Tomorrow Is Forever (5 page)

“Arthur, you're not going. It's different with some men. I suppose I mean it's different with some women. They've got somebody besides their husbands. Please understand. My father was a bank and my mother was a bell. The bank sent the checks and the bell rang to tell me what to do. I'm not trying to say I was unhappy—I wasn't, because I didn't know any better. But then, all of a sudden, you.”

Arthur said, “Do you have to make it so damnably hard to do?”

“You don't want to go, do you, Arthur?”

“No, I don't. But my darling, we've got to win this war or lose it. If we lose it, God help us. Don't you see it? We're fighting so other people will have the same chance at life that we've had—not only the foreigners, but Americans, the Americans who aren't born yet. We've been thinking, here in our favored corner of the world, that we were safe. Now we've found that we're not. Not even this country is safe unless we're willing to fight the brutes of the world so we can keep it so.”

Her mind yielded, for he was incontestably right. But she could not help protesting still.

“What about those children I was going to have?”

“If we win this war,” said Arthur, “you'll have your children. If we don't,” he added grimly, “you won't want them.”

3

S
o, after not quite a year of marriage, Arthur joined the army. From the day they were married until the day he left, he and Elizabeth had not been separated for as long as twenty-four hours. The first night she slept alone the bed seemed twice its usual size and the room seemed enormous.

Crumpled up on that same bed, Elizabeth was telling herself the room would always be empty. She had nothing. No husband, no children, no desire for anything else without them. She was alive, and that was strange, she thought dully as the hours of that dreadful night dragged by, strange that when two persons had interlaced their lives into such a unit as theirs, half of that unit could be torn away and leave the other half still breathing, alive for no purpose but to feel the anguish of the separation.

She felt nothing else. The morning came at length, and other mornings followed it, but for a long time Elizabeth was not conscious of anything but the immensity of her pain. She went through the usual movements of existence, because the routine was so automatic that she followed it without paying attention to what she was doing. Every day blended into the next without anything to mark the transitions, so that she would have found it hard to say how long it had been since they told her Arthur was dead, or whether some occurrence had taken place yesterday or a week ago. It seemed to her that she was alone all the time, though this was not true, for a great many friends came to see her. She was grateful, but they could not penetrate her loneliness. The shock had been too great. Sometimes she wished they would stop coming in, talking and making her answer, but it did not matter very much. She simply drifted from day into night and back into day again, without expectation. Whatever happened around her, she was not really aware of anything except that Arthur was dead, she had to get through the time without him, and she hoped she could do so without being too much of a nuisance to anybody.

Several weeks after the end of the war she received a tactfully worded letter from the Red Cross, telling her that Arthur had died in a German field hospital. There were some gentle phrases about how the stretcher-bearers paid no attention to international differences in their errands of mercy. Before she had read halfway down the page Elizabeth recognized it as a form letter composed by some expert writer to soften the regret that would be felt by recipients on learning that their loved ones had had to spend their last hours among foreigners. It was very kind of them, no doubt, to have gone to the trouble of getting up such a pretty letter, but neither this nor any other literature could help her. She tore the sheet of paper into small pieces and let them dribble out of her hand into the wastebasket.

By this time it was as if her single great pain had changed into a thousand small ones striking her with swift short anguish, each in a different place from the one before. Earlier, there had been no details. Now whatever she saw, every object she touched, stabbed her with its own small blade of memory. She could not pick up a table-napkin without remembering what fun she and Arthur had had choosing the linens for their home. Every time she opened the china-closet she could hear their secret laughter as they garnished the top shelf with the atrocities some of their relatives had thrust on them as wedding presents. If she looked out of a front window she could almost see Arthur coming down the street from his office and raising his head to see if he could catch sight of her anywhere and wave at her before he came into the house. Arthur was everywhere, so vividly that there were even moments when she forgot he would not be there any more. She would wake up in the night and begin to turn over softly so as not to disturb him; sometimes if the library door was closed she would find herself tiptoeing past it, lest the sound of her approach interrupt the work he had brought home to do. When this happened she would bring herself up with a start that reminded her, “But he isn't there, he'll never be there again.” The pain would slash into her, deep and quick, until she thought, “This is worse than it was at first. And there'll never be anything else. Arthur is
dead
.”

She did not make any display of her grief. This was partly because she had an inborn dread of public weeping, but mainly because it did not occur to her to do so. What she and Arthur had shared had been too profound for them ever to talk about it except to each other. Now it would have seemed sacrilegious and obscene to try to tell anybody else what he had meant to her. Arthur had been
her
husband; no matter how much his friends valued him, he did not stand in that relationship to anyone but herself, and only she could feel the severing of that tie. So she bore what she had to bear alone and in silence.

It was a matter of embarrassing astonishment to her Aunt Grace. Aunt Grace was very fond of Uncle Clarence, and would have been deeply distressed to lose him, so when Elizabeth said nothing whatever about Arthur, Aunt Grace was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that Elizabeth had no soul. To Aunt Grace one's soul meant the sum of one's emotions, and to her an emotion was synonymous with its expression. When she was happy she laughed, when she was unhappy she cried, if she liked you she kissed you and if she was angry with you she lost her temper. Regarding these manifestations as identical with the states of mind that inspired them, when she observed that Elizabeth expressed nothing she concluded that Elizabeth felt nothing, and therefore had no soul.

Elizabeth took no interest in her aunt's reactions, nor, for that matter, in anything else. Her friends were being very kind to her. They urged her to go out with them, saying it would do her good. She tried going out, but it did her no good whatever. For they did the same things in the same places as when Arthur had been among them; whether they played in the snow or had dinner at a favorite restaurant or sat around someone's fire and talked, every gathering reminded her of him. She would come home and sit down wearily, sorry she had gone. It was easier staying at home, where at least she did not have to put up any ghastly pretense of being cheerful.

And then one morning, in the spring after the Armistice, she discovered that she did not have much money left to live on.

It gave her a start, not because she had thought she was rich but because in the past few months she had not thought about it at all. She had been spending very little, mechanically writing checks for such necessities as food and rent since it was part of the inescapable routine. When a phone call from Uncle Clarence—who had again constituted himself her guardian, as he saw she was in no state to attend to her affairs herself—advised her that she should meet him at the bank the next morning, she obeyed his summons, mildly wondering what it was about. Uncle Clarence and the bank vice-president told her it was to make arrangements for her pension as a soldier's widow.

The words revolted her. Without trying to understand her reaction, she exclaimed in protest. Arthur had given his life for his country and that was all there was to it. Nothing his country could give her could restore him and she had no desire for anything else. But when she tried to tell them this, Uncle Clarence and the banker, two kindly men with gray mustaches and sympathetic if astonished eyes, explained to her as gently as they could that it would be very foolish of her to insist that she had no need of a pension, since she unquestionably had. Most of what her father left had been spent on her education. And then—didn't she remember?—when she married she had spent a good deal on furnishing her home. Arthur's insurance, though as much as he could have afforded, was small—and in short, the American lawmakers had taken all these matters into account when they provided pensions for the widows of men who died for their country. Uncle Clarence knew this was a painful subject; he would have liked to spare her these details, in fact, he had already attended to everything, but there were a few forms to be filled out, and then her signature here, and here, and here —the banker dipped the pen into the ink and held it out, the handle pointing to her.

Elizabeth took the pen and looked at it an instant, then as though it were a horrid object she threw it down on the blotter and stood up. “No!” she exclaimed, and she meant it, though she could not just then have told what prompted her. “No. I don't want the government to pay me for Arthur. I can earn my own living. I'd rather.”

Before they could reply she ran out of the bank, leaving Uncle Clarence to apologize for her strange behavior, and the banker to answer Uncle Clarence that it was quite all right, he understood, the poor girl was young and had no idea of money, and she had undoubtedly received a great blow, just come back when she's more reasonable, glad to see you both any time.

Elizabeth was walking quickly along the street. She felt somehow strong and free, stronger and freer than she had felt since the day she had received that terrible telegram. All her senses were abruptly alert. She noticed that there was a tingle of spring in the air. People were walking fast, as if they had somewhere of importance to go. All of a sudden she stopped in front of a store window and said “Ah!”—not an audible exclamation, just the swift little catch of her breath that she would have given this time last year at the sight of a smart black hat with a red feather.

Her thrill was gone in an instant. She had time only to think, “Why, this is the first time I've noticed anything,” before the tiredness was back on her and she was saying to herself, “What difference does it make what I wear now?” Looking up at the store front, she remembered that she had bought many hats here in the past. One afternoon she had called Arthur and told him to pick her up here on his way home. He had come in while she was still hesitating, and had made the choice for her—“Here's the one for you, Elizabeth, black with a red feather.” She caught her breath again, but this time it was to stifle a sob, and she hurried home as fast as she could.

Once at home she sat down tensely, asking herself with a sense of desperation, “Can't I ever get away from this?” Then, suddenly, she became aware that in asking the question she had unconsciously, by the words she was using, provided the answer. She had to get away.

But though the answer had come, it was not clear. For a few moments this morning she had been exhilarated, until the hat with the feather had brought him back. What was it, she asked herself how, that had given her that brief bright sense of being alive again?

It was something that had happened at the bank. She had said she did not want to be paid for losing Arthur. No wonder they had heard her with such surprise, for on the face of it that was a foolish thing to say. Nobody could believe a war widow lost her self-respect by receiving a government pension. But her words had given her the impression of shaking off a burden. As she thought of it she remembered what else she had said. “I can earn my own living. I'd rather.”

Naturally they had been startled. She knew no more about earning her own living than a child. The idea of such a possibility had never occurred to her before. She had spoken without thinking, and yet she had somehow been thinking of something much more vital than the source of her income. She sought to recall it, more than once drawing back, for the operation was too painful to be continued without pause, but at last she found what she was looking for. “I was thinking of something, not about a pension or about my going to work. Just for a minute I got a flash of it and it was like being waked up with a dash of cold water—I know—I was realizing that I didn't have to keep on being dependent on Arthur.”

That hurt. She stood up and walked around, her whole spirit protesting against the hurt of it. “I want to be dependent on him! I was so happy when all day I was thinking of him. ‘I'll tell Arthur about this, he'll laugh and laugh.' ‘I must ask how she makes that sponge-cake, Arthur would love it.' ‘Do you really like my bracelet? Arthur gave it to me.' Arthur, Arthur, all the time, never anything but Arthur. Stop it, Elizabeth! I don't care how it hurts,
stop
it! Arthur is dead. Yes, say it and get used to it. He's dead, and you're burning yourself up like those Oriental women who lie down on their husbands' funeral pyres. Arthur wouldn't want this. He loved living and he wasn't afraid of dying, but he'd hate this imitation death you've been slipping into. If you're ever going to be anything better than a sick vegetable, you've got to learn to count on yourself. The only minute you've felt alive since you lost Arthur was the minute you said you didn't have to depend on him any more.”

But as she walked around the house, or looked out at the sidewalk and its familiar trees, she knew more and more certainly that as long as she stayed within sight of these things she would continue to lean on her memory of him. She would be, not an individual, but Arthur's widow, a poor object standing around like something a traveler had forgotten to take with him on his journey. But if she turned down that pension and went to live in a strange environment it would mean she would have to take care of herself, no matter how much her resolution might waver. Her fists doubled up and her whole body tense with the effort, Elizabeth faced the necessity. She had to go. She was going.

She chose California because neither she nor Arthur had ever been there. Neither of them knew anybody who lived west of the Rockies, and there was nothing in California that would remind her of him. Once her decision was made she set about vigorously getting ready to leave Tulsa, doing everything briskly lest she be overwhelmed with the pain of parting. Her first act was to buy a ticket for Los Angeles. Having it there bolstered her determination on the occasions when she thought she could not go through with it. The ticket safely in her desk, she began deliberately to strip herself of the physical objects that linked her with Arthur. She had to do this, because if she had taken them with her she would simply have built up another home like this one, where she could not pick up any article of use without remembering that Arthur had touched it. She sold most of her household possessions, and what she could not sell she gave away. It was hard to do, but not as hard as it would have been to live among these reminders of her lost happiness. Her acquaintances were puzzled by her vehemence, and Aunt Grace was volubly shocked. They could not understand what she was doing, and believing like most other people that if they could not understand a matter it had no explanation, they said, “Who would have thought Elizabeth was so heartless?” Aunt Grace agreed sadly, and told them Elizabeth had not only sold the desk where Arthur had worked, but had even given his clothes to the Salvation Army. Oh well, said Uncle Clarence, Elizabeth was young, and the young were noted for their springing adaptability. But Aunt Grace shook her head. “She has no soul,” said Aunt Grace. “And after all we've tried to do for her.” Contemplation of Elizabeth's lack of soul sometimes moved Aunt Grace to tears.