Dream When You're Feeling Blue (17 page)

A
T LAST, TOMMY CAME HOME,
still weak and needing time to recuperate. Margaret made soups and stews and casseroles and compotes and a little pan of apple crisp, for it was Tommy’s favorite. Frank made puppets from socks and put on a show every night. The sisters brought Tommy comics and crayons, books from the library, small bags of candy. They sat on his bed and read him letters from the boys. Billy made Tommy a slingshot and dropped in several times a day to make sure he was perfecting his aim. And Binks often sat by the side of Tommy’s bed, folding newspapers into hats and boats and singing songs to his brother in his nasally little voice.

After a few days, Dr. Brandon made a house call to check on Tommy’s progress. The rest of the family followed him upstairs and squeezed into Tommy’s doorway. Frank, his arms crossed and his posture ramrod straight, watched the doctor’s every move, occasionally grunting his approval. Margaret peered over his shoulder, Binks and Billy silently punched each other for obscuring the view, and the sisters held stock-still behind all the rest, as though their standing at attention would guarantee a good report on their pale-faced brother.

The doctor sat on the edge of Tommy’s bed and pressed and prodded at his abdomen. He listened to Tommy’s heart and had Tommy open his mouth wide and stick out his tongue. He lifted his pajama top in back and listened to Tommy’s lungs, his eyes on the ceiling. He told Tommy to cough, and he did, rather dramatically, which caused a worried look to pass between Margaret and Frank. The doctor had Tommy stand and then sit down and then stand again. Then he tucked him back into bed and told Tommy he was doing very well. He turned to the rest of the family and raised his bushy eyebrows. “Shall we all go downstairs?”

When the family had assembled in the living room, Dr. Brandon said, “If you don’t all stop taking such good care of him, he’s going to have to go back into the hospital.”

“What do you mean?” Frank asked, halfway between anger and fear.

“I mean, you’ve got to let him rest! Now here, listen to me. I want you to give Tommy a little bell. If he needs something, he’s to ring it. You may poke your head in on him every three or four hours, but do
not
wake him up. The boy’s exhausted!”

Binks began to blink back tears. “Tommy’s not better?”

The doctor turned to him and softened his voice. “Now, son, I didn’t say he’s not getting better. And I know you all only mean to help him. But what he needs most of all is to rest. So here’s an idea: why don’t you each pay him a visit at a certain time every day? But listen to me now, only one at a time!
One!”

“I’ll go first thing in the morning,” Frank said.

“Can I go with you?” Binks asked, and Frank said that would be a fine idea.

“I want to see him in the morning, too,” Louise said, “before I have to go to work.”

“That’s my time,” Kitty said.

Exasperated, the doctor put on his hat and his coat. “You work out a schedule,” he said. “But I want that boy to get some rest! Now, can I rely on you to give it to him?”

All of them were silent, nodding. And then Margaret asked would the doctor like a loaf of the lovely rye bread she’d made that morning. And Binks asked but could he just go up now and say good night to Tommy.

“IT’S SHORT; SHALL I GO FIRST
?
”
Louise asked, after dinner. No one answered. And so she began reading from the letter that had come from Michael.

“Dearest Louise,

“I’m so beat I’ll resort to V-mail for tonight, and even at that I may fall asleep over the page. Today tested us all to the limit; one fellow broke down. And yet despite all the hardships, there is something to love in this man’s Army. We are all on one side, united in this fight against evil, and of course that brings with it a certain camaraderie. But what I’m talking about is more mundane than that, more day-to-day. In basic training, there was a kind of stripping away of ego that now serves us well—there can be no stars in battle, there can only be a team. We aren’t competing in that desperate and backhanded way that men do when they’re trying to climb the corporate ladder. Black, brown, white, red, and yellow men fight together. When you need something, there is someone who will do his best to get it to you. There are no phony standards to live up to. Strange as everything about this war is, it is still the realest thing I’ve ever known. Except for my love for you, my darling. Except for that. Here’s a kiss. And as always, my heart.”

Louise smiled and folded up the letter. “Your turn,” she told Kitty.

Kitty had not heard from Hank Cunningham in well over two weeks, and she feared the worst. But she did have a longer-than-usual letter from Julian, and she shared it with her sisters as well as her father, who had come into the kitchen looking for matches for his pipe.

“Hello, Kat.

“Well, hi de ho, from a brand-new island in the same old Pacific.

“Guess what I’m going trick-or-treating as. A U.S. Marine!

“Yipe, I’m cooking on the front burner now. Did I ever tell you about Too-Too Padama? He’s a Philippine who works in the motor pool. We call him Too-Too because he’s this real excitable guy and that’s the way he talks: ‘I’m too too hungry!’ ‘It’s raining too too much!’ Anyway, old Too-Too got tired of wearing the same stinking clothes all the time, so he made a washing machine using a big barrel and two wooden paddles. It’s powered by a one-lung gasoline motor. I traded him all my hoarded-up smokes to get my laundry done. Then I spent all afternoon with my nose buried in my collar. Detergent: my new favorite perfume. I am now once again the best-dressed man around.

“Last night we saw Abbott and Costello in
Pardon My Sarong
and
Ship Ahoy
with Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton. Pretty good. It’s strange when the lights come up and you’re not there. I know you’re not there of course, but in the darkness, you sort of are.

“Wowser, you sure have learned a lot in that factory. I’m impressed. You asked if I’ve learned a lot in the Army. Oh sure. I’ve become an ace fly killer. Flies take off backward, did you know that? So if you want to kill them, you aim from behind them a couple of inches and you get them every time. I’ll bet I’ve killed more flies than any man in my division. Just waiting for my medal. Maybe it’ll be a big round silver medal featuring a compound eye.

“This all is more difficult than I can say. I can’t write to you about what we do, other than to tell you we go from zero to a hundred miles an hour, not much in between. I’ll have a lot of stories when I get back, but for now I just have to talk about safe things. The guys say the censors all have a case of scissoritis. Beats malaria, I guess. Say hi to the family, and send me some more cookies anytime.

“Love, Julian.”

“Cookies! What cookies?” Frank asked.

“Gingersnaps,” Tish said. It had been Tommy’s idea to send Julian cookies, and Tish was the one who had made them. But she had let Kitty send the accompanying note as though she were the one who had made them. This was because Kitty had let Tish wear her only pair of nylon stockings.

“Any left?” Frank asked hopefully.

“Sorry,” Tish said.

Frank grunted. He was hungry tonight, for Margaret had served them baked-bean sandwiches for dinner—the butcher had had no meat that day. “Be grateful you’ve dinner at all,” Frank told Billy, who’d stared dismally at his plate. They had all cheered up a bit when Margaret told them that meat loaf was slated for tomorrow, the Good Lord and Emmet the butcher willing.

When her father left the kitchen, Kitty read Julian’s postscript:

“One more thing. I just want to say that I’m not a guy who’s jazzed up about any kind of romantic writing, Kitty. Some guys are regular Shakespeares—whether they’re chinning on paper or in person, the words just flow. I don’t care two whoops up a rain barrel about that kind of thing. To me, it’s just showing off. Still waters run deep, you know. I care very much for you. That’s the crop, duchess. I guess it counts for something.”

“There you go,” Louise said, and she said it proudly, as though she were the one who had written it, or the one who had encouraged Julian to.

“That’s
it
?” Tish said.

Kitty looked levelly at her, and Tish turned away.

O
N A DARK SATURDAY MORNING
in early December, while snow clouds gathered outside, Margaret told Louise, “All right, now, sit sideways, take in a deep breath, and stick out your chest!” She had decided to take photographs of her daughters to send to the men for Christmas. Right after breakfast, she told them to get dressed up, fix their hair, put on some lipstick. Louise was first. “Come on now, push it out,” Margaret said.

“Ma,” Louise said, embarrassed.

“You and Michael are practically married,” Margaret said. “Show him your stuff, ’twill cheer him up. Go on now, take a nice deep breath. All the girls do.”

“How do
you
know?” Tish asked.

“Quiet, and let me focus properly,” Margaret said. And then to Louise, “Turn to the side and breathe in, darlin’. There’s no shame in it. Just yesterday I saw photos that Tootie Bensen took of her daughter, and wasn’t she trying to look like a pinup queen, pushing out her bosoms and holding her hair up and winking to boot. And her daughter can’t compare with any of mine. Go on now, take a deeeeeep breath.” And then when Louise sighed and did just that, Margaret pulled the camera down from her eye. “Well, maybe not that deep,” she said. Louise readjusted herself, and the flashbulb brightened the kitchen.

“You look pretty, Louise,” Binks said. He was kneeling on a chair, working a button of yellow dye into the lumpy white margarine.

“What about me?” Tish asked. She’d piled her hair on top of her head in a Grable upsweep.

Binks looked over at her and shrugged. “You look okay, I guess. I like when your hair is in braids.”

“When you’re older, you’ll like this better,” Tish told him, and he didn’t bother to look up from the bowl to say no, he would not. He liked to see the exact moment when the white turned all yellow.

Outside, the mailman opened the box to put letters in, and Kitty went running to retrieve them.

“Five!” Tish said, when Kitty passed them out. Kitty had gotten one from Hank, finally. It was such a relief to know that he was all right. Louise had received only a package with an unknown return address. The name Miller had been carefully printed, followed by an address in Boise. “I can’t imagine what this is,” she said, and then, remembering the man she’d danced with from Idaho, she said, “Oh, I’ll bet it’s from Tom, that boy I danced with who promised to send me four-leaf clovers when he got home. I wonder why he’s back already.” She unwrapped the package and found an envelope along with a smaller box. She opened the box first and smiled. Inside, pinned carefully to paper, were four four-leaf clovers. “He’s okay!” she said. But then she read the note, first to herself, then to her sisters.

“Dear Miss Heaney,

“My son, Tom Miller, was killed in action on November 4. Among his personal effects was this box with your name and address on it. I thought you might like to have it. I assume you were a friend—Tommy had a gift for making friends wherever he went. As such, you will like to know that his wife and son are coping as well as can be expected. We surely will miss him, and I would like to thank you for any part you may have played in his all too brief but very happy life.

“Sincerely, Velma Miller.”

Louise looked up, tears in her eyes.

“Say a prayer?” Tish whispered, and the sisters bowed their heads.

After a moment, Margaret asked briskly, “Who’s next?”

“I’ll go,” Tish said solemnly. She sat on a chair and turned sideways. Then she inhaled and stuck her chest out mightily.

“Face me,” Margaret said.

“But you said—”

“That was to Louise. You’re just a girl. Now turn around and smile prettily.”

“But you said to cheer up—”

“There’s cheering up one way, and there’s cheering up another,” Margaret said. “You look lovely. Any man would be happy to see that smile.”

“Fine,” Tish said. But just before Margaret took the picture, she shifted her shoulders and winked.

H
ANK WROTE AGAIN OF THE FUTILITY
of war. Kitty didn’t read aloud those parts to her sisters; the one time she’d tried, they’d gotten angry. But in this letter, he said that when war was seen at close range, it was so brutal and idiotic. It seemed impossible that men with hearts and brains were capable of it. Such devastation of cities, so many innocent lives lost. It seemed to him that if just a small part of the effort put into war could be put into peace, they’d be so much better off. When the war was over, he said. When this most catastrophic of wars was finally over, surely the world would have learned the need to never make war again. Then he went on to say something that made Kitty gasp, and this she did share with her sisters. “Hank Cunningham is coming home on leave!”

“Here?”
Tish asked.

“Well, he’s going home to San Francisco,” Kitty said. “But he’s coming to Chicago first. He’ll be here the Saturday after next—all day!”

Silence.

“I guess he deserves a furlough!” Kitty said. “He’s flown twenty-five missions! Jeez! You’d think a person would be honored to be with a soldier like that!”

“Well,
I’d
like to meet him,” Louise said. “I’d like to very much.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t,” Tish said.

“Who asked you?” Kitty muttered.

What news! Soon Hank would be back in Chicago, stepping off a train in Union Station. It made her stomach hurt, but in a good way, like the way it hurt before you got into the car on the Ferris wheel. She thought for a moment about how she might not recognize him, then realized that she would have no trouble at all. She’d not forgotten anything about him.

Kitty sat still, trying to pay attention to the letters Tish read aloud, but she heard only bits and pieces: stories of German prisoners sitting on the ground and taking off their shirts to suntan, those same prisoners telling their American captors in perfect English that they had been told New York City had been bombed to smithereens and that the Japs had gotten all the Russians out of Siberia. She heard about enemy helmets attached to jeep radiators, blood-soaked Japanese flags being sent home, dogs accompanying pilots on commando raids, men huddling in the cold under blankets to write letters by candlelight and always, always dreaming of home. Sometimes Kitty wondered if
home
would become something in the men’s minds that their families could never live up to, something that perhaps never even was. She supposed the idea of home had become as much religion to the boys as anything else, a thing to believe in, to turn to, to help keep them going. The responsibility was awesome; Kitty felt it behind her knees, in her breathing; it permeated her unconscious. Last night, she had dreamed Julian came into the house and asked expectantly, “Where is it?” His eyes were bright, he was smiling his famous Julian smile. He was in uniform, dirt in his hair and smeared across the bridge of his nose and caught in the creases of his pants.

“Where is what?” Kitty asked. She wanted to take his hand; she wanted him to hold her, to kiss her. He was home!

“You
know,” he said.

“I don’t.”

He went to the living room and sank down into a chair. “I’ll have to go back, then.” He turned away from her to look out the window. His knee began to bounce. “Julian?” she said, but he wouldn’t look at her. He stared out the window, shaking his head slowly, and she stood before him, her hands twisted in her skirt, smiling and calling his name: “Julian? Julian? Julian?”

KITTY AWAKENED WITH A START,
terrorized by yet another dream that she was already forgetting. Something about turning a corner and…what? Well, why try to remember, when it had frightened her so much? She would say a quick Hail Mary and drift back to sleep. She was sleeping at the bottom of the bed that night and had slid down, or up, so that her feet were pressing against the headboard. Luckily, neither of her sisters had awakened to slap or pinch her away.

She grabbed on to the mattress to pull herself back down and heard the rustling of paper. Money? Had someone been stuffing money under the mattress? Tish. Stuffing away her earnings, only Tish would do such a thing. Kitty slid her hand beneath the mattress and found not money but paper, a tablet. She pulled it out and tilted in toward the moonlight.

November 30, 1943

My darling Michael—

I am waiting to send this until I’m very sure. But if you do receive it, you’ll know that what we feared has happened. Yet I find I’m not afraid at all. And I want to start writing to you about every aspect of this wonderful experience, since you’re not here to share it with me.

First of all, know that I am happy. And I’m not worried about telling my family. No one need know for a while. I’ve not gained a pound, nor have I had any morning sickness. In fact, it’s the way I feel so well that makes me wonder if I’m pregnant at all. But I have missed my “friend” for two months now. So something is going on.

Kitty swallowed so loudly she feared her sisters would hear her and awaken. But neither stirred, nor did they when she carefully put the tablet back under the mattress. She turned onto her back, folded her hands across her chest, and lay wide-eyed, thinking.