Chapter Eleven
The courier from Western Union was dressed in a little gray suit with a pointy cap and couldn’t have been more than fifteen. He looked at his feet as he handed Margaret the envelope and was on his way back to his bicycle before she could open it.
R. KELLUM, THE ADJUTANT GENERAL
She sat with the information.
What was there to do except sit with it?
Good lord, she thought.
Good lord, good lord, good lord.
She was going to have to call Felix’s parents.
She’d met them just once in the nine years she’d been married.
It had been while they were living in Columbus, and Russ and Lillian Salt had called out of the blue to announce that they’d be stopping by the next day, on their way to an air show in Pittsburgh.
They wanted to have lunch somewhere nice and finally meet their daughter-in-law.
What Margaret remembered most from that meal was that Russ made the waitress stand there and watch while he took a full minute doing origami on a dollar bill he then pocketed, and Lillian sent her steak back three times before canceling her order.
The whole visit had lasted less than two hours, and at the end of it Margaret had hoped never to see those people again. But she at least had to call them.
His boss at the foundry.
Ruth, she supposed, who would tell all the other ladies at the dance studio.
Agnes had received a telegram just two weeks ago informing her that George had been killed on Okinawa—unthinkably tragic—and she’d been staying inside.
A large black wreath, given to her by the Red Cross, hung on her front door.
When Margaret, Ruth, and Mrs. Fletcher had brought food to her, there’d been almost no place to put it because people from her church had already filled the icebox and cupboards.
Margaret would reread the telegram before she did anything else.
FEW SURVIVORS AND MOST CREW MISSING meant the Navy had misplaced him.
PRESUMED DEAD was what you’d say about anyone who’d been on a ship that had gone down, if that person’s whereabouts were unknown.
She didn’t want to tell Felix’s parents anything just yet—especially not when better news might be on the way.
She didn’t want to tell Ruth or Mrs. Fletcher and have to endure all that consoling, and receive all those covered dishes, only to then have to inform everyone it had been for nothing.
IF FURTHER DETAILS OR OTHER INFORMATION IS RECEIVED YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED.
Yes. Let R. Kellum sort it out and get back to her.
Then she would figure out what she had to say, and to whom.
—
But what to do with the burden of carrying around such a secret in the meantime, that she did not know.
She broke into a sweat holding the telegram, and when the sweat cooled, it felt like a thin layer of frost on her skin.
She got up and pulled on the baby blue robe Felix had given her the Christmas before he left.
She carried the telegram into the dining room and sat at the head of the table, in Felix’s chair.
She and Cal had hung the Dolice behind where Felix sat so that she could look at it while she ate.
It didn’t dawn on her until now that Felix had nothing to look at from his end of the table.
But Felix didn’t care about art. She could hang anything there or nothing at all and it wouldn’t matter to him.
It certainly wouldn’t matter if he turned out to be dead.
Her eyes spilled over with tears. She’d cheated on him, and he was probably dead.
And where did that leave her? Better off by far than she deserved to be.
And yet. And yet. Also with a mortgage and store accounts that had outstanding balances, and with no plan for the future.
How had she come all this way—from nothing—only to have it all come crashing down?
Felix was the only future she’d set in place for herself, the only one she’d considered, once they were married.
Felix! When had she let go of the constant, daily worry that something awful would happen to him?
He was writing to her about cargo and cigarettes and bad food.
He was always telling her not to worry, that he was far away from the action.
Was this not true, and did he just not tell her how much danger he was in?
How was she supposed to function with so little information?
Be strong, is what they always said. But for whom?
She put her head in her hands and began to sob.
Sweet, kind Felix. Well-meaning, well-thought-of, beautiful, strong Felix.
Gone, killed at only thirty-four. She didn’t want to be a widow.
She didn’t want to hang a wreath on the door or put a gold star in the window and be one of those women she saw in town, wearing black armbands and looking shattered as they did their shopping.
She wanted Felix back, changed by the war for the better and eager to make up for lost time.
She didn’t want him to not come back at all.
Who wanted to see that movie? She lifted her head, reread the telegram, and sobbed all over again.
More information would come, and there was nothing to do but wait, in the meantime.
Wait by writing out a list of the people she would need to call.
Wait by washing the linens, washing the floors, the windows.
Wait by fixing something to eat; she was starving.
But before getting up, it occurred to her that, if this was to become her chair at the dining table, the Dolice ought to be moved to the other side of the room. Cal could help her with that.
She pushed her robe sleeve against her nose.
No. Cal couldn’t help her with that. Cal couldn’t help her with anything.
Cal was married, she was married, and while neither of those facts had stopped them from rolling around naked for the last four Thursdays, this message stopped everything.
Written by a stranger and delivered by a child, a single telegram stopped everything dead in its tracks.
—
There followed a very difficult stretch of days. She stayed in her robe, the telegram folded and tucked into one of its pockets. She slept little and spent her waking hours in a fog of worry.
Two days after she got the news, she called Ruth and begged out of the Fourth of July War Bond Fundraiser Dance they’d planned for that night at Step It Up, claiming to have a cold. She made no mention of the telegram.
“Summer colds are the worst,” Ruth said, and then proceeded to tell her that Brenda Rhodes and Sam Liddick had become an item.
“Who’s Sam Liddick?”
“That young man who got back from Germany not long ago—the one who came to the studio and cut a rug with his Tranky Doo.”
Ah, yes. The night Cal showed up.
“The two of them are hard to look at, if you want the truth,” Ruth said.
“They’re so damned happy. Makes me wish Vic would get home, already.
” She advised Margaret to take two aspirins and climb into bed, and Margaret, who’d already forgotten she’d lied about having a cold, thought that sounded like a good idea.
She bided her time. How long did it take to search the Philippine Sea? That wasn’t the question, she knew. The question was, how long would they search before they gave up? Maybe they’d already given up and just hadn’t gotten around to telling her.
The next afternoon, the telephone rang and she dove for it, her heart pounding.
But of course it was Thursday, and it was Cal, this being the system they’d worked out: he called first from a pay phone downtown, just in case Ruth or Agnes or one of the neighbors had stopped by unexpectedly; he called for the all-clear.
She told him she couldn’t see him, she had people coming over and was very busy—throwing excuses into the phone, hoping one would convince him.
He acquiesced but asked if everything was okay.
Yes, she said, everything was fine, but she had to go.
Because it was too painful to look at, she moved the framed portrait of Felix in his uniform from the mantel to an end table, then from the end table to the secretary’s desk. A day later, she moved it from the secretary’s desk to a spot on the bookcase.
A day after that—or was it two?—she’d apparently moved it again, because she couldn’t find it.
She looked in the den, and in the formal sitting room they rarely used.
She looked in the dining room, and even in the guest room—though she hadn’t been in there since Cal’s last visit and didn’t like stepping into the room alone now.
Framed photographs of husbands didn’t just disappear.
Especially when you live alone and you were waiting for the kind of news she was waiting for.
She finally found it in her bedroom, lying face-up on top of the dresser. She had no memory of putting it there or even bringing it upstairs.
—
Every ring of the telephone was the Navy calling. Every letter through the mail slot was from the Navy. Every creak of the house was the Western Union boy on the front porch, about to ring the bell. But there was no telegram, no letter, no call about Felix.
On the twelfth day of her secret widowhood—and the second Thursday since the telegram arrived—she spied an envelope lying on the floor under the mail slot, long after she’d collected the mail.
Nothing but the letter M. written on it, and inside, a note that said, You okay?
Just wanted to check in. Hope all is well. C.
Please go away, she thought. She tore the note in half, and in half again as she carried it to the trash.
—
The following morning, just before dawn, the phone rang. “Hello?”
“Margaret?”
She sat up. Purple light pushed in around the shades of the east-facing dormer windows. She said yes and hello again and listened. The connection was bad. But there he was: his voice weak, gravelly, but recognizable. She wondered if she was still dreaming. “Felix?”