October 16, 1944

ROCKPORT, MASSACHUSETTS

Dear Rita,

Has the world ever been so beautiful and terrifying as it is right now? I never thought I was a person who was afraid of much. But boy, I’m scared.

Your letter arrived not a moment too soon (as they always seem to do!) Just when I was beginning to doubt that I could maintain this entire farce. And that’s what it started to feel like, a farce. Shakespearean (so Sal would have loved a retelling of the story) and forced. Every morning I felt I pasted a lipstick smile across my lips and hoped the day would rush by. Afraid to lock eyes with Levi, whose longing seeps from him. Or even look too hard at Robert, whose eyes hold the same longing. Like the other night when I was clearing the dinner dishes and Robert came in to help me. Levi grabbed the dish from him.

“I’ve got it,” said Robert, holding firm to the plate.

“Let me,” said Levi, not letting go either.

They both pulled at it and then it fell to the floor. Crashed into a million pieces. Then they both just stared at me. I’m so exhausted by all the tension. Something has got to be done.

Or Robbie, who needs so much, and Corrine, whose little life has been turned upside down more than any of ours, I guess.

So many sets of eyes pleading for me to be more than I am. Frankly, I’m exhausted. And then? Then I get your letter.

I was walking back from a glorious outdoor rally. I’d just made a speech about “Maintaining Our Autonomy When the War Is Over” (the irony of this was not lost on me, but I was persuasive, anyway). We were on the green, near the beach, but I’d decided to take the long way home. So I walked through town.

It’s lovely here when the tourists leave. Don’t get me wrong, I love the jumble of new people during the late spring and summer months. They give this place a newness that it needs. But when they empty out, it’s like the sea at low tide. An acquired taste. And yet...a treasure trove of tide pools and deep-sea shells. And the water is always so peaceful even if it’s laden with seaweed.

Anyway, I was walking through town and Sam comes running out of the post office waving a letter. He gave it to me and then held my hand. “Someday you’ll have to tell me all about these letters, Mrs. Whitehall,” he said. “I get almost as excited as you do when they come in and I don’t even know why!” Then he went back into the post office.

I liked that. Feeling like our friendship has gone beyond us. It is one of the only good feelings I have these days. Can you tell I’m trying to skirt around an issue here? Because I am. My words fail me here almost as much as they did the very first time I tried to write to you.

It happened. All of it happened. And now? Now I’m lost. Here goes, the whole shebang of it.

When he first got home, Robert was doing exceptionally well. But as the elation of homecoming began wearing off, reality sunk in. He needs help to bathe, Rita. And help to dress. He tries, but falls. His upper arms are so strong...but I think there’s a part of his brain that assumes his legs will work. So he tries to make them move, and when they don’t...he finds himself on the floor. He won’t let me see him like that, so he yells and grabs for the bottoms of doors, trying to slam them shut. To close me out.

It was the sneaking out of bed at night that was the worst. And it led to all the trouble. I’d lie there and pretend to stay asleep. Pretend I couldn’t hear him struggle from the bed to the chair. I told myself I pretended because I wanted him to have that little bit of grace. Truth is, I knew what could happen in the dark night, just the two of us and some crickets. Honesty. The kind that turns your stomach.

One night, though, I was so restless I followed him out of the bedroom. He wheeled out onto the back porch to smoke. When I got to the door and looked out, I could see the back of his head, the smoke curling into the darkness.

You were with me in my mind at that very moment, as if you were standing right next to me.

“It’s now or never, Glory...” you said.

So out I went.

“Got one of those for me?” I asked.

He didn’t turn around right away. I walked around to face him and sat right up on the weathered wooden table we keep out there. That way, my head was a bit higher than his. I needed some kind of power in the situation or I’d never do what had to be done.

He shook a cigarette out of his pack and lit one for me.

“When did you start, Ladygirl? Not too ladylike...”

I took the cigarette and lingered over my first drag. “Not very ladylike to sit on a table in your nightgown, either,” I said.

“Maybe we lost all the real ladies to the war,” he said.

“Maybe so,” I said, but then I got quiet because I was losing my nerve. Thank God he knows me. Thank the good Lord.

“You got something to tell me, Ladygirl?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I knew it,” he said, slapping his knee and laughing. “I could feel it from the day I got off the train. It’s been written all over your face. Spit it out, quick. Who is this new Gloria I’m married to? The old Gloria Whitehall would have told me anything.”

“It’s not that easy, Robert. It’s about the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

“It’s serious?” he asked.

And that was it. I wasn’t going to bruise his pride any more by making him play twenty questions with me. I let my weakness with Levi fall out of my mouth. The flirting, the kiss, the—you know. I won’t write it.

Nothing but crickets were heard for a long, long time. So long I helped myself to another three or four cigarettes. He didn’t offer to light those.

“Do you love him, Glory?”

That’s what he asked when he broke his silence. Do I love him...do I love him.

I thought I’d say no. But when I opened my mouth, I said, “Yes, I do. But not how I love you, Robert. Not like a wife loves her husband. I love him like a dear friend. Like a long-ago love. Not up close. I love him from years and years away.”

“Will you leave me be for a bit?” he asked. His voice cracking and breaking my heart.

“You want me to go to bed?” I asked.

“Yes. Go to bed. I need to be alone, okay, Gloria?”

Gloria. Not Ladygirl. Maybe never Ladygirl again.

I went to bed but I didn’t sleep a wink. I heard him come in the house and then I heard some things breaking. But I didn’t get up. After it got quiet I went to check on him. He was in the living room, asleep in his wheelchair, holding a picture frame. I eased it out of his hand, careful not to wake him. It was a picture of the three of us—me and Levi and Robert, our arms around one another from when we were kids. The three musketeers.

Our wedding picture was on the floor, glass broken. I took the photo out of the frame and eased that one back into his hands. He would wake up holding us as a couple. And I would put the picture of the three of us high up on a shelf, where it belonged.

The next morning I woke up to shouting.

“She’s my wife!” yelled Robert.

I ran to the porch and out the screen door in time to see him throw his coffee cup at Levi. I froze.

“What part of that did you not understand, Levi? Were you still so angry at me for winning her heart? Were you angry at me for being healthy enough to fight in the war? Well, look at me, man! Who wins? WHO WINS NOW? You get the girl and you get to walk. You get a nice house and two kids, too. Happy? Are you happy?” He was pulling himself up by the porch columns, his legs slipping, but his arms holding strong.

Levi was white. Pale as if he was dead. I could tell he wanted to help Robert, but knew he mustn’t get too close. Because in Robert’s face was a rage neither one of us had ever seen. A rage that came from a dark, black place, Rita. The war was inside of him...ready to come out.

“I didn’t get the girl, Robert. I might have got her attention for a second...but I didn’t get her. She’s always been yours, we all know it,” said Levi, loud enough to be heard over Robert’s roaring tenor. Just yelling without words.

That’s when Robert fell. He fell to the ground, down the two small steps from the porch to the grass.

Levi couldn’t stand it, so he reached down to help him up. But then Robert’s arms shot up and before I knew it he’d turned Levi over and had him pinned to the ground. He was punching him, over and over again. Levi was struggling to get up...and that’s when I unfroze.

“Stop it! STOP IT!” I cried. I threw myself on Robert’s back, and he shot up his elbow. It clocked me right in the eye. I fell to the ground next to them, and I must have screamed because the children were out and on the porch, and then on top of me in a heap.

Robert turned to me, “Oh, Jesus, Glory! Are you okay?” He was at my side in a flash. “What did I do...? What have I done? What the hell is happening to us?” he choked out through his enraged broken heart. His eyes were absolutely frantic, Rita. I think it wasn’t until that very moment that I understood the full ramifications of my transgressions. He fell back and leaned his body against the lattice of the back porch. The children went to him, trying to hush him. How they’ve fallen in love with their daddy so quickly. It’s been a natural adjustment for them. He shines in their eyes.

Levi got up and backed about a yard away from the pack of us. There was crying and soothing and cooing going on for the children...and soon, believe it or not, there was laughing. All of us. Levi, too.

My eye hurt, but my heart was starting to heal.

When all the fuss quieted down, Levi was the first one to talk.

“I came over this morning to tell you I’m leaving. I’m going to California. I got a cousin out there who bought some land. He fought in the war, fell in love with grapes in Italy, I guess. Wants to start a vineyard.”

“What do you want me to say?” asked Robert, smoothing back his hair. His hair that was growing in again, but there’s gray there, Rita. And he was squinting at Levi. There were tears for that lost friendship, too. So many tears.

“Nothing,” said Levi. “There’s nothing to say. I’m sorry, Robert. I’m sorry I tried to take something from you that we all know was always yours.”

The wind blew through the trees. I heard my heart beating in my ears. This was it. He was leaving. He looked at me, into me and then past me like he’d seen a ghost.

“You leavin’, Levi?” asked Robbie. “I don’t want you to leave.” He ran to Levi, who scooped him up. My thoughts and eyes went to Robert, who I know longed to do the same thing, but couldn’t.

“Hey, little man. You got your dad back now. You don’t need me around anymore.”

He tried to set Robbie down, but that child’s legs went to jelly.

“How about this, how about I go out to California and make a pretty penny. Then you and your mother, your father and baby Corrine can come out and visit me. Whaddaya say?”

The invitation seemed to do the trick. Robbie squirmed away and took off chasing Corrine, yelling, “She’s no baby! She’s a big old sore thumb!”

“I guess that’s that,” said Levi.

“Seems so,” said Robert.

Levi rubbed some dirt off his pants and walked away. Down the path that I’d seen him run up a thousand times, and I knew I’d never see him there again.

“Damn, girl. Just go to him if you want to...” said Robert, noticing my stare. “I can’t stop you, and right now I don’t know if I want to.”

I ran down the road after Levi. It was an easy thing to do because for the first time I knew what had to be done. There were no more questions in my heart.

“Levi!” I shouted. “Wait up!”

He turned to face me. The trees along our road arched over him, framing his masculine perfection. It’s a vision I’ll never forget. His nose was bleeding and he was wiping it away with a handkerchief. One I’d made for him.

“You coming with me?” he asked, his eyes shining.

For a moment I was sorry I’d run after him. It seems that all I do is hurt that man.

“No, Levi. I just wanted to tell you a proper goodbye. And a proper ‘I’m sorry’—and a proper ‘thank you.’”

“My ma always told me that true friends don’t have to say those things. Are we still friends, Glory?”

“Always and forever,” I said.

He began to walk away again and then turned around.

“Just so you know,” he said, “I always knew it would be him. I knew it that night long ago at the Sadie Hawkins dance, and I knew it before we even kissed each other while he was gone. I knew this couldn’t happen to us. Seems to me there are people in the world that you love...but that love isn’t meant for the real world. It just can’t work out. It was like a fairy tale, wasn’t it, Glory?”

The tears were hot, the tears on my face. They stung and pulled at my swelling eye. “No, Levi. It was a lie I wanted to tell myself. A lie I made myself believe and it was so, so selfish of me.”

We just stood there, looking at each other.

“Do you mind if I think of it as a fairy tale?”

I didn’t know what to say, Rita, so I borrowed a line from when we were kids.

“I’m not the boss of you,” I said.

“Damn, girl,” said Levi, shaking his head and laughing. “I’d kiss you on the cheek, Glory, if I didn’t think that would be dangerous. Better I leave now, okay? I’ll write. I promise.”

The “promise” lingered in the air between our bodies.

Then, in one of those fine moments that make up the tragic quilt of life, he was gone.

I walked back up the road and sat next to my husband on the ground.

“Can you ever forgive me?” I asked as we watched the children wander around the morning garden.

He didn’t answer. My breath started to come out all shallow.

“Did he ask you to go with him?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.

“Yes,” I said.

“And you came back to me?”

“Of course I did,” I said.

It seemed as if Robert didn’t know how to react. I wanted to reach out to him, Rita...but I knew it was too soon.

“And you want me to forgive you?” he asked, not able to look me in the eye.

I took a deep breath. “Yes. I want you to forgive me. I want you to forgive both of us.”

We sat there for a long time listening to the children play. Letting the sun warm us.

Finally, he broke the silence. “I don’t know. That’s all I have, Glory. Is that good enough for now?”

“Yes. Anything that lets me stay here with you is good enough, Robert.”

And it is. It IS good enough for now. Isn’t it?

Love,

Glory