All Good Women

by Valerie Miner

  ‘Why?’ He sighed and humored her although he had explained a hundred times. ‘Because you’re spontaneous. Because you’re willing to try things. Like acting. Like typing all those silly letters for a chance at a movie part. Like leaving Los Angeles on your own. I love the fact that you take chances. I admire it.’

  ‘Admire?’

  ‘Yes, you goose.’ He pulled her close. ‘I think you’d be surprised how many people admire you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well, among other things, for taking that crazy job at the shipyard. Even though I acted like a jackass. You persisted. A lot of girls wouldn’t have done that.’

  Teddy lay on her bed, exhausted. She had been fighting fatigue since she got home from visiting her family. But 9 o’clock was far too early for sleeping. Maybe if she just lay here for a few moments, she would revive and then she could go scrub the bathroom or clean the linen closet. You could get little things like this done at night and feel better for them in the morning. Besides, she had to stay awake to talk with Moira and Ann about the party. If they didn’t get organized, they would have to cancel it again. Moira should be home by 10. She said before she left she would make Randy bring her back on time tonight. And Ann, yes, she was off at the Forum with Rachel, so she wouldn’t be too late. She had to stay awake.

  Teddy held her head, thinking about Pop. He seemed to get worse after the doctor warned him about his liver. It was almost as if he had more of a thirst for defiance than for whisky. Mom was growing quieter by the day. And Jolene looked like she was about to explode. Either that or marry too early and escape the house. Teddy knew there was nothing she could do except to visit, to show them she loved them and to be available when disaster struck. Had it struck already?

  Teddy opened the drawer of her bedside table and pulled out the picture Angela had sent from Texas. There she was, all 6 foot 1 inch of her standing proud next to her airplane. She looked even taller than usual in the uniform. It was such a rich face, round and swarthy, supported by firm brows, broad cheekbones and a handsome nose. Angela joked about the nose, but Teddy thought it gave her face character. And she saw how the same nose on Mrs Bertoli lent dignity with the years. Yes, Angela was a fine looking woman; Teddy wished she thought the same about the airplane. It seemed a little rickety compared to what some people were flying … The only way to stop worrying, she reminded herself, was to practice and to change the subject.

  Dawn had admired the picture. ‘She’s in the life, OK. You can tell by the way she stands. By the way she’s looking at you, Teddy.’

  Teddy poured them each a glass of Clooney’s beer. ‘Looking at me, that’s silly. It’s a picture.’

  ‘It’s a picture she sent you. And what does it say on the other side?’ Teddy read silently. ‘“To Teddy. Love, Angela.” Well, that could mean anything.’

  Dawn removed her glasses and slowly wiped the lenses with a napkin. ‘Girl, you do have a dose of jitters.’

  Teddy flipped over the picture now. ‘Love, Angela.’ Love Angela. She did love Angela. She loved her warmth and her drive. She loved her smartness — a practical savvy about the world — that was different from Ann’s intellect or Wanda’s writing talent or Moira’s creativity. Well, she was a little like Moira in her brazenness. Angela would try anything.

  Would she try the Quiet Cat? Of course, of course, Dawn kept reassuring her. But Teddy knew she couldn’t write about such things in letters. Maybe Angela in her boldness would let something slip about a girls’ bar in Texas. No, Teddy shivered, if Angela was going to girls’ bars, she didn’t want to know about it.

  Teddy studied the picture. She loved her individuality, her irreverence. She loved what Moira called Angela’s ‘surliness’, which was actually a powerful independence.

  ‘Love, Angela,’ she read again. Of course Dawn was right, for Angela hated to write letters and didn’t Teddy have not only a letter but a picture? Love.

  Teddy imagined Angela coming home and surprising her in the garden. No one else would be around. Angela would just walk in through the gate and throw her arms around her. Teddy would say, ‘Oh, not here, Angela’. Angela would take her by the hand into the kitchen where she would hold Teddy tight and smother her with … No, no, Angela would pretend to sulk and Teddy would lead Angela into the house. Maybe she would take her upstairs. Yes, that was it. She would take Angela up to see how she had painted her room. Angela’s picture would be by the bed. Angela would be overcome with emotion and … No, no, she couldn’t have Angela’s picture by the bed because the other girls would notice. She could have it displayed with pictures of her family, but that would spoil the effect. Maybe she would lead Angela directly over to the bed — for there was no other place to sit comfortably in the room — and leaning on the pillow, she would inch it to one side, revealing underneath a photo of a handsome woman with her flying machine. Once on the bed, of course …

  Teddy woke to a slamming of the door. She listened to Moira’s dainty footsteps stomping up the stairs.

  ‘Shhh.’ Ann walked into the hall. ‘I think she’s asleep. I knocked softly on the door and she didn’t answer.’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ Moira whispered. ‘It is late.’

  ‘No, not too late,’ Teddy called. ‘Come on in.’ Sitting up, she tucked Angela’s letter and picture beneath her pillow.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Spring 1943, San Francisco, Arizona, England

  BRITISH AND US FORCES LINK IN TUNISIA

  UPRISING IN WARSAW GHETTO

  SHOE RATIONING BEGINS IN US

  FUNDING OF UN RELIEF AND REHABILITATION ADMINISTRATION

  ‘WHY DO YOU DO THIS, Ann? To torment me?’ Papa sat at the green kitchen table staring past his treacherous daughter to the silent living room of the family flat.

  Ann perceived her father as the impeccable creation of his own will. A man almost sixty who looked forty-five. A foreigner who moved with the confidence of an American. A father who would always be a boy living out the world’s promises. He rotated a gear on the stainless steel can opener which he bought just before his wife was hospitalized. Such a clean, sleek instrument. Ann watched, nervous that he might slice the tip of his thumb.

  ‘Why are you doing this to your father?’

  The previous day, when the documents arrived, she began to really dread telling Papa. She was so worried about his reaction to the trip that she was half-way down the library steps before she noticed the rain. Then, suddenly, there were walls of wet. She rubbed her left shoulder under her coat and observed that she was not tense. She could even feel the ping-ping through the cloth. Rain, damn rain. She slipped the prized papers into her briefcase. For months she had sought these documents and now if she were any more foolish, crucial dates and signatures would be lost to the storm.

  She was heading straight for the storm in Europe. First the gale on Filbert Street. Papa would explode when he heard it was settled. Why? he kept asking her since she concocted this crazy scheme to work with refugee children in London. Why? Why was the Forum subsidizing her trip? Why did she want to go? Ann knew that none of her answers would satisfy him. She could never respond quickly enough, logically enough. Papa always had plenty of answers, of all dimensions, until Mama had been hospitalized. Still, even these days, Papa tried to maintain his dead certainty — about the quick resolution of the war, about Daniel’s safety, about Mama’s recovery. So Ann knew Papa would lecture her again that she was wrong to go to Europe.

  Ann did not set her umbrella against the sky. She wanted to feel the raindrops on her cheeks and eyelids. She would not hide. This is what Mama did in her madness and Papa did in his sureness. She thought of the papers in her briefcase, the official letter from Professor Rothman’s friend inviting her to work in London and the travel documents which only a magician like Rothman could have procured so swiftly. The rain eased as she walked through the plaza. Students e
merged speculatively from doorways, their umbrellas raised in anxious defense against the next shower. But Ann knew this shower was over. Already, she could smell the oils of laurel and eucalyptus. Mischievously, she sloshed through puddles in her shiny black galoshes.

  Mr Foster went to Gloucester in a shower of rain.

  He stepped in a puddle right up to his middle and never was seen again.

  How far was it from London to Gloucester? London, she would be in London in two months. She would be leaving college. Tears came at this. What the hell, she needed to cry at losing this campus, the only ground she had ever claimed for herself. Ann shot her umbrella into the sunny sky and wept as she rushed for a bus to take her home.

  Now in the kitchen on Filbert Street, she stared back at Papa and a flash of anger struck her shoulder. Shifting her weight on the chair, she reminded herself to calm down. She could release these claws digging into her skull. She imitated Teddy’s cool, slow and guiltless voice, consciously avoiding her friend’s drawl. ‘I’m not doing anything to you,’ she said.

  He glanced balefully at his cup of black coffee.

  ‘Really, Papa, we’ve been around and around on this.’ She pushed away her coffee. ‘I have to do something. Those children are ours. They could be my own cousins. We still don’t know about Uncle Aaron’s family or your Aunt Judith.’ She held her breath because he hadn’t mentioned the family in a month.

  ‘Aaron and Judith are intelligent people. They will be fine, I’m sure.’

  Ann shook her head. She could not press him on this. ‘I want to find out, to help. Papa, what about all those little Jewish children, their parents in concentration camp?’

  He stiffened. ‘What about me? Here I am, all alone. Your Mama in a crazy ward. Daniel in the army. And you, the only family left, you traipsing off to England. Who cares about Papa? Who’s left to take care of Papa?’

  ‘Papa can take care of himself,’ she said hastily. Then more softly, ‘You’re well, Papa. You have your job and your friends at the factory.’ She stood, packing herself a sandwich to eat on the way to the library.

  ‘We understand each other, Ann.’ He sighed. For a moment he fell silent, surveying the spotless kitchen — lined with appliances and gadgets he had worked so hard to accumulate because the kitchen was the heart of family life and he so desperately wanted an American family. ‘We wilful ones understand each other. Daniel and your Mama, they are idealists. But you and I are pioneers. Yes, and I have been exploring longer, so let me give you one piece of advice. Europe is over. I have labored all these years to save you from disintegration and decay … America is the future.’

  The mustard? Ann searched. Worked to save me, she sniffed. Uneasily she reached for her shoulder. She should sympathize with him. This was his way of coping, pretending to take care of her when he needed her to take care of him. Not needed, wanted.

  ‘The mustard is in the icebox,’ he offered. ‘It lasts longer that way. You don’t learn such things living in a house of girls?’

  ‘No time.’ She wrapped the meatloaf in wax paper. She had no more time to argue with him. ‘I’m gonna be late.’

  He winced at her enunciation.

  ‘We’ll talk soon.’ She pecked him on the cheek. ‘I’ll drop by Saturday so we can visit Mama together. OK, Papa?’

  ‘Gee, Ann, I’m sorry we can’t see you off. It doesn’t seem right, you going away to war in a taxi.’ Teddy poured Ann a fourth cup of coffee.

  Moira pulled her bathrobe close and sneezed. ‘With me sick and you going to work in twenty minutes, there isn’t much choice.’ She coughed painfully. ‘Stop being a basset hound and enjoy the farewells.’ Damn bronchitis. She thought she was used to the six day week and the heavy work. More than anything she was suffering from frayed dignity.

  ‘Besides.’ Ann paused, counting her bags one last time. ‘I’m not going to war in a taxi. Professor Rothman’s nephew is taking me to the bus which I’m riding to Wanda’s camp. Then it’s a train to New York. Then a ship to London. I wish I were travelling all the way in a taxi.’

  ‘Did you pack the chocolates and socks for Wanda?’ Teddy spread oleomargarine over her cold toast. ‘And Vicks for yourself? I’ve read about how damp and foggy it gets in London.’

  ‘Yes, Teddy, I packed everything except you.’ Ann had come to admire Teddy’s equilibrium, a core of spiritual stability, she, herself, would never find. And in the last few months, Ann considered, she had also grown much closer to Moira. Since Randy had returned, Moira was calmer, older somehow.

  Teddy shook her head in embarrassment and regarded her toast bleakly.

  ‘She takes care of everything, all right, except herself,’ said Moira. ‘What a week: I catch a cold that turns into consumption, you leave for the end of the earth and Teddy runs herself ragged with her family.’

  ‘Right,’ nodded Ann. ‘No sleep last night?’

  ‘Pop hit Jolene pretty bad yesterday.’ Teddy noticed that she was talking with that Oklahoma accent, which emerged when she was with her family or when she was overtired. ‘Mom tried to stop him. You know Mom is a small little nothing compared to Pop. It’s only when he gets drinking that this anger takes over. He’s had it real rough, you know, first the crops going, then driving way out here to be unemployed.’ Teddy repeated the familiar saga to quell her fury with him. ‘Then just when we get back on our feet, war comes and takes the boys. It’s been rough on Pop.’

  ‘What about your mother?’ Moira knew they should be talking about something else at Ann’s last breakfast. But she couldn’t help herself. Teddy’s father was ruining the entire family. Besides, in the back of Moira’s mind was the notion that if they avoided ceremony, this wouldn’t be Ann’s last breakfast. She would come back to them. ‘Your mother’s the one who gets knocked around.’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Teddy answered reluctantly. ‘That’s why I went over last night. But Pop is complicated. He’s got big pride.’ She knew she could let go and cry. She had told them before how desperate she felt. But the more out of hand Pop got, the harder it was to talk. The more worried she became, the bigger her own pride grew.

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Ann recalled Papa’s stiff, formal farewell yesterday. ‘Family, it’s hard to see one member separately from one another.’

  ‘You’ll write to us,’ Teddy said.

  ‘Let us know when you’ve made each leg of the journey — Wanda, New York, London?’ Moira coughed to conceal the quaver in her voice and then wished she hadn’t because of the blade slitting through her chest. So this is what Mother called ‘Scottish lungs’, the family inheritance. ‘We’ll write back as soon as we hear.’

  Ann nodded.

  ‘You just might run into Randy in London.’ Moira forced a brightness in her voice. ‘He’s thinking about the army now and could get stationed there.’

  Teddy raised an eyebrow. She was trying to like Randy more these days. She still thought he played loose with Moira’s feelings. But Ann said she was too critical, that he was simply a pressured young man, dissociated by the war. And Randy had been particularly nice to her since he and Moira had reconciled. He often asked after her brothers. Maybe Ann was right. She would miss Ann’s good sense.

  ‘At Trafalgar Square,’ Moira continued. ‘Or Piccadilly Circus. They’re right downtown, Randy says, and full of pigeons.’

  Ann smiled at the notion of meeting Moira’s boyfriend in a crowd of greycoated Londoners who mumbled and swallowed their words. She could hear Randy’s loud cheer now. ‘That would be fun.’ Already she felt lonely, and grateful for Randy’s familiar face. ‘We’ll go to a pub and toast your health.’

  ‘Make sure that’s all you do!’ Moira felt herself getting weepy, so she coughed again, wiped her mouth with a napkin and averted her eyes from Teddy to avoid being ordered back to bed.

  ‘Funny,’ remarked Moira, ‘you going off to war in Engl
and like this. And us getting food limits and blackouts. Sometimes the war hits home and seems more real than ever. Look at Angela in the WAFs!’

  ‘I’m hardly “going off to war”,’ Ann said. Although she wasn’t a pacifist and she could see no way to stop Hitler without guns, she couldn’t imagine herself fighting. Moira would disagree; she would say if she could work in the shipyards, she could handle a gun. They had had this argument before. And since her friend was a bit of a mind-reader, Ann tried to concentrate on something else. Looking around the table at the half-eaten eggs and potatocakes and the rack of cold toast, she felt sorry for Teddy who had fussed to fix a nourishing breakfast. Because of this and because of the journey ahead, she forced herself to eat.

  The others returned to their meals. Knives and forks scratched and rang across the plates. Coffee was consumed in loud gulps. When the doorbell rang, they all sat frozen.

  As Ann drove away with Professor Rothman’s nephew, Teddy and Moira stood at the door holding on to each other and waving. When the car turned the corner, Moira looked at Teddy. ‘Never thought I’d say this, but, Jesus, I wish we could go back to those simple old Fargod days.’

  ‘Shhh.’ Teddy moved her index finger to Moira’s lips. Moira flushed, then shivered. ‘Up to bed with you. When you start missing Miss Fargo, you’re truly sick.’

  Teddy cleared the table. In the kitchen, she checked her watch. She’d be late for work if she didn’t step on it. Just as well; no use pining. They were all good women, but what was this in the face of history? The war was pulling apart their friendship and their individual lives. It didn’t bear thinking about. Teddy checked her watch again and hurried out the door.

  After the old man with the Irish setters got off, Ann was the only passenger on the country bus rattling towards Lion’s Head. Spring in this high desert was a glory of beaming red, orange and gold. Mountains shot into the blue ceiling like fingers impulsively raised at an auction. One, two, three sudden bids for space in the vast flatness and then miles before another contour. The bus driver made several attempts at conversation, but Ann passed them off politely, preferring to linger with memories from the train which had been crowded with soldiers and their families. She learned more about the war on that train ride than she had during a whole year of reading the raging headlines in the Examiner. Funny country, she thought, so rough and untried in places. Her eyes stretched over the miles of dry earth punctuated with occasional touches of scrub. How far was she seeing?