly excused Eleanor from work on Monday and Tuesday—without pay, of course—so she could go on a brief honeymoon, then see her new husband off at the train station. When Cynthia returned home from work on Tuesday afternoon, Eleanor was already there. She wore an apron tied around her waist and a kerchief on her head, and the music of Glenn Miller blared from the radio as she turned the room upside down in a cleaning frenzy.

“Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Richard Trent,” Cynthia said as she set her empty lunch pail and thermos in the sink. “Married only three days and I see you’ve already become a busy little housewife.”

Eleanor smiled as she bent to sweep a pile of dust into the dustpan.

“Rick’s train left this morning. I didn’t know what else to do with myself.”

“How’s married life, Mrs. Trent? Is it as wonderful as you dreamed it would be?”

“It’s heaven!” Eleanor said, laughing. “We barely left the hotel room for three whole days. Being with Rick is—” She couldn’t finish. Eleanor’s fac
ade crumbled, and she sank to the floor in the pile of dust and wept.

In the following weeks, Eleanor kept her false front carefully in place in public, but Cynthia knew how thin and brittle her calm, poised veneer really was. Eleanor approached everything she did with a fevered intensity, as if trying to distract herself from thoughts of Rick. Her emotions rose or sank with the daily mail. Eleanor raced home every afternoon after work to see if Mrs. Montgomery had shoved a letter from Rick under their door, then sat at the desk every night, crying her heart out as she wrote back to him. Rick wrote to her nearly as often, and if she didn’t find a letter from him one day, there likely would be two from him the next.

Eleanor’s worry over her husband was a constant, simmering flame that fueled a restless energy. She attended Mass every day, offering endless prayers for him. She cut out maps of Europe and the Pacific islands from the newspaper and pinned them to the wall so she could follow the battles on the radio and in the news. She knew all of the generals’names and their divisions, charting their movements as if only her daily vigilance would keep Rick safe.

Cynthia worried as her friend grew increasingly nervous, and she worked hard to find distractions to help Eleanor relax. “Come to the movies in Bensenville with me,” she begged. “There’s a Mickey Rooney film playing—
The Human Comedy
.” They went, but Cynthia had forgotten that they always showed a newsreel about the war before the main feature.

Too late, she noticed Eleanor’s pale face as she stared intently at the grainy images, as if searching for Rick among the many soldiers.

They donated blood at all the Red Cross blood drives. Cynthia taught Eleanor how to knit, and they made scarves and mittens and socks to send overseas. But all the while she worked, Eleanor seemed to be marking off the days and hours and minutes like rows of knitting, waiting until the war would end and Rick would come home to her. She still looked like the same old Eleanor on the outside, but Cynthia saw the act for what it was. Inside, Eleanor was a tightly wound bundle of false brightness, trying to keep Rick safe and will him home again by sheer determination.

As winter changed to spring, then summer, Cynthia grew tired of it all. She was sick of following the news, sick of hearing about the ups and downs of war, sick of the devastation and death. Since Eleanor would no longer go to the USO dances with her, Cynthia decided to go by herself on Saturday nights. She had gained self-confidence and enjoyed playing the field and meeting all kinds of guys. She agreed to write letters to several of them, but none of these relationships became serious. Then, after a while, Cynthia no longer enjoyed the USO dances, either. As the war dragged on, the new recruits she met were younger and younger, and seeing their vitality and fresh-scrubbed eagerness depressed her. She knew what they would soon face.