Next to Love (13 page)

After Millie leaves, Babe picks up the scissors. She could throw the ticker tape away. She has got the message. But her sense of responsibility—to the company, to the people who send telegrams and those who receive them, to her own pride of job—is too ingrained. Besides, she wants to keep the cable, as a reminder of the way things were.

BABE GOES UP
the back steps and opens the door to Grace’s kitchen. Naomi is standing at the sink, her dark arms disappearing into the white suds. At least she is not wearing a uniform. At Grace’s in-laws’ house, she wears a uniform. Now she is dressed in a flower-print housedress and flat shoes. She is tall, even taller than Babe, and rail thin. Her hair is wiry as a Brillo pad, but her cheekbones are high and sharp, and her skin is smooth and dark as a ripe eggplant. Once Claude said she was beautiful, but everyone laughed at him, and he never said it again.

Amy is sitting at the table, her elbows resting on the Formica surface, her chin on her hand, staring at a glass of milk as if it is the enemy. Babe is struck again by how old she seems. She has always been one of those strangely grown-up children, not the precocious cloying kind who make arch statements of the out-of-the-mouths-of-babes variety but the little girls—it seems to Babe they are mostly girls—who wear the fully formed faces of grown-ups and do not so much mimic adult gestures as are born with them. In the past year, she has become a miniature matron.

Babe kisses the top of her head. Amy does not shake her off, but she does not look up either.

“What’s cooking?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! How can you say nothing with Naomi’s super-duper brownies sitting in front of you? They’re cooking, or they just were, right?”

Amy looks up, finally. Her long almond eyes narrow, but her smile is indulgent, as if Babe is the child who must be humored.

“What’s the word from Frank?” Babe asks Naomi. “Any news about when he’s coming home?”

Naomi shakes her head. Her hair trembles like a dark halo.

“He must have plenty of points.”

Naomi shrugs. Her last letter from Frank said the points system, like everything else in the world, meant one thing for whites and something else for coloreds. He has seventy points, and he is still getting shuffled around from unit to unit, but he knows white soldiers with sixty points, even fifty-five, who are on their way home. She is not going to try to explain that to a white woman. And she is not going to complain. As long as they don’t send him to the Pacific, she’s happy. He did not see action in Europe, but they need fighting men in the Pacific. They need them so badly they will even let Negroes fight. She is not sure that is something to cheer about.

It’s all very well for Mr. A. Philip Randolph, and Mr. Walter White, and all the rest of those fine gentlemen to go around kicking up a ruckus to get more colored boys into combat. According to them, having colored boys fighting and dying will show white folks that Negroes are the same as them and deserve the same treatment after the war is over. She isn’t so sure it will, but that’s not what bothers her. Mr. A. Philip Randolph, and Mr. Walter White, and the rest of those fine gentlemen are not the ones who will have to fight, and they are not the ones who will come home without an arm or leg or face you can look at or not come home at all. She is glad the government will not let colored boys fight. She doesn’t care that they say Negroes are not smart enough or brave enough or reliable enough. They can call Frank dumb or cowardly or shiftless or any name they want, as long as they keep him safe. Sometimes she wonders if Frank feels the same way, but she never asks. She knows her husband. All she has to do is let on that she is relieved, and he’ll start moving heaven and earth to get into a combat unit headed for the war in the Pacific.

“Where’s Grace?” Babe asks.

“Mrs. Gooding’s not home yet. She went out to have some more pictures framed.”

“More pictures?”

Naomi shrugs and keeps her eyes on the dishes. Babe is the only one of them she still calls Babe. Babe insists on it. But Babe is one of them, and Naomi knows better than to talk about one of them to another. Even about this picture business. Grace—she’s Grace in Naomi’s head, even if she’s Mrs. Gooding to her face—says she’s doing it for the baby. That’s another thing. That child is not a baby. But it’s none of her business. She does not have to go looking for trouble. It knows where to find her.

“She’s having some old pictures of Mr. Gooding framed.” Her voice gives away nothing.

JULY
1945

Claude comes out of South Station onto Atlantic Avenue and stands with his back to the wall—he is accustomed to keeping his back to walls—getting his bearings. He recognizes the buildings. The façades stand just as they did when he left. The Ballantine Ale and Beer billboard still tells him they’re brewed for flavor. The red and green traffic lights blink off and on. No jagged concrete or broken bricks litter the landscape. No torn rooms expose their intimacies to passersby, kitchen pots and easy chairs and teddy bears. No dead bodies with twisted limbs, staring eyes, and oozing intestines lie in the gutter. The light changes to green and the traffic starts moving again. Are gas rationing and tire shortages myths circulated at the front? People hurry past him on their way to the dentist and the office and shopping. Men in business suits stride with purpose. Boys in caps loiter, studying the passing girls in their summer hats and thin cotton dresses. When a particularly pretty one with painted toenails winking from her open-toed shoes goes by, she sets off a cacophony of whistles. The innocence of it all stuns him. Worse than that, it frightens him.

He remembers the pamphlets they passed out at Camp Lucky Strike in France. “Coming Home.” “Since You Went Away.” “Readjustment Tips.” He had laughed. The tips were for the kids and the flyboys. Once, on leave in London, he saw a kid flyboy in a pub. He could not have been older than some of the seniors Claude had taught, but this one was wearing the uniform of an air force lieutenant. He was with a girl, and not the pickup kind either. At least not the kind this raw kid with his brash slang and mangled syntax could have picked up before the war. Her accent sounded as if she were delivering Noël Coward lines from a West End stage; her tweed skirt and twin sweaters were made for a brisk walk in the country; her single strand of pearls encased her creamy neck like a chastity belt. But damned if the boy didn’t have his hand up that tweed skirt. Now, there was a kid who was going to have a hard time readjusting. But not Claude Huggins. All he needs is to get out of uniform and home to Babe, and readjustment will take care of itself, no matter how much home has changed since he went away.

Only it hasn’t. It is going on, safe, carefree, oblivious to bombed-out cities, ten-year-old girls offering their bodies for a tin of K rations, and dead buddies—oh, dear God, don’t let me think of Herb’s brains spilling.… He shuts his eyes, clenches his fists, and waits for the image to pass.

He opens his eyes. The buildings, the traffic, and the Ballantine sign are still there. He cannot believe it. They are as alien and unreal to him now as those other sights were to him when he first landed in France. A sudden longing for that world runs through his body like a spasm. He misses it. He is shocked, but he cannot help himself. He misses the clarity, the purpose, the men he trusts with his life.

He shoulders his duffel. He had planned to go straight to the hotel and check in, but now the thought of that muffled lobby of thick carpets, soft upholstery, and smug strangers makes his bowels churn, just as they did when he first went under fire.

He turns around, goes back into the station, and checks his duffel. When he comes out again, he sets off down Summer Street. He does not remember a bar, but he will find one.

During the past few years, he has walked into dozens of pubs and cafés and beer gardens in dozens of towns and villages, and his father has never followed him into any of them, but now that he’s home, he can hear the rasping Yankee voice in his ear. Dutch courage. He glances at his watch. Four-twenty. Babe wired that if the bus is on time, she will get to the hotel by six-thirty. You’re damn right it’s Dutch courage. He’ll take any kind of courage he can get.

He stands in the doorway, trying to adjust his eyes to the gloom after the glare of the July afternoon. At least it’s cooler inside. Two men sit at one end of the bar. He walks to the other end and slides onto a stool. The girl behind the bar looks up from filing her nails, studies him for a moment, then takes her time getting off the stool and making her way down to where he’s sitting. He orders a scotch, straight.

“No ice?”

Another nicety he has forgotten.

“Sure, ice, why not?”

She brings the drink and puts it down on the bar in front of him. He reaches for it with his right hand, resting his left on the bar. Her eyes go to his left hand. He has forgotten. Where he has come from, no one ever looked at the two middle stumps. They were not avoiding it. They didn’t see it, any more than they saw the filth on their skin, or the blood on their uniforms, or the lice in their hair. They had seen too much else.

She turns away, embarrassed, and makes her way to the other end of the bar. He puts his left hand in his pocket.

He really did forget about it, just as he kept forgetting to write Babe about it. He isn’t hiding it. You can’t hide something like that. But every time he remembered to tell her, the letter was already in the envelope, and the envelope was sealed, and he didn’t see the point of tearing it open and addressing another one.

The girl has gone back to filing her nails, but she must be watching him out of the corner of her eye, because when he takes the last swallow of his drink, she shuffles down the bar again and asks if he wants another. He says he does.

He has one more after that. By the time he slides off the stool and puts his right hand in his pocket for his money, he is feeling fine. Babe is not the kind of girl to go weak in the knees over a couple of missing fingers. He takes a wad of bills from his pocket with his right hand, peels off a dollar, and drops it on the bar.

Outside, the sun has disappeared behind the buildings, and the street lies in a blue haze. He starts back toward the station. He’ll pick up his duffel and get to the hotel in plenty of time for a shower and a shave.

At the baggage check, he hands over his ticket. The boy takes it, disappears into the back, and returns with his duffel. Claude reaches for it with both hands. The boy glances at the finger stumps, then away. You can’t blame the kid. But Claude does.

He comes out of the station into the deepening dusk. The air feels sticky against his skin. His shirt sticks to his back. He wonders if he smells. He has got so used to stinking he can no longer tell. He shoulders his duffel again and starts for the taxi stand.

It happens as he reaches the head of the line. A taxi pulls up. He leans over to open the door. He is using his right hand, so it has nothing to do with the missing fingers. He straightens and steps back to let the woman behind him take the cab.

THE FEAR ENGULFS
Babe like the summer heat. It muffles her senses. The faces of the other people on the bus blur. The driver’s voice comes from a distance. As she makes her way down the aisle, she feels as if she is swimming. She has been waiting for this day for too long. She cannot believe it’s here.

I took a room for Mr. and Mrs. Claude Huggins at the Copley Plaza
, he wrote.
I have two years’ pay burning a hole in my pocket, and we deserve a honeymoon
.

The wind coming in the open window of the bus is hot on her face. Or does the heat come from within? She is not even sure she remembers what he looks like.

She takes the small leather case with the photograph he sent her from France out of her handbag and stares at it. No wonder she cannot remember what he looks like. This is not the Claude she saw off, and not only because of the mustache. His face is leaner, his jaw more prominent. His cheeks look as if they have been hollowed out, though that might be the angle of the light. Even his stance is different. His feet are planted far apart, and he has one hand in his pocket. She wishes she could see his eyes. She is sure she would recognize him if she could see that myopic velvet gaze. But he is wearing dark glasses. She puts the photograph back in her bag.

She tries to recall his voice. She can remember the words he spoke as they walked the strange streets of Southern camp towns and hid from the world and the war in the darkness of seedy boardinghouse bedrooms, but she cannot hear him speaking them. You can write your heart out in letters. You can send photographs. But there is no V-mail for transmitting a voice. For two and a half years the silence pained her. Now it terrifies her.

She does not know what to expect. She does not know what he expects. She thinks of a joke making the rounds. What’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get home? the reporter asks the soldier. Throw my wife down on the bed and make love to her. What’s the second thing? Take off these damn boots. The joke is a sign of their fear. The joke is a long low wolf whistle in the dark.

SOMEDAY YOU’LL LAUGH
at this, people always say, but Babe knows she will never live long enough to laugh at this night. By ten o’clock, alone in the hotel room that is as unreal as a movie set, as unreal as everything else about this day, she knows something has happened. If he missed a connection, he would call or wire. But something has kept him from letting her know. An army plane has crashed. A speeding car has careened out of control. He has made it through the war to be done in by civilian life.

She stands at the open window, watching the traffic. There isn’t much at this hour. A taxi pulls up in front of the hotel. The doorman crosses the sidewalk and opens the door. A man in a uniform emerges. She leans out to get a better look. The doorman reaches back into the taxi. A girl in a white suit, wearing a corsage that screams wedding so loud Babe can hear it eight floors up, emerges from the taxi. The telephone rings.