A Star for Mrs. Blake (40 page)

“You’re looking optimistic, sir,” Hammond remarked.

“I never walk into a room unless I know I’m going to win,” Perkins said with a wink.

Tea and cakes had been laid out, but for the first time in memory, nobody touched the food. The women of Party A were already seated in wicker chairs. The only person missing was Griffin Reed.

“He said he’d be here,” Hammond told Cora worriedly.

“I haven’t seen him.”

“He really wanted to write about it. Something’s wrong.”

While Perkins made the rounds, chatting with the pilgrims, Hammond went outside to the desk. They called Reed’s room and when there was no answer, sent the bellman to check.

Hammond came back saying, “He’s nowhere. What the hell?”

“Give him a minute.”

“We can’t wait, Mrs. Blake. The general’s in a foul mood already.”

“It isn’t like him, especially if it has to do with the newspaper—”

“The important thing is, you’ve got Perkins’s attention,” Hammond said. “Use it and don’t back down.”

The general was calling for quiet.

“Good afternoon, ladies!”

He stood in front of the piano like a kindly professor. Hammond marveled at how his demeanor had changed the moment he’d crossed the threshold. He appeared to be nothing but conciliatory.

“How can I help you?”

There was silence as the women looked at each other. They hadn’t planned their attack.

“I understand you have a question?” he prompted.

Minnie spoke up: “I marched for the right for women to vote. When we came to this country, my mother and I worked in the garment district, and I watched while two policemen beat her up for joining the union. So I’m not afraid of a fight.”

The general raised his hands and backed away theatrically. “But I am!” he said, and got a laugh. He was beginning to win them over.

Not Minnie. She was glaring. “All right, if you think it’s funny—” She picked up her purse to leave.

“Please, Mrs. Seibert,” said the general, who had done his homework. “I meant no offense. I understand your son, Isaac, was an ambulance driver and he performed heroically, despite a cowardly attack by the Germans on his dressing station. My personal condolences for your loss. We’re on the same side, and I am at your service.”

Minnie’s head jerked side to side and her lips trembled.

“It has to do with Mrs. Russell,” she said, less certain. “Tell him, Wilhelmina.”

Wilhelmina’s eyes were wide and she scarcely blinked, almost catatonic, as she held the leather-bound folder against her chest.

“Show him,” Katie urged.

When Wilhelmina didn’t respond, Lily said, “May I?”

She gently pried the folder from Wilhelmina’s arms and presented it to the general.

“Thank you, Nurse.”

“You’re welcome, General Perkins,” she said, avoiding his eyes.

Perkins glanced at the photograph of the Negro boy, closed the folder, and gave it back.

“What happened here, Lieutenant?”

Hammond stepped forward.

“If you remember, sir, there is another Gold Star mother on the tour also named Mrs. Russell, one of the Negro pilgrims.”

“I thought this was all sorted out in New York.”

“It was, after each Mrs. Russell was sent to her proper hotel, but you see, because of the initial mix-up, it’s natural for there to be a question, now … about this.”

“About a picture?”

“About the burial procedures. I think they’d like reassurance that everything was carried out in the proper way.”

“I see. Well, I’m in a position to know, as I redesigned the Graves Registration Service myself. But never mind about me, ask any soldier. His number one priority is taking care of his own. No man will ever be left behind. I promise you, our records are meticulous.”

“What about Mrs. Selma Russell?” Cora asked from the back of the room. “What does she say?”

“She’s apparently been spared the trouble of this.”

“Why is that?” Cora said even more loudly. “Didn’t she also get the wrong picture of her son? What did
she
think when she saw a white soldier?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” said the general, losing patience.

“They don’t get pictures of their boys?”

“They don’t get a goddamned high-class leather-bound book like this,” he shot back.

“So a colored mother, for instance, wouldn’t know,” Cora said, “if something was wrong.”

“My job is to get every American citizen on this tour from A to B, safely and securely. Just like in war, the commander keeps his eye on the horizon. I don’t approve every detail, Mrs. Blake, but it is customary to separate white from black. It’s the way things are done. Ask them, and they will tell you they prefer to be with their own people. As for this—somebody slipped in the wrong picture, and that’s the end of it.”

Cora could hear Bobbie’s voice in her head, and she spoke it.

“Don’t you talk down to us,” she said. “We’ve been told for a fact the bodies lay on the battlefield for months before they were moved. How can we be sure our sons are buried where you say they are?”

“The U.S. Battle Monuments Commission spent many years building the most beautiful cemeteries in the world—”

“That’s not what she’s saying—” Katie interrupted.

“We want proof!” Minnie cried.

“You have to take it on trust.”

“We have no trust left in our hearts,” she answered.

“With respect, the U.S. government has devoted a lot of time and millions of dollars to take care of you.”

“We gave our sons for our country,” Katie said.

“And we’ve given you a first-class ocean cruise.”

“If I wanted a boat ride, I’d go to Staten Island,” Minnie remarked to herself.

“From what I’ve seen, the war was futile, stupid, and avoidable,” Cora added. There, she’d said it.

“That’s damned unpatriotic.”

“My family has a patriotic record going back to the revolution. No one can say that I’m disloyal to my country when I say never again will we sacrifice our children for wars on foreign soil. Wrongs cannot be righted by blood. Happiness can never be the result of senseless deaths. We mothers know.”

“I know all about mothers. My mother was a great woman,” declared the general. “She taught me discipline from an early age—”

Lily could see, not without some satisfaction, that Perkins was losing his audience. They were frowning and restless; they didn’t like being compared to another “great woman.”
Don’t tell about stacking tobacco leaves when you were five
, she thought—but the general did, and ended his speech even more poorly: “In the matter of burial records, the matter is closed. No more accusations. Let my soldiers rest in peace.”

His
soldiers? Lily thought. That’s rather grand.

It inflamed them.

“We want answers!” Cora shouted, and the rest echoed her cry.

“I’ve been more than forthcoming. Good day,” said the general and headed toward the door.

Cora looked imploringly at Hammond for help. The others turned expectantly in his direction, and his heart stirred with pride. Party A, which had fought over portholes and how to cook a chicken, had rallied into a hell of a fighting unit. He saw heartbreak and self-respect. He saw fear. He saw Lily, selflessly fussing to keep Wilhelmina’s sweater over her shoulders, and knew that his most deep-seated loyalties had profoundly changed.

“There is a way to settle this, sir,” Hammond called after his superior.

“It’s settled as far as I’m concerned,” Perkins said.

“You might want to give it a second thought.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because there are still remaining doubts.”

“Not in my mind.”

“If you’re so sure about it, then you won’t mind calling the burial officer in Paris.”

The general halted. He glared at the lieutenant. “The hell I will,”
he snapped, his neck turning red. “Do you really believe the army would callously and cruelly dump bodies in a grave?”

“I believe anything can happen in a war, sir. And any citizen has the right to know, even women. Give them the proof they deserve, or I’ll personally make sure this inquiry gets into the hands of the press.”

“Watch what you’re saying. I don’t care whose son you are, you’re dangerously close to insubordination.”

Hammond felt a wave of certainty roll through him. “Do you really believe everything the higher-ups tell you?” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. I do my duty. Because I am a soldier, through and through. And you are not.”

The hotel put on a private reception that night to honor the pilgrims at the end of their tour—five courses and a speech by the mayor of Verdun. Just before dessert, Cora excused herself and left. She was worried about Grif. She hadn’t seen him all day and nobody was answering in his room. On her way upstairs she caught sight of Florence Dean Powell and General Perkins sharing a table in the main dining room. She noticed that Florence had abandoned her mourning clothes for a swank blue knit silk dress with knife-edge pleats, and that they were laughing over cocktails. Cora was glad: if Florence was here, Reed was most likely alone.

She went up to their suite. From the hallway she could hear music playing from a radio inside. She knocked but there was no response. She pounded harder.

The door opened, apparently by itself. Reed had let it swing wide while he turned and disappeared into the darkness of the room. He’d been expecting Florence.

“Forget your key?” he said irritably over his shoulder.

“It’s Cora.”

He kept his back to her with one hand pushed out, ordering her to wait. She couldn’t help glimpse a sliver of his ruined profile while he fitted on the mask. The shades were drawn and the room was dark except for a single lamp with a scarf thrown over it, which cast the
walls in smoky blue. The music on the radio was jazz. He motioned her inside.

“It’s safe,” he said when Cora still hesitated in the doorway. “The monster is back in his cage.”

He climbed into bed and lay back on the pillows. His hair was still unkempt from the rain. He wore pajamas. In the shadows the mask took over. Its benevolent expression seemed grotesque—all the more so because for the first time she couldn’t find the real man underneath.

“Grif, are you all right?”

He didn’t answer. His silence frightened her, and the way his neck arched stiffly on the pillow as if he were in pain. The nightstand was crammed with liquor bottles, dirty glasses, ashtrays, and vials of powder. The room had a wet animal smell. A sob escaped him, a harrowing sound that seemed to come from a person different from the self-assured man she knew.

“What are you doing here?” he asked tiredly.

Her anger at his absence at the meeting was dissipated by the haunting surroundings, and she found herself almost pleading.

“We waited for you as long as we could. Perkins was there. Why didn’t you show up?”

He didn’t seem to hear. “What did the general think of your request?”

“Ask Florence. She’s down there talking to him now. Did you know that?”

“She said it’s about Bobbie, that’s all I know.”

“Where have you been all day?” Cora asked.

“Right here, what do you think?”

“Drunk?”

“As much as possible.”

“But when we sent the bellman up—”

“I paid him to go away. You should go, too. This is no place for a nice girl.”

“Thomas said you would be there when we talked to General Perkins.”

“War is hell. I was going to tell the world.”

With effort, she held on to her patience. “And?”

“But you see,” he said with a languorous wave of the hand, “I’m really not up to it.”

“You can write about anything.”

“Cora, I’m a morphine addict. I can’t even get out of bed.”

She stared at the debris on the side table. “No.”

“Yes, I have fallen into the arms of Morpheus, and happily so. Joyously so.”

She stood to open the shades.

“Let’s get some light into this room—”

“Stop that!” he called fiercely. “Stop that now!”

“I won’t let you.” She tried to pull him out of the bed. “Get
up
!”

He threw her off. “I can’t. Besides, I don’t want to.”

She was breathless. “Where is Florence? Why doesn’t she help you?”

“Florence is the one who gets me the dope.”

Cora was horrified. “How can she?”

“She gets it from her doctor friends from the old clinic days. Pure, medical quality. Doesn’t compare to the junk on the street. I literally can’t live without her.”

“She wants you to think that. She makes you sick and keeps you sick.”

He sighed. “It isn’t Florence. At least, not only Florence.”

“She’s the monster!” Cora cried. “I can’t stand her keeping you under her spell—”

“I’m not under anybody’s spell, and if you don’t cut it out, I’ll stick you with one of these,” he said, lazily lifting a needle from the bedside table.

“I’m making things worse. I’ll go.”

“You are. But stay.” He took a sip of something from a smudged wineglass. “Please.”

With two fingers she delicately removed some female underthings from the seat of a diminutive chair, dropped them on the floor, and pulled it closer to the bed.

“You’re really hurting, aren’t you?”

“The doctor says I’ve too much lead in my system. It leached out from the mask. Too much lead,” he said, laughing. “Sounds like a bad western.”

“What are they going to do about it?”

“Going to London to get a new one of these. Easy aces. Leaving tomorrow.” His words were slurring. “Gotta get it done, pronto.”

“Then you should.”

“Do you know that I came to Verdun only to see you?”

“No.”

“Yes, because I had to see you one more time before you left for America.”

“You didn’t.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I only wanted your story. I came to pick your bones.”

She drew the scarf off the lamp where it had shaded the light. Reed grimaced and pulled away, squinting at the brightness. Cora playfully wove the scarf back and forth across her face like a dancer’s veil, then tied it over her eyes.

“Now we’re the same,” she said.

“How is that?”