That's My Baby

by Frances Itani

  THE 39ers, the first to join up, had been gone since the beginning of the war. More than three hundred Hasty Ps were not returning. Tobe was one of those, a 39er now buried in a grave in Italy.

  Tobe had transferred to the White Battalion.

  SHE was about to give up, believing it would be impossible to locate Jack. She’d met him only once, at the end of the three days she and Tobe had spent at his house in Horam. She remembered the colour of Jack’s hair, the vertical scar at the edge of his eye, but she wasn’t certain she’d be able to identify him now.

  Four or five civilian men were standing on a high baggage cart, overlooking the chaotic scene. She began to head in their direction to see if they would haul her up to give her a better view of the crowd. But Jack spotted her before she could push her way through. He shouted over the turmoil, trying to get through and past dozens of men in uniform, like him.

  “Red!” he shouted. “Over here, Red!”

  He shoved his way forward. He looked tired, rugged, drew deeply on a cigarette in the way she remembered. His cap was pushed back at an angle over his dark hair. The scar was the same, permanently etched into his face. Older. He was older.

  He pulled her into his arms and hugged her tightly. He had written to her from Italy. He and Tobe had almost made it home together. Tobe was killed in February, only weeks before the remains of the Regiment shipped north to Holland, and only months before the end of the war.

  That much she knew. Now, all Jack could promise was to meet with her another day, the following week, to tell more, to fill out the story, to talk to her about Tobe’s life from the landing at Pachino, in Sicily, and onward. What they had been through together from July 1943 until February 1945.

  The men had begun to form up, preparing to march down Station Street. Jack’s parents and his sisters had arrived; Hanora watched as he waved to them at the edge of the crowd. Evelyn and his son would be joining him from England as soon as the British, the Canadians, the High Commission and the Red Cross finalized their plans to transport the tens of thousands of war brides and their children to Canada. That was taking time, he said. A few months, in Evelyn’s case. There was so much paperwork. There were documents to fill, medical exams, appointments. But his family would soon be here, and he would have weeks to get things ready for them.

  “I loved him,” Jack said, and he hugged her close again before he headed over to his relatives. “You did, too, Hanora. I loved him, and he was my true friend. He couldn’t wait . . . he couldn’t wait to get home to you.”

  1998

  THAT’S MY BABY

  AFTER WORKING MOST OF THE DAY, AFTER considering the overview of the contents of the diaries, after making a few notes on how she hopes to shape the book, Hanora drives to Respiro in the evening to visit Billie. Her cousin is glad to see her.

  “Hanora. Are you out on errands?”

  “No. I’m here to spend the evening with you.”

  “What day is it?”

  “It’s Friday. What have you been doing?”

  “Walking up and down the halls, meeting people.” Billie points to her cane as if she’d propped it against her chair only moments before.

  Hanora is so relieved to hear that Billie is adjusting to life at Respiro, she goes out to the nursing station to speak to one of the caregivers she has come to know. She tells her how pleased she is to learn that Billie is walking in the halls now. But the nurse is perplexed.

  “Your cousin?” she says. “Billie? She hasn’t left her suite except for meals. Not once since she arrived. She goes out only when you are here to take her. She certainly doesn’t walk up and down the halls.”

  Billie was so convincing that it is difficult to understand how she invented the information. She seemed to genuinely believe she had been out there socializing with other residents. Hanora can tell that she didn’t say this intentionally, to deceive.

  “Confabulation,” says the nurse. “She believes what she makes up. We’d like her to move about, walk in the halls, take part in events, but she refuses. We do encourage her . . . we don’t give up.”

  Confabulation. One more piece of jargon to consider. Not exactly the way Hanora has considered the word, if ever she did consider it in the past. She returns to Billie’s suite.

  Billie has been checking through her TV guide and wants to watch a rerun of a movie she and Whit saw on TV sometime in the eighties. The movie is called Sizzle. She remembers the music and wants to see Leslie Uggams sing and dance. A gangster film, Billie says.

  Hanora thinks of her grandparents’ hotel at the edge of the bay in Deseronto. She considers the rumour—perhaps fact—that Capone stayed several times under a different name, or names. Her grandparents and her uncle Bernard wouldn’t have lied about that, so she assumes it is true. She never met Capone but used to watch for him. She thinks he probably wouldn’t have sat around the lobby, but she kept a lookout just the same, and told herself that even a gangster had to eat. He could have been in the dining room, bolting down her grandmother’s amazing meals while Hanora was sitting right there in the corner, at the family table. Many men were on the move between the two countries, criss-crossing Lake Ontario in small boats during rum-running days. She learned about that when she was older. But no one around the hotel said a word about rum-running. Not in front of her. Not when she was a child. She heard mutterings about gambling and about gangsters, but her family was careful about what was said. She and Tobe got together later to figure out the words, the meanings, the taboos that were not discussed.

  Billie has trouble finding the correct channel, so Hanora makes the selection, kicks off her shoes and plugs in the kettle to make tea at the countertop. They settle down to watch Sizzle.

  Leslie Uggams, with her smooth skin, high cheekbones and beautiful eyes, dances a fast, sexy dance to the music of “Sweet Georgia Brown” while John Forsythe looks on. Billie’s left foot is tapping, tapping; she knows the music, she hums along. The mob rivalry, a story set in Chicago, progresses, and a naive—but not for long—character named Julie enters the nightclub. Loni Anderson plays the part of Julie.

  “Julie doesn’t know much,” says Billie, clearly enjoying herself. “She doesn’t know much at all. Look what’s going on around her. Why can’t she clue in? Everyone’s crooked in this movie.”

  Uggams tap dances and sings “That’s My Baby,” and she is a wonder. The song and dance, her movements, everything about the performance sizzles with energy. Hanora would like to meet Uggams, interview her. A person that talented gives so much to the world. And her voice: so deeply powerful, it seems to echo from the back walls of the club.

  Billie sings along with “That’s My Baby”—a few of the lines. Her foot is tapping again.

  “Uggams uses her shoulders,” she says. “And why shouldn’t she? They’re fabulous. I used to have great shoulders. The dance,” she adds. “She must have learned to use her shoulders when she learned to dance.”

  “She’s a star,” says Hanora, delighted to see Billie so engaged.

  “Look at the way she can wear orange,” Billie says. “I saw her on Ed Sullivan one time, and she wore orange then, too. You think I forget things, but I know whereof I speak. She wore some sort of feathered outfit over one shoulder. The other was bare. She knows how to work those shoulders. Just look at her.”

  After Julie gets her revenge, after many twists and turns, the movie ends. Billie sits quietly for a moment, and stares at the screen while the credits roll.

  “The man,” she says. “The one I told you about? The one who was looking for me? He said that. He said, ‘That’s my baby,’ when he showed me the photo.”

  “What photo?”

  “Of him holding the baby. Our last day on board. I went up to say goodbye to Socks and the man said that, just like the song. He said he was moving to Coventry. His face was kind. He was twice my age, so much nicer than my own father. He held out the photo and told me he’d given his word that he would never speak of this, a
nd tucked it into the letters and handed them to me. He must have been mixed up. The letters had string around them.”

  “What letters, Billie?”

  “The ones I told you about.”

  “You never mentioned letters. Who wrote them?”

  “I don’t know. He insisted that I take them. He called me Hanora. I don’t think you were around. I was saying goodbye to Socks so we could arrange to meet in London. The man might have thought I was you. I thought the letters were mine. Well, they were mine. He gave them to me. But I never bothered reading them. I didn’t give them another thought. Socks was going directly to London, and I was right there beside him and handed them off. Socks had room in his luggage.”

  “But Socks left the ship in Plymouth. You and I disembarked in Le Havre.”

  “Plymouth was bombed eight times,” she said. “I read that, after I was back at my job in New York. I told you. I went to that place where everyone assembled before getting off the ship. Socks and I wanted to say goodbye again because I was going on to Paris with you.”

  “Billie, you and I changed identities on the ship.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “It was your idea.”

  Why is Hanora suddenly afraid?

  But Billie is afraid, too. Her memory is becoming scrambled. This happens when she is anxious.

  “What did Blue Socks do with the package?”

  “I don’t know. It was nothing to do with me. I don’t remember.”

  “Try. Think, Billie. Think hard. What did the man say?”

  “Blue Socks? I told you. I don’t remember.” She stares out the window, her eyes blank. She’s becoming agitated.

  “The man with the letters. What did he say?”

  “Something about not being silenced. Something about Father.”

  “Whose father?”

  “You had a father. I had a father. The man confused me with somebody else. He was acting strangely. Socks wanted to get me over to a quiet corner. We had a shipboard romance . . . I was head over heels. I met him in London later. We had only a few minutes to say goodbye. I ran up after breakfast.”

  “Please. Sit quietly. Think, Billie. Where are the letters now? Where is the photo?”

  “I didn’t care about any of that. I handed them to Socks. I met him three times. You probably never knew that. The last time was in New York. He brought the chest back for me. That was all before Whit. I loved Whit, Hanora. He was the only one for me.”

  “The letters might have been mine,” says Hanora. “What exactly did the man say about ‘father’?”

  “I had an abusive father,” Billie says. “He drank. He was unkind. Your father was perfect. Uncle Kenan was so good to me when I visited every summer. I was jealous. I used to imagine that he was my father, too.”

  “The man on the ship. I need to know. I was adopted, Billie. Kenan and Tress were not my birth parents. The man thought you were me.”

  “Oh, come on, Hanora. Now you’re talking nonsense.” She is irritated, and clearly doesn’t think much of this idea. “Why on earth would you invent such a story? And why would you and I change identities? What would be the point of that?” Billie leans forward in her chair and rocks back and forth. “What would be the point?” she says. “What would be the point?”

  She begins to cry. She’s incapable of saying more. Hanora tries to calm her down. A nurse comes in to help put Billie to bed. She turns away from them both, and sobs herself to sleep.

  MISTAKEN IDENTITY

  HANORA LIES IN BED. HEART POUNDING. NOT a chance of sleep. Stares at the ceiling. Goes over and over the scene in her head. More than one—a myriad of scenes. Everything so long ago. The ship. What can be recalled accurately after all this time? Everyone’s memory distorted. Everyone’s memory different, even when two people witness the same incident at exactly the same moment. Two onlookers or twenty-two, it makes no difference; the reports will never be the same. Remember Akutagawa, she tells herself. So many testimonies about what took place in his story “In a Grove,” but no two accounts alike. Everyone with different motives in the telling.

  What of her own memory? Aunt Zel warned her to guard, to preserve, the important moments so that, later, she could raid the hoard. As Aunt Zel herself must have tried to do from a past that stretched back generations before Hanora was born. How is anyone to know what to store, what will matter over time?

  Maybe, Hanora thinks, maybe I managed to get some memories right. Maybe I added some of the better ones. I may have chosen others poorly. Hoarded the wrong hoard.

  But she can’t make light of this, even to herself.

  The man travelling to Coventry was the man she had thought of earlier. She saw him when she was out walking on deck. She talked to him several times. He addressed her as Billie, knew she and Billie were cousins. He’d have known nothing of the identity switch. He wore a knitted green scarf. He seldom took it off except to dine or when dressed for the evening. Wore it during the day, wore it when out walking on deck. This memory, the forest-green scarf, has darted out from the buried hoard. And will be in her notes, she suddenly realizes. She wrote her observations when she was a passenger on the Champlain, sailing the ocean for the first time. Every notebook from that period is on a shelf in her closet. She hasn’t looked at the notebooks for years.

  She sits upright. Pulls on a robe and goes to the closet. Pulls down the one she wants, easily found. They’re all in order, labelled by date. She flicks a duster over them once in a while. Has no idea what to do with them. They’ll be destroyed, probably. But so far she hasn’t made a move to do this. Probably because they represent her training ground. The early, rough—but detailed—recording of people and events that helped her start out in her profession.

  She goes back to bed. Props pillows behind her.

  Call up your feelings, she tells herself. Stay calm and call up what you saw. The day of disembarkation. First Plymouth, then Le Havre. This matters. Every detail. Memory becomes distorted along the way. Think of Billie’s memory fading, replaced by some other reality.

  Everything so long ago.

  She begins to read.

  MAR. 30, 1939—PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND!

  Some passengers skipped breakfast. More than a few empty chairs. Not at our table. Excitement and buzz in the air; we’re caught up in it. People reporting they haven’t slept all night. Musicians in dining room. They’ll disembark in France later, when Billie and I do.

  Duke comes to breakfast. Ivie sits across from him. Irving Mills, too. Mills wearing spats, Ivie wearing dress with rectangular print. Wide lapel-like collar each side, reaches waist as if collar intended as vest. She smiles, gives a wave. Fabulous, self-assured smile.

  Ruth in black again. Black wool dress, V-cut neckline—this time with dramatic chiffon scarf, startling cerise. Cheeks flushed, almost match scarf. She turns the emerald-and-diamond ring around and around her finger. So excited to be seeing her husband, can’t keep down a cup of coffee.

  Get through this part—but there’s still more about her own table.

  Frank and Frankie danced late last night. They ask for slices of beef with asperges and melon. Not my kind of breakfast. Someone at table behind asks for French ice cream and waiter brings out two flavours from kitchen. Everyone roaring with laughter. Blue Socks attentive to Billie; she spent the night in his cabin. He still thinks she is Hanora. Billie says she’ll correct that when they meet in April. She’ll explain everything.

  The waiters move quickly to whisk away plates. Socks goes to his cabin to finish packing. Billie and I end up hurrying through meal, though no need to rush. Some people come to breakfast wearing overcoats—as if that might speed disembarkation.

  Many passengers on deck as we approach land. Plymouth is spread out before us. Luggage in halls awaits pickup; people milling about in public rooms. Everyone anxious, checking passports, checking watches. Too bad, after so much relaxation all week. I mingle with crowd before going down. Have a feeling I’
ll miss out if I don’t.

  Billie and I swap our passports back. Glad to have my own again. Glad to be Hanora Oak. There’s so much movement everywhere. Le Havre passengers try to stay out of the way of the mob getting off in England.

  Who on earth keeps track? Plymouth, then Le Havre. After that, ship has to prepare, stock up, return to New York. Stops again in Plymouth on way back, picks up new passengers joining return voyage. Complicated trail of schedules and bookings, embarkations, disembarkations. Who keeps track?

  Two assembly points. All crowded. Billie goes up first, wants to say final goodbye to Socks, wants to see him one more time before they meet in London.

  I take my time, wander back upstairs. Hear the sound of a horn. Laughter from behind. A few of Duke’s musicians horsing around. They’re not getting off but they add to the chaos.

  I catch glimpse of Fred Guy. Blue Socks edges over to speak to Guy, probably about his own mandolin, or about Fred Guy’s guitar. Or maybe banjo. They played together a couple of times in lounge this week. Socks laughs and claps Guy on the shoulder.

  The other musician is across the room. The older man I’ve seen walking on deck. He is pressed into the wall by the crowd. Wears a heavy winter coat and a knitted green scarf. I hang back because I don’t belong here. But I want to see what’s going on.

  The room is dingy, not yet open to full light. The older man looks in my direction. He’s searching for someone. He smiles at me from where he’s standing, starts to make his way toward me. That’s when there’s a shudder and the exit gate draws back. Another surge, and bodies funnel toward the narrow opening. Billie intervenes. She’s found Socks. The older man reaches her and Socks at same time. They’re talking about something. Socks slings his arm around Billie’s shoulder. I try not to get caught up in the surge. Have to turn away. But everything so exciting. Go back down to my cabin. Write what I can here. Soon we’ll be in France. All seems like a dream. “Follow your dreams,” Duke told me. “That’s what I’ve always done.”