The McKelveys went in and out by the back door. No one wanted to see the Christmas tree. Or Jimmy’s portrait, back on the mantel. Or the mound of mail on the dining room table. When Ellie went out for the mail, she averted her eyes from the flag in the window.
Jimmy wasn’t coming home. Ellie knew that, but her heart wouldn’t listen. Back and forth, her heart and head argued.
First came hope. If Fred would just come with that telegram…
But when Fred didn’t come, hope turned to frustration, then sadness.
She cried, but only in the bathroom with the shower on. But crying didn’t give her that clean, relieved feeling. Just empty. Blank. Numb.
Slowly, the empty place filled with anger.
You lied, Jimmy. You let me think you’d be safe.
The anger kindled into a bonfire of rage. Ellie wanted to do horrible, terrible things. Stomp flowers. Smash windows. Slash furniture. Scream and scream until her throat bled.
Instead, she walked around feeling mean and hateful, wondering why some people lived and some people died.
“Hello, Ellie,” Mrs. Schmidt called from her garden, her sunburned face glowing above the zinnias.
“Hi, Mrs. Schmidt.” Ellie thought, You’re old. Why aren’t you dead, instead of Jimmy?
Buddy Gandeck huddled on his porch swing, wrapped in a wool blanket, even though it was a hot day. Ellie waved. He stared at her. No, not at her – through her, as if she were a ghost. You’re alive and you don’t even care, Mr. Big Hero. Victoria has four brothers. I have one. Why did mine have to die?
Ellie seethed, furious at everybody and everything.
Then, as suddenly as it came, the anger disappeared, leaving her exhausted and spent, and soon Ellie was crying in the bathroom again.
The rest of the McKelveys went about their business. Ellie would look around the supper table, at Mom passing the peas or Sal yattering about Connie Cavendish, and would want to shout, What’s wrong with you? Don’t you know everything has changed?
But no one talked about Jimmy. Or the war. Everyone spent as little time together as possible. Mom stayed up all night doing laundry, radio dance music pouring from the basement. Toots spent more and more time with the Bettys.
Pop never came home for supper, choosing to work later and later at the post office. When he did come home, he’d change clothes and go down to the park across from the school. Ellie and Stan followed him one night to see what he did there.
“Jeez, he’s not doing anything,” Stan whispered as they crouched in the picnic shelter, struggling to see in the dark. “Just wandering around.”
Ellie supposed the park was better than Pop belting beers at the Do-Drop, but it was unsettling. She couldn’t fall asleep until she heard him tiptoe up the creaky steps to his and Mom’s room. It seemed no time at all before she heard him leave for work.
In a way, Ellie understood. Being together reminded them of Jimmy. Talking about Jimmy hurt too much. Thinking about Jimmy hurt too much. She would hear “The Hut-Sut Song” or see Lana Turner in a magazine and think Jimmy! Then a door would slam in her head.
Time to cry in the bathroom again.
Hard as she tried to ignore it, Ellie always caught a glimpse of gold star whenever she passed the service flag. One day, when she was home alone and could stand it no longer, she snatched it out of the window. She couldn’t scream or swear or slam things, but she could get rid of that hateful flag.
Ellie tried to rip it in two, but the fabric was too strong. She could cut it into little pieces and burn it. But somehow she just couldn’t do it. Not just now. I’ll do it later.
She ran upstairs and stuffed it under her mattress.
One hot August morning, Ellie went to bring in Pop’s Post-Gazette – and stepped into a sea of jars. The stairs, porch and the terrace walk were covered with canning jars. Dozens and dozens of jars. Tomatoes and pickles and beans. Jars of things Mom never canned…plum preserves and apple jelly and piccalilli.
“We have such good neighbours,” said Mom as she and Sal helped Ellie carry the jars to the storage cellar. “We have much to be thankful for.”
Ellie looked at Mom, her hair sticking every which way, a splotch of something brown on her wrinkled housedress. Ellie knew Mom said these words because they were the right ones to say.
Not because she thought they were true.
Three weeks after Ellie’s birthday, Mom went back to work.
“I need to go,” she said, retrieving her lunch bucket from the kitchen cabinet. “Maybe my little effort will help some other mother’s son. I wish I could make a dent in the…the letters in the dining room.” Mom’s voice faltered. “So many nice people, and I just can’t…”
“Don’t worry,” said Toots. “Me and the girls can take care of them.”
Which was why Ellie was sitting at the dining room table one sticky afternoon with Sal and Toots, a fountain pen, a bottle of ink and a stack of thank-you cards. The room had been shut up since the funeral, and smelled faintly of fried chicken and dumplings.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Ellie asked Sal.
“Mr. Green says I should take off whenever I need to.” Sal blew at a stray lock of hair. “Here.” She shoved a stack of envelopes at Ellie.
Ellie’s cards all had crosses and lilies and flowery verses about “your time of sorrow” and were from people she didn’t know. Pop’s post office pals, Mom’s fellow plant workers, parents of Sal’s friends. None of it had anything to do with Jimmy. Not the crosses or lilies or the people who’d never met him.
In her best penmanship, Ellie wrote The McKelvey family thanks you for your kindness and prayers in our time of sorrow on each note card. That’s what Mom had written for them to copy. She carefully blotted the card and began another. The McKelvey family thanks you…
“Hey, this one is from England,” said Sal. “Look at the stamps. I’ll bet it’s from those people Jimmy used to visit. What was their name?”
“Whitehurst,” said Ellie.
Sal shook out a letter and read:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. McKelvey, Sal, Ellie and Aunt Toots,
Please forgive my familiarity, but I feel as if I know you all. I was devastated to learn of Jimmy’s death. He was a dear boy, so like my own Clive. I know he was a good son, a good brother, and a good friend, because he was all of those things to us. He always said, “You Brits are like Pittsburghers. You like bars and beer and a good time.” It was always a good time when Jimmy was around. How we will miss him.
Sincerely,
Margaret Whitehurst
Ellie imagined Jimmy singing along to Cilla’s accordion. “Mairzy doats and dozy doats and…”
Don’t. Think. Hurts too much.
“Listen to this one,” said Toots, waving a sheet of tablet paper.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. McKelvey,
I was in Jim’s high school class and I wanted you to know what a good egg he was. I had polio as a kid. I get around okay on crutches, but I never could do the things the other fellows could. Sometimes they gave me a hard time. Jim looked out for me, not making a big fuss, but just including me. Everyone liked him, so if Jim McKelvey thought I was okay, everyone else thought so too. I heard Jim was a medic. That’s him all over, always thinking of the other fellow. For the rest of my life, whenever I see someone in trouble I’ll ask myself “What would Jim do?”
Sincerely,
Howard (Howie) Ellsworth
“That’s Jimmy all right,” sighed Toots. “Always looking out for the little guy.”
Ellie ripped into an envelope and pulled out linen stationery printed, Women’s Auxiliary Volunteer Emergency Service, WAVES Barracks, Washington DC.
“Who’s that from?” Sal asked.
“Miss Ruthie.” Ellie read slowly, trying to make out the ornate script.
Dear McKelveys,
I am so sad for you. Jimmy was good to Papa and me. He did so many kindnesses, like shovelling coal into the cellar each winter,
helping Papa fix this and that at the store. He never wanted thanks. “Neighbours help each other,” he always said. Jimmy made you feel like you were the most important person in the world, and he meant it. He was no phony, Jimmy McKelvey. God rest his soul.
Ruth Greene, Specialist, First Class, WAVES
“Wow,” said Sal softly. “I didn’t know he did all that. He never said anything.”
“That’s the kind of fella he was,” said Toots, wiping her eyes. “Never made a fuss, never wanted one made over him.”
Ellie’s pen moved across card after card, but her mind was far away. All these people loved Jimmy, too, in ways and for things we never knew.
As the afternoon ticked on, reading and sharing the letters, it was as if Jimmy still lived. Ellie half expected him to bang through the screen door, yelling, “I’m starving. What’s for supper?”
But of course, she now knew that wasn’t going to happen.
The McKelvey family thanks you…
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ellie’s days muddled together in a grey, steamy string. August day followed August day, marching relentlessly towards Labor Day, and the start of school.
To the rest of the world, Ellie looked like the same old Ellie. She heard people whispering about her at church, at the grocery store, at the movies.
“That Ellie McKelvey is a tough cookie,” they said. “Never shed a tear. What a trouper.”
If they only knew, thought Ellie. But they were right. No one would ever see her shed a tear.
Ellie was sorting laundry in the cellar when Toots clumped down the stairs in her work boots.
“Hey, Short Stuff, here’s my two cents’ worth for the wash.” Toots slung a laundry bag in Ellie’s direction.
“Gee, thanks,” Ellie muttered as she dumped it out. “Just what I need.”
But Toots didn’t hear her. “There’s a rumour that Northside Market has meat,” she shouted over the chuggeda-chuggeda of the washing machine. “I’m going to see what’s there. I’ll be back to make supper.”
“Okay.” Ellie didn’t look up from the pile of dirty clothes as Toots left. One red sock in a load of whites, and the McKelveys would all be sporting pink underwear.
White shirt, this pile. Overalls, that pile. Red socks, bandanna, Jimmy’s Hawaiian shirt.
Jimmy’s shirt? What was it doing in the wash? She squinted at the wrinkled cloth. What was that? She held the shirt to the ceiling light bulb.
There, on the left sleeve, a big blotch covered an entire hula girl. Ellie sniffed the spot, then rubbed it. Machine oil. Toots must have worn it to work.
Oil on Jimmy’s special shirt. Oil that wouldn’t come out. Not even if Ellie used a scrubbing board, a whole box of Rinso, and all her strength.
Ellie’s smouldering anger turned to rage. Toots would be gone for at least an hour. Plenty of time for what Ellie had in mind.
Calmly, she piled the freshly ironed sheets and tablecloths into the laundry basket and carried it upstairs to the kitchen linen cupboard. She neatly stacked the sheets on the shelves, tablecloths in the drawers. The quiet click of the cupboard doors closing set the bonfire in Ellie’s heart roaring.
She pounded upstairs and threw open Toots’s door with a bang. For a second, she was surprised the room didn’t fight back or burst into flames. But no, it was the same old messy, smoky-factory-smelling room that said Toots lives here now.
You ruined Jimmy’s shirt. Not your shirt. Jimmy’s. Not your room. Jimmy’s.
Ellie set about removing all traces of Toots. She jerked open the top dresser drawer. Crash! Dump. Toots’s bobby socks and brassieres scattered across the floor. But what was this on top?
An opened letter from Jimmy’s friend Max. Ellie shook it from the envelope. She meant to scatter the pages, and douse them with Evening in Paris, but Jimmy’s name caught her eye.
August 1, 1944
Dear Agnes,
I know you folks have heard about Jimmy’s death by now. If anyone feels worse about this than you, it would have to be me. Jim was a good person, and a true friend. He might still be alive right now if he hadn’t been so unselfish.
Jim wanted to save everybody. One by one, those damned Germans picked off us medics, aiming for the red cross on our helmets. Before long, it was just me and Jim, and about a million Germans, it seemed, shooting at us. If only we’d had guns. I got hit in the shoulder. Jim started to cart me off to an aid station when one caught him square in the helmet. He died fast. The last thing he said was “You’re going to be okay, Max.” And he was gone.
There’s talk of putting Jim up for a medal, besides the Purple Heart. The Medal of Honour wouldn’t be enough to show how brave and good he was.
I’m already back in the battle, though I can’t tell you where. I just know that I have to keep fighting for Jim. For you. For all the fellows who can’t any more.
Max
“And he was gone.” Gone?
Ellie crumpled the paper. Her thoughts disappeared in a frenzy of motion. Black buzzing spots sizzled before her eyes, like angry bees. Far away, Ellie heard things crashing and breaking, blood pounding in her ears. After what seemed a long time, she knew she was tired. Very, very tired. The angry bee-things went away, and she could see again.
Someone had tossed Toots’s belongings around the room. Spilled bottles. Thrown powder. Strewn her clothes hither and yon. Dresser drawers on the floor, bedclothes ripped from the mattress, lamp tipped over.
Ellie guessed that someone was she. But she didn’t really care.
Her hands were full. What was this?
One clutched Jimmy’s leather jacket. The other, something wrapped in tissue. Some forgotten Christmas present? She unwrapped the tissue. Her ashtray. Where did that come from? Why is it wrapped so carefully? Where did I find the jacket?
Throwing herself across her own bed, Ellie fell asleep, inhaling the leather-and-Vitalis scent of Jimmy’s jacket.
A shadow fell across Ellie’s bed. Toots. Uh-oh…
But Toots didn’t look particularly angry.
“If you’re over your hissy fit, you can put my things back where you found them,” she said. “When you’re done, come on down to the kitchen. Got something for you.”
Slowly, Ellie set Toots’s things to rights. She couldn’t imagine what Toots might have for her, unless it was a punch in the kisser. She worked steadily, refolding clothes in the drawers, wiping up spilled perfume and powder.
Finally, Ellie finished. Not knowing what to expect, she went down to the kitchen.
Toots stood at the counter, a butcher knife flashing through a skinny-looking chicken.
“Chicken,” she said without turning around. “Northside had chicken.”
Ellie hesitated at the door. She didn’t want to get too close to that knife.
“There’s a letter for you on the table. Don’t know how you missed it. Lord knows you found everything else in my room.” Toots gestured over her shoulder with the knife. “Didn’t give it to you earlier, because I didn’t think you were ready for it.”
“What do you mean, not ready for it?” Ellie asked.
Toots turned to face her. “If I’da given you the letter at the first, you wouldn’ta taken in what it said. You was too mad.”
“Really? How could you tell?”
“The look in your eye, for one thing. The way you clenched your jaw, for another. Like you was holding something in. Judging by the wreck you made of my room” – Toots chuckled a little – “I reckon you got all the mad out of you. You read the letter now. Might answer a few questions for you.”
An envelope leaned against the salt and pepper shakers. For Ellie, it said. In Jimmy’s handwriting.
Ellie’s heart shot up to her throat, thumping wildly. With shaking hands, she unfolded the letter.
Dear Movie Star,
If you’re reading this, then you know what happened. I wanted to set a few things straight with you.
I know I promised that nothi
ng would happen to me. I shouldn’t have done that. Some promises are not ours to make. Sometimes you go ahead and make them anyway and hope for the best. You don’t want the people you love to worry. I’m sorry, Movie Star.
I wanted to be there for all the important stuff in your life. The first day of high school and your first date. Graduation and getting married. But I’m not sorry that I came over here. I don’t want some crazy guy like Hitler taking over the world. There are worse things than dying. Like knowing you could’ve done the right thing…and you didn’t. Like not really living while you are alive. I’m just sorry I’m not coming home.
I won’t be around in the flesh, but you know I’ll always be there. Just look in your heart, and I will always be there. And if you listen real hard, you will hear me saying, “I’m proud of you, Movie Star. You’re doing fine.”
Be a good girl, and help Mom and Pop all you can.
Love always, Jimmy
PS Don’t forget to let the joy out.
PPS In case you’re wondering, I gave your birthday card to Mrs. Whitehurst to send for me. I sent this letter to Toots a while back, just in case.
Ellie folded the letter back into the envelope and waited for something to happen. Tears? No, she was all cried out. Anger? No, she had taken all that out on Toots’s belongings. Slowly, Ellie climbed the stairs to her room. Reaching under her mattress, she drew out the service flag. She smoothed out the wrinkles as she hung it back in the living room window. Then she went out on the porch to see if she had hung it straight.
She had.
“Sal’s been telling everybody at Green’s that Jimmy’s gonna get a medal,” Jellyneck said to Ellie a few days later. “That’s good.” He sounded wistful. “Does it make a difference?”
“Does what make a difference?” Ellie asked.
Jellyneck gulped. “Well, you know. That your brother died a hero instead of uh…”
“In a jeep accident,” Ellie finished in a flat voice. “No. It doesn’t make one bit of difference. He’s still dead.”
Jimmy's Stars Page 16
