54
Out of the morning quiet came an inquiry from the person Vivian least expected.
“Are you absolutely sure about this?” Luanne said pointedly. “Because if you’re not . . .”
At the vanity, seated in her bathrobe, Vivian lowered the cardinal-red lipstick she was about to apply. She turned toward her roommate, who stood at the closet in her freshly buttoned dress.
“Please, don’t get me wrong,” Luanne continued. “I adore the thought of calling you my sister. And I know it might be unfair of me to say anything, with the ceremony only hours away. It’s just that everything’s moved so fast. Especially given how much he’s been out of town.”
Vivian admitted to her: “I do understand why you’d be concerned.”
When Gene and Vivian announced the news right after the proposal, Luanne had smiled and bid them good wishes. There had been an uncertainty, however, underlying her manner. Not unlike the doubts that festered in Vivian. Still, the week had rolled on without dissent, until this moment.
“This isn’t just about me, Viv.” Luanne took a step closer. “You haven’t even told your parents. Don’t you think they’ll be upset to have missed it?”
“They’ll be fine–after a while. Besides, it’s best this way. I don’t want the fanfare of a big wedding and neither does your brother.” What’s more, an event like that would take months that Vivian could not afford to spare.
“But shouldn’t your father at least give his blessing?”
“Gene was going to ask him, but there’s no guarantee when my father will actually return. Then there’s the business of my parents not even being at the same house. Don’t you see? This helps avoid all of those issues.”
“Well, yes. I suppose....”
“Luanne, good grief. I thought you were overjoyed we became a couple.”
“I was. I am. But still–”
Vivian could not bear any more of this. “Gene and I are going to be happy together.” The declaration shot out with such potency, she wondered which of them she was trying more to convince.
After a pause, Luanne gave a look of regret. “I’m sorry, Viv. I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t be.”
Vivian shook her head, bridling her emotions. “It’s okay. You were right, it has moved fast.” She shrugged and said, “We’re just eager to make it official and don’t see the point in waiting. The same as a lot of other couples these days.”
Given the recent rash of deployment, sprints to the altar had become commonplace, even for people who had scarcely met. The fact that Gene was stationed in the States hadn’t stopped Vivian from using this rationale as a source of self-assurance.
“We love each other, Luanne. We really do.”
Though truth upheld the words, Vivian withdrew her gaze, fearing it would reveal more than she wished to share. As she busied herself with powder, Luanne slipped into a pair of heels and approached the vanity. She gave Vivian’s shoulder a tender squeeze.
“I still need to pick up your bouquet,” Luanne said with notable lightness. “I’ll see you there?”
Vivian smiled without turning. “See you there.”
Some would say it was bad luck, letting Gene view her before the wedding. But Vivian had come to learn that in spite of one’s efforts–avoiding cracks, crossing fingers, flinging salt-most in life occurred with little control.
The only element she could count on was the ease she would feel in Gene’s presence. This was the reason she had insisted he escort her to the courthouse. She knew she would need that comfort in order to carry on with the plan.
And for a brief while, it worked.
He stood at her door in his dashing dress uniform, his eyes glimmering beneath the bill of his hat. “Shall we?” he said with a smile, and offered the crook of his arm. He guided her to the waiting cab, carrying her suitcase for their hotel stay downtown. Packed among her clothing was a silken nightgown for what would be their first time together in that way.
What she had not figured into the equation, however, was the intrusion of her conscience. For the better part of a week, it had stalked her from a distance. But here, en route to the courthouse, it was squeezed in like a third passenger. She could not ignore its existence. From her heightened awareness, each kindness from Gene transformed into a punishment. His compliments over her appearance, on her wedding suit and Victory curls, were like lashes to her skin. He held her hand, and the sincerity of his touch burned through her thin ivory gloves.
Were the sensations but a warning of what was to come?
Months down the road, Gene would cradle the baby as Vivian lurked in the background, haunted by a secret. That was assuming, of course, the child’s birth would not have already exposed the truth-when gray-blue eyes, light-blond curls, and an early delivery shouted proof of another father.
The faster the thoughts spun in her mind, the thicker the air became. She leaned closer to the open window, but the August humidity blocked any reprieve. She sought an escape, a means to break free.
“Sir, could you pull over?” she said to the driver.
“Sweetheart,” Gene said, “we still have several blocks to go.”
“I need out. Now. Please.”
He looked at her, befuddled, but affirmed her request with the cabbie. The instant they halted at the curb, Vivian jumped out and headed to nowhere in particular. It was as though she had blinked and the golden path of her life had twisted and darkened into a merciless maze.
“Vivian, wait for me!” Gene called out. Travel bags in hand, he caught up to her near the fountain of a city park, where three children waded about, scavenging for pennies. When Gene turned her around, she jerked her eyes away.
“Doll, what is it? Tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t. I can’t do it.” She cringed inside, disgusted by what she had almost done.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll just wait. We don’t have to rush.”
“Gene, you don’t understand.”
He studied her face, searching for clues, until a splash from the fountain hit his sleeve.
“Come over here with me.” He guided her to a corner of the park and onto a shaded bench. He set their luggage down. As he sat beside her, a hot tear leaked down her cheek. She went to wipe it away, but he gently beat her to it.
“Folks get cold feet all the time. Nothing to worry about.”
“No,” she whispered. “That’s not it.”
He hesitated, looking afraid to ask. “What, then?”
If only he hadn’t surprised her with that proposal. She had been fully prepared to confess it all. After six weeks of his absence, trading only a handful of letters and phone calls, she could not have seen that coming. No girl in her right mind would have seen that coming.
“Why did you ask me?” she said. She was desperate for the road map that had delivered them here, to pinpoint the wrong turns they had taken.
His forehead creased, the pondering of a trick question. “Because I love you.”
“We were apart for more than a month, you never even mention marriage, and the minute you come back you get down on one knee. Why?”
He parted his lips to answer. Then he tucked them in, tight as wire. Gazing away from her, he sank into the bench.
Finally, he said, “I’d made a mistake before. Years ago. I loved a girl, and she believed we’d get hitched one day. Have kids. Live happily ever after. Everybody around us did.”
It was his old girlfriend, Helen. Vivian knew this without asking. The story of betrayal had never been more painfully significant.
“I wasn’t sure, though, that I ever wanted to get married,” he said. “When I told her that, after years together, she pulled away for a while. One thing led to another and ... it didn’t work out. I realized too late that I should’ve explained more to her, so she’d have understood.”
He shrugged a shoulder in a manner that was anything but nonchalant. “Thing of it is my old man was a decent guy-until he drank. Usually he’d just throw a fit, start breaking things. But one night my mom accidentally burnt a roast. Money was tight, and he exploded. I was at the table when he slapped her hard enough to knock her down. She caught the edge of the counter with the back of her head and wound up with four stitches. I was twelve. He never did it again, not that I know of anyway. But part of me never forgave myself for just sitting there, scared as hell in my seat, not defending her like I should have.”
Vivian had never noticed how rarely Luanne talked about home. All those years, she had always seemed so sweet and carefree, no one in school would have imagined.
Gene cleared his throat and turned to Vivian. “Point is, with me being away from you, and feeling a distance growing, I just . . .” He shook his head and clutched her hand on her lap. “I couldn’t risk losing you, Vivi. Not when I know we’re supposed to be together. I know it in my heart. And I have no doubt anymore about being a good husband. I’d take such good care of you, if you’d let me.”
“Oh, Gene. I know you would....” Her tears were falling now in a stream she couldn’t slow, couldn’t stop. After what he had shared, her confession would gain another layer of cruelty. “That’s why there’s something you need to know.”
He waited for her to go on, clearly recognizing her conflict as more than cold feet.
Perhaps, to some extent, he would relate to her feeling of deep regret, of being unable to change the past but wanting direly to make things right.
Vivian amassed the remnants of her courage, recalling a time she could now identify as both the beginning and the end. “I was living in London with my parents,” she said. “One day, I was at the market alone when the air-raid siren sounded. It was just a routine alarm. We had no idea-or at least I was too ignorant to realize how close we were to war. And how, because of it, my whole life would change.”
A rivulet of sweat slid down her back. She shifted her vision to an unseen, distant spot. She could only complete the tale if not faced by Gene’s reaction, including the inevitable revelation that the “friend” from Germany she had asked him to help was actually Isaak.
“At a vendor stand,” she said, “I knocked over a tomato. It landed on a man’s dress shoe, and when I looked up he was standing there. And he smiled at me.”
From there, Vivian pressed on, covering the highlights of moments that had shaped her life for the past three years. Meeting Isaak at the London cinemas, the secrecy of their courtship and his family in Munich. His professor at the university, the information gleaned from her father, the letter at Euston Station. She described the reunion at Prospect Park, igniting confusion and fears, the resurrection of interred feelings. She spoke of Agent Daniel Gerard, the dealings of espionage that prohibited her from confiding in anyone, including Gene. And with a tightened throat, she detailed the legal dealings that had led to Isaak’s execution.
“Before that, though,” she said, fighting the shake in her voice, “I went to his hotel room to deliver a message. I never meant for anything more to happen. I swear to God, I didn’t. I was certain it was over for us-whatever it was that he and I’d once had. After he died, I was going to move on with my life. With you. But then, weeks later, I was at work, and I fainted. And they sent me to the doctor, and . . . and I . . .”
Struggling to finish, she angled toward Gene. She found his eyes lowering to her stomach, where her hands had unconsciously settled. He inhaled a sharp breath, and his neck trembled as though his head had become too heavy. He moved his jaw in several attempts to speak but failed.
“I am so, so sorry. Gene, the last thing I ever meant to do was hurt you.”
He rubbed his hand over his mouth. A bead of perspiration trailed from his temple, just below his hat. When his gaze slid toward her, it was clear he could not see her. He had succumbed to a daze she too often made her home.
“I’d understand if you never wanted to see me again,” she told him. “But I pray that somehow you’ll find a way to forgive me.”
An infinite beat passed before he rose woodenly, wordlessly from the bench.
“Please,” she said, “don’t go yet.” She touched his sleeve, and he held there for a moment. If only he would look at her, he would see in her eyes and face how utterly sorry she was, how desperate she was to make it up to him.
But he didn’t turn an inch. He merely walked away, abandoning his belongings, leaving her behind.