The Liberators of Willow Run

by Marianne K. Martin

  “Did you read the book I gave you?” “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Have you read more Nancy Drew?” “I wish we could see you more often.”

  Ruth smiled and somehow managed the confusion. “Yes, I did.” “No.” “Four more Drews.” “And so do I.”

  Before another barrage, Lillian stepped in. “Audrey, would you mind if you and I have a chat together and give the girls time to catch up with Ruth? I’m afraid the interruptions would make conversation useless otherwise.”

  “Not at all,” Audrey replied. “I would love to have the chance to get to know you.”

  “Off you go, then,” Lillian said to wide smiles of approval. “Get it out of your systems.”

  Audrey settled into one of two wingback chairs neatly placed on either side of an accent table.

  “Ruth explained on the phone that she’s told you how we know each other so we can talk comfortably,” Lillian began.

  “It isn’t easy to trust someone with the hurting parts of yourself. I’ve never met anyone who has faced that part of themselves as directly as Ruth has.”

  “Over the years,” Lillian said, “I’ve met so many girls, some shared their stories and some didn’t. Some touched my heart more than others, and Ruth even more than the rest. And they all deserve better than the way they are treated—ostracized and blamed while the fathers escape judgment. Unless there has been some new development since I was in nursing school, it takes two to make a baby.”

  Audrey smiled, convinced now beyond doubt that every girl should have a mother like Lillian. “So I’ve heard,” she replied.

  “I took the extra hours at the Home to ease my heart. I do what I can to make this time in their lives better and let them know that someone still believes in their goodness.”

  “I see exactly why Ruth thinks so highly of you.”

  “She obviously trusts us both a great deal,” Lillian replied. “We have to do our best not to let her down.”

  “Hey, Lil, I’m back,” came a male voice from another part of the house. Robert Barton appeared around the corner of the kitchen with a smile and an introduction. “I picked up something for all you girls today,” he said. “It’s a surprise.” He headed back to the kitchen, but stopped and poked his head around the corner. “It has lots of calories and it’s chocolate.”

  Lillian gave him the big smile that he was waiting for. “At least a week’s worth of brownie points,” she said and added, “Will you go up and rescue Ruth from the girls? We’re going to need some uninterrupted time. They can visit more at dinner.”

  The circle tightened with Ruth on the couch and Audrey and Lillian’s chairs pulled close. The tone of their conversation turned serious.

  “I apologize,” Ruth directed to Lillian. “I didn’t realize what I was forcing you to do.”

  “No, Ruth, there is no need to apologize. What you did was the only thing you could do. We are all here to try to find a way to help Amelia.”

  Audrey spoke first. “I only know Amelia through what Ruth has told me, but I know all too well some of the danger that she is facing. And I want you to know that I will not allow her to be sent home. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure of that.”

  “I will, too,” added Ruth.

  The strength of their conviction seemed to surprise Lillian. She hesitated a moment before saying, “I will do everything I can to help Amelia—legally. But anything that crosses that line I can’t be involved in. As much as I might be tempted to listen to my heart, I have to be careful. I need to be here for my family, for my patients, and for my girls at the Home. I just can’t do anything that will jeopardize that, but I will do everything else that I can.”

  “So let’s work backward from the premise that she is not going home,” Audrey began. “We know that she can’t stay with you, Lillian. Can she stay with either of us?”

  “Robert’s brother is an attorney, so he was the first person I talked to. Since she is not of age, if you transport her you can be charged with kidnapping. If she gets there on her own, you could be guilty of harboring a runaway.” Lillian looked directly at Ruth. “And because of how close you were with her at the Home, they will look at your place first.”

  “Then I don’t see any way around someone doing something illegal,” Ruth said.

  “Or somebodies,” added Audrey. “Do you think we could make our own underground railroad, like the slaves used?”

  “There is something else we have to consider,” Lillian said. “A runaway girl, and that’s what our Amelia will be, is even more likely to be institutionalized if she gets caught.” Her expression heightened in directness and seated the message. The stakes had just gone up. The words seared through Audrey’s senses.

  Ruth asked the obvious question. “How can we find people who will care as much as we do—who will be willing to take those kinds of chances for someone they don’t know?”

  “Someone who has experienced something like what Amelia is facing,” Audrey offered. “Wouldn’t they want to help prevent her from going through the same thing?”

  “I may know someone,” Lillian offered.

  “And maybe that person will know someone else,” Ruth added. “And then that person may know someone.”

  “We won’t have much time to put things in place,” Lillian said. “I see Amelia Monday and I’ll have a little better idea how close she is to delivering. We’re going to have to stay in phone contact every day.”

  “Here’s the number where I’m staying.” Ruth pulled a pencil and small pad of paper from her purse, wrote the number, and handed it to Lillian. “I’ll call you tonight with the number at the restaurant, if that’s all right.”

  “Yes.” Lillian looked first at Ruth and then Audrey. “We’re going to do this, then?”

  “Even,” Audrey said, “if I have to kidnap her right out of that hospital bed.”

  Audrey knew it was coming, the inevitable question. She had laid the path to it carefully, purposefully. It let Ruth walk along with her, until now, until it was the right time to answer.

  They talked about Lillian and her commitment, and Amelia and the possibility of their plan. But Ruth had waited to ask until they sat in the darkness of the back seat of the cab.

  Blessed by a non-talkative driver listening to the news on the radio, Ruth asked softly, “Will you tell me why you are so passionate about helping Amelia, aside from the dangers that we both know she is facing?”

  Being prepared to answer a question was one thing, a fairly well-controlled thing. What Audrey couldn’t prepare for was answering it while her body was betraying her. The space was too close, too dark. There were no bright restaurant lights or busy conversations to diffuse the flush of her skin or the pounding of her heart. And no brief whiffs of Ruth’s perfume or brushes against her arm with relief only seconds away. Tonight there was no escaping the familiar scent overcoming the oddness of the taxi’s space, or the heat radiating through the fabric of her skirt where Ruth’s thigh pressed against it.

  Audrey tried to concentrate on the words. “I let someone down,” she began, “someone I loved—love very much.” A slow stream of light from approaching headlights temporarily exposed the look she’d seen from only one other, the same look she had promised to never encourage again, the look she longed for. “I didn’t protect her. I didn’t know how.” Ruth’s hand slipped underneath hers and laced their fingers together. “I don’t know if she is capable of forgiving me. And until you came to me about Amelia, I thought that my only redemption was to never put another in that kind of danger.”

  “Danger because she loved you?”

  Audrey turned her head to the window. It wasn’t this answer that made her hesitate, it was the one that was surely to follow. “Yes,” she returned softly.

  “Do you still believe that?”

  “The danger hasn’t changed.”

  “And it’s happening again,” Ruth said, and touched her fingers beneath Audrey’s chin to turn her head back. “Someone
’s loving you.”

  The words spoken so softly and holding such power, stopped her breath. Audrey forced herself to take the next breath, dared to stay with the look Ruth was sending through the darkness, promising what seemed impossible.

  “I’m loving you,” Ruth whispered as close to Audrey’s lips as she dared. “If you feel the same thing . . . I need you to tell me.”

  “From the moment you said, ‘I don’t know where you are from, sir.’ That . . . confidence,” she replied, gently squeezing Ruth’s hand, “the hold of your head and the set of your shoulders. I knew that you would challenge every fear that I have.”

  “Can you see my smile?”

  “Yes,” she said, touching fingertips to the smooth, warm skin of Ruth’s cheeks.

  “I will challenge every one of them, whatever they are, for as long as it takes for you to be free of them.”

  “Then you need to know what it is that I fear. Will you come with me tomorrow so that I can show you?”

  “When do we leave?”

  Chapter 22

  The early morning air was cool and smelled of warm metal. The two women boarded the train and took their seats. There was an odd feeling of excitement, or maybe it was anticipation, but something niggled at Ruth’s thoughts. She had hungered to know more about this woman since she first saw her sitting alone, strangely content, in the restaurant. Throughout the months since then she had gathered everything she could about who Audrey Draper was—what made her smile, what made her bristle, what made her proud. Audrey liked casseroles and pork chops and cherry pie and ice cream. Good hot food at the end of a long shift made her smile even when no one was watching. She steeled her jaw at insinuations that she was “less than.” She was proud of her part in the war effort and, it seemed, she was proud of Ruth Evans. It had been a long time, Ruth thought, since anyone had been proud of her.

  What she did not know was what Audrey feared, specifically, personally. Not the usual fears of a woman on her own, not the expected fears of a woman loving another woman, but her fears. Those so deep, and so well-protected that they could cause Audrey to give up any chance to love again. Today, though, Ruth knew that she was going to find out.

  “Her name is Velma,” Audrey said, turning to look at Ruth. “I want you to know her.”

  Ruth waited attentively as Audrey’s eyes refocused vaguely at the landscape passing them by. “The first time I saw her she was wading in the fountain in the park. She didn’t seem to care at all that her skirt was wet to her knees. She talked me into wading with her. I’d never felt so free. We laughed and splashed each other and drew disapproving looks, and I decided right then that I wanted her to be a part of every day. And she was. I thought she was beautiful, her hair always down, loose and free, and a smile so easy and bright. She dreamed and wondered and asked, why not? We shared everything with each other, the simplest things that made us happy, our loftiest dreams, our love. We stole time—moments, hours—and lied to everyone except each other. We laughed and sang and loved and dreamed, and never spoke of what might happen if we were found out. We were happy and in love. No one could take that joy from us because we were invincible.”

  She was talking about a lost love, a love she still held. Ruth watched her as she looked past the window, past the moving landscape, past her, and wondered how much pain this journey was bringing. How hard was it to lose a pureness that she was sure she’d never have again?

  The impulse to pull Audrey into her arms and hold her through the pain, to tell her that Ruth would be there with her through the journey was so strong, so hard to override. She wondered if Velma would have asked, why not? Would the right thing to do have won? Would hers have been the answer that ignored the risks and allowed Ruth to pull Audrey close and hold her?

  Ruth slipped her hand under Audrey’s, her compromise. Audrey turned from the window and the train slowed into the station.

  “Thank you,” Audrey said, “for listening.”

  “You never have to thank me for that.”

  People began leaving their seats and making their way down the aisle. “I hope you will understand why I am doing this,” Audrey said as they rose.

  “I think I already do.”

  Audrey hadn’t said a word during the cab ride. She sat as if she would exit at any moment and fidgeted with the clasp on the slender brown purse on her lap. The cab dropped them at the front walk, a long, deliberate distance leading to the most intimidating building Ruth had ever seen. The immense three-story brick building warned of a familiar isolation and judgment that Ruth knew too well. She fought apprehension, matched Audrey’s pace, and followed her lead.

  After the long silence in the cab, it was unexpected when partway down the walk Audrey asked, “Do you attend church?”

  The question seemed an odd one. “Obligatory attendance when I lived at home. My parents are Catholic, it was expected. I’m relishing the time I have now to figure out what I am.”

  “I come here every Sunday that I can. I come here to try to find redemption, even though I know that I never will. That kind of thinking makes it sound like I should be locked up here, too, doesn’t it?”

  Ruth looked over, unsure of what to say, but Audrey continued looking straight ahead and didn’t seem to need a response.

  “The first time I walked this walk, so determined, so set on my mission, it was to ask for forgiveness.” She hesitated for a moment, and then added, “and to take Velma away from this place.” They stopped before going through the large wooden door. “And the first time through these doors was when I realized how dangerous naivety is.”

  There was only the necessary interaction from detached hospital personnel as the women signed in at the visitor’s desk and were led down the corridor to the day room. Unlike the common room at the Crittenton Home, filled with overstuffed seating and conversation, the day room was stiff and sterile and strangely quiet. Women sat in chairs lining the walls and beside large unadorned windows. Some mumbled incoherently or talked to no one in particular. Others rocked from side to side in straight-back chairs or stared blankly ahead. An isolation beyond what she had experienced at the Home—beyond her comprehension.

  Audrey found Velma at a window at the far end of the room. She made no attempt to turn her stare from the window as Audrey knelt beside her chair.

  “Velma,” she said, placing her hand over Velma’s, folded neatly in her lap, “it’s Audrey. I’ve brought someone to meet you.” She cupped her hand under Velma’s chin and gently brought her head around to face her. There was no expression, no recognition in Velma’s eyes. Beautiful blue eyes with the glassiness of a doll’s. Audrey stroked Velma’s cheek and tried again. “It’s me, Velma. It’s Audrey.”

  A soft crease developed between Velma’s brows. Her voice sounded tired. “Is it time for dinner?”

  “No, sweetie,” Audrey replied, then cupped Velma’s chin again when she started to turn back toward the window. “I’ve come to visit with you, and I brought someone to meet you.” Audrey reached for Ruth’s hand and pulled her to kneel beside her. “This is Ruth, Velma, she’s a friend. I wanted her to meet you.”

  The pretty eyes looked close at Audrey’s face as if trying to recall, the struggle pushing into a deep frown. They moved to Ruth’s face and the frown lines eased. The struggle ended and the glassiness returned.

  “Her name is Ruth, Velma. I’ve told her about how we met and our favorite place. Do you remember the fountain?” Velma turned past Audrey and fixed her stare once more out the window. But Audrey persisted, moving to sit against the windowsill in front of Velma. She reached her hand out to Ruth to join her. “Remember how cool the water felt, how we stood under the water flowing from the mouth of the big fish in the center?” A start of a frown, only a twitch this time. Audrey surveyed the face that used to show such joy, and waited.

  Ruth watched Audrey carefully begin removing the bobby pins holding Velma’s dark hair in tight rolls atop her head. The care, the expression on
Audrey’s face brought a painful tightness to Ruth’s throat. She took a deep breath trying to relieve it as Audrey loosened the unpinned hair and let it fall freely to Velma’s shoulders.

  “Your mother was here, I know,” Audrey said, letting her fingers loosen the heavy tresses. “She always hated your hair down.”

  Velma tilted her head and ran her hands through her hair. A break from her world, however slight, but enough to brighten Audrey’s face. “That feels better, doesn’t it?” she said. “I know how you love it loose and free.”

  The tinge of hopefulness Ruth saw in Audrey’s face, heard in her voice, brought the tightness back to her throat. How can she put herself through this? How many times? How can love be so deep, and so painful? So real. Not a past or a story left to the imagination, but flesh-and-blood real.

  Audrey took Velma’s hands in her own and asked, “What shall we talk about today? What would make you smile? Oh, I know,” she said, touching Velma’s face to get her to look up. “I heard one of your favorite Cole Porter songs on the radio the other night. Do you remember when you did Red, Hot and Blue with the Civic Theater? You sang ‘It’s De-lovely,’ and you sang it to me in the park. You sing so beautifully.”

  There was still no response from Velma, no recognition, only the blank stare. Audrey began humming the song softly, enough of it that Ruth recognized it. She watched her, trying so hard, caring so much, and realized that the love she felt for Audrey was reaching a depth she hadn’t expected. But was it possible for it to ever match the love she was witnessing?

  “The night is young, the skies are clear,” Audrey sang the words now, bending forward, challenging the pretty, empty eyes. She sang the next line, and then something happened. The stare never changed, but when Audrey began the chorus, “It’s delightful,” Velma’s light, whispery tone joined, “it’s delicious, it’s de-lovely.”

  Audrey continued singing and Velma sang with her the second verse and the chorus again, and the third. Tears began streaming down Audrey’s cheeks but she kept singing, holding Velma’s hands and leaning close.