Letters From Home (28 page)

30

January 3, 1945
Evanston, Illinois

T
hough struggling to stay awake on the bus ride home, Liz was thankful for her rigorous day at work. The nonstop pace had helped the time pass with few opportunities to gauge how far away her father’s Washington-bound train might be. And how soon he would discover her letter.

She ambled up the pathway to her house. Each footfall brought her closer to an afternoon nap. A catnap, at least, before her evening rail departure to Pittsburgh.

She squeaked out a yawn while passing through the entry, headed straight for bed.

“Elizabeth.” A deep voice lunged at her.

Liz grabbed her stalled heart. She sighed at the sight of her father off to the right, seated in the living room. But just as her pulse returned, it quickened from fear over his extended stay.

Don’t panic, don’t panic.
He could have merely changed his travel schedule.

She smiled. “Father, what are you still doing here?”

“Elizabeth, sit down. We need to talk.” His clipped tone and rigid posture alerted every nerve in her body that Chicago weather wouldn’t be the core of their discussion.

“Of course,” she replied, feigning casualness. She took her seat on the couch, opposite him in the rocking chair. Toes clenched in her loafers, she fidgeted her thumbs over clasped hands. A witty line to break the tension had nearly reached her lips when she spied the paper on his lap. Her eyes stretched wide; her temperature rose. The confession—not meant to be read until her father was at least four hundred miles away—had become the centerpiece of the room.

“Father, please. Let me explain.”

“No,” he said firmly. “I have something I need to say, and I want you to listen to every word.”

It was already clear: She had pried open a vault her father wanted sealed, and now he’d be closing the door on her as well.

Bracing herself, she lowered her gaze to the copy of
Life
magazine on the coffee table. On the cover, Judy Garland offered empathetic eyes. How Liz wished she too could be transported into a magical world far from reality.

“The first time I ever saw your mother, I couldn’t breathe,” he began.

Liz blinked at his words. Tentative, she edged her head up.

“Beyond beautiful was the only way to describe her. She glided across the stage as if she were skating on ice. She wasn’t the company’s prima ballerina, but it didn’t matter. Everyone in that theater was entranced by her.” With unseeing eyes, he stared into the reflective glass of the china closet poised against the wall.

“I went backstage to meet her as soon as the show ended. When I found her in the corner untying her slippers, I just stood there. My mouth was so dry it was hard to swallow. Finally, I marched over and introduced myself.” He smiled faintly and his voice lightened. “The second I heard her speak, I actually forgot my own name.”

Liz couldn’t imagine it. Professor Emmett P. Stephens, an esteemed scholar and speaker, intimidated by a ballerina.

A ballerina.
The Nutcracker.
On her mother’s last present. The wrapping itself had carried a secret all these years. Before storing the box, Liz had memorized every figurine on that paper, unaware of their importance, their message.

Her father continued. “I’m not sure how I managed it, but somehow Isabelle agreed to go out with me. Once my nerves settled, it was as though we’d always known each other. We ate and talked and laughed. Then later that night, we were dancing at some back-alley jazz club, when a guy on the cornet starts playing a solo. It was Louis Armstrong himself, just a kid back then, but the song was like nothing I’d ever heard. It was a slow, moody tune, the kind that seeps under your skin. I remember feeling like we were the only ones in the room. And that’s when I knew. I’d found the woman I wanted to spend my life with.”

Liz understood completely. For that brief moment dancing in Morgan’s arms, the notes had seemed mystical and perfect, powerful enough to evaporate the world around them.

“We talked for months, about the exotic places we wanted to visit, all the things we were going to accomplish. Your mother was so full of life. She had so much to offer, just like you.” He paused, let the words take hold. “And, like you, she had big plans. She wanted to become a famed dancer in New York more than anything. But in the midst of all those dreams, we were handed a surprise.”

Liz was still grasping that she and her beautiful yet aloof mother had once been anything alike, when he looked straight into her eyes.

“It was you,” he said.

“Me?”
she whispered, not entirely sure she’d voiced the word.

“When your mother told me she was pregnant, I didn’t know what to say. My first thought was about all the sacrifices we’d have to make. Then I realized what a blessing we’d been given. I didn’t waste another second. I ran out and bought the nicest ring I could afford. Our dreams would have to adjust, but we didn’t have to give them up. We’d do it together, as a family. That’s what I told her.

“But then, soon after, I was offered a good position in California. Since jobs were growing scarce, I didn’t think twice.” After a quiet beat, he moved the letter to the coffee table. Leaning forward, he clutched his hands. “Once we’d settled there and you’d grown up a bit, Isabelle auditioned for a dance company in L.A., but she’d become a little rusty. When she didn’t make the final cut, I encouraged her to try out again, that all she needed was practice. Yet she wouldn’t. Said she’d missed her chance. And as time passed, your mother grew more and more resentful of a life that never suited her.”

The fresh implication of blame seized Liz’s thoughts. Filtering through in a murmur came the lyrics her mother had played endlessly in her bedroom. The phrases—describing the gloom and misery of stormy weather, of growing old and losing all she once had—gained a heart-wrenching meaning. Each line rolled and blended in an elusive spin, until all Liz could grasp was how little she knew about her own parents.

“So you see, Elizabeth, her leaving had nothing to do with some trivial argument between the two of you. Your mother loved you—even if she didn’t know how to show it. She just finally realized how much of herself she’d lost along the way, and it terrified her. She was convinced that leaving was her only chance at salvaging what was left. That if she stayed for even one more day, she might never have the courage to go.”

And there it was. The absolution Liz had spent years waiting to wrap her arms around.

Yet she couldn’t. For she had just learned that her sole existence was the knife that had severed her parents’ relationship.

“You’re wrong,” she told him, a quiver in her voice. “It
was
my fault. Don’t you see? Things would’ve been so much better for you both, if only I were never born.”

“Don’t you
ever
say that.” His stern tone verged on anger. “Elizabeth Marie, you are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

She fisted her hands, struggled to withhold the emotions building inside. “But if that’s really how you feel, then why have you been so distant? All this time, why?”

He sighed, his expression falling, his shoulders sinking. “Elizabeth,” he said, “I never meant to hurt you. I was just so afraid of interfering with your life and your plans, afraid of letting you down. As I’d done with her.”

The irony balled in Liz’s throat. She fought her way through, tossed out her feelings. “I always thought I had disappointed
you.
I thought, if I became a teacher, if I married a man like Dalton, then maybe, just maybe I’d finally earn your approval. All I wanted was to make you happy.” Her voice cracked, as did the dam holding back her tears.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he told her.
“Your
happiness is all I care about. Whatever dreams you have, you follow them, and I promise, I will be there to support you. No matter what.”

She nodded slowly, his words creating a bridge between them. And in his eyes, glimmering with moisture, she could see he’d at last met her halfway.

In a rush, she knelt before his chair. She hugged his waist, as she had as the young girl who never should have let go. “Daddy, I love you so much,” she whispered.

Folding over her, he kissed her temple. “I love you too,” he said. “More than anything in the world.” There in his embrace, strong enough to carry her through a lifetime, Liz came to understand she had been wrong: Even two made a family.

After the tears ceased, Liz joined her father on the front porch swing. Side by side they sat, no invisible border dividing them. Just a daughter relishing the adoration of her daddy and wondering why she had waited so long.

They talked for hours. They spilled their hearts. And for the first time in her adult life, Liz felt as though her father really knew her.

Once evening had cooled into night, they bundled in wool blankets and sipped from mugs of steaming mint tea, swinging and talking until the early hours of morning. She wished she had the power to stop time. Part of her feared she was dreaming and the ring of an alarm clock would take it all away. Yet she quickly decided it mattered little. She was going to enjoy every bit of this feeling even if she had imagined it all.

“Elizabeth,” a voice said as something tapped her arm.

She opened her eyes and discovered she had fallen asleep. When her vision cleared, she sighed. For seated beside her was her father. She had drifted off with her head on his shoulder, her hand resting in his. The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled, and without his saying a word, she knew she was loved.

“Honey, look.” He pointed to the sun, its orange rays reaching up from behind the fortress of rooftops, painting the sky powder blue. She turned her head and found the most glorious sight before her: the fading image of a crescent moon, the kind out of storybooks. She closed her eyes, took in the crisp smell of coming snow. Through her eyelids, she could see the golden glow of the sun, and her face basked in its warmth.

Thank you, Morgan,
she offered silently, and squeezed her father’s hand.

31

Mid-January 1945
Near Rheims, France

M
organ increased his pace as he hobbled past bedded soldiers in the wide hall outside the gymnasium. The closer he got, the more certain he was about the identity of the guy parked at the end. He felt a smile coming on, despite the soreness in his underarm from the wooden crutch. Only for a second did he consider the topic their reunion could trigger, explosive as an S-mine.

At the foot of his buddy’s hospital bed, Morgan sprang his greeting. “Those Dodgers gonna win the pennant again, or they gonna wait another twenty years?”

Frank raised his eyes from a worn issue of
Time
magazine. Gray light pushing through the frosted window outlined his freshly buzzed hair and clean-shaven face. “Guess they let anyone in here these days,” he muttered.

“Hadn’t you heard? Joint’s under new management.”

“Must be desperate for patients.”

“They let
you
in, didn’t they?”

Frank laughed and laid the magazine over his blanketed lap. He edged himself up to recline against the pillow cushioning him from the concrete wall. His undershirt hung loose over his dog tags and withered torso, verifying he’d lost as much weight as Morgan since their tour began. Good ol’ Army rations.

“Take a load off, Mac.”

“Yes, sir,” Morgan shot back. He negotiated his way to the wooden chair beside the bed. Judging by the number of floor tiles between Frank and the next soldier, a lumped form completely covered in a blanket, this wing of the school had fewer patients to tend to. The smell of disinfectant, however, wasn’t any less potent.

In the creaky seat, Morgan adjusted his bathrobe and propped his foot on the edge of Frank’s mattress. His leg throbbed like a son of a gun, but he wasn’t about to complain. Every sensation only reminded him the limb was still there. And how close he had come to losing it.

“So what’d they do,” Morgan said, “find out you had the clap at the last short-arm inspection?”

“Not unless I got it from being near Jack.” Frank grinned. “Doc says I got jaundice. Doesn’t clear up soon, they’re talking about sending me home.”

It was then that Morgan noticed his friend’s skin had a yellowish tint, as did the whites of his eyes. “Funny. Thought maybe you had some Jap in ya that you didn’t want to admit to.”

“Yeah, right.” Frank ran his thumb over a wound dressing on his left biceps. “How ya like that? Six months of dodgin’ Kraut ammo and I end up with a faulty liver.”

“Well, it was bound to catch up with you sooner or later.”

“How you figure?”

“From all that communion wine, while training for the minist—” Before Morgan could finish, a cramp attacked his calf. He muffled a huff as he massaged the knot through his rolled-up pajama pant leg.

“What are you doing walking around anyway?” Frank said. “Ain’t you got the sense to stay in bed while you can?”

“Just following nurse’s orders,” he ground out. “Supposed to do a round through the place, till I either get too tired or collapse on the floor.”

“Hope you don’t think I’m carrying you back.”

“Don’t worry. I’m in no rush. The guy in the next bed’s the biggest blabbermouth I’ve ever met.” Morgan sighed as the cramp subsided. “They don’t ship him out soon, so help me I’m gonna take this crutch and discharge him myself.”

Fresh from the replacement depot, “Jabber” had allegedly been shot in the right buttock by an enemy sniper while crouching over a straddle trench to take care of his business. Yet by the twentieth time he’d recapped his dramatic “assault,” Morgan wondered if his million-dollar wound had been compliments of a guy in Jabber’s own unit.

In stark contrast, the bedded soldier to Morgan’s other side was a young, stoic Air Corps gunner who’d survived a crash landing on the French-Belgian border. His bandages indicated that the flesh on his hands had been chipped away after freezing to his gun during the winter bombing raid. Deemed unfit for duty, he spent most days staring at the ceiling, ignoring Jabber’s prattling and a stack of unopened letters from Oregon piled on a chair beside his bed.

Until now, Morgan’s only reprieve from the morale-stifling duo had been brief visits with Evelyn and a run of cribbage victories against Father Bud. In light of his Catholic upbringing, Morgan had tried on several occasions to let his pious opponent win a single round, but not even cheating to tilt the game in the priest’s favor could save him from constant defeat. Apparently, there was no telling whom God was rooting for these days.

“So what about Jack?” Morgan asked Frank, trying for a nonchalant tone. “He still in one piece?”

“Been a while since I’ve seen him. But you know Jack. Always pops up somewhere.”

Morgan refused to consider the alternative. “Another conjugal reconnoitering mission?”

“That ain’t no joke.” Frank snorted. “You watch, by war’s end, he’ll have a hundred kids lined up from Paris to Berlin. All account of dames lovin’ that uniform—and him loving their strudels.”

Morgan chuckled. “Only a hundred, huh?”

“Hell, Ike just waits long enough, Jack Callan could dilute the Aryan bloodline by his lonesome. Then we could all finally pack it in and go home.”

A draft brushed over Morgan’s skin. He pulled the robe collar snug around his neck, rubbed his arms. “Hey, at least he found a better way to stay warm than the rest of our sorry butts.”

“Yeah. By dodging rounds from pissed-off husbands gone home on furlough.”

Morgan smiled, recalling Jack’s story about getting hot and heavy with a leggy Hungarian gal. Supposedly, her blacksmithing father caught them in a stable and chased Jack two full miles with a branding iron. “I don’t get it,” he said. “How is it that
we’re
in here, and he’s the one without a scratch?”

“Beats me.” Frank shrugged. “Downright miracle, with the smart mouth he’s got on him. But then, same goes for that wiseacre brother of yours.” The sentence stopped in midair, hung like a sheet pinned to a clothesline. No breeze, no sound. The stillness wrung Morgan’s gut.

“Mac,” Frank said. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t mean—”

“Really,” Morgan told him. “It’s okay.”

Frank lowered his eyes to his grip on the magazine, his yellowed cheeks paling. The silence between them screamed for a full minute before Morgan decided they’d both be better off if he exited. As he reached for his crutch, Frank again slugged him with the unexpected.

“He saved my life, Mac.”

Morgan raised his head. A patient’s cough reverberated in the hall.

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“Chap. He saved my life.” Frank’s voice was as solemn as his face. “Figured you didn’t know, but he saved all of us on the roof that day.”

The claim didn’t make any sense. How could Charlie’s recklessness be seen as heroic?

“I didn’t know the whole story myself till afterward,” Frank went on. “Right after you dropped off the ammo, Sarge starts screaming for us to clear out. A Jerry tank was about to blast us away. But then a rocket comes shootin’ from the hill and blows the Panther all to hell.”

Morgan narrowed his eyes at the revived image. The tank exploding across from the brewery, dirt and snow, the taste of gasoline.

“After it was all over, a couple of us hiked up the hill. And that’s when …” Frank hesitated. “Well, that’s when we found the two of you.”

Morgan clenched his jaw, veered his attention to the tiled floor. He wanted to retreat now more than ever, but he couldn’t. All he could think about was Charlie expelling his final breath as they lay in that icy foxhole, a gravesite with a charming view that Morgan had not only handpicked but helped his brother construct.

“Doc Gordon was patching you up,” Frank said, “when one of the bazookamen up there came to. A round had ricocheted off a flask in his chest pocket, the lucky cuss.” He cleared his throat, rustled his magazine. “Thing is, I tried to thank the fella for saving our asses. And that’s when he told me what Chap did. Why the guy didn’t keep it to himself, I don’t know. Wiping his conscience, I guess.”

Frank was obviously about to exaggerate, a way of memorializing the deceased. All with good intention, but Morgan wasn’t in the mood for another eulogy. He looked up to stop him. “Rev. You really don’t have to.”

Frank persisted. “From what the guy remembered, Chap wiped out the Kraut who was shooting at him, then grabbed the bazooka. He launched a shell at somethin’ below, just before the fella blacked out.”

If Frank was telling the truth …if that’s really how it happened, Charlie had sacrificed his cover—sacrificed his life—to save the rest of them.

Morgan paced his breathing, the wind knocked out of him. “So what you’re saying,” he managed to say, “is that he saved me too.”

“He saved a whole lot of us,” Frank told him. “I honestly don’t know how it all would’ve turned out if Chap hadn’t come through like that.”

Morgan shook his head. “No,” he insisted. “That can’t—that’s why I—” He tried for a complete thought, but all had fragmented inside him.

“I don’t want to make things worse for ya. Just figured I’d want to know. If it was me.”

Morgan strained to connect any words he could, hindered further by the squeak of a wheel. A nurse trundling a cart. He watched vacantly as she disappeared into the gym, leaving a clear view of a chaplain. Rosary dangling from his hand, head bowed, he prayed over a heavily bandaged soldier.

“Why?” Morgan said finally, still staring off. “Why would he do that?”

“Your brother?”

Morgan turned to Frank. “God,” he replied, and was surprised at the calm in his own voice. He should have been outraged, yet he couldn’t feel a thing. Like pulling water from a dried-up well, his bucket was empty. He was too tired to even blame himself. He simply wanted answers.

“Help me out, Rev. Tell me there’s a purpose to it all. Otherwise, what are we doin’ here?”

Frank opened his mouth, but then closed it. He slouched into his pillow and said, “I wish I knew.”

Morgan angled his head back, heavy on its hinge. He stared at a spidery crack in the window beside him, too resigned to extend his view past the pane. “You gotta give me somethin', man. Anything.”

Frank blew out a sigh. “My bet is you’ve got more answers than I do, Mac. I haven’t said a prayer or stepped foot into a church since I was a kid.”

One syllable at a time, the statement sank in. Jarred by the implication, Morgan cut his gaze to his friend. “What’d you say?”

“Just that I’m not the best one to ask, is all.”

“No, the other thing. About not being in a church.”

Frank rolled his shoulders. “It’s not like my ma didn’t try. I was just such a terror to get out of bed on Sundays, she eventually gave
^u
p.”

“But—what about when you were studying for the ministry?”

Frank’s lips curved up halfway. “Seriously,” he said, “can you picture me wearing a dress and preaching about religious virtues? With all my sins, I’m not sure any church would welcome me through their doors, much less ask me to lead one.”

Morgan gaped as though his trusted pal, Reverend Frank Dugan, had just admitted to being Lucifer himself. Now beyond stunned, he struggled to grasp the second revelation Frank had handed him today. “Then why does everyone think …”

“Listen,” he told him. “Here’s the deal. The day I first met Jack, he asked me about what I did for a living before enlisting. I told him I was a clerk with Baptists—as in a
sales
clerk for Baptist’s Hardware Store. Next thing I knew, word about me being a preacher had spread all over camp. I would’ve set ‘em straight, but guys started passing me some of their food at chow time. Guess they thought they were racking up extra points with God, hoping for holy help to get them through the war. Figured I was better off keeping my mouth shut.”

Morgan felt a rumble of emotion rising from deep inside, an irrational hilarity moving from his stomach to his chest. He leaned back, balancing his chair on its hind legs, and fought off a smile. “So let me get this straight. You’re not a fallen pastor, just a Brooklyn kid who wanted extra scoops of Army slop?”