Alex was fuming. “I can’t believe you think I’m such an idiot!” It was his turn now to slam his fist down hard on the kitchen table, rattling the silverware. “I don’t think war is romantic.” His face was hot. They sounded just like Jonathan. “And I’m not too young to make decisions. And I want to join the army.” Obstinate, he folded his arms and glowered at his parents.
His mother began to sob quietly. She got up from the table and rushed out of the room.
“You see?” His father was yelling so loudly now, Alex felt himself shrink back into his chair. “Look what you did to your mother! This conversation is over. No one in this house is joining the army. Understood?”
Alex jumped up. He felt bad about making his mother cry, but he wasn’t going to let his father scream at him like he was eight years old and tell him how to live his life. “You can’t stop me,” he said calmly, glaring at his father. “I’m going to join. I’m not a coward.”
The unsaid words like you hung in the air. Alex immediately regretted what he’d said. He backed away from the table and stared at the ground.
His father turned red and looked hard at this son. He stared at Alex, mutely, his eyes filled with sadness.
“I didn’t mean…” Alex’s voice trailed off as he looked at his father, abashed. Still, his father said nothing; he just kept looking at him with that same sorrowful stare. Alex tried again.
“Dad, I’m sorry you don’t like it but…it’s important to me. Same as not going to Vietnam was important to you. Don’t you get it?”
His father stood up from his chair and called out after his mother, then left the room. Alex stared at the half-eaten bowls of soup, now cold and unappetizing. He waited to see if his parents would come back. Ten minutes passed. Alex collected the soup bowls and dropped them in the sink. He went back to his room and opened his e-mail. He had an important message to send.
. . .
There was a soft knock at the door. Alex looked up from the laundry he was folding, startled. His mother stood in the doorway, leaning against it. She looked tired; her eyes were shadowed with gray and her shoulders sagged slightly inward.
“Alex?” Her voice was tentative.
“Mom.” He set down a shirt and turned to her. “What is it?”
“I just—” Her voice faltered. “Your father—”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” Alex’s voice hardened, and he turned away. His dad hadn’t spoken to him since the episode Christmas Eve. He hadn’t yelled or fought or even tried to persuade Alex. He had just stopped talking to him, as if Alex didn’t exist. Alex had tried to engage him, tried to talk to him, to convince him he knew what he was doing, but his father ignored him. When Alex spoke, he stared right through him as if he were invisible, a ghost.
“He just—he wants what’s best for you. He doesn’t want to see you get hurt or lose your legs or…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked away.
“He wants what’s best for him. If he really cared about me, he’d think of what I want and not just what he wants.”
“But sweetheart, I don’t believe you’re thinking this through enough. It’s a war in the desert somewhere, and you could be killed. Why do you want to do this? I think that’s what we don’t understand. Why?”
Alex gritted his teeth. “I want to fight the Taliban. They’re evil. And I want the people who plotted the 9/11 attacks to pay for what they did.”
“But Alex, they don’t even know if the people behind the attacks are in Afghanistan.”
“So you think the Taliban are okay?” Alex ignored her point and turned to her, arms folded. “You think their form of government is good?”
“I don’t. But I also don’t know if this is a winnable war. I’m worried it will be like Vietnam. So many lives lost, and the country all but destroyed…. It’s a foreign war, Alex.” His mother spread out her hands helplessly. “I don’t know what the right thing is. But I don’t want my son killed.”
“What if the Americans had said that in World War II? Do you think the concentration camps were okay, Mom? That was a foreign war. And Vietnam—it was bad, fine. But it got you out of there, didn’t it? It brought you here. You wouldn’t have me if someone had held that attitude.”
His mother sighed. She looked weary, as if she didn’t have the strength to fight anymore. “I just hope you’ve thought this through. I don’t think it is as black-and-white as you believe it is. And I don’t know if this is the right choice for you, Alex. The army? You never even liked being on a baseball team.”
Alex’s face twisted. “I don’t think sports and the army have anything to do with each other.”
“I understand your principles, but is this really the right choice for you, personally? For Alex Cameron?”
“Everyone is so sure I’m not cut out for this.” Alex resumed folding his shirts with ferocity. “I’m going to be just fine.”
His mother sighed again. Her shoulders seemed to bend inward as she did so. “I’ll leave you, then,” she said softly. She turned quickly and left the room.
Alex didn’t turn his head. He folded another shirt and shoved it into his duffel bag. Then he took a deep breath and looked around the room to see what else needed packing. He couldn’t take much to the basic-training camp, but he didn’t want to forget anything important, either. He walked over to his desk and began opening and closing drawers, rifling through them. He remembered the last time he had done this, barely four months ago. How he’d changed since then, he thought. He was practically a different person. He’d been younger then, naive, innocent about stuff like war and politics and history.
Alex was about to slam the final drawer shut when he noticed the soldier doll. It peered at him from the dusty space, half covered by a pack of yellow Post-it notes. It had a somber look on its little face.
Alex pulled it out and studied it. It was a soldier, and he was going to be a soldier. He held it, considering. Was it silly to bring along a doll? Would the other guys laugh?
It’s from an American soldier who was in ’Nam, he decided. No one’s going to laugh at that. Alex grabbed his backpack and stuffed the wooden figure inside.
. . .
The sky poured freezing rain the day he left. He waited for his parents to come to the door to say good-bye, but they didn’t. He unlocked the door very slowly and went outside, closing it with force behind him. He waited, but still nothing. He waited longer, his wool hat turning to ice. He felt his eyelashes freeze and the vapor drip into his eyes. He blinked and stared hard at the door, waiting. Still nothing. Not even his mother. She spoke to him less and less now—his father had seen to that. She still looked at him with sad eyes, but she didn’t say much.
“I’ll write you,” she’d whispered last night. “And please call. Call my cell phone.”
Alex had turned away in disgust. She was so afraid of his stupid father that she didn’t even want him, her only son, to call the house. At that moment, he hated her, hated her as much as he hated his father. He was glad they refused to see him off, to say good-bye.
Alex wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck as he lugged his bag down the driveway. Icy rain whipped his face, stinging his cheeks in needles of pain. At the bottom of the incline, he lost his footing and slipped, landing on his back with a sickening crunch. When he’d caught his breath, he righted himself, dusting the snow off his soaking jeans. He shook off his backpack to see if there was any damage, but the crunching sound had just been a half-open bag of pretzels. He started to close the bag and then noticed the soldier doll.
He picked it up and stared hard at it. His mother hadn’t even come downstairs to say good-bye. “I don’t need you,” he said to it. “I don’t need anyone.” He tossed the doll on the side of the road and walked quickly to the bus stop.
Chapter 13
Toronto, Canada
/>
2007
“Mom?” Elizabeth kicks off her shoes and walks into the house, carefully stepping over her discarded footwear. Her mother sticks her head into the hallway from the kitchen, frowning at the haphazardly dumped yellow platform sandals.
“Someone could kill themselves on those things,” she says disapprovingly.
Elizabeth kicks the shoes to one side. “Who ever got killed by a killer pair of shoes?” she quips.
“Those aren’t just shoes. Look at the size of the heels! You could sustain a concussion if you tripped in them.”
“Yeah, if you’re a total spaz, maybe,” Elizabeth snorts. “Death by fashion.”
“It’s been known to happen.” Her mom leans against the doorway and folds her arms across her chest.
“Right.”
“There was a dancer once; I can’t remember her name. She was wearing a really long fashionable scarf, and it got wound up in the wheel of the car she was in, and she was strangled.”
“Come on.” Elizabeth casts her eyes heavenward in mock exasperation.
“I’m telling you. Look it up on your Wikipedia or whatever.”
Elizabeth raises her eyebrows. “Even if it’s true, it doesn’t prove anything. She could have been wearing a practical, warm scarf and the same thing might have happened.”
Her mother gives a resigned sigh. “You’d make a good lawyer, Liz. You have an answer for everything.”
Elizabeth grins triumphantly. “Does that mean I win?”
“No. You still have to put your shoes away.”
“Boo.” Elizabeth sticks out her tongue.
“I’m the boss of this house.”
“What about Dad?”
“He’s not here right now, remember? So I’m in charge.”
Elizabeth is quiet for a moment. Her father left a week ago, but she still isn’t used to his absence. It’s as if something isn’t quite right in the house without his silly jokes or enthusiastic laugh. It feels strange, now that it’s just her and her mom in this new house; it suddenly makes the space feel much larger than it did a month ago.
“I miss Dad.” The words tumble out before she can stop them.
“Oh, honey.” Elizabeth’s mother comes over and puts an arm around her daughter’s narrow shoulders. “So do I.”
Elizabeth lets her mother hug her for a minute before pulling away. “Did he call today?”
“Yes. And he sent an e-mail. He’s had a lot of interesting replies to his article on the soldier doll.”
“Oh yeah?” Elizabeth looks at her with interest. Her dad and Dr. McLeod had co-written an article on the discovery of the doll for a national newspaper, and it had been published last week.
Her mother motions for Elizabeth to join her at the kitchen table.
“Most were just Margaret Merriweather fans,” her mom said. “But there was one really interesting one. It was from an older woman who’d had the doll at a concentration camp called Terezín. It was near Prague,” Her mother leans back in her chair. “Her name is Eva Goodman. Here, I printed it for you.” She reaches into her back jeans’ pocket and retrieves a folded square of paper.
“Thanks.” Elizabeth snatches the paper from her mother and unfolds it, smoothing it against the wooden surface of the tabletop.
The e-mail is quite long. Mrs. Goodman begins by explaining to Elizabeth’s father how a fellow prisoner, a German Jew named Franz Roth, had presented her with the doll as a small gift.
He told me the doll was a good-luck charm, that his friend had given it to him on the battlefield in the Great War. He said they’d found it on an English soldier, wrote Mrs. Goodman.
Elizabeth looks up at her mother. “An English soldier?” she asks excitedly. “Do you think it could be Ned?”
“Your father certainly does. He was beside himself over this e-mail. Like a little boy.” Her mother grins.
“I can imagine,” says Elizabeth. She goes back to reading.
After the War, Mrs. Goodman concludes, before I immigrated to America, I gave the small toy to an orphanage in Prague. A dear friend of mine, who I later learned had perished at Auschwitz, had spent time there. I donated it in her memory.
Elizabeth finishes reading the e-mail to herself, which includes further details of life at Terezín and Mrs. Goodman’s deportation to another camp called Treblinka, just before she was finally liberated by the American army in 1945. She had then married an American soldier and immigrated to New York.
“Wow,” says Elizabeth when she’s finished. She looks shaken. “Did you read this?”
“I did,” says her mother in a somber tone. She looks at her daughter curiously. “You learned about the Holocaust in school, didn’t you?”
“We did,” says Elizabeth, frowning. She has a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s different, though, when you read it like this. In an e-mail. When you read the books and stuff, it just seems so long ago.”
Her mom nods. “Makes it seem more real. More personal.” They sit quietly for a moment, contemplating.
“Dad must have been so excited to get this,” Elizabeth says again. She smiles, thinking of how thrilled her father would have been to receive the message.
Her mother laughs. “Look at all the exclamation marks in the subject line when he forwarded it to me.”
Elizabeth rolls her eyes and scans the top of the e-mail for her father’s words. “He doesn’t really say much, though,” she observes. “It would be nice to get a little more information.”
“He’ll probably call again tomorrow,” says her mom. “He’s got a lot going on there, and the Internet connection is slow. I’m sure he’ll be in touch whenever he can. And he did promise we’re all going to go to England on his first leave.”
“That’s true,” says Elizabeth, brightening. It’s what she’s looking forward to most—going to London. She looks around the kitchen. “Is there anything for supper?”
“Yes!” Her mother rises proudly from her chair and opens the fridge, gesturing triumphantly.
“What is it?” Elizabeth looks suspiciously at the casserole dish inside.
“Lasagna.” Her mom beams.
Elizabeth eyes her skeptically. “Where’s it from?”
“I made it!” Her mother looks very pleased with herself.
“Seriously? Like with noodles, from scratch?” Elizabeth walks over and pokes at the dish in disbelief, prying open the lid to look inside.
“And vegetables.”
“No!” Elizabeth steps back from the fridge and feigns shock, fanning herself with her hands as if she might faint. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it.” Her mom looks smug. “Now what can you say about me, since I’m no longer forcing you to eat pizza?”
“Me?” says Elizabeth innocently. “What did I say?”
“Ha.” Her mother slides the lasagna out of the fridge and carefully places it in the oven.
“Do you even know how to turn that on?” Elizabeth cocks her head to one side and grins slyly.
“Funny.” Her mother elbows her gently in the ribs as she switches on the heat and sets the timer. Impatient for the generous topping of cheese to begin to bubble, the two stare at the glass oven door while the dish inside slowly cooks.
. . .
“Would anyone really buy this?” Elizabeth holds up a hardcover book, displaying the cover for Evan. She looks doubtful. “Maybe one for the free book table?” She nods in the direction of the door. Outside, unwanted books, cast off even by Sam, sit, forlorn, on a table marked “Free to a Good Home.”
“Soap: A History.” Evan reads the title. “I’m not so sure. It could be interesting. How it was discovered, how it became popular. You know, people didn’t bathe until recently. Like, doctors didn’t even wash their hands
.”
“Gross.” Elizabeth wrinkles her nose. “But if they didn’t wash their hands, then that wouldn’t really be part of the history of soap, would it?”
“I don’t know,” says Evan pointedly. “You’d have to read it to find out.”
Elizabeth sighs. Evan is protective of the books. He treats them like children, reluctant to banish them to the free book table. She peels off a price sticker and carefully places it in the top left-hand corner. “It’s a dollar book, then.”
Evan winces. “Poor soap book.”
Elizabeth laughs. “No wonder Sam wanted to hire someone else to help you with this,” she says. “You’re impossible. He’d never be able to turn over inventory with you here alone.”
Evan looks wounded. “Untrue,” he says, pouting. “I got rid of all those atlases.”
“Evan, they were so old that most of the European countries in them don’t even exist anymore.”
“Exactly. They were antiques.” He jumps up. “They could be worth something! I’m going out to get them.”
“Oh, sit down.” Impatiently, Elizabeth pulls him back down to the floor, where they’ve been sorting books for hours. Sam had hired her to work with Evan these last few weeks of summer to help clear out the old books to make room for new ones in the fall. It’s been fun working together as a couple, and they often spend their evenings together, too.
“You have no appreciation for antiquities,” grumbles Evan, picking up an old volume of Encyclopedia Britannica and examining it critically.
“Me? How dare you. You’re talking to the current owner of the soldier doll.”
“Which you had never heard of until I mentioned it.”
“Stop sulking, it’s annoying.”
Evan sticks his tongue out, and Elizabeth laughs. She whacks him gently on the head with an old paperback destined for the twenty-five-cent pile.
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