FLOSSY CLOSED THE BOOK and sat in the quiet of her kitchen, save for the moaning wind and the crackling fire.
She felt nearly the same tempered sadness of a long vigil beside a dying friend. Virginia Woolf was gone. She shook her head. Leonard Woolf and her sister, Vanessa, had been concerned about her but just then everyone had their own preoccupations. It was the height of the war, with air raids and blackouts, and Leonard was doing volunteer night duty watching for fires. The day before her death, before she walked into the Ouse River weighed down with rocks in her pockets, he had taken her to see Octavia Wilberforce, a distant cousin of Virginia’s who was practising medicine near them in Brighton. He’d spoken with Octavia about his wife in the weeks leading up to the suicide. In fact, Octavia was herself sick with influenza but agreed to see Mrs. Woolf none-theless. She would say later, after it was all over, after they’d finally found the body, she thought Virginia had been haunted by her father. Flossy looked up and outside, could see the butternut tree trembling in the wind.
At that moment, there was a rap on the door, it opened and Jimmy limped in.
“Jimmy,” she said, startled, jumping to her feet, “you’re early. They’re still in bed.”
“Heh, heh, not surprised,” he grinned, pulling a baseball glove out of a plastic bag. “The grandson’s. Never uses it.”
“Ah, that’s much better than the one she’s been using. We’ll get it back to you. Have a coffee?”
“Sure, okay.” Jimmy removed his jacket, hung it on a hook inside the door, put his cap on top of it and took his usual chair while Flossy poured him a cup. Oscar was curled on top of the wood box behind the stove. “Wasn’t that a beauty last night?” he asked.
“The rain? We sure needed it,” she said, dropping a teaspoon into his cup and placing it in front of him at the table. Her brother grunted acknowledgement.
After she got her own and poured some milk from the refrigerator, she stood at the window watching the rain and looking towards Mealie’s studio. Jimmy was stirring sugar into his coffee, his back to her.
“Eighteenth of April, 1925,” she said. “That’s another one for Becky. I was thinking about that day this morning,” she said wistfully, looking out into the curtain of rain, “down by the bay, with father. Was just like this, wasn’t it?” He stopped stirring. She could hear the rain pelting against the roof. Her gaze followed a drop rolling down the outside of the window. It stopped abruptly as if it had lost its way, and, rolling away in two directions, dissolved into nothing. “When did you figure it out, Jimmy?”
He didn’t answer and she began to wonder if he’d heard. He began to stir again, then stopped. “London,” he finally said.
“In hospital?”
He nodded. She sat down near him at the table. “That war was hell on you.”
“On a lotta people,” he nodded his head again and stirred the coffee. “I thought I could take a lot,” his old blue eyes looked pained. “You’d think you’d forget about it by now, you’re forgetting everything else,” he said. “I think about it more and more, Flo, all the time. When I can’t sleep at night, I lie there and count off the names of my mates who were killed. I never get to the end of them.”
“How many, Jimmy?”
“Hundred and thirty-two.”
“Dear Lord, it’s a wonder you survived surviving,” she said. “It’s a wonder you survived any of it — home, the war. Any of it. I, I don’t … I can only think that I let you down, Jimmy. I should have talked to you, helped you, let you talk about it.”
He shrugged, looking down at his cup. “Nobody wanted to hear. Not just you.” He took his glasses off and set them on the table. He shifted in his chair as if he were a man needing to settle into the words he was about to speak. “I told Thomas,” his voice cracked. Flossy looked up at him. “A couple of weeks before he died, about father and us at the boat. I think it must’ve killed him ...” He swallowed hard.
“Oh no, Jimmy, dear God,” she said, reaching a hand across and grabbing his arm. “It brought Thomas back, to life, couldn’t you see that?” She patted him gently and shook her head. “You let him forgive himself, that’s what you did. You let Thomas go. It was the kindest thing anyone could have done for him.”
They sat quietly for a few minutes. Jimmy dug into his pocket, pulled out an old checkered handkerchief and blew his nose. How had she let him drift so far away, knowing he’d probably gone through hell and back in Europe? She’d not cared enough to ask, her own brother, had just not made the effort to let him talk. “I didn’t think …,” she began. “I didn’t think about how those things might have affected you. We should have talked about that, about Thomas and the Mumford boys, the war. All these things you’ve carried and I didn’t help. It would have done us both good to talk. I should have been a better sister … I’m so sorry, Jimmy.”
He pulled his head back. “It got me through,” he said, “a lot of things, knowin’ you saved my life. I would’ve gone with him, Flo, in the boat, if it hadn’t been for you.”