Calling Me Home (34 page)

I took care to avoid pregnancy, and Max agreed to a delay in starting a family. With the uncertainty of war and the newly recovering economy, I insisted we should hang on to our stable jobs and not even consider it until we’d established our home and accumulated a cushion of savings.

It would have been fair to say outright I didn’t want children at all. I’d never shared my history with him, had never breathed a word about Robert. I hoped I’d never have to. The thought of another pregnancy terrified me—even without the possibility of someone tearing my child from my arms before I’d even had a chance to kiss her too tiny, too quiet lips goodbye. I also worried the fall had permanently damaged my womb. Perhaps I’d never carry a child to full term. I didn’t want to know. I couldn’t imagine seeing another newborn emerge from my loins without conjuring my daughter’s face—one I knew only in my imagination.

The United States entered the war in December. It changed everyone. The bombing at Pearl Harbor, though far away in Hawaii, challenged the belief that our country was invincible. The news sent me to bed in tears. Max thought I wept because of the inevitability of war; he couldn’t have known I was weeping for Robert. I wondered whether Robert would survive now that we were really and truly at war, just in time for his departure if Nell’s information held true. Max attempted to soothe me when he came to bed, caressing my shoulder, trying to draw me close, but I turned away. I felt as unfaithful to Robert as ever.

I worked fewer hours each month as Mr. Bartel’s business dropped in response to the inevitable tightening war brought. Max’s job as an accountant in an industrial supply firm was regular as clockwork. The war only increased demand for the goods his company produced. I cooked his breakfast each morning and packed his lunch box. He pecked me on the cheek, as though we’d already reached our silver anniversary, and waved as he walked toward the stop where a trolley bus would pick him up. We were saving for an automobile, but with fuel rationing, we wouldn’t hurry.

On weekends, we still attended movies or went to concerts by local civic orchestras—though so many men had left for the war, the music was thin.

I could see far into the future: Even at the war’s end, our life would continue as it already was, slow and steady, year after year, decade by decade.

Max thrived on predictability. I withered inside. I cursed our dull utopia. Max wasn’t interested in conversation that kept my mind alive—there was no discussion of current events, popular fiction or the classics, music or film. I tried to draw him in, to lift him—as I began to view it, self-righteously—to my level. He seemed puzzled, but not overly frustrated by my attempts. He chuckled, insisting he really didn’t desire to look beyond the surface.

He was a good husband, but for his inability to stir any wonder in me—wonder at who or what lay beneath his surface. After less than two years of marriage, I felt I knew him completely, and the knowledge could be poured into a single coffee cup. Conversely, he knew me little beyond realizing he’d married a woman who seemed to enjoy sparring for the sake of it. He took that in stride, like everything else, with an amused sense of pride.

On a day like that, in 1943, Max strolled away to the bus stop. I spent my frustration on the innocent potatoes and carrots I peeled for our supper, on sweeping the porch, on trying not to explode in my desire to engage someone—anyone!—in conversation more stimulating than a discussion about the weather or the price of a dozen eggs. I turned to an unruly rosebush we’d planted the spring before. The country was deep in the war by then, and most of our gardening efforts went into growing lettuce, beans, and anything else we could cultivate to preserve commercial produce for the troops and cut transportation costs to move it. But we’d splurged on one rosebush for a barren corner of the front yard. We never expected it to be such a needy plant, however, forever demanding attention. If I wasn’t fighting mildew, it was time to fertilize. If I wasn’t fertilizing, I was pruning.

It seemed an awful lot of work for a medium-size plant that hadn’t given much in return. A few buds had opened after we’d planted it, but mostly, it had remained dormant all summer, fall, and through the winter. I’d read that pruning it in the spring would encourage the prolific blooms I longed to see—perhaps they’d give me hope for more than just the rosebush.

His voice came from behind me. “You were never great at trimming bushes.”

I dropped the shears clutched between my bulky gloves and pulled my hands to my belly. I sank to my knees, my legs collapsing beneath me. I’d never expected to hear his voice again. But even after nearly four years, I’d have known it anywhere.

I didn’t dare turn around. I wondered whether the sound had issued from my imagination, an illusion born of the images that still haunted me. Of course I would hear Robert’s voice as I pruned a bush, dreaming of the hours we’d spent grooming the arbor. Of course I would.

I let my eyelids droop closed and sat still, commanding my mind to do it again.

I heard throat-clearing, and I turned my head only enough to glance over my shoulder.

Robert waited, resplendent, in military uniform. He held his sharply angled cap between his hands and moved it out a bit, jiggled an awkward greeting.

Emotions flooded me, some directed at Robert, some simply at the situation: relief, shock, joy, fury, skepticism, hope, bitterness.

Love.

Still love.

“Hello, Isabelle.” Quiet, confident. Whereas he’d been a bit of a boy before, he was a man now. The passage of time I saw in his eyes must have been reflected in mine.

But his greeting also conveyed caution. Not the worried fear of discovery or harassment. He seemed unconcerned what my neighbors might think, yet wary of my reaction.

I forced myself to rise, pushing up from the ground against the odd sensation that gravity might win. I stepped toward him, studying him as though he might yet fade, a mirage conjured by my internal longings—or from leaning into the roses too long with the sun pulsing at the back of my head.

“You are real,” I said when close enough to touch him, though I didn’t.

“Of course I’m real,” he replied.

I wanted to throw myself at him, beg him to say why he’d never tried to contact me, plead with him to save me from my mistake of a marriage. I didn’t. I simply stood and drank in this sight of him in uniform.

The events he’d witnessed and the demons he’d wrestled across four years etched his forehead and jawbone like stories written in fine lines and tense muscle.

Though his voice was unmistakably Robert, the rough edges had been sanded away, leaving something verging on refinement. I wondered where he’d traveled since enlisting. He had already sounded different after he’d attended college—before we married—but this surpassed that. Wisdom resonated in his deep baritone, even in the few words he’d uttered.

“Why are you here? What are you doing? How…” How would I begin?

“I’m not sure I know the answers myself,” he said. “Though I believe it was providence that led me to you. Again.”

“‘Providence’?” I was confused at first, then thought of my words to him all those years ago, when I’d gushed childishly about kismet and fate. I’d been so naïve.

“I saw your father downtown. He told me about your—your marriage. Your husband’s name was easy enough to find in the telephone directory.”

He knew I was married again. And my father knew, too. I’d ignored his attempts to contact me through the Clinckes, but he’d apparently been keeping tabs on me. The mention of him stirred the ice in my heart. “Where have you been?”

“Where have I been lately?”

“I’d like to know where you’ve been since the last time I saw you. For now, lately will do.” I hated how a chilly tone crept into my voice. After all, it wasn’t as if he could have done anything differently; my brothers and mother had been determined to erase him from my life. Anything else would have been madness. But I was bitter. I couldn’t help it. Had he even tried?

“Working in army mess halls, along with other fellows who look like me—if they’re not moving supplies.” He crumpled the edge of his hat into his fist. “So far, on the home front. When I joined up, they said I’d never be allowed on a medical unit, but now they’re talking about training a group of Negro medics for the European theater. I’m throwing my name in.”

This announcement crushed the air from my lungs. Even though I was married again, I had harbored some kind of fairy-tale fantasy he’d come to rescue me. I couldn’t speak at first. When the silence between us became unbearable, I scraped up a brief question. “You’re going…” I stopped. The phrase “over there,” sung patriotically in songs, angered me. He’d found me, but only to say he was sacrificing himself to the enemy, when he could stay safely on home soil, even if his skill and training was wasted. I wanted to ram my hands against his ribs and shove him to the ground.

“Not much call for medics here. I want to do my part. There’s a unit of Negro soldiers training for Europe. They’ll need medics. Right now, nobody’ll hardly touch our injured boys. They don’t get much more than a look when they’re wounded. Most are left to die.”

I felt shame at his use of
our boys.
It was my people doing this. I shuddered, thinking of men like Robert abandoned in the field simply because of skin color. But this was the same country that had erected signs like the one outside my hometown, warning Negroes they’d better be gone before dark. The same country where violent men took “justice” into their own hands while others turned a blind eye.

On an intellectual level, I understood Robert’s need to go, to care for his brothers when they were hurt. Of course I did. Any other reaction would have shamed both of us.

On an emotional level, though, where I wanted to cry out for Robert to right my dismal error in marrying Max, to gather me to himself and love me for the rest of our days, I couldn’t stand believing he intended to leave me again.

“I wish you’d never come here, then.” I spit out the words. “I wish you’d left me ignorant of the fact that you’re even alive. Finally, I can stand living without you, and now my heart is going to break all over again.”

I dragged my gloves off and threw them at the base of the rosebush, kicked my pruning shears out of my way. I ran along the walk, then clambered up the steps toward my front door, leaving Robert speechless in my wake.

“Isa!” he finally cried. “I’m here because I had to see you. I still love you. Every day, every minute, I love you.”

I faced my screen door, slowing at his words, at the sound of his name for me.

I shook my head. He wasn’t here for me. He was going away, as soon as he’d appeared.

Even if he loved me still.

I buried my fists against my eyes, trying to contain the scalding tears that threatened to betray me.

“Nell, she told me … she led me to believe you’d found someone else.” I said the words so quietly, I wasn’t sure he’d hear them. But his voice came over my left shoulder.

“You saw Nell?” he asked. “She told you—Oh, Isa, there was never anyone but you. Never, from the day I saw you at the creek, screaming and beating your fists on the ground.”

And now when I pictured Nell, I saw her clearly, doing what she thought was best for both of us, leading me to believe Robert had moved on.
Always
trying to do what was best for both of us.

“Is that why…” His voice faded, but I knew the question he left hanging.

I turned and faced him. “Yes. That’s why I live here in this pleasant picture of hell. I watched for you. Waited for you. But you went away. You gave up and went away. So when I met Max and he didn’t demand more of me than I could give, I married him.”

“I wanted to come back for you. I would have. I wasn’t sure I’d tell you this. But … there’s something else you should know.” Robert looked down at his shoes now, almost as if he were ashamed. “I wanted to come back for you long before now, Isa. I planned to. I thought I was brave enough to break the rules. I stayed at the docks, saving money to go back to school in the summer—I knew your daddy wouldn’t be paying my tuition again—and hoping I’d think of another way for us to be together. I tried so hard to think of a way.

“Summer was coming on … already so hot and humid, tempers were short everywhere. Felt like if I sneezed wrong, the boss would fire me. I was walking home from the job one afternoon when out of nowhere, two men jumped me. They grabbed me by the arms and dragged me to a car. It was Jack and Patrick. And it was your daddy’s shiny car.”

Robert stopped, gazing off down the street, looking at nothing, really, as though remembering my brothers’ faces—or maybe that afternoon we’d flirted with water while he washed my father’s car. I thought of the timing. When my pregnancy started to show, Jack and Patrick never gave any indication they’d noticed. Not the day I gave birth. Not after.

But they’d noticed.

“They shoved me in the backseat. This guy in the front seat—I didn’t know him—he drove, and they kept pushing my head down, though I fought it at first. By the time the car stopped, I had no idea where we were. On a dirt road—really just a path with ruts—in the middle of some woods. They yanked me back out of the car, and I tried to run, but all three pounced on me, nearly beat me to a pulp. Then they dragged me by the ankles into a clearing. Three or four more waited there.

“I begged your brothers to tell me why they’d taken me there. I said I’d done everything they asked. Left you alone, Isa. Didn’t come around asking about you, didn’t try to contact you—even though I wanted to. Still intended to. Momma and Nell were gone from your house by then, Nell, a long time before, of course, and Momma a few weeks.

“They said, ‘Shut up, nigger.’ Said it was about time they taught me a lesson for defiling a white woman.”

I leaned on the screen door, afraid my knees wouldn’t support me. Robert’s words made them quiver, made them useless. The flimsy door wasn’t much better, but it held.

“By then, I was past scared. I figured my best chance was to be quiet, to go along with whatever they had planned. It was six or seven against one—what else could I do? I prayed it wouldn’t involve a rope or a tree.