14

JUST AFTER LUNCH, THE AMBULANCE surrenders Harry. Jewel’s taken the day off work, helping to get things ready. Rebecca’s tied a yellow balloon to the tree outside, a poor colour choice given the memory of that bag under the hospital bed. Still, it reminds Lucy of the day they brought Robert home from the hospital when he was just a mite, never mind how unceremoniously Harry is deposited upstairs. But the room is cheery, the Don Noble and the TV positioned so he can see both from the bed. The nurses have given tips and instructions to turn him every couple of hours, and feed him slowly so he won’t choke. Jewel’s old room, her sewing room, has been crammed with waterproof pads and aids: a bedpan, wheelchair, walker, crutches. Could it be that Jewel’s gone overboard?

“Let’s be optimistic,” he says quietly as they stand back, watching the medics place Harry between the sheets. She should be happy, but this moment she’s been hoping for stirs up panic as raw as the feeling that’d crawled through her years ago in that church basement, as she coaxed Jewel to take the nipple. Now what? Now that he was here, how would she manage? But like a gift, now that it’s given, how can she even think about sending it back? Ashamed, she busily plumps pillows, kisses his chilly forehead, welcoming him home. Maybe Jewel feels it too, the weight of what’s ahead? Not Rebecca, though, flitting around arranging things. Whatever’s got into her lately has taken hold as firmly as the Yanks claiming the moon! As Lucy imagines the astronauts planting their flag, Harry’s eye flashes a look of apology, as if it hasn’t yet taken in the others, only her. You’ve got the shitty end of the stick, dolly, it seems to say. Then his lips fumble: a moan, a bit of drool—gobbledygook—and finally a syllable: “Lucsch?”

Rebecca sets down some Vaseline, looking a little shocked, maybe even dismayed. None of this seemed quite so alien, so difficult, in the hospital. Jewel rushes to smooth things over, asking Harry what more he could ask, having the best nurses in town. “Old man,” he calls him, eyeing Lucy; if his father weren’t so frail, she could imagine Jewel punching his shoulder. It makes her blush when Harry rubs his head up and down enthusiastically. Gratefully. That’s my dolly, she imagines him saying, if he could talk. Like a dog with a bone. At least he’s still in there somewhere, isn’t he?

Rebecca vanishes; they hear her down in the kitchen rustling something up. Oh, Lord. She comes back with food on a plate, sticky buns that are store-bought, thank God, but of a texture that wads and would block an airway in a second, the voices of a dozen nurses seem to holler. Just as Harry sucks and smacks at his, Lucy, terrified, reaches into his mouth and pulls it out, and he almost looks like he’ll cry. Stealing candy from a baby, says Rebecca’s stare. She and Jewel, have the tact, at least, to leave before Lucy has to manage supper.

As she follows the mimeographed instructions—a life sentence of soup and soft foods?—the kitchen’s drafty silence is a comfort: the way the Earth must’ve felt to Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Aldrin stepping back on it. Carrying Harry’s meal up on a tray, she tries to look at the plate as, well, a relief map, like Robert made once for geography, with a lot of mounded brown and green, of papier mâché. At the sight of it, half of Harry’s lip curls, an effort at a smile. Nothin’ like real food, dolly. A fella oughta take out insurance, eating that hospital crud, she imagines him joking. Spooning small bites of hill and dirt into his opened mouth, she fancies herself a mother booby, and him a chick that’s tumbled from the nest but managed to fly back up. Yes, there’s something miraculous and only good about hope come home to roost, rewarded, and for a fleeting moment she feels relief sweet as mashed carrots.

Later, though, bathing him is a different story, the basin balanced on her side of the jiggling mattress. It’s like bathing an overgrown, helpless infant as she draws the cloth over his neck where food has dribbled, and between his fingers, then tenderly pats him dry. If there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s not to think beyond the chore in front of her. Positioning the bedpan, she makes sure the TV is good and loud, though, the way she’d turn up Maggie Muggins if Robert got whiny. Emptying it, to keep from gagging, she thinks of Robert as a baby, and then Jewel—and, unwittingly, of the baby before him. How had she managed, when she hadn’t been much more than a girl herself, still too young to appreciate that babies grew up? How did any mother manage, let alone the mothers of babies who didn’t, or couldn’t? But then Untamed World comes on, a gift from the airwaves. She fixes Harry’s pillows, making him comfy as a wildebeest charges across the Serengeti. “Who’s that, dear?” she nudges him, her voice almost bubbling over with cheer. But when she glances over, he’s asleep.

That night he’s a deadweight beside her, that right arm of his a withered branch that would just as well fall or get snapped off by wind. She doesn’t sleep a wink watching the clock, those instructions ticking through her, when or when not to turn him. “Upsy-daisy,” she grunts, rolling him onto his other side. It’s like moving a boulder, the effort eating her strength. But, with whatever strength’s left over, she presses her palm to his cheek in place of a kiss, and closes her eyes. Wanting to nestle against him, but afraid to. For he smells wrong, of starch and antiseptic and pee laced with chemicals. Like a vehicle, not new but passed off as reconditioned—strike her dead for thinking such a thing! But watching a real car’s lights trace the ceiling, she listens to him breathe, the sound more laboured than any snore, and letting her toes touch his, feels herself melt at last into the mattress and what Rebecca would call an “airy-fairy” normal. The stuff of the stories. Goodnight, my darling. Sweet dreams.

How can it be, having Harry present and yet not, not the old Harry, anyway? The lights on, as Jewel would say, but nobody home. She should be used to it, his there and not-thereness; Lord knows she’s had practice. Not that practice helps, when it’s as if she’s been stowed in one drawer, and Harry in another, which wasn’t so bad, as long as one knew the other was safe. A tisket, a tasket, the clock’s ticking, monotonous as a child’s chant, finally draws her under. A green and yellow basket. A basket full of weeds, the thought presses down; and she imagines coltsfoot in a ditch and Harry’s snore as the idling of a truck.

1939

HER HEART HAD JACKHAMMERED, SEEING Jewel off. Her boy, her baby, so tall and skinny, the uniform buckled at his waist: he’d been just three days past his twenty-second birthday. The scratch of wool against her cheek, the smell of damp khaki—kayaki, Rebecca would’ve called it, had she been around back then. Anyway, it was like kissing a giraffe goodbye. Our soldier, pride had pricked at her, she and Harry waving in the December drizzle, bereft. They could’ve at least had a band, sending the boys off. No “Auld Lang Syne” or “Roll Out the Barrel”: the stuff of the first war, and of newsreels. But a spectacle would’ve killed her.

Maybe it was the cold, but Jewel’s face had looked beaky as he marched up the gangplank. They watched till all they could see was his peaked cap. Brass, pipes, a bit of ceremony would have been in order, but even Jewel himself had tried to keep the sailing a secret. “God Save the King,” Harry’d hummed quietly, muttering God save them all from that fruitcake in Europe with the moustache and bad haircut. What was it about those Jerries? he’d wanted to know, “And God, where’s he at?” Don’t blame him, she’d said. They’d dabbed at their eyes; tears just made it harder. As the ship’s whistle blew, Harry’s fingers had tightened around hers, her boxy little purse bumping him. She’d made herself think about canning, preserving. Their last few moments: the warmth of Jewel’s cheek, the smell of tobacco and boot grease. So long, Ma! Auf Wiedersehen. Harry’s See ya the same as sending him off after Sunday dinner.

She’d watched him disappear in a blizzard of faces. Breathing in the stink of bilge, she’d stared at the pier as Harry gulped, What a beautiful boat, the Empress of Britain. Straightening her pillbox hat for her, humming “We’ll Meet Again” as the ship slipped from her moorings. The engines’ shudder the shudder of Lucy’s heart, which Harry’d warned Jewel not to break, like telling the Jerries to go decorate tannenbaums. The army was better than the navy or the air force, he tried to cheer her, as the Empress slid out into the foggy dark, a line of foam breaking from her. The shapes of more ships moving by, spirits rumbling in the night, a convoy. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, she’d crossed herself. The more the merrier, Harry’d joked. As though all those young fellas were off on a trip, just to see the world.

As they tooled up from the docks in the new-ish Plymouth, they saw sailors reeling everywhere, never mind it was the middle of the night. Crossing town, Harry zipped past their street and St. Columba’s, the prison and Dunphy’s, the dancehall somebody’d thrown up near Deadman’s. If they raced, they’d see the ships going out; never mind that he could barely see to drive, with the fog and not a light anywhere with the blackout. Slow down, she’d said. Any slower and a dog could piss on the tires, he’d answered, admitting, though, that without Jewel around it’d be “some jeezly quiet.” Compared to the sickness in her heart, maybe. Except for the two weeks Jewel had come home after quitting work and enlisting, they’d forged a routine, she and Harry, based on quiet. And it wasn’t as if Jewel had hung around; he’d whooped it up, God knows where or what habits he’d formed at Black’s Shipping, and rooming downtown. I’m working, his excuse every time they’d asked him to supper. Sure, Harry’d said, a single guy and wartime in a town that was a hooker’s heaven—as if Artie Babineau were a ventriloquist six feet under. But war prospered sin, Father Marcus declared every week: look around.

Harry downshifting for the next cove, the harbour’d opened before them, and they’d cut down a lane hugging the cliff. Not so much as a candle flickering from a window as the “arse end” of the convoy slid past the submarine net, making good time, Harry observed. The drizzle silver-plated everything as a corvette cleared the gate boats anchored there manning the net. In daylight they reminded her of Christmas ornaments, one green and one red, or two sitting ducks. “You can take the kid outta Hellifax, but you can’t take the Hellifax outta him,” Harry joked, to comfort her. “Don’t even think about it,” he’d said, meaning the U-boats lurking at the harbour mouth with their torpedoes. But as the last ship disappeared she’d prayed aloud, not caring what he thought. God have mercy, she’d told the void that was like water rising, displacing them both. On my boy, and everyone else’s. Impossible not to imagine fire, and the frigid black sea filling lungs and sinking them all to the bottom.

Good things come to those that wait, the priest never quit saying, and business boomed at the shipyards, Harry working overtime repairing damage done by the Jerries. She had the house to tend, he reminded her, as if her war effort were reclaiming the space Jewel had so briefly filled. “You get in a knot every time the kid comes and goes,” he said, and he was right. But time stalled around them like a ship in reverse, forget that having Jewel underfoot those couple of weeks had been awkward. Who needs the Jerries when they’ve got you, Ma? Once, he’d come home near dawn, and she’d woken to the sound of the sofa squeaking like a jiggled pram. That’s when she’d found out about Mona: nothing serious, just a lark, he’d said.

“Seeing anyone?” she’d grilled him, before he’d moved back home, and he’d said there was Mr. Black, the boss, and his secretary who weighed two hundred pounds wet, not counting her moustache. Then Harry’d nosed in, saying all girls were after was a meal ticket. She’d nearly dropped the teapot when Mona came to meet them. No bigger than a minute, she had starry eyes and a blue sweater so tight her ribs showed. But she’d helped with the dishes, and there was something sweet about her sharp face. Jewel had made them all squeeze together while he snapped a picture. Cheddah, Mona said instead of cheese. She worked at the tobacconist’s next door to Black’s, and knew who smoked what. Jewel had taken Mona dancing at the new place by Deadman’s, but later, Lucy’d woken to hear him retching. So much for a steadying influence.

But as the weeks dragged after his departure, she thought fondly of Mona, and once, from a tram, spotted a look-alike. The street was choked with sailors and girls, and, beelining to Eaton’s, Lucy’d lost sight of her. Blackout curtains were on special, a necessity, but a dismal green.

She was about to leave when a brassy voice called out, “Looking for something, Missus?” A far cry from Mona, the gal seemed familiar. Fingering cheap fabric, Lucy couldn’t help staring; it had been an age—ten years?—since she’d seen her. She’d grown by a foot, but had the same catty grin, though her hair was slate-coloured, and wasn’t Lil’s daughter a strawberry blonde? “Just looking,” she’d said, smiling faintly, and couldn’t help checking for a ring.

But the girl persisted—she had things to learn about serving customers—saying, “You’re Jewel’s mom, right?” and asking where he was. As if the bags under Lucy’s eyes weren’t telling enough.

Loose lips sink ships, she’d thought, and asked if people were actually buying these curtains, even as the image of the Empress leaving the jetty crowded in.

“Fugly as sin, aren’t they?” the girl joked, “some friggin’ ugly.”

A minor thing if Jerry buzzed overhead, she’d answered quickly, buying six pairs.

The curtains spoiled the look of the front room, but it was best to be on the safe side—of what, though, she’d wondered; what could be worse than waiting? Every week she wrote, packing shoe-boxes with Hershey bars and cookies. Jewel wrote back, describing buddies he’d made, how the food stank and the showers, when they got them, were freezing. Reading around the crossed-out bits, she’d composed a fuzzy picture for herself of young fellas touring around, carousing as they would at home. Sometimes Jewel gave details, like the Jerry car they commandeered, rigging a tank to its engine to heat water. Travelogues with the place names inked out, his letters. Once he mentioned a tank burning, but then it was on to the next village.

In spring he mentioned apple blossoms, the letter arriving while she cleaned house, a salt breeze swinging in and out of the opened windows. In the note that came months later he discussed chocolate; she was weeding the garden when the postman stopped. Love, Jewel signed it, the rest saying precious little.

Months, and a year, and another year crawled by. A letter here, a letter there. Leaves to London. Pubs. Then Paris. Shifting details, from food to slit trenches and hundred pounders. “It’s only lingo,” Harry’d tried to soothe her. Words like Brits and Yanks were crossed out, the censors hand sometimes unsteady. Dont worry. Jewel wrote, his punctuation gone to the dogs. Reading of the war in the paper, the endless bombings and sinkings, she’d dreamed of his baby face, features blending into those of the child she’d lost. Like a portrait captive inside a locket. Dont worry.

She prayed the rosary first thing each morning, last thing each night—and Wednesdays at noon, stretched out in the cellar. Weekly air raid drill, the signal and its routine old hat after a while. Still, she had to stop what she was doing—peeling an egg, rinsing a pot—to go and flatten herself to the concrete. Lying there that first Wednesday, Jewel’s absence an open wound, she’d focused on Harry’s tools, then remembered Mr. Heinemann’s note deep in the wall. She’d almost wanted to die, suddenly: the casualty of a Luftwaffe bomb. It could happen, people said, though at night they just drew the curtains as usual and went to bed. But a ship was sunk off Sambro; this could’ve been England, Harry said, as if the walls of the world were crumbling. Waiting for the siren’s whine to stop, she’d imagine soldiers with swastikas on their sleeves climbing in the windows.

When Harry didn’t have the radio blaring, she played the Victrola, jumping at each bump. Nervous Nellie, he called her. If Jewel came back in one piece, she’d have Harry buy a new one, but in the meantime they’d wait. Don’t tempt fate, Father Marcus said. What good, a new anything, without Jewel there with them? She’d thought along the lines of the priest’s advice, as in giving up chocolate for Lent, or awaiting the Second Coming: keep busy, but not too busy. The records’ bumps kept her on her toes. But one steamy night the spring had broken for good, and then time really dragged, with just the radio and nothing anyone would want to hear. The shipyards working round the clock, Harry was on call constantly, even with girls replacing men gone off to fight. Mrs. Chaddock had a niece with her welder’s papers; but then Mrs. Chaddock also had stories about U-boat crews wading ashore for beer and a night out. Maybe Mona had traded her cashier job for something mannish? Jewel’s latest letter said she’d married the receiver at Black’s. No accounting. And suddenly no chance, either, of buying a new Victrola, not for love or money, even if she’d wanted one, every spring and screw funnelled into war. Jewel’s letters had grown glum, full of crossed-out lines, Harry often at work when she opened them.

“Don’t wait up,” he’d said, one muggy evening, heading off to Dunphy’s.

How could she stand to be alone? The Arm was flat as a cookie sheet as she rounded the cove, Jewel’s latest note in the pocket of her good dress, one with blue roses and a twirling skirt—pretty, though it didn’t do much for her waist. By the time she found the trail through the woods, she’d felt quite wilted. Queer place for a dance-hall, even Harry said, stuck out on that swampy spit. Through the trees had loomed the ruins of Babineau’s dock, and across the channel the empty jail, munitions moved to a depot on the Basin. The trail cut to a rocky path, the glide of a clarinet drifting closer. Dunphy’s Social Club, said the sign tacked to a tree; Dunnuttin’s, somebody’d dribbled in red paint. Lounging outside, a group passed a bottle, someone giggling at Lucy’s dress.

Inside, the clarinet had given way to tinny piano. A lady with yellow hair took Lucy’s money, stamped her hand. Oh, God, she’d thought, hoping no one from St. Columba’s appeared. At one end of the dance floor was a stage and at the other a counter, girls hogging chairs along the walls, while onstage a man bashed at the keys. It must’ve taken some doing, getting a piano there. The air oozed liquor, which had made her wonder about complaints in the paper about nowhere to drink. The Mounties would’ve had a field day, stumbling on this place; she felt dirty just walking in.

As the pianist banged his way through “Jeepers Creepers,” sure enough, she’d spied Harry clapping along. He was sitting with someone; Lucy could just see her hair and doughy shoulders, and they were passing something between them. He’d leaned close enough to kiss the woman’s cheek. Then a gal shimmied past with a sailor: Lil’s daughter in a dress with straps that cut into her flesh, and with her, two others in bright red lipstick. A flotilla of skin and flimsy cotton, they’d swept Harry up and he’d laughed, tucking the bottle under his arm. Then Lil, none other than herself, had turned unsteadily, winking. “Oh shit,” he’d murmured, spying her—sloshing liquor as she approached. “At least you’re not drinking by your lonesome,” Lucy’d said, feeling stung, and wanting him to feel that way too. But he’d caught at her arm, offering her a sip and blathering that he was helping Lil out. “Sure you were,” she’d said, her voice icy, the mugginess a slap as he followed her outside, shoving the mickey into his pocket. It’s nothing, dolly—I can explain, he kept saying, as the darkening woods closed in. Explain away. She’d fled up the path, stumbling over roots as the trail steepened, Harry breathing behind her. They found themselves on the top of Deadman’s, the Arm shushing below. Dampness rose up through the bushes, carrying the funk of dead leaves and the spongy earth underfoot. To weasel out of the spot he was in, Harry brought up Artie’s stories, about the dead buried there in unmarked graves. “Yankees, Frogs, slaves; maybe even the odd Kraut,” he said, his laugh a little desperate, “prisoners of war, hundreds of ’em. Undesirables.” Like the Marryatts? she’d asked.

Moonlight groped through the pines as he tipped back the bottle. A prickly feeling had climbed her neck, then embraced her, a chilly hug, and watching her, he’d said how the place gave him the creeps. It wasn’t as though he quelled her jealousy, her perfectly reasonable disgust, but suddenly the chill had made Lil a fly in the ointment. All she’d wanted was the safety of the veranda, to sit watching moths bump the light. For something Father Marcus said had come back, about thin places, places like this, burial grounds and near water, where the spirits of the dead hovered, lingering. Never mind whose bones moldered underfoot. Then Harry’d grinned, losing his baleful look. A twig snapped; she’d heard it too. Rustling, giggling, then breathing; and through the bushes a flash of cotton. A sailor, probably, and bare arms in the moonlight: Lil’s girl?

1943

AS THE WAR DRAGGED ON, the foghorns droned nothingness—and for months the weather stayed poor. Sometimes it seemed she herself was smoke threading over water, or a mournful wail crossing grey ocean. Whenever the phone rang she steeled herself. Once it was Father Marcus asking if she could help with the Christmas campaign. Christmas an insult, campaign viciously loaded. No idea where Jewel might be, she’d forwarded his parcels to a post box in Britain. The return address “An East Coast Port,” though anyone with half a brain knew: Hellifax. It was the holy season, Father reminded her, and there was a widow in need in the Grounds.

“You might take comfort helping the needy,” he’d said, reminding her that God remembered those who remembered others. That, according to St. Francis, the reward was not to be loved, as to love. Herr Heinemann had crept to mind; apple cake, and bits of Harry’s clothing. An eye for an eye, or tit for tat? If only it were so: just desserts for selfless acts. But being middle-aged, forty-two, she wasn’t stupid; she knew by now that things didn’t work that way, rewards a matter of grace, not a ledger.

The priest asked her to deliver something, a shoebox; the league had made up dozens for servicemen, to which she’d contributed. Toothpaste, candy, homemade socks; too bad knitting left time to think. Clearing his throat, Father wondered if there’d been any word. “Not a peep,” she’d said quietly, and he’d told her that God was steadfast in mercy, and she mustn’t lose faith. But then one of his sermons reared itself, about loving thy neighbour, which really meant loving thy enemy. “Remember this poor, lost soul,” he’d coaxed, adding that all were brothers and sisters in Christ. His directions confirmed her suspicions; never mind that the poor widow had a daughter. Old Mrs. Slauenwhite’s hands shook as she handed over a box and some food. Palsy had locked in her frown, more or less permanent after she’d lost her grandson. “Ah, Missus! Better you than me,” she said.

Wet snow blanketed the steps, and no one answered when Lucy knocked. A window was broken, an overcoat stuffed against it. A bottle rolled as she let herself in; she could see her breath. “Lily?” Her call was met by a groan from the room where kids had fought at Artie’s wake, Lil’s sunken eyes peering up from above the filthy quilt. “Look what the cat’s drug in. What the Jesus do you want?” she’d slurred bitterly, asking if Lucy’s hubby had sent her, or what? The stink was awful: sickness and rot. As Lucy set the parcels down, Lil grabbed at her, her fingers half-frozen. How much easier to have pried them away, and run. “Nobody home,” she could’ve lied; but the priest’s voice intervened: You win hearts by feeding stomachs. Winning hearts for Christ is the reward.

Picking at some turkey, Lil had retched, vomit decorating the quilt. Mocking her for being “a good sport” and calling Harry “one lucky bastard, a darlin’,” saying they deserved each other, he and Lucy. She’d wiped her mouth, staring at the peeling wallpaper, and accused him of being timid. “Got the balls of a hamster,” she laughed raggedly. “Wouldn’t know what to do if a woman come up and bit him on the arse!” Lucy’d wanted to spit, but then Lil had said, “But you now, Missus, far’s he’s concerned, the sun sets on yours,” and that the last thing anyone needed was charity and Lucy’s type coming around. “Fish stinks after a while,” she’d choked, “so git.” Lucy didn’t stop to slide the plate into the icebox, leaving the shoebox on the floor. Feeling sick, she’d hurried through the slush, then thought of the daughter. She’d phone her at work, what anyone would do under the circumstances. No matter what, Lil was her mother. Like mother, like daughter? But when she got home, a letter was waiting, the postmark illegible, but she’d have known the writing anywhere.

Dear Ma,
Landed o.k. in **** hours crossing, sick as a dog, no sealegs till ****. Nice digs though. Nice view from ****, as you can see in the snaps, looks a bit like ****. Ha ha. Why go far when anything a guy could want is in his own **** . Well. Got to march. So long for ****, say hi to dad & don’t worry, be seeing youse.
Yours truly, J xox

Shaking the empty envelope, frantically she checked inside. If he’d sent pictures, they were long gone.

1944

THAT SPRING AN OBIT RAN in the Herald: Lily Jean Marryatt. Forty-eight years old, daughter of the late Erma; survived by…no visitation, by request. Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling oh sinner come home. Harry’s step lightened, somehow. Not long after, she was getting breakfast when the paper thwacked the step; the boy had a habit of winging it. Normandy Invaded! the headline blared. The eggs going cold, Harry’d gripped her shoulder, mumbling that since they hadn’t heard otherwise, things had to be all right. If not, wouldn’t they know?

Time had hummed then like the wires, a buzzing dread that woke her at night and made her clammy. Once, in the wee hours she’d found Harry on the porch in his pajamas. He had an appointment at the eye doctor’s next morning for a cleaning and polishing. In the moonlight his good eye had looked wet, and he’d muttered about feeling poorly, and why bother? An eye or a Victrola, what did anything matter, when your boy was absent? Neither had been able to say missing.

Then she’d dreamed of Jewel stopping by a river, water flowing green and opaque. Squatting on a rock, he’d splashed his face, then peeled off his uniform like a skin. A shield of lindens towered all around. Something black and white drifted by, a cow, and a uniform with red on the sleeve. He turned sharply, and it was as if she were there, too. Looking her in the eye, he opened his mouth: “Hey, Ma!” As she waved, an arm moved behind him, a helmet like a potty. Below its brim the Jerry’s face bore a mark. A tattoo: three blue upside-down commas. The face was Franz Heinemann’s. As the bayonet lifted, she tried to scream, tried to move her arm, but it was wooden. Somehow Jewel turned, his boot sinking in mud, and a scuffle started.

Not the water, she tried to warn him, but no sound would come out. The Jerry drove his bayonet—the movement slow as salt threading through an egg timer—but Jewel slid and spun. They were Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, Robin Hood and Guy of Gisbourne, sword-fighting, thrusting, parrying. Suddenly Jewel was a little boy, and the Jerry lurched. A triangle of blood blooming in his chest, and his face becoming rock, and as he gave one last thrust, lunging, his soleless boot skidded. Curling life into his fist—like the workings of a watch: first steps, words, day at school, that run-in with the Mounties, and his look on the jetty that drizzly day—Jewel blindsided the blond-stubbled jaw, sent the man reeling into the silent current.

A teenage girl with a face like hers and dandelions in her hair hid like a frog in the rushes, and let out a croak. As the enemy thrashed, Jewel thrust his bayonet. Heinemann’s mouth opened, gasping, and in the dream she could see inside—the pink surprise of a tongue—and even understand. Hilfen mich? Useless syllables dangling over the river as it netted him. One last glimpse before his clothes pulled him under: his face was another child’s, the Slauenwhite boy’s. The helmet spinning away a tortoise shell. The tortoise and the hare, as the fellow bobbed a final time, the air knit with spray.

A yellow wind stirred the reeds as the river sucked, and overhead a bird tweeted. Wir kampfen bis wir siegen? Somehow it made sense: we fight till we win. Picking up his shirt and boots, turning his back, Jewel slipped through the lindens, and she was the bird watching over as he ran.

The next morning, as soon as she woke she wrote to him, quoting the twenty-first Psalm: The Lord is thy shepherd, don’t forget. She omitted the part about the valley in the shadow of death, launching instead into his father’s activities. He’s considering a new accordion; maybe the fiddle fever is waning? The notion had given her a tiny jolt of pleasure. When we met, he was quite the musician—before his fiddling, and raising Cain, ha ha! Humming Vera Lynn, she’d crossed out that last bit, trying not to imagine him lying in a trench, or wading through gunfire. Our Father, she’d whispered, sealing the envelope before Harry appeared, rosining his bow.

Posting the letter was like plugging her nose and jumping off a rock. She’d imagined it riding the sea in a convoy, a candy heart in the belly of a destroyer. Crossing paths with one from him somewhere in mid-Atlantic, surviving wolf packs and waves.

1945

THEN, ONE FREEZING MARCH DAY, a letter had arrived for Harry, postmarked Delmenhorst. Delmenhorst? Resisting the urge to open it, she’d called him at work and he had her read it over the phone.

Dear Dad,
Up to my knees in blood shit & corruption. Bremen, you know: the place with musicians? Put the boots to Jerry, sleeping outside all winter. Ma’s chocolate bars are great, the boys trade for smokes. You’d think you hit the jackpot here, cellars full of cash. Arse wipe’s about it. They say the Jerries are whupped. Tell Ma I dream about her pie. Guess what passes for coffee? Weeds by the road. Went to some fella’s house and his wife brewed some up. The Jerries are done for.
Your son always, Jewel

Father Marcus’s eyes were grave but detached as he pressed the host to her tongue that Sunday. Corpus Christi. A tiny, perfect moon, sticky as a postage stamp. The bread of heaven. She’d let it melt on her palate. Blood of Christ, shed for you. Then Mrs. Slauenwhite had corralled her; they were starting early on the raffle, looking for donations. The prize was a quilt embroidered with the names of all the parish boys who’d enlisted, every wife and mother asked to do a square on a sugar bag, a precious item given rationing. Naturally, Lucy’d squirrelled some away. Busy hands mend busy minds.

She was pressing open a seam when the bell rang. Standing there in his cap, the man asked how she was doing. The sky had swayed as he held out the telegram. She shook her head, the iron hissing behind her. “Harry?” she’d called out feebly. But Harry was at work, of course, welding plates to a hull with a hole in it big enough to drive a truck through. Harry? “Sorry?” The man had kept his eyes on her apron, asking if she was Mrs. Caines.

Wounded in action, Jewel was shipped to a hospital in England, they eventually learned. A clean place with good light, said his note. His writing not so different-looking. My luck ran out, was how he put it. All I seen were trees like torches, then a flash. Any lower, and I’d be singing soprano, any higher, and…Sorry for the bad news. Shrapnel. I’ll make it, dont worry. Others didn’t, though. I love you Ma, he signed off, J. Harry’d read it breathing over her shoulder, needing a drink. Impossible to tell if the sound he made was laughing or crying. Swigging, swallowing. “Jesus Christ,” he’d said, muttering about what the fathers of girls didn’t know.

They were both there to see the ship dock, fewer than a dozen people waiting in the spitting April rain. In a throng she mightn’t have recognized him. Stooped, craggy-faced, he’d almost walked right by. She was wearing a new coat, mauve, a bit of an old ladies’ colour. Harry had on a suit and tie, his neck bulging. His bad eye had developed a permanent squint, as if the lid were sick of pretending to be useful. In the five years, four months, and six days since she’d kissed Jewel goodbye, her hair had gone the shade of weathered shingles. He’d looked confused when she grabbed his sleeve.

She could almost circle his waist with one arm, clinging to him. Wincing, he pulled back at first, till Harry pressed in and, swear on everything holy, kissed him. The rain a thousand pinches. He’d limped to the car, an arm around each of them, peering about nervously at every honk and rumble. Gripping his father’s arm, getting into the front seat. A small torture it had been sitting behind him the short ride home, braving his sideward glances. Holy Mary, Mother of God, she’d prayed. Driving in silence, they’d passed sailors beating someone up in broad daylight. She’d thought of Jewel’s wound, the strafing he’d survived—by grace?—as Harry asked if he could guess what she’d baked. Covering his eyes, Jewel just shrugged; and all her waiting was a knife in her side—Stabat mater dolorosa—even as she imagined angels singing. When she gripped his shoulder, through the dank wool he felt warm and solid: more than she could’ve hoped for. “A Ritz pie,” Harry’d brayed—apple made of crackers. “Beat that, eh?”