The Enemy at Home

Brace yourself, honey, Chris is in the hospital. But he’s going to be okay.

Wednesday afternoon, he was tossing around a football (yes, our Chris was playing football) in the backyard with our new tenant, Joe. And somehow, the two of them ended up tumbling down the ravine. I had to call an ambulance. They brought Chris up on a stretcher. Both Chris & Joe ended up with cuts, bruises and stitches. But Chris broke his leg. It was a bad break, and they had to operate on him yesterday. He had a great surgeon, Pete, and everything went smoothly. He’ll be in the hospital for the next week. With proper healing and physical therapy, he should be able to walk normally in about six months—so the doctor told me. But he also said that this injury will most likely keep our boy out of the draft. That’s the one silver lining to all this.

Joe, by the way, feels horrible about the accident—even though it wasn’t his fault. I think the two of them simply got all caught up in their scrimmaging or whatever they were doing . . .

Nora stopped writing, sat back and set her fountain pen on the kitchen table for a moment. It wasn’t easy lying to Pete—even in a letter. She’d have to convince Chris to use that same cover story when writing to his dad about the accident. She’d already told Chris that her scuffle with Joe in the ravine had been a huge misunderstanding.

From where she sat, Nora could look out the kitchen window and see the lights on in Joe’s apartment. It made her feel safe to know he was there.

The house was quiet. Jane was up in her bedroom, doing her homework and sulking. This afternoon, she’d come home from her field trip to learn she’d missed all the excitement of Chris’s mishap. She was also furious at Nora for accidentally breaking and throwing out the cymbal-playing Scottie dog her Uncle Ray had given her. “Honey, it completely fell apart when I knocked it off your shelf,” Nora had lied. “It was in pieces. I didn’t think you’d want it anymore.”

The truth was, early Thursday morning, she’d put the wind-up toy in a paper bag and furtively tossed it in a trash can near her bus stop.

Nora had reported to work on time the morning after she and Joe had buried her brother. She might have phoned in sick and taken the day off. But as her lead man had reminded her, there was a war on.

During her break, she’d spoken to him and someone in personnel, asking if, starting that day, she could work half days until her son got out of the hospital. She’d wanted them to know she was serious about her job but needed to put her children first. They’d said it could be arranged.

She’d left work yesterday at eleven o’clock and gone directly to the hospital, where she’d waited it out while they’d operated on Chris. Joe had joined her for a while. Then, with her grateful blessing, he’d gone home and gotten rid of Sidney Garrick’s car for her.

“ROSIE” SLAYER DEAD had been the headline for the Seattle Times on Thursday. The article had provided details of Ronald Lapp’s attack on a riveter at her parents’ home in Queen Anne—and how she’d killed him with an ice pick. The riveter, a young woman named Dolores “Dolly” Oberlin, was praised for her courage—a fine example of a home front heroine.

Ronald Lapp had clearly been a miserable excuse for a human being. He’d had a long criminal past and beaten out a rape charge in 1941. The police had been searching for him for the strangulation-murder of an eighteen-year-old girl in Portland last year. The authorities had seemed certain they’d found the “Rosie” killer this time.

A spokesman for the Seattle Police Department had said it “wasn’t likely” that Roger Tallant had killed Connie Wiedrich after all. It would probably be as close as they’d ever get to an apology for killing Connie’s friend and wrongly accusing him of her murder.

Nora still felt terrible about what had happened to him.

She’d eaten an early dinner in the hospital cafeteria on Thursday. Then she’d finally visited with Chris. He’d been conscious, but still woozy from his surgery. Nora had stayed until visiting hours ended. When she’d come home, Joe had stopped by and they’d had a drink in the kitchen—at the same table where she sat now. She’d barely been able to stay awake.

But they’d needed to figure out a few more details—to answer any questions Chris or Jane might have. They’d decided to go along with the idea that Joe had fibbed about being married so he could rent the apartment intended for a married couple. It seemed forgivable considering the wartime housing shortage. And they would say that Joe had been contemplating a professional name change when he’d signed the lease. He’d wanted to be considered a “serious” artist and briefly rechristened himself Joseph Strauss for a few days—before realizing that good old Joe Slattery made a decent living as a commercial illustrator, and he didn’t want to starve to death. Joe had come up with that idea. Nora figured these cover stories would clear up any confusion and allow Joe Slattery to stay on in the garage apartment. And Nora wanted very much for him to stay.

She had hated the idea of him going back to his apartment last night, leaving her alone in the big, empty house. Nora had been too exhausted to want any kind of intimacy. She’d just wanted to be under the same roof with him while she slept. But at nine forty-five, she’d sent him on his way, locked the doors, and then wearily treaded upstairs to bed.

Now, Nora picked up her fountain pen and glanced toward the kitchen window again. She saw Joe in his paint-splattered T-shirt, passing by the living room window of the garage apartment. He must have been working. It felt as if he was watching over her and Jane tonight. It would always feel that way—as long as he was there.

Nora focused on her unfinished letter. Her husband would never know how much Joe meant to her. She would never tell Pete—or anyone else—about her brother’s crimes. That would remain a secret between Joe and her.

She went back to the letter, telling Pete about her arrangement for half days at work. She also told him about Jane’s two-day field trip to Orcas Island.

I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend with just us girls. There’s nothing on the docket except visiting Chris in the hospital and maybe some tilling around the victory garden. Nothing else is new here besides Chris’s terrible tumble. But this too shall pass.

Meanwhile, my darling, take care of yourself and stay safe. I miss you.

Love,

In the week that followed, Nora stayed busy. She spoke to a representative at Lakeview Cemetery and learned that she didn’t need to furnish the cemetery with a body or death certificate to finalize purchasing a plot. Plenty of markers in the cemetery were for soldiers who had died and been buried overseas. So, Nora followed through with the purchase of a plot and a modest tombstone. For the inscription, she confirmed the birth year through Roger’s friend, Richard. Though his body may have ended up in the potter’s field, Roger would have a marker in a nice spot at Lakeview Cemetery, reading:

ROGER J. TALLANT
1913–1943
A FRIEND & GENTLEMAN

Nora felt she owed him that much.

Before Chris’s release from the hospital, Nora received a mere two days’ advance notice from the navy that her brother’s remains would be arriving in Seattle by train. But it was enough time for her and Joe to arrange for a crematorium to pick up the remains. They later chartered a boat and sailed out on the Puget Sound, where Joe scattered his brother’s ashes over the water. Jackson Slattery got the burial at sea he’d always wanted.

Chris and Jane weren’t happy with her for not including them for what they thought was their uncle’s sea burial. Jane pointed out that Catholics weren’t even allowed to be cremated. And Chris said it was just plain weird that she’d had a burn victim cremated. But Nora insisted that her brother had wanted it that way.

Nora appeased the kids a bit when she gave Chris the Illinois Central Railroad watch Ray had inherited from her dad, and Jane got her brother’s sunglasses. Jane thought the glasses were cool. Everything else belonging to Ray that the Navy had sent—except for the family photos—Nora gave to charity.

While laid up in the hospital, Chris started writing to Ruth Nakai at the Minidoka Relocation Center near Jerome, Idaho. They would become pen pals and he’d share some of Ruth’s letters with his mom.

Ruth wrote that, during her first week at the internment camp, she and her mother were able to track down Tak and Miko through a directory listing the 120,000 internees. Miko was a teacher at one of the camp schools, and Tak was on the board of the internees’ self-governing committee. Ruth wrote that she was better off at the camp than she’d been alone in the woods with her mother. She was making friends there, and they had regular activities. But they were in the desert, and she missed the woods. She also missed having her own room and bathroom. But the worst part about this place, she wrote, is that I’m a prisoner here, and I’m not sure they’ll ever let us out.

By the time Chris was released from the hospital, Nora could tell he’d become more confident and happier. Even as he tried to get around in his clunky cast with his crutches, Chris seemed more comfortable in his own skin. In the hospital, he’d seen so many people who were worse off than he was—including a few wounded veterans not much older than him, overflow from the local army and navy hospitals. Some of them had been crippled or lost limbs. Chris would be taking physical therapy sessions with them, and they treated him like a peer. Suddenly—or maybe not so suddenly—her son had grown up.

As far as Nora could tell, no one picked on him at school anymore. Then again, how low can you go, bullying a kid in a cast? Having kept up with his studies while in the hospital, Chris had to hobble back and forth to classes for only two weeks until summer break. A lot of kids signed his cast—even though he still spent most of his time alone.

That wasn’t quite true. He spent a lot of time with Joe.

The vandalism stopped. Ray had initially scared them away. And having Joe in the apartment above the garage had helped deter further trouble.

For a while, Joe became like a member of the family—and a big brother to Chris. As the weather turned nicer, he joined them for dinners at the picnic table in the backyard. True to his word, he used Jane’s likeness in an illustration for a peanut butter ad. It was going to run in several national magazines—including Life and Look—in September, just in time for back-to-school. Nora figured Jane would be impossible to live with.

Returning home from the plant every workday, one of the first things Nora still did was check the mail for a letter from Pete. She continued to write to him two or three times a week. In mid-July, one of his letters started out with his code about being relocated:

Hello, Sweetheart,

So happy to have gotten your last note & read that all is well. I’m amazed at how well Chris seems to be recovering. Can’t believe that Jane had an actual “date.” I feel so old! Love to them both. You know how much I miss you all . . .

So, Nora knew he’d moved onto Sicily for the next big push by the Allies. And she would worry about him again—in the same dangerous situation, only in a different place.

It was around this time, on a warm summer night, she and Joe ended up alone together in the backyard. It was twilight, and they were sitting in lawn chairs near the victory garden by the garage. They sipped ice teas and talked quietly—about nothing in particular, the way married couples sometimes do. Joe had the garage apartment window open and the radio on. Rudy Vallée was singing a schmaltzy version of “As Time Goes By.”

Nora felt so comfortable, she caught herself almost reaching out to stroke his arm. Instead, she took a minute. Then she sighed and gave him a sad smile. “Joe, it kills me to say this. But you’ll have to move soon. I’ve become way too attached to you.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “I feel the same way. And I like you and your family too much to ruin things.”

A week later, Joe moved out.

Within a month, two women in their twenties moved into the garage apartment—both riveters, both with Marine fiancés away in the Pacific. The women were nice enough, but they worked swing shift, and Nora didn’t see that much of them.

She and the kids each received a couple of postcards from Joe that summer—of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Grand Canyon, and other West Coast attractions. They couldn’t write back, because Joe was traveling and didn’t give a return address.

Nora never heard from Joe again.

But for years, long after Pete came back safe from the war, Nora would sometimes open a magazine and see an exquisitely illustrated ad for one thing or another, and she’d recognize Joe’s work.

Sometimes, there was a character in the background of Joe’s various illustrations—a woman who looked exactly like her.

And he always made her look beautiful.