CHAPTER 17
During the few days that followed, Alice-Ann kept her fears —that Mack might have been writing to both her and Janie Wren —hidden under the surface of what had become normal. But at night, she pored over his letters, looking for clues that he might have been corresponding with more than her . . . or his parents.
She found not a single hint. Either Janie had only expressed her own fantasies, or Boyd MacKay was as suave and slick as Hollywood heartthrob Joseph Cotten. Still, each and every night as she said her prayers, Alice-Ann asked God that, if it could be so —if Mack could still be alive —then make it so. “I’ll do anything,” she whispered into the thick darkness of her bedroom, placing her plea like a gambler’s deal. “I’ll be a better Christian. I’ll work more at the church, if you want me to. I’ll do anything, God. Anything.”
She knew better, of course. She could all but hear Aunt Bess’s stern warning against such prayers. “You should be a better Christian,” Aunt Bess would surely say, “because that’s what Christ expects of you. Not for love, Alice. Those kinds of prayers will get you nowhere.”
But she prayed them anyway, hoping God knew the intent of her heart, as surely he did.
“‘I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings,’” she said, taking her imaginary argument with her aunt a step further by quoting from Jeremiah. Then she added, “Jesus, please search my heart . . .”
The agony of her prayer tore at her, leaving her to cry herself to sleep and wrestle with herself in her dreams until morning came.
Then, on the evening of June 6, as one bit of bad news seemed to be in need of worse news to ride coattails on, their family radio crackled with breaking devastation. “We are continuing in our coverage of the invasion, which, as you know . . .”
Alice-Ann listened with her ears but kept her eyes on her father’s face. Grim hardly began to describe it. For too long, she’d focused only on how the war affected her —the rationing, the long days at work, the blackouts. How it worked all of them —with the exception of maybe Irene —to the bone. There were nights, too many to count, when she’d been too tired to sleep. Others when she’d been too worn-out to wash her face and brush her teeth.
And this war —this awful thing —had taken Mack and Marty Dibble from both the town and the people who loved them, and returned Carlton Hillis with severe trauma to his nervous system. Now this.
“. . . what we have reported thus far has come to us from England —not London —but somewhere in England . . . This is being referred to as ‘The Invasion.’ There are still no Allied confirmations . . . only what the unreliable Germans have reported . . .”
Alice-Ann stood on shaky legs, walked around the sofa to her mother’s chair, where Aunt Bess held a darning needle in one hand and a sock in the other, not touching, merely being held. Alice-Ann sat on the thick armrest, then felt her aunt’s arm slide around her hips. “It’s going to be all right, Alice,” she whispered. But to convince herself or her niece, Alice-Ann wasn’t sure. “In the end, I’m quite certain this will move us toward the war’s end. Our boys coming on home.”
“But what does it mean for now?” she asked, her voice perhaps too loud. Papa shot a look at her —one she hadn’t seen in a while —and shushed her.
“Early Tuesday morning, landing craft and light warships were observed in the area between the mouth of the Somme and the eastern coast of Normandy . . .”
Irene stood, her sleeping baby cradled against her, nuzzling at the bodice of her dress. “I’m going to put him down.” She took two steps from her husband before turning back. “And get a map.” Words that relieved Alice-Ann. At least she wasn’t the only one in the room completely ignorant of where “The Invasion” had taken place.
“The long-expected Anglo-American invasion appears to have begun . . .”
Her father’s jaw worked back and forth.
“Papa?” she dared ask. “Please? What does this mean?”
But it was her brother who turned to look at her, his face pasty white. “This is big, Alice-Ann,” he said, his words soft-spoken.
Nelson shook his head. “I don’t know, little sister. Just . . . big.”
“Are any of our boys over there?”
He turned back to the radio. “No way to know for sure, Alice-Ann. No way to know.” He sighed deeply. “Not for a few days, anyhow.”
Several long days and many news reports later, Bynum had her confirmation.
Pete James —like so many others —had died on Omaha Beach in northern France. Funny-looking Pete, with his too-big ears and lanky bones. Pete James, who’d sworn with the crack of his knuckles on his mother’s living room sofa that he’d “get them Japs.”
But the Japs were only a fragment of the enemy. In the end, Pete James never had a chance —a real chance —at getting anyone.
“I feel so shallow,” Alice-Ann admitted to Carlton on a warm Saturday afternoon a few days later, as they sat for the first time in the Hillises’ living room. With Carlton’s daily improvements, Doc Evans had managed to find a wheelchair for him, on the promise that he would get out of bed every day, get dressed, and —soon enough —get out of the house.
“Why’s that?” he asked.
Alice-Ann studied his eyes, now completely void of bruising and swelling. They were also clear as glass, as they’d always been, but she’d never fully noticed. “I —I didn’t tell you before . . . because I —”
Outside the open window, from the sidewalk below, a child called to his mother and the mother responded, “Well, come on then.”
“Tell me now,” Carlton coaxed, tilting his head and pulling her back into the room. He smiled and echoed the mother’s words. “Well, come on then.”
She chuckled. “Okay. Remember the day I came here smelling like body lotion?”
“The first day, you mean?” he teased.
Alice-Ann nodded. Since the day she’d smelled Jergens on Janie Wren, she’d reveled in the scent of it on her own body, not to mention having appreciated the way it lent itself to making her feel more like a woman with each application. “Yes. The first day.”
“I remember.”
“I told you I had gone to the drugstore that day —to MacKay’s, really. I hadn’t intended to shop. I only wanted to tell them how sorry I was. You know, about Mack.” She paused, not sure where to go from there with her explanation.
“And?”
“I saw Janie Wren. She’s working there now. Do you remember her?”
“Pretty girl? Graduated with your class?”
“Mine and Maeve’s. Mm-hmm.”
He grinned, then brought his hands up in the air to form a curvaceous figure. “I remember.” He whistled between his teeth and she swatted at him.
“Oh, stop it.”
Carlton had the good decency to blush. “Well, she is pretty. Or at least she was the last time I saw her.”
Alice-Ann grimaced, feeling the old self-consciousness fly over her. “Ugh. She still is.”
His eyes squinted. “Do I sense the green-eyed monster?”
“Maybe.”
“And Janie’s beauty bothers you because . . . ?”
“Because I’m not —truth be told —beautiful. Not by the longest stretch of the word. I can’t even be considered attractive.”
He shook his head. “Alice-Ann, you’re a beautiful girl in your own right.”
Alice-Ann couldn’t be sure which bothered her most, that Carlton had called her a “girl” or that he’d declared her beautiful “in her own right.”
He raised both hands. “Wait. No. That didn’t sound right.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. “What I meant to say was —”
She waved her hand in the air to stop him. “Carlton Hillis. If you and I are going to be friends, then the least we can do is be honest with each other.”
“Ah . . . then. What is this honesty you speak of?”
“First of all, my hair is like a —a —Brillo pad.”
“Hyperbole doesn’t look good on you, Miss Branch.”
She leaned over. “And look at these teeth.” She made a horsey face.
“I can’t quite make them out.” Carlton leaned back in his chair and shifted for comfort. “But I remember them. Front two. One laps a little over the other.”
“Makes me look —bucktoothed!”
“I’ve seen bucktoothed. Boy who was in basic with me. That boy had the teeth of a mule, which you don’t. Besides, it gives you character. What kind of person has perfect teeth anyway?”
“Claudette. Maeve. You.”
Carlton ran his index finger over his teeth. “Yep. Sure do, come to think of it. I am, therefore, a man without character.”
Alice-Ann bit her bottom lip to keep from laughing. “And my face,” she continued, wondering what he might have to say about her freckles.
“What’s wrong with your face?”
“You can practically play connect the dots on my face.”
“Again, hyperbole. A dash of freckles across the nose only serves to make you both cute and adorable.”
Alice-Ann threw her hands up and flopped against the back of the sofa. “Cute? Three-year-old girls are cute and adorable, Carlton. Young women almost nineteen years of age don’t want to be known as . . . cute.” She sighed. “Or adorable.”
The rhythm of Carlton’s breathing came slow and easy, as though he pondered something beyond Alice-Ann’s ability to reason. “So what happened that day?” he finally asked.
Alice-Ann stood, walked over to the window, and peered to the side street below, then across it to the bank, where she’d clocked out a short while earlier. Late-afternoon shadows rested against it, like a blanket pulled up for sleeping. “I have to get going. Nelson will be here soon.”
He chuckled. “You’re not going to answer me, are you?”
She returned to the sofa. “Your mama will be up here shortly, getting supper on the table.” She sniffed. “I do believe I smell lima beans cooking on the stove.”
“If we’re lucky, with a ham bone.”
She smiled. Weakly, she knew, but at least it was a smile. “Janie Wren also wrote to Mack since he signed up and . . . Janie Wren believes he could have survived because some football player did.”
Carlton’s face grew somber. “What? She thinks he was shot down in the Pacific and . . .” He shook his head. “What? That he was picked up by the Japs?”
“I reckon.” She pondered it, not as long as she had in the past few weeks, but for a moment. “I suppose it could have happened. I know I’ve —I’ve prayed every single night that it would be so if it could be.”
Something dark and foreboding slid across his face, and his eyes —five minutes ago full of mischief and teasing —grew dark. “If that’s so, Alice-Ann, you’d better pray another way.”
Unexplainable fear gushed over her. “What do you mean?”
Carlton looked down. “I still can’t believe they let his location get past the censors.”
“What do you mean?” Alice-Ann repeated again, as though the first question had been forgotten.
“He told you they were in Emirau. The censors should have caught that.” He looked at the ceiling. “This whole thing. It’s just a real mess.”
Alice-Ann remembered the letter. The missing sections. “They cut out part of it. I think the part about what he’d be doing there.”
“They should have cut the whole blame thing.”
His eyes fixed on hers until finally she repeated her question, the one whose answer she feared the most. “What did you mean about me praying the other way?”
“The Japanese, sweetheart. They’re —” he paused —“not . . . kind to their prisoners.
“Not kind? Can you be specific?”
Carlton shook his head again. But this time, had she not been staring at him, she would have missed it. “No,” he said. “Even if the government can’t censor all of it, I can.”
Footsteps bounded up the stairs, and a moment later, Maeve rushed into the room, her hands working her hair into a ponytail. “Hey,” she said with a grin, but then her face fell. “Hey,” she said again, this time drawing the word out. “What’s going on in here?”
Alice-Ann stood. “Nothing.” She collected her purse from the sofa. “We were just talking about the —the war, that’s all.”
Maeve frowned. “You’re supposed to be making him feel better, Alice-Ann. Reading to him and stuff like that. Not making him relive the nightmares of war.”
“I’m not —”
“Wait a minute, you two,” Carlton interjected. He turned his face to his sister. “First of all, Maeve, I’m feeling just fine, thanks in part to Alice-Ann.”
“But I —”
“No buts, little sister. Right now I’m having a conversation with my friend about something important to her.” He turned his face toward where Alice-Ann stood planted on the oval rag rug for which she and Maeve and Claudette had helped tear material . . . back when they’d been high school girls without a care in the world. “Sweetheart, listen to me.” His voice held such tenderness and caring, Alice-Ann feared she’d begin to cry. “Are you listening?”
She nodded, then whispered, “Yes.”
“You pray the way God leads you. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Alice-Ann stepped to the chair, leaned over, and kissed his cheek, inhaling the light scent of aftershave. “No,” she added. “I’m sure there’s a lot about war I don’t understand.” She glanced at Maeve. “I mean, how are we to understand any of it, really? We’ve lived our part here on the home front —the blackout curtains, the rationing, the drills . . . but what do we know of what men like Carlton and —and Mack —have seen?”
Maeve crossed the room to gather Alice-Ann in her arms. “I’m sorry, Alice-Ann. Sometimes I forget what all this has cost you, too.”
Alice-Ann opened her mouth to say more but then stopped herself. What good would it do, after all? “I have to go. Really.” She glanced at the cuckoo clock that ticked from a three-tiered table. “I’ll have to run now to make it.”
Carlton reached for her hand, and as she’d done so often lately, she willingly gave it. “Are we okay?” he asked.
“We’re more than okay,” she answered with a squeeze. “But I really must go.”