Our Seas of Fear and Love

by Richard Shain Cohen

  “Brigit. Would you like to go?” the intern interrupted her wandering.

  She tried to hide her excitement. “Yes. That would be wonderful.”

  “I’ll pick you up about eight, O.K.?”

  Hiding her anticipation, “Yes. That’s fine,” she calmly told him. “You don’t know what dorm I’m in. It’s the one at the corner of the street before you get to the hospital.”

  “See you then,” he smiled. He was as excited as was she. To be seen out with perhaps the most beautiful female the interns knew. The interns had even had a contest in which they put in a hat the names of the best-looking student nurses. Brigit was always closest to if not on the top. Perhaps she would not have been too happy about that. She wouldn’t. She never considered herself a beauty queen and disliked beauty contests and girls showing off themselves. It was disgusting and indiscreet. However, she learned in Boston where to buy fashionable clothes and how to appear not only as the naturally beautiful woman that she was but also how to appear still more noticeable, hips, bosom, with knit dresses, for example, and when she could afford it, dresses that emphasized her bosom and showed her legs. Not only was Brigit learning style, but she was revealing her personal charm.

  “See you then,” appearing unconcerned, she smiled back; but to encourage him, she added, “Thanks, Henry. I look forward to it.”

  On Saturday night, with the help of Lynne fussing about her, Brigit started to brush her shoulder-length hair. Lynne took the brush from her and combed and combed until her hair was the brightening red Lynne wanted to see. Brigit put on a red lipstick, but not too dark, enough to say, “Try it.” Brigit smiled. Lynne shaped her eyebrows that she thinned and made certain they came to just above the corner of her eyes. “Ah, you beauty; alluring vamp.” Brigit then put on her dress that fell just below her knees, that emphasized her bosom and her hips, but wide enough at the skirt to allow comfortable dancing.

  She moved about in various positions, hands to her hips, swaying in front of the mirror to see what she would look like were she so inclined – which she wasn’t. She started smiling, and then both of them were laughing, as Lynne pushed her on the shoulder.

  “You’re stunning,” Lynne exclaimed. “I’m almost jealous.”

  “You are not. Look at yourself. If I were a guy, I’d be after you in no time.”

  Suddenly, Brigit thought of her father. He would disapprove. All he can think of is a woman wearing kitchen-maid clothes. If you go out, then the woman can wear a simple dress that shows she’s a female. Not what Brigit was wearing tonight, the latest fashions in Boston, in fact throughout the country. Luke not only realized there’s no denying the breasts, he loved looking at Maureen’s, would gaze at her when she undressed at night, and often, despite the years of marriage and four daughters, obviously he would want to enter her and she would allow him. He would never force her into sex, however. If she were not in the mood, sometimes she would hold his penis, play with it, put her mouth about it until he had an orgasm. She enjoyed this play. Yet, despite having a beautiful wife, he seemed never to notice that Maureen, even in the house, would wear light rouge and a dull red lipstick, enough to make her lips desirable and to help emphasize her face, and enough to keep him interested. But if he saw Brigit tonight and Lynne encouraging her, he would be angry. Brigit started to laugh.

  “Lynne, you know what. My dad would be furious if he saw me. I’m supposed to be that simple girl in the convent school, wearing my uniform and never even being pubescent, never growing up.”

  “You’re joking or exaggerating.”

  “I’m exaggerating some. But he would not approve,” as Brigit stood before the mirror, turning, twirling, admiring herself. “Here’s to a great night, daddy. Oh. Don’t you worry. I’m still a virgin and will be until I decide I don’t care to be anymore. Hmm. Maybe I guess that will be when I marry. Well, daddy, don’t worry. I won’t even allow his hands to wander. But perhaps a little kiss goodnight won’t be so bad. That O.K., daddy?”

  “Listen, if your father saw you now, he’d be wowed.”

  “I wonder,” she answered sadly. “I really wonder. He’s just such a prude. But, don’t think I don’t love him. It took him a long time to accept me being at Boston City General, let alone Boston, the city of sin and Yankees. You know, people like you, Lynne.”

  Lynne pretended to laugh. “Listen, I’ve got a great book you should send him, The Late George Appley. Then he’ll think you’ve really been ruined. Does he read much?’

  “You think he’s ignorant? Yes he reads,” she laughed, “Oh well, mostly westerns. But if I tell him to read it, he will. What’s it about?”

  “Oh, it’s great. About Boston highbrows. Talk about corruption. He’ll wonder if the Protestants have converted you and if you’ve met any of these people. Just don’t tell him about me and where I live. He’ll be ordering you to stay away from me and my bad influence.”

  “Cut it out,” Brigit laughed. “Keep it up and I’ll get you to go to mass with me.” She looked at the small clock on the dressing table. “Henry ought to be here soon. You sure you like the way I look?”

  “You’re kidding. He’s going to want,” and she stopped. “You know what I mean.”

  And that was the first night club date of the many to follow. Yet, no male was ever able to get close to her, although they kept trying. They admired her defenses. She did over time come to pet, but mostly kisses, if the man appealed to her, either those in the hospital or those she got to know among college students. Many, however, were drafted or enlisted and became fewer and fewer. The rationing, the news, the collections of rubber and metals to help the war effort. No matter how happy they could be, the girls were never far from the war either in the newspapers, Life Magazine, or in the loss of nurses who had taught them and who had joined or the doctors who had left. Yet, in Boston, no matter how much she enjoyed it, it was a world so foreign from home that never left her. She still dreamed of nights and the skies so clear and filled with stars and moon. She missed the desert in all of its seasons, the warmth, especially in winter when she knew it would be more comfortable than Boston. Yet, she would never forget her excitement with the first snow or the Fall and the lovely trees that reminded her of a painter’s palette, how she marveled at Spring and watched for the buds and the sudden full leafing of the trees. She especially enjoyed walking through the Public Garden and smelling the flowers, watching the children playing, laughed at herself when like a child she rode on a swan boat. Unreal as that was, it was the Charles River that truly fascinated her, the sculls from the different universities, watching the small sailboats. On one day, she told Lynne she would like to learn how to sail.

  “They give lessons. I’ll go with you. I never bothered.” So when they had time, they would go where the river flowed nearby the Boston Esplanade and take lessons. Once, in a playful mood, they took separate boats, sailed out to the middle of the river, took their oars and started a war, splashing one another, screeching in joy. Back on shore, Brigit told her, “We’re supposed to be serious nurses,” still partially laughing.

  “Oh bull. You think my father would be able to continue taking care of patients if he didn’t have fun. He even gets to take out a scull now and then. He was on the Harvard team, you know.”

  “I wish I could ride in one of those. Oh well.”

  Meanwhile, the world was at war. The student nurses knew they were preparing to help the country in some way, either by joining a service or volunteering to take care of the homecoming wounded when they received their RNs; that is if they were allowed to volunteer.

  And then there were the Esplanade concerts with Arthur Fiedler when she and Lynne and some of the other girls would go and sit in the grass to listen, to feel the beauty, be fascinated by music that took them separately to their own secret lands and dreams.

  Aside from the music at the Esplanade, she had enough money from her father so she could go to Symphony Hall, where she could concentrate on Serge Ko
ussevitzky and the music he would evoke. To save money but to get a good seat, she would sit in the corner of the first balcony overlooking the stage, to watch the movement of the conductor and look among the musicians and their expressions as they played. One night she was fortunate to watch the young Leonard Bernstein.

  ~

  During her nurse training, the time came when Brigit and her class went to a mental hospital. Her time as a student was coming to a close. Through most of this time, as they endured the war, read the news, shuddered, Brigit wrote her family for news of the effects upon the town and heard of boys she had known who had gone off to war, some of whom had been killed, others wounded. The boy she liked best who had given her her first kiss had been killed. When Brigit read the letter, she teared and thinking more about him and their youth together, she began to cry. It was then she told herself she was going into the service as soon as she became a RN. In a letter from Maureen, her mother wrote that her sisters, Ellen and Marie, becoming of age, joined the WACS. It’s so lonely. Brigit, it’s hard to explain how your father and I feel. How we miss you and your sisters. But we know it’s something we must endure. Your father has lost to the service some of the men who worked for him. Now he’s hiring more Mexican workers. He has expanded their quarters. I don’t know what we’d do without them. And remember Maria Marcipal, the very pretty girl, daughter of one of the doctors, well she’s going to become a nun. She was going with a Jewish boy – imagine - who left for the army. I guess the family allowed it, because his father is well known in El Paso. At first she thought she’d join one of the women’s services. I’ll miss her too. She became like another daughter to us. But nothing can make up for the girls we love so and miss. I give you a kiss and strong hug. Do take care of yourself and be safe and come back to us one day. I know you. You haven’t told us, but I know you’ll go in the service when you finish school. True, huh? Have you met more nice boys like that Henry you went with for a short time? What happened to him? Did he get fresh or you just tired of him? I know how that is, dear. We never forget those things, how our old boy friends treated us or who we liked but then came your father. You know the rest. It will happen to the three of you. You know I want the gossip. God bless you, dear one. – Mother. Dad sends his love and wants you to know he misses you. You could heal his wounds he gets around the ranch. You know how careless he sometimes can be. Love again, Mother.

  The mental hospital was startling. A nurse took the students to the different floors. She started on the worst, a floor with rooms having heavy closed doors and small windows so the patients could be watched. In one a woman sat naked in a corner, curled with a hand to her mouth, appearing to hide herself, feces on the floor against a wall opposite her. On another floor, in wards there were catatonics or in another, women or men in baths. The students stayed in a separate building. For meals they would go to a dining room in a nearby patient building. At every meal, patients would be at the windows, clawing at the bars, screaming. On one particular day as Brigit walked through a room of tubs in which women lay with canvas just to the top of their breasts, one yelled at her, “Hey, dearie. You’re a good looker. We could make out. I can show you tricks you never thought of; make you feel great so you’d scream with delight. C’mon, dearie. Let me feel your clit, rub it for you and kiss you down there, kiss and lick, and my fingers inside. How about it?”

  Horrified, Brigit, hurried past the woman and from the room while another patient loudly laughed. But she would have to return to take care of these people and realized she would have to become accustomed to what she heard.

  Another, sadder time, she was in a men’s ward. A man, sitting in a tall-backed wooden chair, a blanket wrapped around him, stared, she thought at first at her, but it was at nothing, or nothing she would ever know. A nurse came up behind her. “He’s catatonic.”

  “Yes. I know. I feel terrible seeing him this way. How horrible not to be able to talk to someone or for us even to know if they are aware of us.”

  “He came back from the Pacific that way, dear. Imagine the hell he endures now and did then. They sent him to us when the naval hospital could no longer do anything. This goddamn rotten war, shitty goddamn Japs and Germans. I’d crush all their balls.”

  Brigit listened without answering; and for one of the first times, she wished she had said that. Crush a man’s balls and he loses his manhood. One of the nurses at Boston City General took it upon herself to teach the new students how to kick a man there if he tried to attack her; but Brigit rarely thought of it except when she worked the late shift and had to walk in dark to the dormitory. Startled, Brigit hushed herself, made a quick cross at her chest and promised God she would be more careful. She was a healer, after all, and she realized and accepted that the experiences here were to prepare her for taking care of such patients, as it would help her to soothe battle scarred minds.

  Thus the year 1943 arrived, and that June day her parents left their secure desert home and traveled to the land of the devil – and they did enjoy it, especially after watching Brigit pinned as a RN, meeting Lynne and her parents, and others of the class along with their parents, if a father wasn’t off to war. Many had brothers, uncles, cousins, friends serving, fighting.

  After the ceremony Lynne’s parents, Dr. and Mrs. Brock, had the Donovans to their home and invited them to Maine where they had a house nearby the ocean. In between, there was much hugging and kissing. It was then Brigit told her parents. “Mother, dad, I’m enlisting in the navy. They’ll make me a Lt. junior grade. They just say j.g. I’ve been to the recruiting office and will be inducted after you leave.”

  “Well, that’s a welcoming,” Luke kidded. “May we stay long enough to see Maine?” he added, then quickly, “Do you know where you’ll be?”

  “I think so, daddy, probably the Chelsea Naval Hospital not too far from here.” She couldn’t help herself, moved quickly to her father and placed her arms about him and kissed him hard at the side of his lips. Father, mother, and daughter each had his or her own tears. “I love you both so dearly, and don’t you ever forget it.” And they were softly crying and tenderly touching one another.

  At the Brocks, on Beacon Street, across from the Public Gardens, they entered the hall. Maureen and Luke were astounded. They looked and floors above, the walls appeared to curve inward until they formed a funnel atop of which was a large rounded stained glass window. Brigit had been there before and knew how her friend lived at home. The Brocks took the Donovans to the second floor, not to be showy – that was not part of their character, the home being something they merely accepted. On this floor there was a large reception room. To one side there was a paneled library. There was also another library facing the street front. Directly on the opposite it was the large dining room looking out on the river. One floor higher was a dance hall mirrored on two sides that extended the width of the house. All the bedrooms were on the fourth floor with the fifth for the servants. Dr. Brock not only had a successful neurology practice but both he and his wife had inherited large sums. Lynne’s mother and father, who met after her father returned from France following World War I, married in June, 1921. It was the social event of the season.

  Without waiting any longer, Lynne hit Brigit on the shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s show them the river.”

  “Excuse us, mother and father. I want the Donovans to see the river at its best.” They went to the third floor where there was a hidden room off the ballroom. They looked on the Charles which slightly rippled from the soft breeze. “You see,” Lynne said, “how lovely it is. Look there! The sailboats. Aren’t they almost magical the way they glide?” Suddenly, Lynne became thoughtful. “It’s so peaceful as it flows toward our beautiful Atlantic. But the Atlantic takes all those men to war. It’s so horrible, I hate thinking about it.” She had one younger brother who, if the war lasted long enough, would end up in the service. He was now 17. “I can’t stand the thought of Andrew IV going off to war. I just can’t.” Her face became both des
pondently thin and angry, as she tried to keep herself from crying. She shook her head. “Brigit and I have spent a long time by the river. But I guess she told you.”

  The answer was a simple, “Yes” from Maureen, closely watching the two girls, happy they were such good friends but sad for Lynne’s terrible thoughts and the wretched images she imagined fleeting through Lynne’s mind. The peaceful river that the girls loved, perhaps dreamed by of the men they would one day marry but carrying them to fear and perhaps hatred.

  The dinner went well. At first the talk was a little stilted, but then Luke started talking about the ranch and the Southwest desert. Dr. Brock told a little about his practice. It was the women who spoke the most. The stars, though, were Lynne and Brigit, the parents of the girls telling them how proud they were, and Brock jesting with Lynne about coming to work in his office eventually and what a terribly difficult boss he would be. Luke interrupted that there would be nothing at his place for Brigit like that, except that she could come home and look after injured workers. At one point he rather criticized his daughter, telling the group, but especially her, that she could come home after the war and work at the Catholic Hospital and help at the ranch. Naturally, the parents knew their daughters would be exceptional, so Luke had no expectation of what he said.

  The Brocks became more comfortable about the Donovans coming to Maine with them. Dr. Brock somewhat looked down on Luke, perhaps as a laborer, yet admired the strength of the man and the success he had made of his work.

  Maureen, at first, felt uncomfortable about Nancy Brock, her aristocratic face, the kind one sees in the newspapers, say of the king and queen of England, except that Nancy was not as, well, as frumpy, Maureen was thinking, as Elizabeth. But it was the manner, the sophistication, the accent when she spoke with her long a’s and cutting of the r’s, an accent even beyond Boston but what she had learned from her parents and in school, an accent far above the crowd. Maureen was uncomfortable at first, felt herself dowdy. But both women were tall and fair, their aging bodies not having accumulated much fat beyond what they had when married and before the children. In their dinner clothes they wore the proper cosmetics that emphasized their best features, dresses that still allowed a man to turn to see their busts and slightly protruding hips. Yes, in physical ways, there was a resemblance. Nancy tried hard not, however, to show the superiority of her Boston upbringing. She had that way of making people feel comfortable, though she may have thought them inferior, whether it was a store clerk or dinner guests such as they had tonight. In fact, she liked Maureen. Both women were somewhat like their daughters in this way. They just naturally admired the strengths they saw in one another. Nancy felt, that despite the difference in their upbringing, that had they lived closer, they could be friends, perhaps like Lynne and Brigit. Lynne did not have her mother’s aire about her, never had, something Nancy sometimes regretted. But when Nancy came to know Brigit and having been struck by her beauty, and knowing Lynne was a rebel like Brigit, she not only accepted Lynne’s personality but that of her close friend. She also knew that her husband reveled in Lynne’s difference, not only from his wife, but from most of the girls with whom she played, grew up, was close to through the high school years. Somehow, she seemed always to choose the outspoken, the less self-conscious of their position in society. Lynne, in fact, almost had a fight with her parents about her coming out. She did not believe in it. From where her ideas came about equality and social nonsense was beyond her parents, except they knew they had a very intelligent daughter who read many books, as well as the newspapers and grew older discussing the world events, the differences that they saw among people in newspaper articles. It was because of this that Lynne’s father came to accept his daughter’s independence much sooner than did her mother.