Juliana

by Vanda

  “I won’t.”

  “The army’s a strange place and fighting a war is a strange business. You would be amazed at how many people over there are just like us. You know homo—”

  “You. Not us.”

  “Oh, you’re still there.”

  “I’ve only felt that way for one person.” The Jewish girl, Marta, popped into my mind. “One person doesn’t make me like that. Not that there’s anything so bad about it, but—”

  “I’m glad you cleared that up for me.” He pulled out a cigarette with the name “Macedonia” on it. Foreign, I guessed. “Damn, I hate these things.” He lit the cigarette. “There are so many in the army who are just like me . Men and women. We had this one sergeant who would actually flit around the camp, limp wrist and all, while he barked orders at us. Everybody knew and nobody cared. The favorite entertainment over there was impersonator shows. Guys dress up like women all the time. Most of them were probably gay, but nobody said anything or seemed to give a damn. A bunch of us had our own clique and we’d get together and sometimes we’d camp it up. You know talk like Tallulah Bankhead, Dorothy Parker. Things like ‘Oh, darling, dear, sweetie, everything is divine, dearie.’ For fun. It was just between us, but I’m sure the other guys heard us. They never said anything, and we all got along. As long as you didn’t give it a name, it was fine. We were all Americans fighting for our country, and that was all that mattered. Sure, there were still those who wanted to kill us, but … even the brass didn’t care. At first.”

  He started to sit down on the bed, but when he looked at the gray sheets he moved to the straight-backed chair near the desk. He put it in the center of the room “Here. Sit.” I did. Max leaned against the desk. “I met a man. A soldier. A beautiful man. Young, barely twenty. I fell in love.”

  “How many times have you been in love with a beautiful man?”

  “Never. Men and boys have passed through my life, yes. There’s been lots of sex but never love. This man was different. I never touched him.”

  “Come on, Max, I know you.”

  “I wanted our first time to be special not in some sleazy hotel during R and R. I wanted to take him some place where we could have cordon bleu and wine. I wanted to give him roses. I bet you didn’t know I could be so romantic?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Neither did I. I also didn’t touch him because he was more afraid of people finding out he was homosexual than he was of going into battle. I wanted to protect him. I never felt that way about anyone until this dear, sweet man came into my life. He didn’t want his grandma—who raised him—in West Virginia to know he was gay.

  “The first time I met him I was in a bar that was barely standing in Palermo. The whole area was a bombed-out mess. A bunch of us had twenty-four hours to live it up. We’d been fighting for weeks, and we just wanted to drink, and they wanted to find a girl, and I wanted …. When I looked past a couple guys who were pummeling each other into bloody messes, I saw him. Scott. Scott Elkins. He was pushed up against a wall. He never even curses so the kind of life we were living was hard on him. I brought him a drink, but he refused it. I asked him if he wanted to get away from that place, and he said yes. I know what you’re thinking. That was my come-on line and it was, only, he didn’t get it. He just really wanted to get out of that place. So we found an almost-empty hotel lounge and had Cokes. No, we didn’t get a room. For a while, I thought I’d misjudged the situation—that he wasn’t gay—though I’m rarely wrong about that sort of thing, Miss Huffman.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “Such language. I’m shocked. Who, pray tell, have you been consorting with while I’ve been away?”

  “So what happened?”

  “A few months after we got close, he got transferred back to the States, but we wrote to each other. In one of my letters, I called him “darling.” Once. I didn’t think anything of it. We’d all been talking that way to each other, and it never occurred to me that it would be a problem. Until this lieutenant showed up at my barracks and said I had to report to the CO for questioning about my ‘sexual proclivities.’

  “I knew they censored the mail, but I thought they were looking for military secrets. But they had a new policy. You didn’t have to do anything homosexual to get thrown out for being homosexual. You didn’t have to do something like—uh, excuse me, Al, ‘sodomy’ for them to go after you. That way they could go after the women, too. Showing any ‘signs’ of homosexuality was enough for them to harass you. Signs like calling another man ‘darling.’

  “They arrested me and stuck me in a hospital where they took away my clothes and made me wear the ugliest pair of green pajamas. The whole time, their doctors ‘observed’ me like I was some kind of scientific experiment. And they kept asking me who else in the army was a ‘faggot,’ ‘a cock sucker.’ Sorry if I offend, but that’s the language they used. They wanted to know if my dear boy was one of those. Of course, I told them no, but …. If they hurt him, I swear I’ll …. They called me a sexual psychopath and gave me this thing called a ‘blue discharge.’“ He held up the folded blue paper. “This announces to the world that I was kicked out of the army because I was ‘undesirable.’

  “Al, I love this country. I fought for this country, and I would’ve died for it. A few times, I almost did. So, when was I undesirable? Was it when I worked with Irving Berlin to put up a show that brought in thousands of dollars to fight this war? Or was it when I daily risked my life in months of fighting in North Africa? Or could it have been that time I carried the wounded soldier on my back for miles during the Italian campaign. Or maybe it was when I spent four days in a field hospital unconscious. When? When was I so goddamned undesirable?” he said with force and threw the paper onto the desk. I thought he might cry, but he held it back with clenched teeth.

  “I’m sorry, Max.” My voice was faint.

  “They transferred me home to Fort Dix where they took away my uniform and gave me this garbage to wear.” He scooped up a pile of clothes that lay in the corner. “They sent me home to my beloved New York City in this foul, tasteless, cheap ….” He slammed the clothes onto the floor. “How could they humiliate me like that? I am Maxwell P. Harlington the Third, boy wonder of Broadway. Goddammit!”

  “I know you are,” I said.

  “You do?” he asked with tears lining his lower eyelashes.

  “Yes.”

  “Let’s get out of this dump.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  I ran into Café Reggio’s, a little early on purpose. I dashed into the ladies’ room to tame down what the wind had done to my hair and to resituate my platter beret’s central position on top of my head. I thought I looked good in my new tangerine two-piece suit dress, very businesslike. I hoped a little like Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce . It cost way more than I could afford, but I put it on layaway in February hoping it would make me feel better about my life. I took a seat in the corner and slipped off my coat.

  “May I help you?” the waiter asked.

  “A cappuccino,” I told him. “I’ll order more later. I’m meeting someone.” I slipped off my gloves, put them in my purse, and gave a quick look at my face in my compact. I couldn’t believe I was doing this much primping.

  As I dropped my compact back into my purse and clicked it shut, I looked across the room. There he was walking toward me, handsome in his uniform.

  Just as he reached my table, I stood, ready to run to him, but I didn’t move. “Danny. Or should I say Sergeant Boyd.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, that’s me. I think.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do. I wondered if he expected me to throw my arms around him. That no longer seemed right. He looked older, more manly, or was that more worried, standing there smiling, his hat under his arm, his gaze steady.

  “Shall we?” he asked, nodding at the table.

  “Yes. Of course.”

  As I was about to seat myself, he came around the table to help. Then, he unbuttoned his
jacket and sat in the cast-iron chair with the red cushion opposite me. He balanced his hat on his knee. “Gosh, Al, you look terrific. All grown-up. ”

  “You look pretty swell yourself. When I got your wire at the Canteen, I couldn’t believe it. I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “I’m sorry I disappeared like that. Hey, let’s order.” He picked up the menu. “What’s good?”

  “Well, first you’ve got to try the cappuccino. They’re famous for that. I have one coming. You came too fast. I planned on sitting here sipping my cappuccino like I’d turned into a sophisticated lady. Isn’t that silly?”

  “No.” He pulled out a box of Regents and lit one. “You have turned into a sophisticated lady. A sophisticated New York lady, which is about as sophisticated as you can get. Wouldn’t the old gang at Huntington High be surprised? So, you’re not roomies with Aggie anymore?”

  “No. She had Dickie to take care of. You heard they got married?”

  “Yeah, my mother told me. She told me Dickie’s in bad shape.”

  “I think he might be getting better, though.” I tried to sound hopeful.

  “Yeah, about as better as you can get with one of those rubber things hanging on you for life.”

  “Yeah.”

  The waiter put my cappuccino in front of me and dashed off to get Danny one. Danny studied the menu while I studied him. That curl I’d always loved that had flopped onto his forehead was gone.

  “So tell me, Danny, what’ve you been doing? What a dumb question. You’ve been fighting the war. That must’ve been terrible.”

  “It was. But I’m home now.”

  “For good?”

  “Tomorrow morning, I have to report to my base, but I don’t have to go back to the war. Al, there’s no way to tell someone what that was like.”

  “That must’ve been so …. I don’t know what to say to you. Do you need to talk about it?”

  “Hell, no,” he exclaimed. “Oops, sorry. Language is pretty crude in the service.”

  “It’s been getting plenty crude at home, too.”

  “Has it? But you’re as innocent as ever.”

  “I don’t think so, Danny.”

  “So, tell me about your special fella.”

  “I don’t have one these days. I was engaged a year ago, but it turned out we weren’t suited to each other. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I get acting jobs every now and then, and I work at Gimbels to make up for what the radio jobs don’t pay. It’s a bore. And the acting somehow doesn’t feel like the right way for me to go. But I don’t know which way is the right way. I volunteer at the Canteen and that’s the one thing I really love. But this summer they’re closing it down to put in a new air conditioning system. The Theater Wing finally raised the money, so I don’t know what I’m gonna do with myself. Count the minutes till September, I spose. It’s terrible to say, but when the war’s over and they close it for good, I’ll be one lost fish.”

  “If I had any sense, I’d whisk you up in my arms and …. I’ll never do that, but you know that, don’t you? It’s the most logical thing in the world to do. For you and me to—”

  “Danny, it’s okay. You’re a homosexual. So? Tell me about the handsome men you’ve met all over Europe.”

  “I fell in love. Or at least that’s what I think it is. Corporal Benjamin Farnum from Patterson, New Jersey. He’s a great guy. I want you to meet him some time.”

  “I’d like that. Have you told your mother?”

  “Well, actually she told me. When I got back to base last week, I got this crazy call from her. She starts telling me she knows I’m a homosexual, but she loves me anyway and wants me to be happy, but please don’t tell the neighbors and she’s sorry she made me into one. And then she said your mother told her that I made you into one. Is that true? Are you a homosexual, too?”

  “Gosh, no. But you know how my mother is.”

  “That’s what I told my mother. That’d be too strange to be true. Both of us? When you meet Mr. Right, he’ll show you the way to go.”

  “You think that’s true?”

  “Isn’t that how it’s sposed to work? For girls anyway. For guys, it’s different. We have to find our own way. So in a sense, I’m kind of dreading getting mustered out. Once that happens, I’m gonna have to seriously think about things. I may go to a doctor.”

  “What kinda doctor? Are you sick?”

  “You’re about the only person who doesn’t think so. I won’t go while I’m still in the army. I wouldn’t want anyone to find out that about me. You know what the army can do to people like me.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “But as much as I love Ben, sometimes I wonder … maybe I am sick. Maybe our love is a sickness. It made my uncle kill himself. Could it be a sickness to love someone like the doctors and ministers say?”

  “I don’t know. But if you’re happy with him so what if you’re sick? Why would anyone want to be cured of being happy?”

  He smiled. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Twelve Days before D-Day

  The war continued, and it seemed that it would never be over, and for some, it wouldn’t. Max had a hard time recuperating from his particular wound, if he ever did. There was no medicine for it and no sympathy. His dream of coming home in his uniform, the great conquering hero, and using that to get investors for his new club was gone. All the G.I. benefits that Congress was passing would not apply to him. That blue discharge erased all Max had sacrificed during the war. All the work he’d done with the Irving Berlin musical could not be used to build his club. The last thing Max wanted was someone to find that blue discharge. His new club would be sunk if he were discovered to be an out-loud homosexual addict, a pervert, a sexual psychopath, a criminal.

  Despite all this, Max started sketching out designs for his dream club and I found myself getting involved; together we’d imagine how the place would look and what talent we would attract. Sometimes, I imagined we would hire Juliana. Then I remembered I never wanted to see her again. Max and I would get so excited about our plans we’d forget that we had one, huge brick wall standing in our way: no money.

  One evening, we sat on the floor among the lists and diagrams we’d spread over my parlor rug. I wore trousers and one of Max’s old dress shirts. He was tieless with his sleeves rolled up.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Max said. “How ’bout I run and get us some of that food, what do they call it? Takeout. You know, the white boxes they sell at Bamboo Forest over on Eighth. We won’t have to stop working.”

  “Sounds good to me.” I studied Max’s sketch of the stage he wanted.

  “Chop suey, okay?” he asked, as he got up from the floor .

  “Fine. Don’t you think maybe this stage is a little too deep?”

  “That stage is perfect, and since when do you think you know what you’re talking about?”

  “We can discuss it when you get back.”

  “Can we, Miss High and Mighty?” He grabbed his tie from the back of the chair. “Now she thinks she knows how to design a club?” he mumbled as he tied his tie. “I suppose next she’ll want to run it. Arrogant know-it-all brat.” He walked out the door.

  A few minutes later he was back, knocking, and I saw he’d left his wallet and keys on the coffee table. I grabbed them and ran to the door.

  “I swear Max you’d forget your head if—” And there she stood—Juliana. Resplendent in her silver fox stole and purple suit that highlighted her curves. She wore a matching hat with a veil that covered her eyes. With a flick of her gloved hand, she lifted the veil.

  “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello.” I think I stopped breathing.

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood and—”

  “You happened to be in my neighborhood?” The gray paint in the hallway was peeling, the rug had a big tear down the middle, and a few tenants had ground their cigarettes in it, but there she stood
outside my door, a non sequitur in her fox fur and purple suit, undoubtedly, custom made by Mainbocher. The light from the lamp on the wall flickered in her dark hair that was held in place by the snood with the tiny gold stars on it.

  “Well …” she said, wetting her lips with her tongue as if trying to gather her words. I hoped she couldn’t hear my heart thundering against my chest. “So ….” She tried to continue, but she suddenly seemed struck with a desperate urge to remove her gloves. She tugged at them as if she was afraid they might fight back, got them off, and slammed them into her purse. “May I come in?” she asked, on one big gust of breath.

  “Sure. Please.” I moved out of her way and she stepped into my parlor with delicate grace, filling the room with the light scent of lemons. I looked down at the mess of papers and pencils that Max and I had strewn across my rug, wishing there was some way I could sweep it all under the couch without her noticing. And then, I’d do a quick change out of my sloppy clothes. I said a prayer that Max didn’t show up before she said whatever it was she was struggling to say.

  “Listen carefully,” she began. “You are unlikely to ever hear me say this again.” Her eyes wandered about the room looking at everything but me. “I never say things like this, but—you appear to need it.” She took in a deep breath. “You.” Another breath. “You.” Another breath. “You are … special to me.”

  “I am?”

  “Don’t make this into something, or I’ll leave. ”

  “No. Okay, okay.” I held my hand over my breast and felt my heart doing flip-flops in there; I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Memorizing this moment with my whole being.”

  End of Book I

  I hope you enjoyed this beginning of the Juliana series.

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