It wasn’t difficult to find 111 Clement Street. It was a tall building made of stucco that had been separated into apartments. Unit A was directly up a small flight of outside stairs and had its own entrance.
“You ready?” Milo said. He had the helmet under one arm.
“No. But this is why we’re here,” Lucy said, and held on to her pouch of rue for courage. It didn’t matter that her legs were shaking. It didn’t matter that she suddenly realized she had a lot of feelings riding on the answer to the question of whether or not this man was okay, or if he had left his family and buried the memory of them in the dirt.
And then it was happening. A woman with pixy-short dark hair and a crinkle in her nose when she smiled answered the door. She was thin, and Lucy suddenly wished she’d brought something for them besides the pictures. Biscotti, maybe.
“Yes?” the woman said. Not unkindly. Then she spied the helmet and her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
Lucy couldn’t find a single word.
“We’re sorry to bother you,” Milo said, and swallowed. “But we might have something that belongs to you.”
“Does John Ruth live here?” Lucy found her voice.
The woman took a step back to call up the stairs. “Johnny!”
A teenager, short and burly, with a flat nose and a military haircut, hopped down the stairs to stand beside the woman. He resembled the Johnny in Lucy’s picture, but couldn’t be. The picture had been taken in 1963, almost ten years before. “Yeah? Who are you two?”
Milo and Lucy looked at each other. Milo said, “Is your dad here, maybe?”
The boy’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know about my dad?”
The thin woman put her hand on Johnny’s shoulder and stepped forward, slightly blocking him. Protecting him. “What’s this about?”
Lucy took the plastic baggie out of her sweatshirt pocket and handed the three pictures to the boy. “We found these.”
Before Johnny could get a good look at the pictures, the woman snatched them out of his hands, her eyes wide.
“Where did you get these?”
“Is that . . . Dad?” Johnny said.
Lucy hesitated. “We found them buried in a flight helmet in the hills just outside San Jose. Near Alum Rock Park.”
Milo held out the helmet with the Dirty Thirty symbol painted on the back, and Johnny took it. Then they all stood there, momentarily flustered, silent as the stars above.
“Heavens, look at us just standing here like a bunch of bumpkins. Come in!” the woman finally said. She opened the door wide enough for them to go inside.
“I’m Meg, and this is Johnny. Amanda!” Meg called, and a long-legged, almost-Gia-aged person came trotting down the stairs. She even had Gia’s long, dark hair.
“Yeah?” She smiled at Lucy. She had the same crinkle in her nose as her mom.
“Let’s all sit down for a minute and take a deep breath,” Meg said.
Amanda looked confused, but followed her mom into the living room. Once they were all situated on the long velvet sofa and mismatched chairs, and introductions made, Meg took the three photographs and handed one each to Amanda and Johnny, keeping one for herself.
“It’s Dad!” Amanda said.
“That was our last day together before he left for the war the first time,” Meg said with a hint of a smile.
Milo took the Purple Heart from his pocket. “We found this, too.”
Johnny leaned forward and took it from Milo. He looked at his mother. “I didn’t know Dad was injured.”
“He wouldn’t talk about it. Even with me. Where did you find these things?”
“There’s a house up in the hills that’s a meeting hall sort of place for vets. They come together and tell stories. Sometimes they stay overnight if they don’t have anyplace else to go. We found the name John Ruth in the record books. He came through in January of 1965, and he left this address,” Lucy said.
“Sounds like somewhere John would have gone. He was always off helping this vet or helping that one. Lord knows they weren’t getting help from anyone else.”
“So he came back?” Lucy said.
“For a little while,” Meg said. She looked off toward the fireplace mantel where there was a folded American flag in a triangular box. “He came back the first time. But not the second.”
Lucy and Milo both stared at the flag and without thinking, Lucy reached for Milo’s hand. Lucy was heartbroken for this family, for herself. For Gia and Josh. For the whole wide world, it seemed. She hadn’t realized how much she was counting on the idea that she would find whoever the Purple Heart belonged to. That she’d see a family who made it through the war whole.
“He didn’t know how to be home. He couldn’t sit still. He’d leave sometimes for days at a time. Finally, he told me he had to go back,” Meg said. “That somehow, he hadn’t done enough the first time.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lucy finally said. “I hope this hasn’t made things worse.”
“Heavens no, child. You haven’t made things worse at all,” Meg said. She looked young to Lucy, especially when she smiled. “We’re happy to have whatever pieces of him we can get.”
The helmet was a little dirty, but Milo had cleaned it mostly, so Johnny slipped it on, snapped the strap under his chin. Then he put both his hands on either side of the helmet, as though hugging it tight to his head. Maybe he was listening for something, the way you can listen to the inside of a seashell.
Lucy realized the Purple Heart wasn’t just for the wounds of a soldier, but the family’s too. A testament to their own resilience and bravery in surviving a different kind of wound.
“Mom, this is the first time I’ve seen myself this little,” Amanda said. “Too bad we lost all the pictures.”
Johnny looked at his folded hands. “They’re in the spare room. In the closet up on the shelf behind a box marked sweaters.”
“When did you find them?” Meg said, unsurprised.
“A few years ago. I was looking for a blanket to take to the beach.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Meg said.
Johnny just shrugged.
“What?” Amanda said, looking back and forth between her brother and her mom. “Mom, why did you hide them? And why didn’t you tell me, Johnny?”
“We all have our own way of handling things, I guess. Some of us better than others,” Meg said.
“Well, don’t just sit there, Johnny. Go get them!” Amanda said. She took the Purple Heart from her mom and inspected it from top to bottom.
“I suppose it’s time,” Meg said. She looked at the flag in the wooden box over the fireplace. “Right, John? You found a way home, after all.”
Lucy stood up, a bit wobbly on her feet, suddenly feeling like an intruder. “We should go.”
Milo was still staring at the American flag folded in its triangular box.
“Can I at least give you something for your trouble? You must have been searching for a long time.”
“No, ma’am.” Milo stood up. “‘You can’t put a price on a good deed.’ That’s what my dad always says.”
Meg stood up and gave them each a giant squeezy hug. Then Johnny came down the stairs with a fairly large box. Lucy hoped it was crammed tight with pictures. Amanda bounced up and down on the sofa, arms outstretched, ready to receive them.
After a few more thank-yous and Meg’s insistence they at least take a small flag she kept with her pencils by the phone, Lucy hurried down the stairs and toward their bus stop without waiting for Milo. He tried to catch up.
“What’s the matter?” Milo said.
“I don’t know!” Lucy said. “I’m just so tired.”
Lucy finally slowed down and they walked side by side over to Geary for the 38 bus to Union Square, where they’d pick up the 45 back to North Beach.
“I wanted him to be there, I guess,” Lucy said. “I wanted to ask him questions. About the war. About how to keep your family together.”
“But your family is together,” Milo said.
How could Lucy explain that, somehow, they were together and not together at the very same time? That it didn’t really matter if a body was next to you, if the heart was ten thousand miles away.
By the time they got back at four o’clock sharp, the fog had burned off. Great-Aunt Lilliana, Papo Angelo, Lucy and Milo went up to the rooftop deck for a few minutes to take it all in and say good-bye.
Great-Aunt Lilliana’s rooftop was filled from front to back with flowers and bushes and different places to sit. She even had two small crape myrtles blooming their bright fuchsia hearts out. They all stood there quietly, watching the gulls dip and rise on the breeze, flying against the wind.
“I’ve booked the cruise,” Papo said, hands shoved in his pockets. “We’re leaving in October and hoping for clear skies and the aurora borealis. I’ve even purchased a backpack for Nonnina’s urn.”
“Why couldn’t you have waited?” Lucy said, turning to look at Papo.
“For what, my Lucia?”
“You could have waited until we were all there to ring the bell for your last dollar. Why would you have done it when no one was around except Gia?”
Papo took a deep breath of salty air. His nose was pink. “Oh, Lucia. I have had that dollar for years.”
“I knew it!” Lucy said. “So why then?”
Papo turned his hands out of his pockets and lifted them to the sky. “It suddenly came over me. Now is the time! And before I could stop and think, I just rang the bell like a ding-a-ling! I knew if I didn’t do it just then, I might never do it at all.”
Great-Aunt Lilliana turned to Milo and said, “Is it time for you, too?” Which surprised them all, including Milo. “Are you ready to show us what you’re hiding?”
Milo didn’t hesitate. He just took out the most magnificently carved dragonfly Lucy had ever seen. It was palm-sized and intricate and made of wood stained a dark red. Deep in his pocket all this time.
“It’s a golden-winged skimmer,” Lucy said, remembering his drawing.
Then, as though struck by lightning, or some other paralyzing force of nature, Milo slid into a heap. Lucy rushed to his side thinking he’d been hurt, or was having a seizure, or she didn’t know what.
“What’s the matter?”
Tears came down Milo’s cheeks. “My dad’s not coming home.”
She wrapped her arms around his bony shoulders. “Oh, my gosh, why not? What happened?”
“He died,” Milo said. “Three months ago.”
“Three months...”
Lucy looked up at Great-Aunt Lilliana and Papo Angelo to see if they might understand what was happening. They both looked mournful, knowing. But of course they knew. Everyone probably knew except Lucy. Because she’d been so preoccupied with her own troubles. Papo leaned down and put a hand on Milo’s shoulder.
Great-Aunt Lilliana left them huddled there and went downstairs. She came back with a handkerchief, a glass of water and a baby aspirin. She also carried another herb of some kind. By the time Great-Aunt Lilliana tied the pouch around Milo’s neck and put her hand over the pouch and his heart, Milo was still.
“I wanted to tell you a hundred times. But I just couldn’t say it out loud,” Milo said. He looked at Lucy. “We got his Purple Heart in the mail. In the mail! They didn’t even deliver it in person. And I was so mad. About all of it. And so I took it out to the Cape Fear River . . . to the place I’d drawn the dragonflies with Dad. I took it out there and I . . . I just threw it . . .”
Milo couldn’t finish. He cried instead, and Lucy held him tight. She was sick for his loss, sad because he hadn’t trusted her sooner.
And astonished because this journey hadn’t just been hers.
It had been Milo’s, too, of course.
They were a team.