“Oh, no, Kitty, gosh. I’m glad he’s back. He flew his missions, he deserves to be back! I’m just feeling a little…” She pulled a letter from her pocket and gave it to Kitty. “I got this today.”
Kitty unfolded the thin pages full of neat blue script and read:
Dear Michael Junior,
I’m asking your mother to hold on to this letter for when you’re older. If you’re reading it, it means I didn’t make it back from the war.
You know, you picked the best person in the world to be born to, and I know that she will guide you well all your life. What I want to tell you are just a few things that I would have told you—probably over and over—had I had the great privilege to help raise you.
First of all, I want you to know that I believed in the cause for which I died. No war is won without sacrifice, and I think I can speak for every man I’ve met here when I say we knew exactly what we were doing and why. We fought for the country we left behind, and those in it, to preserve a way of life; and we fought to rid the world of a great evil.
Death is a hard thing to understand at any age, and perhaps under any circumstances. But I hope you will come to see that I did not die when my body left this earth. I live on as long as someone remembers me, and I know your mother will, and I know you will come to know me through her. And I live on because of you, Michael, for even though you are your own man, I am forever a part of you.
A few words of advice.
Tell the truth. Make it a habit. Nothing will erode your soul more than to live a life built on falsehoods.
Do not provoke a fight, but if you or your family are attacked, fight back honorably.
Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on the earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.
If your mother marries another man, and I hope she will, I want you to give to that lucky fellow all the love and respect you would have given to me.
My biggest wish for you is that you enjoy this beautiful life you were given. For all its problems and difficulties, life is mostly a wonderful experience, and it is up to each person to make the most of each day. I hope you are successful in your life, but look to the heavens and the earth and especially to other people to find your real wealth.
Wherever I am, wherever you go, know that my love goes with you.
Your proud father,
Michael O’Conner
Kitty handed the letter back to her sister, her eyes full of tears.
“Aw gee, I’m sorry,” Louise said.
“For what?”
“I made you cry.”
Kitty wiped carefully under her eyes. “That’s okay. But you know what? Guess what I want to tell you that I just know.”
“That he’ll make it back?”
Kitty nodded.
“I know that, too,” Louise said. “I really do. It’s just that when you get a letter like this, and you think about all the boys who wrote them who didn’t make it back, or won’t…” She shook her head. “And all their women who will be left alone and will never find another man like that one, because there’s only one of each of us. I just can’t get it right, Kitty, I just can’t imagine it. A guy wakes up and eats breakfast, and it’s his last day on earth, and he doesn’t even know. He has no idea. Every guy over there knows men are going to be killed; every time they’re in combat, they see men killed all around them, yet every guy thinks he’s going to make it.”
“I know,” Kitty said. “Hope.” She didn’t want to go out anymore. She wanted to put on her pajamas and talk to her sister. She wanted to make them fried egg sandwiches to eat in bed.
“Oh, stop,” Louise said, as though she were reading her sister’s mind. “Go have fun. I’ll come next time. Gosh, he’s swell, that Hank. You’re lucky to have found him.”
Kitty shrugged.
“Knock it off,” Louise said.
“What?”
“The nonchalance. You’re nuts about him.”
“We’ll see.”
“Look at me,” Louise said. “Let’s make sure you didn’t smear your mascara. Do you like that mascara, anyway?”
“I do,” Kitty said. It was new, an expensive brand she’d bought last week from Tish at the cosmetics counter where she worked. Even with Tish’s discount, it was outrageous. “I’ll put some on you,” Kitty said. “Want me to?”
“I’m not going anywhere!”
“So?” Kitty looked at her watch. “I’ve got time. I’ll put some on you. I’ll show you how to do it.”
“Okay,” Louise said, and she sat up higher in bed, happy now.
Kitty headed for the bathroom to retrieve the black cake of mascara, the cunning little brush. There, she was thinking. Now Louise is okay. Now I can have fun.
The bathroom door was locked, and Kitty rapped lightly against it. “Who’s in there?”
“Me,” Binks said.
“Well, come out.”
“Okay.” The toilet flushed, and Binks banged the door open.
“Good boy,” Kitty said.
“WAIT TILL I TELL JULIAN ABOUT THE GREEN MILL,” Tish said. She straightened the piece of writing paper before her.
“He’s been there,” Kitty said.
“Did you go with him?” Tish asked.
Kitty spoke carefully. “We went there a long time ago.” They had drunk sidecars, and at one point Julian had lifted her up in the air and kissed her. She’d bitten his ear, and the people around them had whooped and applauded. “Some hot tomato, huh?” Julian had said. “Eat your hearts out, fellas.”
“We didn’t have any fun, though,” Kitty said.
“Well,” Tish said happily, and Kitty felt sure she knew what her sister was thinking. He didn’t have fun with you.
Kitty was glad for Tish and Julian. She wouldn’t trade her situation with anyone. She was finally deeply, wildly, madly in love. She talked to Hattie about Hank almost every day, and last time she’d said, Wasn’t it a miracle that she had found the one man for her? Wasn’t it truly a miracle?
Hattie had said she was very happy for Kitty, but truth be told, she didn’t really think it was a miracle. She’d said, “I know how you feel about him. It’s how I felt about Will. But I guess I believe that there’s a lot more than one man for me, and for you, and for every other woman. And more than one woman for every man.”
Kitty didn’t like thinking that way. But she guessed it was true. Still, when you were with the man you loved like crazy, you didn’t have to acknowledge that there could ever be another you would love so well. You could pretend it was a miracle you’d found each other. You could relish the knowledge, however false, that no one else would ever do.
FALL AGAIN. LEAVES DRIFTED SLOWLY or, in a wind, blew down sideways. The days were warm and golden, and the nights made the tip of your nose cold. Michael Junior was almost able to sit up unsupported and adored his strained peas. Kitty sang him lullabies each night, and every time he reached up to touch her face, his eyes wide and wondering, she nearly wept. She understood now the attraction to babies, to children. Oh, did she. She understood with her mind and her heart and her gut.
Fala had learned to fetch the newspaper, and Frank took all the credit, though it was Tommy who’d taught the dog how. “Showed the little fellow once, and didn’t he do it ever after!” Frank said, ignoring the number of times Tommy had done it before him.
Billy was working delivering newspapers, and was so well liked he made extremely good money in tips. He was saving for a car, he said; he was going to buy a new car as soon as they started making them again. “Better get a bigger piggy bank,” Frank told him, and Billy said his money was at the bank. Earning interest. To which Frank said, uncharacteristically, nothing. Binks’s baseball team had taken first place, and he slept with his trophy. Tommy’s health was stable; his cheeks were pink again.
The war news was good, too, if you ignored the casualties. Paris had been liberated, and it seemed Hitler really was all but done for. According to the newspaper, he was hiding in his underground bunker, wavering between fits of rage and deep depression. He suffered from headaches, stomach cramps, and dizziness, and existed on an assortment of drugs. He was mentally ill, too, talking to his generals about the new armies he would raise, the secret weapons that would appear, the quarrels that would break out among the Allies, which would facilitate a victory for Germany. Meanwhile, his “army” was old men and children. Yes, Hitler was nearly defeated; it was just a matter of time. Then the Japs would get licked and the boys would come home. What a day that would be!
Meantime, the Nazis had boasted that Germany would eat, even if all the rest of Europe starved, but Michael wrote of seeing heartbreaking groups of refugees, of how he gave away most of his food to children who stood staring at him with their eyes wide, their bony hands clasped before them.
He wrote about the odd poignancy of coming across horses hit by artillery fire and lying dead in their harnesses at the sides of the roads. He told Louise about the mighty Russian army, how they and their American allies had at last met, and had drunk and danced together. He told her about Ernie Pyle’s famous remark, made after the Americans arrived victorious in Paris and all the French girls were throwing flowers and kisses. Pyle was reported to have said, “Any guy that doesn’t get laid tonight is a sissy.” Guess what? Michael had written. I’m a sissy, and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Julian wrote from Saipan that they were sending boys home who had been two years over. Those boys going back were overjoyed but also scared to death. When your days left grew shorter, you got very nervous about being hit. Later, from the Palau Islands, Julian wrote Tish, Don’t worry about me, kid. I’m taking it easy, making like a crab in the sand.
The sisters wrote back: to them and to other soldiers they met here and there. Always letters going out and always letters coming in, all up and down the block. If someone saw someone else out on the porch taking mail from the box, they would call out, “Did you hear from him?” And if you said yes, they appropriated some of your joy and some of your relief, too.
It was different for Kitty now; her man was home. But of course she worried about those who remained. One night she moaned loudly in her sleep, dreaming about Julian being killed. When her sounds awakened her sisters and they in turn awakened her, she told them she’d been dreaming about some monster. Purple, with purple eyes. They were too tired to doubt her word. The next morning, Kitty went to the church and lit a candle for Julian. Please don’t let him die, she whispered, then quickly added, or get hurt, either.
ON AN UNSEASONABLY WARM NOVEMBER DAY, Hank and Kitty were having a late lunch of hamburgers at the dime-store lunch counter. They’d been shopping for clothes for Hank, casual clothes for his days off from work. He had gotten a job teaching flying—his time in the service had taught him valuable things that could be passed on to men who were still being trained to be sent overseas.
They were talking about the kind of life they’d lead after they were married. Hank had given Kitty a ring three days after he’d gotten home, one he said he’d bought the day after he met her. She still didn’t quite believe him, but he insisted that it was true. “I knew instantly,” he said. “And I wrote a buddy in California who’s a jeweler and told him how much I had to spend. And he sent the ring to me, and I carried it in my pocket until I could give it to you.”
It was a small, round diamond that Kitty wore, nothing so grand and glorious as she used to imagine she’d have. But it meant the world to her. She looked at it a thousand times a day, and every time she saw it, she felt a pleasant rush of love and anticipation for the happy life she dreamed she’d have with Hank. But now they were back to the same tired argument they’d been having for weeks. Hank wanted her to quit her job and find office work until they were married, then quit altogether. It was so different, the way Hank talked to her, so different from the way he had written her, when it seemed as though he wanted her to make up her own mind, and respected her for having the ability to do so. It was true that her first thought had been that she couldn’t wait to quit. But now she had changed her mind. Ever since the talk she’d had with Frank when she was thinking about quitting the factory early on, she had understood the need for personal sacrifice, for the great satisfaction of putting someone before you. It mattered to her that Michael and Julian and millions of other boys were still fighting, and that what she did directly helped the effort. In addition, she cared more than she had realized about Hattie, about their daily conferences in the employee lunchroom, their friendship. And the thought of making so much less money was discouraging. Kitty still remembered the Depression and the gaunt, jobless men who used to go door-to-door selling apples and rags. Hank said she wouldn’t need to make money, he would make money for both of them, as was right. And her moving in with him would lighten her family’s financial burden: they wouldn’t need her money so much. If they did need help, he would take care of it.
At first when he talked about her family not needing her help, Kitty had nodded, agreeing, thinking, One less mouth to feed. But then she thought of her place at the table, empty. She thought of her bed, where Tish and Louise would sleep without her, and she felt a terrible piercing pain. What would life be without her sisters to talk to, to laugh with, every night? So often she’d fantasized married life with the man she loved, but now what it really meant felt starkly and unpleasantly revealed. It was as though a stage set she’d believed was a real and lovely place had been shown for what it was: an illusion. In thinking always about what she would gain by being married, she had never thought about what she would lose. Her family sitting in the parlor eating popped corn and laughing at Jack Benny. The unplanned moments of humor and sweetness in a family, the security you felt at so clearly belonging somewhere. The history of all the members, so well known, the comfortable predictability of all the different personalities. It bothered Kitty to think of herself as a coward, a weak person who clung to her mother’s skirts—or her sisters’. But maybe she was exactly that.
Oh, and there was more to it. There was the siren song of everything that life might also be. Not so much another man but another way of being. What if she advanced in her work life to make great sums of money—if not at the factory, then somewhere else? What if she took a chance on being something altogether different? Suppose she could become a stewardess and fly all over the world? When she had asked Hank about traveling, he’d laughed and said the farthest he wanted to travel was downtown. In fairness, he had been home for only two days when she’d asked him that. It hadn’t been the time to talk to him about travel. Later, when the war was over, that would be the time to talk about it.
But he wanted children right away, too! Kitty just wasn’t sure she was ready quite yet. She knew she wanted them someday, baby Michael had put her doubts to rest on that subject; she now knew that she wanted them very much. But later. For the time being, she didn’t talk about how much she loved helping care for Michael, lest Hank put more pressure on her. She didn’t smile at the way Hank held little Michael and sang to him. On one occasion, Hank had been the only one able to settle Michael down after he’d had a fussy day. “Oh, I just like babies,” Hank had said. “I guess they like me back.” He’d laughed as Michael cooed at him, making sounds so very much like conversation. The rest of the family had laughed, too, delighted, but Kitty had looked carefully away.
Kitty turned on her stool and told Hank, “I will quit my job eventually. Just not yet. You have to let me decide things, too. You can’t tell me to do it now just because that’s what you think is best. Don’t I get a vote?”
Hank was quiet. Kitty could all but predict what he was going to say: Guys on the battlefield liked their women working in a defense plant. Once they got home, though, they wanted them back in skirts and away from other men. It was only natural. It was only right.
>
Hank said, “Waitress? More coffee?” and his voice had a tight, strained quality she’d never heard. Well. He was saying that same thing a different way. She looked over at the woman next to her, who looked away. Don’t get me involved, sister. This is your fight.
Kitty sighed. “Let’s go for a walk, Hank. Want to go for a walk?”
“Sure.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. His eyes softened, and Kitty’s stomach leaped up. Oh, she adored him, she did. She took his arm as they began walking, thinking of Marcele Cox, who’d written in Ladies’ Home Journal, “Many a woman will end her period of war work convinced that home, after all, is the place where she can make her best conquests and secure her most beautiful rewards.” But Marcele had also written, “A husband is the person on the right side during the wedding ceremony, and on the right side forever after,” and this had given Kitty considerable pause. It was all so confusing! She tightened her grip on Hank’s arm, thinking the truest thing Marcele had written was this: “Marriage is love turned so the seams show.” They’d show each other their truest, most honest selves, she and Hank, and they’d figure out a solution for everything.
By the time Kitty and Hank got off the streetcar, headed for dinner with Kitty’s family, they had agreed that she would work at the factory for as long as she wanted. Period. The deal Kitty made privately with herself was that when she got pregnant, she would stop working. Oh, she could hardly imagine it. A child, made by Hank and her, living inside her. She’d been through pregnancy with Louise, but that was different. This would be her body changing and delivering into the world a real live baby, her and Hank’s child. It was so scary! But it was wonderful to think about, too. A million lovely things to imagine about having a baby, being a mother. Once she was pregnant, then she’d tell him how all along she’d been thinking about how cute babies looked sitting in bathtubs, their tummies round and their faces alternating between wrinkled-brow befuddlement and wide smiles that nearly broke your heart. She would tell him how she used to stand over baby Michael, just watching him sleep, aching with love. How she leaned so carefully over the crib rail to gently touch his hand.