The Heart's War (3 page)

I could feel him slipping away from me, withdrawing into himself. His face had flushed red with anger again. I tried to take his hands, but I couldn't pry his fingers from his knees. The ham in the oven started burning, but we all ignored it.

"I don't want to lose you, Jeff!" I
said, my voice cracking.

"You won't. I'll be okay, you'll see. The war will probably be over before I even finish training," he said.

I remembered all the young men back in 1914 saying the same thing. The war will be over before we get there, they'd joked. The war had ended quickly for many of them sooner than even they thought. The German machine guns and artillery were relentless.

The image of Jeff lying face down in the muck of some water-filled crater filled my brain. How could he do this to me?

"Don't you want to be together?" I asked him.

Marie had clenched both her hands into fists, which she was rubbing up and down her thighs. She kept looking between us. The smell of the burning ham increased, but I seemed to be the only one who noticed.

Jeff took a deep breath, then leaned forward as though talking down to a child who just didn't understand. He reached for my hands and I let him take them.

"We will be, when I get back. When the war ends, I'll go to Paris and buy the ring there! What other girl will have a real French engagement ring?"

It had gotten to him, I could see that. The war fever. That itch that young men get to prove themselves, and show that they could be heroes, too. The price of being a hero, though, always seemed to be a life. They thought it was all a game.

"You stupid, stupid boy!"
I said.

I wrenched my hands from his and stood.

"Eleanor!" Marie said, wringing her hands together in her lap like they were a wet rag she had to dry out. I could tell it was just an automatic response. A veneer of shock at rough language. I could tell from the distant look in her eyes, like she was gazing right through the opposite wall with its old watercolor frames, that she was just as upset as I.

"Why, Jeffrey, why are you doing this to me?" I asked.

The smell of burning ham filled my nose. Why is she letting it burn so? I wondered. Paradoxically, my mind fixated on that scent. It tickled in my nostrils even as my eyes began stinging. Pressure built up behind them. Lord, there had to be flames spewing their dark smoke out through the old oven door.

It couldn't have been because Jeff had thrust upon me the real possibility of going over to Europe to fight in their war. To perhaps die in that war and never come back to me. No, it was the stinging smoke of the ham.

I caught a sob in my throat before it could come out, and my body shook with the effort of containing it.

"Eleanor, dear, why don't you sit by me?" Marie asked. Concern tinged her voice, though I could hear the slight quiver in it that spoke of the anguish under the surface. Marie knew mothers who'd lost their sons already. Her face, plump with full, pale cheeks, drew taut as the thought of having that happen to her haunted her expression.

She'd stopped wringing her hands, though her eyes still fell to the floor every time she tried to look at her son.

A small, torn corner of the letter had settled on the coffee table. I snatched it away, crumpling it in the palm of my hand and dropping it down on the floor with its fellows.

My chest started heaving, and my dress seemed to have tightened about my waist. I couldn't breathe. No matter how much air I pulled in, my lungs cried out for more. The stench of the ham got to me.

"Please, Ellie, sit down. Let's talk about this, you and I. I have some time. Why don't we spend it together so that I can have some lovely memory of you I can cherish at training, and on the long voyage?"

He reached up for my hands, the cuffs on his jacket riding back along his wrists. He had such long, delicate fingers. They were meant to play an instrument, or build things. Not to wield a rifle. What was he thinking?

"No, I'm sorry, I can't. I can't talk to you right now, Jeff."

The hem of my dress swished above the floor as I made for my escape, away from that smell, away from that awful letter.

At the doorway into the foyer, I remembered my manners and spun about. I could feel my carefully
coiffured hair coming undone, strands of it sticking out, some of them crossing my vision.

Jeffrey had his hands on his knees again. He stared steadfastly at the floor as he fingers pulled up on his slacks, showing his dark socks. One of his shoes had come undone. How could he be a soldier if he couldn't even keep his shoes laced?

"Marie. Marie?" I said.

Jeffrey's mother shook her head and looked up at me, squinting as her eyes focused back on me. She appeared startled at my transposed position, and I knew that she'd
withdrawn fully from reality for those few dreadful moments. She thought I was still sitting down by her.

"Yes, Eleanor?" she asked.

"Thank you for the invitation to dinner. However, I'm feeling indisposed at the moment. Perhaps..." I trailed off. I'd wanted to suggest rescheduling to next week, but Jeff wouldn't be there next week, "...I'm sorry. Please, have a nice evening."

"Thank you, dear. Tell your mother I asked about her..." Marie said.

She jerked, her head turned towards the kitchen, "My ham!"

I turned to go, having already pulled on one shoe. I had the other in my hand when I felt Jeff standing in the door behind me.

"Please don't be mad, Ellie. Won't you please consider staying?"

I dropped my shoe and put my hand to my face. That pressure returned, throbbing against the back of my eyes as though some evil little demons cavorted in my skull, laughing as they tried to push them right from their sockets.

"I'm sorry, Jeff, I just can't. Not right now. Please, forgive me," I said.

It took two tries to get my shoe on my foot and get the little buckles fastened. I hurried out the door into the cooling evening air. An older couple walking their dog tried to ask what the matter was, and whether they could help. But there was nothing they could do, and the yipping of the little white-haired brute, straining at the end of its lead, made the pounding behind my eyes even worse.

Chapter 3

My mother sat sipping at a cup of tea, the steam curling up from the white porcelain cup. It was black tea, with no milk or cream to spare to lighten it. Mother grimaced every time she took a sip of it, drinking it more from habit than anything else.

The cup tinkled against the saucer, the dark tea swirling inside and lapping at the rim as I barged in through the front door.

I knew I must have looked a wreck. The breeze had torn at my hair with wicked claws, and despite my best efforts, some small amount of moisture had escaped my eyes. They had puffed up to a blushed, red color as though I'd been twice stung by bees.

Mother put her fingers down on the lip of her cup, steadying it. A drop of black tea ran down the side of the porcelain and made a ring around the base of the cup. She frowned at me, bunching the wrinkles on her forehead together so that it looked as though someone had made a series of bloodless cuts.

Then she got up and came to me. "Eleanor, honey, what's the matter? Aren't you supposed to be at dinner with Jeffrey and his mother?"

I hated that word: "supposed." It carried in its meaning the manner in which things should be happening, but were not. I was supposed to be sitting down to a lovely, succulent ham. I was supposed to be spending the summer with Jeffrey, we were supposed to marry and have a family... But "supposed" seemed always to fly in the face of the actual course of events.

I shook again. My calves ached, the muscles tightened like a piano string from my more than brisk walk back home. Nor had I removed my shoes. Mother would be upset at tracking dust onto the floor, I knew. But at that moment, I didn't care.

"Jeff... Jeff received some awful news in a letter today. I excused myself so that he and his mother could have some time to comprehend it," I said.

"Really?
How terrible. I've already eaten, but I can probably find enough in the kitchen for a serviceable meal. Come," mother said.

I yanked my hand away from hers. Her eyes widened and she regarded me as though I'd slapped her.

"No, momma. I... I'm tired, that's all. I'm not hungry, either. In fact, I feel a little sick. I'm just going to nap."

I didn't know what dreams waited for me, but I knew that even my worst nightmare couldn't compare with the reality of my waking life at the moment.

"As you wish," mother said.

I knew she was upset that I hadn't shared the contents of the letter with her. She so loved a little snippet of gossip. The worse someone else's life seemed, the better she appeared to feel about her own.

The idea of sleep tugged at me, sapped the energy from my overexcited muscles. My calves burned as I mounted the stairs so that I had to haul myself up with the rail as my legs balked at the work. The boards creaked under my weight until I reached the top.

An old,
greying rug with frayed edges ran down the length of the upper hall. Mother had an old Daguerrotype hanging on the wall directly in the middle, showing herself and her four brothers all in their gowns standing outside the farmhouse by New Hamburg where she'd grown up. Their eyes seemed to follow me as I slumped my way to the far door and pushed it open.

My bed had four high posts, and a maroon canopy hung down from them. The shadowy depths inside hid the quilt covering the spread. My window had been shut most of the day, and the sun shining in had heated the small, rectangular space of my bedroom oppressively.

I didn't care. I kicked off my shoes. They clattered against one another in the corner. I pressed my face into my pillow and let out the scream that had been building inside me since Jeff had announced his intention to allow himself to be drafted.

With that, all the strength leaked from my body, spent in the down of the pillow.

I slept.

Chapter 4

The Saturday morning sun glared in through the gaps in the drapes. I awoke with a headache and a series of cramps throughout my body. My dress had twisted about my legs, binding them together. I had to unclench my hands from around their handful of quilt.

Rubbing the remnants of sleep that tried to glue my eyelids closed, I peered about my room. Mother had been in, I could see. She'd drawn the drapes for me, and my shoes had been arranged neatly in the corner.

Aside from my bed, I had a small dressing table, a stool, and a chest of drawers with an old flower pattern on its cream-colored finish that served as my dresser.

Untangling my legs, I grimaced as I put my feet to the floor. The tightness in my calves from the previous day had tied the muscles like some hangman's slipknot that wrenched on them every time I moved my feet up or down. It was good that I had this Saturday off. I couldn't have spent a minute in that hot room filled with women churning out clothes for soldiers, let alone an entire shift.

The sound of my mother's laugh came up the stairs. I frowned at myself in the mirror. Were we expecting company today? I didn't think so. Who could it be?

Sitting down on the stool, I pulled out my brush and did my best to undo the effects of my night's turbulent sleep on my hair. I sucked in a sharp breath each time one
of the bristles caught in a stubborn tie. But I kept going. I could hear my mother's voice, though I couldn't make out the words.

I brushed until my hair shined, loose and straight about my shoulders. The rays of light leaking in through the window caught in it, giving the blonde lengths the appearance and coloring of many strands of burnished gold.

There was another voice, too, I noticed then. Lower. A man's voice.

Slipping out of my dress, I opened the wardrobe and pulled out one more suited to a Saturday. The flower-patterned skirt hung down to my ankles, and it had a small, rectangular opening that went a few finger's widths down past my neck.

There was none of the red puffiness about my eyes today. I examined my face closely in the mirror, checking it for any outward signs of the turmoil that still twisted and tightened in my stomach. Maybe, I figured, my mother wouldn't ask me what had upset me so if I pretended it had never happened. Though I know the chances of that were as likely as Kaiser Wilhelm and King George ending the war and swearing an endless, fraternal love to one another.

Getting up, I made my way downstairs. In my bare feet, the stairs did not creak as much as they had on my laborious climb up them the previous day.

High emotion and the heat of the day had parched my mouth of all moisture, and my tongue felt like a dried, withered thing in my mouth. I planned on giving a brief, polite greeting to whomever our guest turned out to be, and then begging off for some water and perhaps a bit of toast (maybe with a bit of butter smeared on it for flavor, if we had any left).

"Oh, that's wonderful! Truly wonderful! I'm so proud of you," mother said, her voice becoming clear as I neared the living room.

"I'm glad. I just wish that my mother and Eleanor weren't so upset. They don't seem to understand in the least..."