Chapter 7 Adelaide #2
I realized I’d closed my eyes. I opened them and saw a lovely, worried, young face. It took me a moment to remember: I was in the dining room with my granddaughter. “Yes, dear. I just got caught up in some memories.” I smiled at her. “Where were we?”
“You were telling me about you and Granddad. I thought you two dated all through high school.”
“Oh, we did. Although at first, I didn’t even realize we were dating. By the time it dawned on me that everyone thought we were a couple, well, we’d been together so long that no other boy even thought I was available.”
“Did you like someone else?”
“No. This was a very small town, honey, and as the saying went, the pickin’s were slim and none, and Slim had left town.
The senior class at our school had only thirty-five students, and Charlie was the best of the bunch.
” I toyed with a silk-covered button on my old dress.
“I tried to break up with him after graduation, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. ”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, the war was on. Like most boys in my class, Charlie enlisted right after graduation. Before he went off to basic training, I told him we should see other people.”
“And?”
And nothing. “He didn’t want to hear it.” He’d cried, in fact. I’d never felt so bad about anything in my life.
The whole thing flickered in my mind’s eye like a Technicolor movie, but I kept talking as the mental movie played.
We’d been sitting in his father’s car—a 1939 Ford, red as a firecracker, with a gray interior—parked out at the lake. We ended every date that way, talking and necking at a place called Lover’s Point.
Charlie’s breath had been hot on my neck. His fingers moved from my back to my breast, but I shooed his hand away.
“It’s okay, Addie,” he’d murmured against my skin. “When I come back from the war, we’ll get married.” He reached for my breast again.
I pushed him away and pulled myself against the door. “I’ve told you over and over, Charlie. I don’t want to get married.” What I really meant was, I don’t want to marry you. I don’t know why he couldn’t take the hint.
“You want to be an old maid?” he’d demanded.
How many times had we covered this same ground? “I want to be a photographer. I want to travel the world and make my mark on it.”
“So work as a photographer while I’m gone. Then when I get back, we’ll get married.”
“No, Charlie. I’ve got other plans.”
“Plans that don’t include me?”
I didn’t want to hurt him, but sometimes he was thick as a brick. I pulled at a loose thread on my sweater. “I just don’t feel about you the way you deserve to have a girl feel.”
“That’s only because you’re such a good Christian. Once we’re married and you know that everything is blessed by God, your conscience won’t bother you, and you’ll enjoy the kissing and touching and all.”
I was pretty sure that a church ceremony and a ring on my finger wouldn’t suddenly make me feel all quivery and excited to kiss him, the way other girls talked about kissing their boyfriends—or make me want to grope him the way he wanted to grope me.
“Neither of us has ever dated anyone else. I think it’s a good idea for us both to see other people. ”
His face had gotten all mottled. He’d been a pale boy, pale and slight. His lips looked kind of mushy when he pressed them hard together. His eyes had teared up, but behind the wateriness I glimpsed a flintlike hardness I’d never seen. “Who is it?” he asked.
I was too surprised to take him seriously. I laughed.
“This isn’t funny.” His voice was tight and low. “Is it Ted Riley? I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Ted was a tall, thin, painfully shy boy with glasses and an Adam’s apple like a goiter.
I couldn’t remember him ever saying a word to me—or to any girl, for that matter.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know there’s no one else.
But if I were to meet someone—and if you were to meet someone—well, I just think we should be free to date other people if the occasion arises.
” I tried to smile, but Charlie was blinking fast, trying so hard not to cry that it cut me to the quick.
I tried to lighten the mood. “I hear those French girls are really something.”
“Jesus!” Charlie never cursed or took the Lord’s name in vain, so the word jolted me.
So did the way his hand banged down on the steering wheel.
“I don’t want to see anyone else, Addie, and I don’t want you to, either.
” He looked away, wiped his face with his knuckle, then turned back to me.
“Say you’ll wait for me. Promise me you’ll wait. ”
I couldn’t. But I had to promise him something. This was Charlie—my lifelong friend, my companion since we were both in diapers. I couldn’t send him off to war crying with a broken heart. “I’ll write. I promise I’ll write.”
“Every day?”
“You know I’m not that good about writing. I’ll send a letter every week or two, though.”
“Every week.”
“Okay. Every week. Or at least every ten days.”
“Every week. Promise?”
I blew out a sigh. “I promise.”
“That’s better.” He put his arm around me. “And when I get back—well, by then, you’ll be ready to settle down.”
It did no good to argue with him. I looked down at my hands.
“You will,” he insisted. His hand tightened on my upper arm. “You will. You’ll see.”
Jiminy! I just wanted him to give it a rest. “Maybe,” I’d muttered.
“That’s more like it.” He tried to pull me in for a kiss, but I drew away.
“Come on, Addie. It’s my last night. Let’s seal it with a kiss,” he said.
“I need to get home,” I said. “You can kiss me good night in the driveway.”
“So you wrote to him?”
Hope’s voice made me open my eyes. I’d forgotten she was there.
“Oh, yes. Just as I said I would.” I also wrote to four other servicemen.
It was part of the war effort, keeping up the morale of the boys.
I used to write the same letter five times, copying it onto scented stationery.
“They weren’t really personal letters—just chitchat about the weather, the latest movie, the war effort at home, what was happening at my job . . . just general stuff.”
“He was hurt in the war, wasn’t he?” Hope said.
“Yes.” My mood darkened. We were jumping ahead, getting to a part of the story I dreaded talking about. “Right after the holidays, he took shrapnel in the foot and lower leg.”
“In England, right?”
“Well, it happened in France, but he was sent to a hospital in England, and they weren’t sure he was going to make it.”
“How awful!”
“Yes, it was. He had a fever. And back in those days, fever often meant gangrene. Penicillin wasn’t available until later in the war. While he was in England, they thought they’d have to amputate his leg.”
“Oh, Gran!”
“I felt so sorry for him, and for his family. His parents were terribly upset. But . . .” I sucked in a breath. It felt callous saying it, but I was on a mission to tell the truth. “It didn’t jar me into a sudden realization that I couldn’t live without him.”
I fell silent for a moment. I was surprised to hear rain pattering on the roof.
“I kept him in my prayers, of course. And I wrote him more frequently, trying to cheer him up, telling him I was praying for him, just generally trying to make him feel like he had someone rooting for him. I even knitted him a scarf. This happened just before I met Joe.”
“Joe was the man you fell in love with?”
“Yes.” Joe’s face floated into my memory, his smile calling up one of my own.
“What was he like?”
“Oh my. He was . . .” The years were falling back now, peeling back like bedcovers, inviting me to climb right in. “He was really something.”
Poof!
· · ·
All of a sudden, it’s 1943, and I’m in New Orleans. And this time I’m not just watching a film in my mind; this time I’m reliving it. I’m pretty sure I’m telling Hope about it, but I can’t hear the words, because the memories are so crisp and clear, it feels like it’s happening all over again.