To Sail Beyond the Sunset (27 page)

Later on that night Brian said, “So Ira thinks this city slicker is his brother’s woods-colt?”

“Yes. You will think so, too, when you see him. Dear one, he and I look so much alike that you would swear that we are brother and sister.”

“And you have an acute case of flaming drawers about him.”

“That’s a mild way of putting it. I’m sorry, dear.”

“What is there to be sorry about? If your interest in sex were so mild that you never thought about any man but your poor, old, tired, worn out—
Ouch!
”—I had pinched him—“husband, you wouldn’t be half as good tail as you are. As it is, you are quite lively, Mrs. Finkelstein. I prefer you as you are, good points and bad.”

“Will you sign a certificate to that effect?”

“Certainly. You want it to show to your customers? Darling girl, I slipped the leash on you years ago, as I knew then and know now that you would never do anything that could risk the welfare of our children. You never have, you never will.”

“My record isn’t all that good, dearest. What I did with the Reverend Doctor Ezekiel was stupidly reckless. I blush whenever I think of it.”

“Zeke the Greek was your rite of passage, my love. It scared the hell out of you and you’ll never take a chance on a second-rater again. That’s the acid test for adult adultery, my true love: what sort of person you select with whom to share your escapades. All other factors follow naturally from that choice. This Bronson who may or may not be your cousin: Would you be proud to have him here in bed with us tonight? Or would it embarrass you? Would you be happy about it? How does this bloke measure up?”

I thought about Briney’s acid test and checked over Mr. Bronson in my mind. “Brian, I can’t pass judgment. My head is spinning and I haven’t any sense about him.”

“Want me to talk to Father Ira about him? Nobody can pull the wool over Ira’s eyes.”

“I wish you would. Oh, don’t suggest that I want to go to bed with Mr. Bronson; it would embarrass Father and he would say
Mrrrph!
and grunt and stalk out of the room. Besides, he knows it. I can feel it.”

“I can understand that. Of course Ira is jealous of this city slicker, over you. So I’ll stay away from that aspect of the subject.”

“‘Jealous’? Father? Over
me
? How could he be?”

“My love, your great sweetness makes up for your slight stupidness. Ira can be—is—jealous over you for the same reason that I can be jealous over Nancy and her little pink fancy. Because I can’t have her. Because Ira wants you himself and can’t have you. Whereas I have no need to be jealous over you as I do have you and know that your riches are an inexhaustible bonanza. That beautiful flower between your sweet thighs is the original horn of plenty; I can share it endlessly with no possibility of diminishing its wealth. But for Ira it’s the unattainable, the treasure that can never be reached.”

“But Father can have me any time!”

“Wups! Did you finally get past his guard?”

“No, damn it! He won’t give.”

“Oh. Then the situation is unchanged; Ira won’t touch you for the same reason I won’t touch Nancy—although I’m not dead sure I’m as noble as Ira. You had better warn Nancy to stay covered up and downwind when dealing with her poor, old, frail pop.”

“I’m damned if I’ll warn her, Briney. You are the only male in the whole world I am absolutely certain would not hurt our Nancy in any way. If she can get past your guard, I’ll cheer her on—I might learn something from her about how to cope with my own chinchy, impossible-to-seduce father.”

“Okay, you redheaded baggage—I’ll sniff Nancy and jump you. That’ll larn yuh!”

“I’m skeered. Want a giggle? Brian Junior wanted to look. Nancy let him.”

“Be damned.”

“Yes. I kept my face straight; I neither laughed nor pretended to be shocked. B. Junior told her that he had never had a chance to see just how girls are different from boys—”

“What nonsense! All our kids have been naked in front of each other from time to time; we brought them up that way.”

“But, dear, he really did have a point. A boy’s differences hang right out where they can be seen; a girl’s girlishness is mostly inside and doesn’t show unless she lies down and makes it show. That is what Nancy did for him. Lay down, pulled up her robe—she was just out of her bath—spread her thighs wide, pulled her lips apart and showed him the baby hole. Probably winked at him with it. Probably enjoyed it herself. I would have—but none of my brothers asked me to.”

“Wench, we haven’t found anything yet that you don’t enjoy.”

I thought about that. “I think you’re right, Brian. Some things hurt a little but mostly I have a wonderfully good time. Even this frustration over Mr. Bronson pleasures me more than it hurts…since I can tell my beloved husband all about it without causing him to stop loving me.”

“Do you want me to tell Ira to lay off? Ask him to give you the shuteye chaperonage that I would give you?”

“Uh, let’s wait until you have sized up Mr. Bronson. If you approve of him, I’ll have my drawers off in a jiffy. If you don’t, I’ll continue my best Vestal Virgin act, which is what he has been getting. But, as I told you, my head is in a whirl and my judgment is no good. I need your cool head.”

On Tuesday the
Post
and the
Star
each reported that President Wilson had asked the Congress to declare that a state of war exists between the United States of America and the German Empire. Wednesday we waited for the shout of “Extra!” in the street, or for the telephone to ring, or both—and neither happened. We required the children to go to school although they did not want to, Brian Junior especially. Woodrow was utterly unbearable; I had to refrain from switching him too often.

On Thursday Father returned home, in a state of tense excitement. He and Brian kept their heads together, and I stayed with them, mostly while delegating all that I could. Woodrow demanded that his grandfather—or someone—play chess with him, until Father turned him over his knee and walloped him, then made him stand in a corner.

On Friday it happened. War. The extras were on our street just before noon, and my husband was on his way almost at once, after telephoning a brother officer, a Lieutenant Bozell, who picked him up and off they drove to Fort Leavenworth, their M-Day assignment. Brian did not wait for his telegram.

Brian Junior and George were home for lunch, waited until their father left—then were late for school for the first time ever. Nancy and Carol came home from their school—Central High School, just a few blocks away—just in time to kiss their father good-bye. I did not ask if they were cutting classes or school had closed early; it did not seem to matter.

Father exchanged salutes with Lieutenant Bozell and with Brian, then headed straight for the streetcar line without coming back into the house. He said to me, “You know where I’m going, and why. I’ll be back when you see me.”

I agreed that I knew. Father had been increasingly restless ever since his request for active duty had been turned down.

I turned everything over to Nancy and went back to bed…for the second time, as I had impressed Father as baby watcher earlier, so that Brian and I could go back to bed after breakfast; we both guessed that this would be
Der Tag
.

But this time I went to bed just to cry.

About three I got up and Nancy served me tea and milk toast, I ate some of it. While I was fiddling with it, Father returned home in the most towering rage I have ever seen him in. He offered no explanation. Nancy told him that Mr. Bronson had called and had asked for him…and that brought it out of him in a flood.

I think “poltroon” was the mildest term that he used about Mr. Bronson. “Pro-German traitor” may have been the bitterest. He did not use profanity, just words of rage and disappointment.

I had great trouble believing it. Mr. Bronson a coward? Pro-German? But Father was detailed in his account and broken-hearted in his response. In my own confused grief—my beloved country, my beloved husband, my secret lover, all the same day—I had to force myself to remember that Father was hit just as hard. His brother’s boy—or was Theodore Bronson his own son? Father had hinted at the possibility.

I went back to bed, cried some more, then lay there, dry eyed, with this triple ache in my heart.

Father tapped on my door. “Daughter?”

“Yes, Father?”

“Mr. Bronson is on the telephone, asking for you.”

“I don’t want to talk to him! Must I?”

“Certainly not. Is there anything you wish me to say to him?”

“Tell him…not to call me. Not to come here. Not to speak to any of my children…now or ever.”

“I’ll tell him. With a few words for myself, too. Maureen, his sheer gall amazes me.”

About six Carol brought me a tray. I ate some of it. Then Justin and Eleanor came to see me and I cried on my big sister and they consoled me. Later—I don’t know the time but it was after dark. Eight-thirty? Nine? I roused at some commotion downstairs. Shortly my father came up, tapped on the door. “Maureen? Mr. Bronson is here.”

“What?!”

“May I come in? I have something to show you.”

I didn’t want to let Father in; I hadn’t cleaned up and I was afraid Father would notice. But… Mr. Bronson here? Here? After what Father had said to him? “Yes, Father, come in.”

He showed me a piece of paper. I read it; it was a carbon copy of an Army enlistment form…which stated that “Bronson, Theodore” was enlisted at the rank of private in the National Army of the United States.

“Father, is this some sort of bad joke?”

“No. He’s here. That’s authentic. He did it.”

I got out of bed. “Father, will you start me a tub? I’ll be down quickly.”

“Certainly.”

He went into my bath; I peeled off my gown, went in after him, thanked him. I didn’t realize that I was naked in front of him until he looked at me and looked away. “Ask Nancy to serve him something, please. Is Nancy still up?”

“Everyone is up. Get into that tub, dear; we’ll wait for you.”

Fifteen minutes later I went downstairs. I suppose my eyes were red but I was smiling and no longer stunk and I was dressed in Sunday best. I hurried to him and offered my hand. “Mr. Bronson! We are all so proud of you!”

I don’t remember details of the next hour or two hours or whatever. I sat there in a golden haze of bittersweet happiness. My country was at war, my husband was off to war, but at least I knew the deeper meaning of “better death than dishonor”—I knew now why Roman matrons said, “With your shield or on it.” Those hours of believing that my beloved Theodore was not what I had believed him to be but a coward who would refuse to defend his country—those hours had been the longest, most hateful hours of my life.

I had not really believed that there were such subhuman creatures. I had never known one. Then to have it turn out simply to be a bad dream, the result of a misunderstanding over words—I’ve read somewhere that pleasure is relief from pain. Psychologists are a silly lot, mostly, but that night I enjoyed that sort of ecstatic pleasure. Even my fires of libido were banked and, for the time, I did not worry about Briney, so joyed was I that Theodore was indeed what a man to be loved must be: a hero, a warrior.

My big girls did their best to stuff him full and Carol made him a sandwich and wrapped it to take with him. Father was full of man-to-man advice, old soldier to new recruit; my big boys were falling over each other to try to do things for him, and even Woodrow was almost well-behaved. At last they all lined up to kiss him good-bye, even Brian Junior, who had given up kissing save for an occasional peck on his mother’s cheekbone.

They all went to bed but Father…and it was my turn.

I have always been of such rugged health that winning Testaments for perfect attendance at Sunday School was never any trouble to me—so wasn’t it nice that I had two Testaments when I needed them? I did not even need to think up a new inscription; what I had written for my husband was right for any Lucasta to any warrior off to the wars:

I gave it to him, saw him read it, then I said, “Father?” He knew what I wanted, a decent amount of privacy.

“No.” (Damn him! Did he really think that I would drag Theodore down on the rug? With the children awake and only a flight of stairs away?)

(Well, perhaps I would.) “Then turn your back.”

I put my arms up and kissed Theodore, firmly but chastely…then knew that a chaste kiss was not enough to say farewell to a warrior. I let my body grow soft and my lips come open. My tongue met his and I promised him wordlessly that whatever I had was his. “Theodore…take care of yourself. Come back to me.”

“Over There!”

My father, having been refused a return to active duty in the Army Medical Corps, was then turned down again when he tried to enlist as an infantry private (he made the mistake of showing his separation papers…which showed his 1852 date of birth), and then tried to enlist in St. Louis with a claimed date of birth of 1872 but was tripped up somehow—and finally did manage to enlist in the Seventh Missouri, an infantry militia regiment formed to replace Kansas City’s Third Missouri, which was now the 110th Combat Engineers training at Camp Funston and about to go “Over There.”

This new home guard, made up of the too young, too old, too many dependents, too halt, or too lame, was not fussy about Father’s age (sixty-five) in view of his willingness to accept a dull job as supply sergeant and the fact that he needed no training.

I greatly appreciated Father’s decision to live with us for the duration. For the first time in my life I had to be the head of the family, and it’s really not Maureen’s style. I like to work hard and do my best while the key decisions are left up to someone bigger, stronger, and older than I, and with a warm male odor to him. Oh, I’ll be a pioneer mother if I must. My great-great-grandmother Kitchin killed three hostiles with her husband’s musket after he was wounded—and Father did teach me to shoot.