Letters From Home

by Kristina McMorris

  “Order up!” The chef’s voice jerked Betty back to greasy paradise and her mouth into a frown. She deposited Irma’s bare dinner plate in a bussing tub. As she headed for the kitchen, someone called out, “Excuse me? Miss? Over here.”

  “Be there in a minute,” she shot back; she couldn’t be in two places at once. But then she registered the new customer’s appearance. An Army sergeant, all alone, dark and suave. Fit in his sharp uniform, he boasted looks as dreamy as they came.

  Her shoes did an automatic U-turn, straight to his table. Cosmetics undoubtedly needing to be refreshed, she tilted her face to its most flattering angle and asked, “See anything you like?” She inserted a deliberate pause before gesturing to his menu.

  His mouth slid into a grin. His eyes glinted.

  And she knew she had him.

  “Hey, I know you,” he said. She would have taken the phrase for a tired old pickup line, but his tone sounded of genuine discovery. “The USO,” he explained. “A few weeks back.”

  Had she danced with him and forgotten? Surely she would have remembered a guy like this. Crud, she hated when a fella had the upper hand.

  “You were one of the singers,” he added. The connection seemed to end there.

  “You’ve got quite a memory …” She drew out the last word, a prompt for him to volunteer his name.

  “J.T.,” he said. “And you’re Betty.”

  “How did you—” she began, then glanced down at her name tag. “Oh. Right.”

  “Pleased to finally meet you.”

  “Likewise.” The feel of something sticky between her fingers prevented her from extending her hand. As a cover, she yanked the pencil from her ear and notepad out of her pocket, posed them in order-taking position.

  “Well, Betty, I think you got a fan club started by some of the guys in our office.”

  “The office?” she asked, milking the compliment.

  “Army recruitment, down off Jackson.” He reclined in his seat, one arm draped across the top of the neighboring chair, as if accustomed to claiming ownership and space at will. His posture launched a wave of arrogance stronger than his spicy cologne. “You should come by sometime. We could use a smart, beautiful woman like you in the Women’s Army Corps.”

  A giggle bubbled through her. “You see me in the WAC? Marching around all day in khaki?”

  J.T. gave her figure a brief scan, no doubt picturing her out of a uniform rather than in one. “Just think about it, sweetheart. You could help out our soldiers by doing more than singing to ‘em.” The implication might have been offensive had he not continued so smoothly. “Besides, you seem like the kinda girl who’d like to travel, see the world. Sydney, London, Rome. Maybe Hawaii? White sandy beaches, luscious palm trees. Water so blue and clear you could spot a dime at the bottom.”

  His pitch sounded as rehearsed as that of a Fuller Brush salesman, but the vision towed Betty’s mind into a drift regardless. Life could certainly be worse than living in a tropical haven. Too bad military enlistment was a requirement. She’d sooner become a lumberjack than run around playing soldier. Why, for the love of Mike, some women tried so hard to swap roles with men, she had no idea.

  “I said order up!” the chef bellowed.

  She pushed out a sweetly appeasing voice. “Coming,” she answered, abruptly reminded of her unglamorous servitude. The chef’s call should have taken priority, given his grumpiness tonight, but she couldn’t bow to another command before enlightening someone, anyone, of her overflowing potential.

  Posture lifted, she peered down at the sergeant. “Thanks for the offer, but I already got plans,” she stated, as though he should have expected as much. “I’ll be traveling with the USO, soon as a spot in a touring group opens up. So I’m sure I’ll be stopping in all those places you mentioned.” She added with a wink, “Even drop you a postcard if I have time.” In reality, all the Hedy Lamarrs and Marlene Dietrichs took overseas priority. But the possibility of joining the tour was the main reason Betty had auditioned for the USO, and she wasn’t about to give up the chance at a better job—a better life—no matter how slim.

  “Well, if things don’t work out,” he said, “come on by and see me. Or, even if you wanted to chat about other things, besides the military …” He trailed off, inviting her to fill in the blanks.

  “Wessel, there you are!” A GI appeared at the front door beside two rather refined-looking girls. To top it off, they were knockouts, which J.T. seemed to note in less than a blink. “We’re hittin’ O’Toole’s. Ya comin', or what?”

  The girls whispered to each other, then giggled, a sound that drew the sergeant from his seat like a snake to a flute. Not until reaching the exit did he rotate back, as though suddenly recalling Betty was there. “Like I said, you oughta come by.”

  She layered on a smile. “Yeah, sure.” In your dreams, her mind added. Jerks like this reminded her why she’d be better off with a real gentleman—like Morgan, that soldier from the dance. Because mysterious and chivalrous deserved to beat out suave and dreamy every time.

  Not that they always did, of course.

  As J.T. and his gang strolled gaily past the diner windows, Betty tried to imagine a hundred ways to put the nitwit in his place if given the chance. But before she could come up with a solitary one, a gruff warning from the chef took another stomp at her pride.

  6

  Late August 1944

  France

  “Charlie! Where are you?” Morgan screamed, pain grinding his throat. He rubbed his eyelids with the back of his hand and strained to focus. The gray smoke of mortar explosions burned his nostrils.

  “Charlie!” His voice melted into the bursting of artillery shells and hammering of machine guns. He fought off a cough. The taste of tar coated his tongue. He spat and missed the water, hitting the sleeve of his fatigues. Black, grainy liquid.

  Waves were riding him mid-thigh. Ocean waves. But he couldn’t feel the chill. Too numb, too filled with terror. Too confused by how he and Charlie had ended up separated.

  He clutched his Ml rifle to his chest and plodded through the bloody sea, the water like a flood of molasses. Leaning every pound of his body forward, he pushed toward the hazy beachhead. German bullets zipped past his ears. He ducked his face away, grasping his net-covered helmet. Behind him, miles of Allied ships, now tattered floating tombs, dappled the ocean. Infantry hung like soiled rags off bow ramps. Uniformed corpses plugged jagged holes in landing craft.

  Morgan refocused and resumed his march, until something bumped his knee. He gasped at the sight. A swarm of dead bodies hovered beneath the surface of the water. Their unseeing stares reached for him, pleading for help too late. Boys, all of them, too young to be soldiers. Still, here they were, cut down by machine-gun fire. Drowned by the weight of their own field packs.

  Staggering from dizziness, he trudged onward. He searched for pillboxes camouflaged in the trees overlooking the shore. Not a bunker in view, but he knew they were there, preserving the merciless rage of Wehrmacht troops awaiting his approach.

  Once at water of knee-high depth, he hurdled the waves with his weighted boots. The suction of wet sand suddenly yielded. He stumbled out of the ocean and onto a quilt of fatigues covering every inch of the beach. Was he the only GI left standing?

  The question retreated as he plowed through the patchwork of helmets and weapons, of crumpled bodies lying facedown in the gritty sand. A mortician’s waiting room for fallen heroes.

  He dropped to his knees in a bucket-sized gap, tossing his rifle aside. He yanked back on jacket collars for a glimpse of their faces. Blood trickled from their gaped mouths. Gashes, bullet holes, missing pieces. The stench of death seared his senses, folded his stomach in quarters. And their eyes, their glassy eyes, shining hollow, like tinted doors entrapping their souls.

  “Morgan….” A hoarse whisper seemed to cry out from the heavens.

  He flew back on his knees. “Charlie?”

  “Morgan….” The v
oice drew nearer, echoing as if spoken from the base of a well.

  “Charlie!” he shrieked, searching, searching. “Where are you?”

  A fatigue-clad arm shot up from the pile of bodies. The sandy hand grabbed hold of his shoulder and shook him.

  “Morgan, wake up.”

  The unexpected words jolted him back to their French campsite. From the milky light of the moon, he could see his brother, wrapped in a blanket an arm’s length away.

  “You okay?” Charlie asked groggily.

  Yeah, Morgan mouthed without sound. The terror of his dream tapering, he forced a dry swallow and nodded.

  Charlie yawned as he rolled onto his other side, adjusted his head on his elbow.

  The duty had always been Morgan’s, waking his brother from nightmares. All those months after their mother’s death, he would climb up the bunk-bed ladder to interrupt the kid’s tossing and turning.

  When had things become so backward?

  Morgan blew out a quiet, shaky exhale, his muscles as taut as tucked Army bedding. He swept a glance over the mounds bivouacked around him: his slumbering squad, spread throughout the pasture like grazing cattle.

  He rested the back of his hand on his forehead and inhaled the familiar smell of dewy meadow. He’d find it soothing if not for the distant barrage of artillery fire, or the vengeful explosions of Hitler’s “Buzz Bombs.” Not quite the sounds of summer nights on the farm.

  From star to star he drew imaginary lines, struggling to erase the haunting pictures flipping through his mind. Considering how many images there were, it was hard to believe only two months had passed since their troop transport ship left New York. For twelve days they’d sailed in the dank, creaking chamber, zigzagging to avoid wolf packs of German subs. Poor Charlie had rarely been sick a day in his life, but the Atlantic’s unforgiving pitch and roll made up for lost time; his waistline shrank two belt loops before the ship had anchored.

  “Good thing we didn’t join the Navy,” Morgan had joked. Charlie hadn’t laughed.

  Looking back, Morgan almost laughed himself, remembering how eager they’d all been to reach the living nightmare that waited across the English Channel. His squad had arrived on the Norman shore well after the D-Day invasion, but the gruesome crime scene still invaded his dreams. Even now, the memory of bodies washing ashore sent a chill zipping up his spine.

  Then again, the thought of death sometimes offered a strange sense of peace. A morbid notion, perhaps, until you’re at the tail end of another twenty-mile march beneath the hot French sun, with sixty pounds of gear bound to your chafed, raw back, your feet swollen and bleeding, your stomach knotted from K-rations. All elements of an Army conspiracy, Morgan decided, to make battle an appealing prospect.

  An effective strategy, as it turned out. At one point, he’d been suckered along with the rest of them. Like a kid awaiting a parade, he too had lined the road to welcome the tarpaulin-covered convoy. No one seemed to mind that the front line was the next scheduled stop.

  Over winding roads, their deuce-and-a-half had bumped and groaned. They’d snuck through the black of night with taped-over headlights, getaway cars preparing for a heist. By the time they unloaded in Brezolles, Morgan was certain the torturous hours of marching or waiting for action would surely rival those spent in combat.

  The theory didn’t last.

  In three-foot-deep foxholes, he and Charlie had dueled trapped members of the German Panzer army, closing the Falaise Pocket like a tube of toothpaste. Though tens of thousands of Kraut soldiers had been captured, a hefty number escaped through the gap. Both a success and a failure. The essence of war.

  The battles were far from over, but the amount of bloodshed Morgan had already witnessed could soak the earth to its core. He’d learned there was no limit to how violently men and their machines could deconstruct the human anatomy. How desensitized people could become. How barbaric it all was.

  Now, studying the dirt road cutting through the meadow, the road they’d be tackling at daylight, he feared what other lessons war had in store for them.

  “Charlie,” Morgan said in a loud whisper. Unable to sleep, he wanted someone to talk to. He tapped his brother’s shoulder. The kid didn’t move. Not even a break in the rhythm of his heavy breaths.

  How was it that he rested so peacefully?

  Maybe in Charlie’s dreams they were somewhere far away. A safer time, safer place, where the air brimmed with warmth and the lullabies of crickets. They were kids back in their dad’s Iowa fields, dozing out in the open, naming shapes made of stars in the sky. A sky that offered them promises, futures as limitless as the universe.

  A sky that lied.

  7

  Late August 1944

  Chicago, Illinois

  The gilding of the room amplified the stiff formality at Liz’s table. In the corner, a string quartet played Rachmaninoff over silverware clinking on fine china. A tuxedoed host at the entrance relieved a woman of her fur stole while waiters slipped in and out of the kitchen that smelled of grilled steak and spices. Diners nodded and murmured and lobbed laughter back and forth like a tennis ball in a never-ending match.

  “All done here, miss?” The waiter gestured with his upturned hand, the movement as groomed as his mustache.

  Liz opened her mouth to decline, but Dalton replied for her. “We both are, thank you.”

  Why on earth did he choose a place as fancy as this if he wanted to eat at drive-in restaurant speed? Had she known he was in a hurry, she would have bypassed the vegetables and savored the marmalade chicken first.

  Liz pressed up a smile as the waiter retrieved their plates. The distraction of eating gone, she bounced her leg under the tablecloth, keeping time with the drumming awkwardness.

  Dalton took a long drink of red wine. Tabletop candlelight traveled through his crystal glass and cast severe shadows across his face. With the chiseling of his features, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine him draped in a toga, orating before the Roman Senate in another lifetime.

  “Was your steak all right?” she asked, attempting conversation.

  “Come again?”

  “You only ate half your dinner. Was something wrong with it?”

  “It was fine. I just had a late lunch.” He offered a lean smile, then popped his second Rolaids of the evening into his mouth. If it weren’t for knowing heartburn ran in his family, she might suspect she was the cause of his indigestion.

  Sipping her lemon-wedged ice water, she glanced to her side. A middle-aged couple, necks adorned in a bow tie and pearls, sat silently at the next table. Engrossed in their meals, they sliced, chewed, and dabbed their mouths with white linen napkins. They had to have been married fifteen, twenty years. No children, Liz guessed. Just a small, yippy lapdog waiting at home. The woman would knit next to the radio while her husband read the paper before they retired to opposite sides of the bed.

  Liz tried not to stare, but she had exchanged so few words with Dalton over dinner she began to feel as though they had more in common with the neighboring couple than each other.

  Dalton drained his glass and contributed to their small talk, finally. “Did you end up with all the classes you wanted?”

  “For the most part. I was hoping to take the one on Yeats, but it was still full.”

  “That’s great.” He glanced over his shoulder.

  Had he heard a word she’d said?

  “Dalton, I said I didn’t get into the class.”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. I’m just looking for our waiter.”

  She hoped he was planning to ask for the bill rather than the dessert menu.

  “Dalton Harris, how the heck ahh you?” A deep male voice encroached on their table.

  Dalton shot to his feet, accepted a handshake. “Mr. Bernstein, it’s a pleasure to see you.”

  A swath of the man’s slicked gray hair fell over his temple as he slapped a palm on Dalton’s shoulder. He reeked of cigar smoke and old Boston money, and the button closing his
pin-striped suit jacket appeared ready to launch should he laugh too hard.

  “Did you just arrive?” Dalton asked.

  “Just finished up. Dinner meeting, you know. All hobnobbing and politics. Not a romantic evening like yours.” He motioned his double chin in Liz’s direction.

  “Please,” Dalton said, “allow me to introduce my girlfriend, Elizabeth Stephens.”

  Mr. Bernstein gave her hand a cordial peck. “Nice to meet you, missy.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Her father is Professor Emmett Stephens,” Dalton pointed out, “a recent transfer from Northwestern to Georgetown.”

  “Ah, yes. I believe my son, Warren, took one of his classes way back when. History, was it?”

  “Classical literature,” Liz replied, then risked a peek into Dalton’s eyes to make sure correcting the gentleman was acceptable, an act she immediately regretted. When had seeking his permission become a reflex?

  “Literature. Of course,” Mr. Bernstein said. “Well, no time for amusing folk tales anymore. Right, Dalton? Not with law school keeping you as busy as it does my own boy these days.”

  Amusing folk tales? Liz’s jaw coiled closed, and thankfully so. She was feeling less and less inclined to refrain from slinging retorts labeled “brash” by the charm school Julia had attended.

  Dalton folded his arms, wholly absorbed. “Warren is in his second year at Harvard now, isn’t he, sir? And already published in the Law Review, I believe.”

  “That’s right,” the man said, surprised. He looked down at Liz. “Sharp as a tack, this one is. You hang on to him, and you just might end up our nation’s first lady. Right after Warren’s presidential term, of course.” When he chuckled, Liz dipped her gaze to the taut thread securing his coat button, hoping for a fracture in the monotony.

  “I believe you mean his terms,” Dalton said. “Re-election would be a given.”

  Mr. Bernstein slanted a grin toward Liz. “What’d I tell you? Sharp as a tack.”