Dream When You're Feeling Blue

  “Sure, you complained enough when I made them, too.” Margaret dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.

  “Now they would be welcome as the Second Coming!”

  Margaret lay her napkin down and stood. “Here’s what, Frank Heaney. I hereby resign from the position of cook. I’ve taken on other work now, too, and it’s gotten too hard for me to do everything myself. You cook for the duration. You shop at the butcher and the bakery and the grocer, and you juggle the points and the stamps, and you stand in the lines, and you come up with the menus. I’m sure I’ll enjoy the vacation. And now, if you’ll excuse me.” She pushed her chair under the table, went into the parlor, and turned the radio on loudly.

  The family sat still, looking down into their plates. And then Frank cleared his throat and said, “Well. I’ll be right back.”

  No one could hear the brief conversation over the sound of Kate Smith, but their father returned to the table after only a minute or so. “Good news from the front,” he said. “We’ll have the fine services of your mother in the kitchen after all. And you’re none of you to complain!”

  “I didn’t say anything,” Binks said.

  “Just a general reminder,” Frank said. “Pass me the tongue, please.” He tucked his napkin into the top of his shirt and very quietly sighed.

  KITTY LAY MOANING IN THE BATHTUB. She was ready to quit work. Lala had quit after lunch on the first day after their orientation. Laura had lasted several weeks before she went to work at Marshall Field’s. Hattie said that, hard as the work was, it was the most money she’d ever made and she was staying no matter what. They ate lunch together every day, comparing notes on the abuse they’d taken.

  The work was claustrophobic and mind-numbingly dull. Most often, Kitty attached fixtures and assemblies to a tail fuselage. When she was lucky, she got to sit on a wooden toolbox and work near the hatch, where she could see out of the plane; otherwise, she knelt down low or stood on a stool and reached up high to work on what felt like the inside of a gigantic barrel. But that was better than being shoved into tiny places to work, like the nose or the tail of the plane, or the circular belly turret. Sometimes she worked with her knees bent up against her chest, her shoulders hunched so far forward her chin was right there to meet them. But no matter where she worked, at the end of the day every part of her—her neck, her legs, her arms, her shoulders, her back, her hands—ached. If she banged her head, which happened often, that hurt, too. She’d seen one girl get her nose broken when she dropped a wrench onto her upturned face, and Kitty lived in fear of that happening to her.

  Tired as she was on the way home, she rarely got a seat on the streetcar. It was because she wore pants; if a girl wearing a skirt got on a streetcar where Kitty was standing, a man would invariably get up for her. It infuriated Kitty. Sometimes she wanted to sit on the lap of the girl with the skirt (who no doubt had been sitting all day in a comfortable office like the one Kitty used to work in) and say, “Listen, sister, I’m the one who needs this!”

  The first day she’d worked on a plane, Kitty had slept from the time she got home until the next morning—she wouldn’t come downstairs for supper, and finally Margaret had told Frank and her sisters to stop trying to make her get up; she’d give her a big breakfast the next morning. And indeed she had: Kitty’s bowl had been piled high with oatmeal and raisins. Frank had been concerned when he saw her that morning and had asked if she was in pain. “Oh, no,” she’d said. “Just a bit stiff. I’ll get used to it!”

  She’d gotten used to it all right—she’d gotten used to being in pain. Every day she came home hurting and exhausted. Kitty was proud of the work she was doing, but it was so much harder than she had anticipated. The men she worked with swore and spit and oftentimes smelled—and frankly, so did many of the women. The men made rude remarks about her and the other women, calling them “victory girls,” the term for women free with their favors to almost any soldier. She’d thought all the workers would be consumed with patriotic fever, and many were; but some were shamelessly lazy, literally sleeping on the job. The noise was awful, so loud that sometimes when Kitty came out of the factory, she couldn’t hear quite right—for a few hours, it was as though her head were stuffed with cotton. And the dirt! She simply couldn’t get what was left of her nails clean. And it wasn’t just her hands that got soiled; she got dirt up her nose and in her ears, around her neck and, unbelievably, between her toes. After she bathed, she had to scrub a ring of black from the tub and rinse down the drain the shiny metal shavings that had come out of her hair.

  She’d made a mistake. Her father had been right; this was no job for her. So what if she could toss around terms like “command deck” or “top gun turret” or “A- and N-bolts” or “cotter keys.” She preferred terminology like “sweetheart neckline” and “baby-doll ankle straps” and “chenille-dotted rayon nets.” So what if she could use a ratchet wrench and a drill? Weren’t the jobs you learned to keep a household running just as valuable? Any job these days was helping the boys. Truly. There was no shame in doing another kind of work. Sure, she’d have to go back to making less money, but what difference did that make? Sooner or later (quite a bit later, it appeared), she’d be marrying Julian, and then she’d have all the money she needed. In fact, it was better for her future to take care of herself for Julian; he’d never want to have anything to do with a girl who didn’t take care of herself. He’d told her to take the job, but he wasn’t at all aware of the toll it took. It didn’t matter how often she used Hines Honey and Almond cream for “war workers’ hands.” Why, if Julian saw how rough—

  A knock on the door, and here came Billy’s urgent voice. “Kitty? Are you almost done?” Another knock, louder. “Kitty?”

  “I’m coming out!” she said and lowered herself into the warm water one last time. She pulled the plug, stood, and wrapped a towel around herself. It would be so nice to be married and have just two people using the bathroom. Just she and Julian, and if one of them was in there, even for a long while, why the wait would still only be…Kitty froze. Then she quickly dried off, dressed in her nightgown, cleaned the tub, let Billy in the bathroom, and ran to her room.

  “HEY?” KITTY WHISPERED BREATHLESSLY TO LOUISE, after she had settled in the bed beside her.

  “What?” Louise answered sleepily.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to do about using the bathroom when you’re married?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, number two.”

  Louise laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Kitty said. “You don’t want him to come in right after. It would change his whole image of you.”

  Again, Louise laughed.

  “Shhhh!” Kitty said. “Don’t wake up Tish!”

  “I am awake,” Tish said. “And as usual I know more than you guys. I know exactly what to do about that situation.”

  “What, then?” Louise asked. “What do you do?”

  “If both of you have to go, always let him go first,” Tish said, with tired authority. “If it’s an emergency and you can’t wait, then make sure the window’s open and flush right away. When you come out, close the door and distract him. For ten minutes.”

  “Oh,” Kitty said. “That’s good advice, actually.”

  A moment of quiet and then Louise said, “What about gas?”

  “Well,” Tish said. “You just don’t.”

  “But what if it slips?”

  “Make sure you have a dog to blame,” Tish said. “Seriously. It’s worth getting one for that reason alone.”

  “But I don’t like dogs,” Kitty said. Oh, everything was too hard. She punched her pillow and closed her eyes. “Good night.”

  Louise said, “Do you guys ever think about how Hitler has affected the whole world? That just one man did all this? I mean, what if he had been a good man, instead?” Neither of the sisters answered. Kitty sighed. Everything really was too hard.

  “DEAR PERKY LITTLE PUS
S,” TISH READ and giggled. The sisters were comparing salutations.

  “My darling,” Louise said quietly.

  “Dear Miss Heaney, who has freed Diogenes to lay down his lantern at last,” Kitty read.

  “Huh?” Tish said. “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” Kitty said.

  “Diogenes was a Greek philosopher,” Louise said. “He spent his whole life wandering around with a lantern, looking for a honest man.”

  “So what does that have to do with anything?” Tish asked. And then, to Kitty, she said, “Read the whole letter.”

  When Kitty hesitated, Tish said, “It’s only from Hank!” She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. “Or do you have something to hide?”

  “No, I don’t have anything to hide!” Kitty said. “He just says he got my letter, and he talks about his commanding officer, things like that. That’s all. It’s nothing.”

  “Then why don’t you read it to us?” Louise asked.

  They would not stop until she did. “His commanding officer is named Carl Peters,” Kitty said, then read:

  “He has handsome features but is hung badly inside himself, if you understand what I mean, one of those poor souls who seems as though his head should be twisted gently and pulled, like a cork in a bottle, in order to free his real body from that clumsy, sagging, bent, and apologetic mass of flesh. Lest you think me unkind for saying these things, this last is by his own admission and quite literally in his own words. Furthermore, lest you feel sorry for him, you should know that, in addition to his skill at self-deprecation, he has as well a deliciously wicked, often ironic sense of humor in describing others. He calls me Durante for my inability to crack wise, for example. But he is never cruel; rather, his jabs feel like true affection.

  “I have noticed as well that Captain Peters has a keen sense of balance—in the psychological sense, I mean. His mood is even; he does not give himself over to despair or to elation. He surely must feel terrible fear from time to time, as all of us do, but he knows how to keep his mind clear and make good decisions quickly. He is a born leader, quite popular with both men and women; I suspect there is much I might learn from him where women are concerned, in fact. And as you seem so keen on my finding another woman besides yourself, I shall study him from afar and take note of his habits, much as I would the mud-crested winkadink. I hope you are smiling; of course there is no such bird! Or if there is, I know nothing of it.

  “You ask what I was like as a young boy. Too serious, I should say, most succinctly. And as enraptured of the toad as of any young girl—I found the world rich with delights and had difficulty prioritizing. Whom should I pursue, the amphibian or the redhead? In some respects, the problem persists. Or did persist, until I met you.”

  Louise gasped, and Kitty held up her hand. “Just wait.”

  “But there, I am back at doing what you say you do not want me to do. Still, as a student of Nature for all these years, there lingers in me a suspicion that my affections might not be so unwelcome after all. True? Tell me true, Kitty.”

  Kitty looked up and spoke quickly. “Of course, I already did tell him. Last time I wrote him, I told him in no uncertain terms.”

  “How does he sign the letter?” Tish asked suspiciously, and Kitty read the last few lines.

  “I am off for a night flight now and shall look for you in the heavens. If you would be so good as to send me a picture, I would not have to be so dangerously distracted in my work. Your friend and nothing but! Mr. Cunningham.”

  Kitty folded the letter. “So,” she said. She felt something strange inside, an agitated kind of sorrow.

  “Are you going to send him a picture?” Tish asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh, go on and do it. You’ve told him you’re just friends.”

  Kitty studied her sister’s face. No guile. She meant it.

  “Listen to what my guy wrote,” Tish said. And she began to read excitedly from the soldier who’d sent her four pages in a wild, loopy script, describing the visit they’d had from Marlene Dietrich, who’d stretched out on a piano to sing her sultry song. Kitty tried to listen but couldn’t. In her mind, she saw a young Hank watching a frog, a shock of his black hair falling on his forehead. He sat quietly and patiently on the banks of an otherwise deserted riverbank, unmindful of his wonderful good looks, focused instead on the world before him, and beyond.

  IN AUGUST, MRS. O’CONNER DIED, and Michael was home within thirty hours. At the funeral home, Kitty stood alone in the corner, discreetly fanning herself. She was watching Louise hold Michael’s hand and speak with the people who had come to pay their respects. It was so strange seeing Louise and Michael together again. The circumstances were sad, of course, and maddening, too, if you could be so crass as to put such a term to it. Kitty supposed she was crass, because mostly what occupied her mind was what it must be like for Louise to have so little time with the man she loved and then be spending it this way.

  Michael had grown much thinner, and there was a look in his eye Kitty had never seen before. A gentle distance. A weariness out of sync with his age and formerly easy and upbeat disposition. You couldn’t quite reach him. Some of this, Kitty thought, was grief for his mother, for what had been, for him, a sudden death. But there was something else, too.

  He’d be going back tomorrow. So little time for him to be home and with Louise. Margaret had invited him and his father to dinner, but Michael’s father was going to stay with his sister in Wisconsin that night, and Michael and Louise had asked for the evening alone so that they could go for a meal and to a movie, just like old times. Who could blame them? But oh, what wrenching sweetness would now be attached to this simple thing.

  Kitty saw Louise whisper something to Michael. Then she let go of him and went off toward the ladies’ room. Michael looked around the room, a sorrow he’d been holding at bay now apparent in his face. But then he spotted Kitty, smiled, and walked over to her.

  “Hey, good-looking.”

  “Michael, I’m so sorry,” Kitty said.

  He nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Gosh. who’d have thought…”

  “I know.” He studied the carpet, then looked up at her. “Kitty? I want you to make sure my fiancée takes good care of herself.”

  “I will.”

  “God, I miss her.”

  “She misses you, too.”

  “Don’t let her worry about me so much. And help her feel better about everything—Dad said Mom was in an awful lot of pain. It’s better she didn’t linger any longer.”

  “Yes.” Kitty didn’t know what else to say. How could you say you were glad someone’s mother had died? She thought of Margaret lying in a coffin, of herself weeping over her own dead mother. Then she thought of Margaret sitting up in the coffin and saying, “Enough now, we’ll get our drama from the motion pictures, thank you very much.” That was exactly what she’d say.

  “Hear from Julian much?” Michael asked.

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I get a lot of letters from him,” Michael said, smiling. “Still the same old Julian.”

  “Yes,” Kitty said. Was he? She didn’t even know.

  “I suppose he is tired of the wardrobe by now,” Michael said.

  “And no gang to boss around,” Kitty said. “Now it’s him taking orders.”

  “Definitely not his style,” Michael said and then saw Louise. He raised his hand to signal that he’d be right over, and gave Kitty a quick hug. “Good seeing you, Kat. Drop me a line sometime. And tell Julian that when it’s all over the four of us are going to have one hell of a party.”

  “I will.”

  “And please…take care of her until I come home. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Kitty watched him walk away. Billy had talked about how smart Michael looked in his uniform, and he did. Oh, how she missed men, their height and low voices, the firmness of their touch! Well, Julian, she meant, of
course. How she missed Julian.

  IT WAS VERY LATE WHEN LOUISE came up to bed. The light outside the window was pinkish gray; the birds had begun to call. Kitty was awake but said nothing. The idea of letting her sister believe she had some semblance of privacy was right, for soon she heard the soft sounds of Louise crying. Sometimes nothing but tears would do. Kitty wanted to turn over, her hip ached from being in that position too long, but she kept still, and would, for as long as it took.

  EARLY ON MONDAY MORNING, MARGARET SHOOK Kitty’s shoulder. “Have you seen Billy?”

  Kitty opened her eyes and blinked once, twice. “What?”

  “Have you seen Billy? Wake up, all of you; Billy’s missing!”

  Louise sat up and yawned. “Ma, calm down. I’m sure he’s somewhere nearby. He’s probably out playing.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down!” Margaret held out a note with a trembling hand. “I found this on his bed! He’s gone and enlisted! ‘I’m off to win the war,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll write soon.’”

  “He can’t enlist!” Tish said. “He’s too young!”

  “Yes, and who gave him the idea of how easy it is to lie about his age? All of you so loose with your talk, and now look what you’ve done!”

  Tish began to cry.

  “Wait,” Kitty said. “Wait a minute, Ma. Are the other boys here?”

  “No,” Margaret said. “They and your father are out looking for him.”

  Tish wiped her eyes and reached for the clothes she’d left on the floor. “I’ll go and look.”

  “Wait for me,” Kitty told her, and Louise said, “I’ll come, too.”

  “You girls have to go to work,” Margaret said. And then, when it became clear that none of them would do any such thing, she said, “Don’t all of you go together. Go in different directions. And come back to the house every hour on the hour in case he shows up. I’ll wait here. Oh, the licking I’m going to give him. Right out in the front yard, in front of everyone!” Then she began to cry, saying, “If he’d only come back, I’d forgive him, God love him. He just wants to make his father proud. Oh, where did he go? Why must we live in such a big city?”