The Long Path Home

by Ellen Lindseth

  Yet they had been competitive, too, both trying out for the same part and throwing fits if the other one got it. They had argued and fought and told the other they wished they had been born an only child. But only in private. Vi wished, now, that she had spent more time telling Fern how much she had admired her and that her jealousy had been fueled by thinking herself an inferior copy.

  How clearly she could see that now.

  “Virginia Heart, what are you doing out there?” Sue called from the deck stairs.

  Vi jerked back to the present. “Sorry. I thought I lost an earring, but I found it!”

  Hurrying inside, Vi resolved to write an additional letter home, and this one to Fern and Fern alone. She would apologize for being such a brat and say all the things she should have years ago.

  It also made her think she should be more like a big sister to Marcie, rather than a babysitter. Someone like Fern. A confidante. Someone who would stand with Marcie against a common enemy. Someone who would also shore up Marcie’s defenses where she was most vulnerable. Because that was what Vi had needed five years ago and didn’t get. In her case, there hadn’t been enough love in the world to make her feel whole, because she had always believed Fern was better, and that was what had left her vulnerable to Robert.

  Vi suspected Marcie had a similar weak spot, in that she didn’t see her own value. Which meant anyone who made her friend feel desirable would be “in like Flynn,” and Vi would not—could not—let that happen.

  Vi had promised Sal she would take care of Marcie, and so she would.

  Because no one should have to go through what she had.

  Chapter 11

  “So that’s Italy.” Marcie sounded singularly unimpressed as the mountainous coast came closer.

  “Not what you expected?” Vi asked, squinting to see if she could make out anything more than cliffs and peaks in the bright morning sunlight. Fortunately, it wasn’t too hot yet, allowing the girls to stand along the rail and sightsee without wilting in their uniforms.

  “I don’t know.” Marcie turned her back to the view and shrugged. “The way some people in Little Italy talk about it, one would think wine flowed in the rivers and citrus trees bloomed on every hillside while birds of paradise flitted in the breeze.”

  Vi shot her an amused look. “In other words, heaven on earth.”

  Marcie huffed a soft laugh. “Precisely.”

  Vi returned her attention to the rugged landscape, wishing she could remember more of Italy’s geography. She knew the Alps were in the North and Venice had canals, but wasn’t the rest of Italy flat, with lots of grapevines? “It doesn’t look like heaven from here.”

  Marcie sighed and tilted her head back to catch the sun. “You know what’s funny? Italy was never a place I dreamed of visiting, or even really thought about. London, maybe. Or Paris. But not Italy, and yet here I am.”

  “Not even Rome?” Vi was surprised. She had naively assumed every Catholic person wanted to go there, in particular to the Vatican, to meet the Pope.

  Marcie shrugged. “I guess I was never bitten by the bug, despite my mother dragging me to Mass every chance she got.”

  “I wouldn’t mind seeing the Sistine Chapel,” Gertie said, sounding wistful. “But I doubt Frances would be up for it, and Sue said we couldn’t go anywhere without our travel buddy.”

  “I’m sure Sue would make an exception as long as you’re with someone in the cast,” Vi said, giving the girl a brief squeeze.

  “Assuming you could find someone else to stay with Frances,” Marcie said, her face still to the sky. “Of course, we might not even make it to Rome. We could be stuck in the South, entertaining flyboys.”

  “Where did you hear that?” Gertie asked in surprise.

  Marcie shrugged. “Here and there. And speaking of Fran, where is she?”

  Vi looked around, surprised the girl wasn’t with them. It wasn’t every day one got to sail along the coast of Italy.

  Gertie continued gazing longingly at the horizon. “She’s around . . . somewhere.”

  Vi’s eyebrows rose as she spotted a very flirty Frances entertaining a small group of sailors.

  Poor Gertie, Vi thought. She didn’t stand a chance trying to keep Frances in check, though that wasn’t really her job. Unlike Vi, if Gertie’s travel buddy ended up pregnant or kicked out for immoral behavior, no one would hold her accountable. Vi wasn’t so lucky.

  “It’s so strange to think that this time last year, Italy was our enemy,” Gertie continued in her soft, sweet voice.

  “Italy was never our enemy,” Marcie said sharply. “Mussolini, yes. And his fascist party, to be sure. But they are all babbi—” She said the word with a snarl. “The rest of Italy—the real Italy—had no interest in fighting anyone. Certainly not the Americans, who were our allies in the Great War.”

  Gertie turned to Marcie in surprise. “‘Our allies’? Is your family Italian?”

  Vi could have kissed the girl for asking. Even though she already knew the answer, having the knowledge out in the open would make her life so much easier.

  “No!” Marcie said. Then she added a touch defensively, “And even if they were, would it matter? We all came to America from somewhere.”

  Not exactly a definitive answer. But perhaps close enough that if Vi accidentally let something slip, Marcie wouldn’t be suspicious.

  “I guess I never thought about it,” Gertie said slowly. “But I suppose not, since we’re all on the same side now.”

  Silence descended over the trio for a few minutes as the mountainous shoreline got closer. It looked deceptively peaceful and bucolic.

  “Is there still any fighting going on in Italy?” Gertie asked. “I mean, we liberated Rome months ago, and since Rome is the capital city, the war is over for them, right?”

  “We’re on a ship full of soldiers, Gert,” Vi pointed out dryly. “I doubt Uncle Sam is bringing them to Italy for a vacation.”

  “I know that,” Gertie said with something approaching irritation. If she was even capable of such an emotion. “But Frances said the men were only here to join up with other units on their way to France.”

  “I heard that rumor, too,” Marcie said before Vi could question the veracity of Frances’s source. “But if you had read the papers before we left, you’d know our men are still fighting hard to push the Germans out of northern Italy.”

  “Really?” Gertie’s eyes widened. “The front page only mentioned France and the Pacific. I guess I thought that meant Italy was conquered. Kind of like North Africa.”

  “No,” Vi said gently, even as Marcie rolled her eyes. Vi understood her travel buddy’s impatience with Gertie’s ignorance, but not everyone had relatives in Italy, so not everyone paid attention to the situation over here.

  And she also was sensitive to what would likely be Gertie’s next thought.

  Sure enough, the dancer started to pale. “Then we . . . I mean, I knew the USO sometimes went to the front lines . . . but I thought, when we passed Spain, that we would be going somewhere—”

  “Safe?” Marcie interjected. “If you wanted to be safe, you shoulda stayed home.”

  “Marcie!” Vi shot her a hard look. “Be nice. Or did you forget we’re all supposed to be a family? And to be honest, I’m not particularly keen on going into a war zone, either. You might be looking forward to some excitement, but I, for one, would really like to get back in one piece.”

  Marcie threw up her hands in disgust and turned away. Vi inwardly sighed. Sometimes she forgot how “young” her travel buddy was, despite their almost being the same age. Likely it was the hard lessons of the past five years that left Vi feeling at least a decade older. Living on the street could do that to a gal.

  Frances drifted over. “Hiya, Gertie. What gives?”

  Gertie attempted to smile. “Nothing. Vi and Marcie here were just telling me about the fighting in Italy.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” her friend said. “We’ll probably be st
ationed in Rome, where all the best theaters are, and get to sightsee on our days off. And think of all the soldiers just dying to see pretty American girls like us!”

  “When they’re not literally dying, fighting Nazis,” Marcie said under her breath. Vi shot her another sharp look.

  Providentially, Sue called to them at that moment, telling them to gather their things and to meet in the wardroom ASAP. Vi held her tongue while Frances and Marcie traded murderous looks. Keep your head down, Vi. You don’t have a dog in this fight.

  But that was wrong, she reminded herself. She was no longer Lily Lamour, looking out for only herself. She had Marcie’s well-being to look out for, too. It was time for her to start being the sister she had never been for Fern.

  And maybe, in the process, she could finally begin to balance the scales between herself and the universe . . . and her older sister.

  Chapter 12

  “Welcome to Naples!” Lieutenant Guilford said with a pearly-white smile and a sweep of his arm. “We were expecting you yesterday, but never mind. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”

  “He reminds me of a carnival barker,” Marcie practically yelled in Vi’s ear as a tank rumbled by, one of many being unloaded from the cargo hold of the ship next to theirs. The whole harbor was as busy as an anthill, with soldiers and sailors everywhere shouting to one another, directing traffic and platoons of fully kitted-out soldiers.

  “Well, he is our publicity agent, which is almost the same thing,” Vi said with a laugh. A passing soldier with a red beret grinned at them. Marcie gave him a little wave, and his grin got even bigger. Vi elbowed her travel buddy in the ribs, which earned her a scowl.

  “We would have been here sooner,” Wyatt said, stepping forward to shake Lieutenant Guilford’s hand when Mr. Stuart didn’t immediately respond. Vi eyed the latter man curiously, trying to decide if the director, who stood to the side, staring off into space, meant to be rude or was lost in artistic reverie. “But our ship had to detour a fair bit to avoid submarine activity.”

  Vi blinked and forgot about Mr. Stuart. This was the first she had heard of there being any actual danger on the voyage. Endless exhortations to be careful, yes. Repeated reminders to be alert, yes. But never a word from the captain that they were being actively hunted by submarines.

  This new knowledge made her feel a bit lightheaded.

  “We’re also a bit rusty, having been cooped up on the ship for so long,” Sue said as the lieutenant shook hands with her, too. “Any idea when we can get onto a stage and brush the cobwebs off?”

  Lieutenant Guilford’s sparkling smile disappeared. “Oh, I do apologize. I thought you might enjoy a little R and R after your long trip, so I didn’t reserve a rehearsal space. I’ll fix that. In the meantime, the army has you scheduled for some additional training.”

  The troupe groaned at this news, and Lieutenant Guilford held out his hands in supplication.

  “I know, I know, but it won’t be as bad as you all are thinking,” he said. “It’s only a few briefings on the country and its customs. There will be plenty of time to relax and swim; you’ll find numerous pools available to officers and the USO. There are also a few shops I could recommend, though you ladies may find the selection a bit limited. The environs in this part of Italy are generally safe, so feel free to explore. Except the beaches. Don’t go there. Those are strictly off-limits.”

  “Whatever for? The water looked lovely on the way in,” Ann said with a faint frown.

  “It’s not the water, miss.” Lieutenant Guilford’s face became unexpectedly grim. “It’s the mines. The Germans buried them everywhere along the coast.”

  A kind of pall settled over the group, and it was a much more subdued company that piled into the waiting jeeps, leaving the luggage and crates to be loaded onto a truck that would follow behind.

  As the jeeps growled through the narrow streets of Naples, Vi’s odd sensation of having been dropped onto an entirely different planet deepened. Vi felt as if she had landed on a different planet. Much was as she would’ve expected of a busy port town. Middle-aged women with bags over their arms perused the wares of the street vendors, while tired-looking farmers unloaded battered trucks or mule carts. Old men in baggy pants stood on street corners, hands in their pockets, watching the jousting of trucks, autos, pedestrians, and bicycles as they fought for equal rights to the road. The sidewalks and streets teemed with seemingly normal activity.

  And yet, eerie, blackened, and hollowed-out buildings appeared and disappeared down every cross street, their cracked and jagged facades a silent reminder of battles recently fought. Soldiers of various countries, distinguishable by the different caps and trim on their uniforms, chatted among themselves, their rifles slung over their shoulders. Most disturbing of all, though, were the frightfully thin children weaving and darting between it all and laughing as if oblivious to the devastation around them.

  But then, the war was nothing new to them. For some, it was all they had ever known. It struck her then that this—this ability of the children to play and the citizens of Naples to continue living their lives despite the devastation—was the true essence of what it meant to be human. That incredible gift to rise up from the ashes, no matter how awful the circumstances, to dust oneself off and move forward. That had to be mankind’s greatest quality.

  As the city blocks gave way to fields and farmhouses, the view changed but was no less disturbing. Even Ann and Marcie, who were wedged into the jeep’s back seat next to Vi, fell into a shocked silence.

  Scorched and twisted olive trees stood silent watch over fields marred by craters that were the work of shells and hand grenades. Abandoned farmhouses, roofs gone and doors torn off, spoke of lives lost. Dreams upended. Marcie pinched her nose against the stench of hemp rotting unharvested in the fields. What must the countryside have smelled like after the fighting had first moved on, and plants weren’t the only casualties disintegrating in the heat and sun?

  Finally the jeeps entered the town of Caserta, their destination according to their driver. A handful of bone-thin children stopped their play with a makeshift ball to watch them pass. Vi’s heart twisted as she compared their gaunt visages to her last glimpse of Jimmy, his full cheeks rosy with health and vigor. Her chest ached for their parents. How different their dreams for their children’s lives must have been from this.

  “Looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Ann said over the jeep engine’s growl and gnashing of gears. “Take a gander at that!”

  Vi glanced toward Ann’s side of the street, steeling herself for some new awfulness, and then did a double take. An enormous, ornate, five-story building made of white and gold stone—a palace, really—rose up into the bright-blue sky in a surfeit of splendor. Large enough to cover several city blocks back home, with a vast lawn stretching out in front of it, crisscrossed by paths, it dominated its surroundings.

  Beautiful stonework around the windows and along the roof gave it an air of elegance despite the damaged roof and broken glass panes. Three stately arches were embedded into the front facade, each one nearly three stories tall from ground to apex and wide enough to accommodate a horse-drawn carriage or even a small truck.

  The number of military vehicles parked out front gave rise to that last thought and also suggested that, whatever it had been in the past, it now served at the pleasure of the Allied army.

  Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought to herself in a black humor.

  Ann tapped the driver on the shoulder. “What building is that?”

  Vi leaned forward, curious, too.

  Lieutenant Guilford shouted the answer over his shoulder. “The Reggia di Caserta. It was a royal residence in the 1700s, built to rival the Versailles in France. Now it’s the headquarters for the British Armed Forces. Before that it housed the Italian Air Force Academy, which was why it was bombed. Luckily only one shell found its mark, so most of the building is still intact.”

  “I don’t
suppose we’re staying there?” Vi asked hopefully, seduced by the idea of sleeping within such grandeur. Especially after the cramped conditions aboard the ship.

  “No, miss,” Lieutenant Guilford said. “Nor would you want to. There’s no hot water, and all that missing glass means you’d be at the mercy of the mosquitoes. And that’s not a good idea, believe me.”

  “Oh,” Vi said, a little sorry to have the building’s grandeur diminished.

  “But it does have a gem of a theater,” the lieutenant continued. “Several other units have already performed there and raved about the acoustics.”

  “Well, that’s fine, then,” Ann said, sharing a conspiratorial wink with Vi. Vi agreed. Imagine being able to boast once she got back to the States that she had graced the stage of European royalty! It’d be quite the feather in her cap. That is, assuming she did get back.

  Her mood slipped.

  Marcie nudged Vi in the ribs and gestured toward the other side of the jeep. “Is it just me, or do the natives seem less than happy to see us?”

  Tearing her thoughts from Jimmy and Sal and the fate of the club, Vi looked where Marcie was pointing. Several pedestrians had stopped to watch them pass, their vacant, weary faces reminding Vi of her conversation with Luciana. The American jeeps weren’t signs of liberation to these people but merely continuing occupation.

  “I suspect they’ve seen things we can’t even begin to imagine,” Vi answered. “Still, I’m glad they aren’t our intended audience.”

  “Amen to that,” Marcie said, her tone light. Her expression, however, remained troubled. “I suspect they would be a tough crowd.”

  Vi couldn’t disagree. An undertone of weariness and anger seemed to permeate the landscape. Emotions that didn’t go well with a light musical comedy.