Actually, probably better not to dwell on those memories here in her former sitting room either, she thought, her eyes tracing the familiar pink wallpaper with its pale yellow stripes and blue roses. The two girls in the other room no doubt already considered her sexually depraved. She didn’t need to add fuel to the fire, so to speak.
“Brady,” she whispered. She closed her eyes, picturing blonde curls, clear blue eyes, red lips that tasted of clove cigarettes and Lone Star beer.
Lieutenant Kelly’s warning came back to her, and she realized now the wisdom in her commanding officer’s counsel. Because if she didn’t know it could cost her so much, she might be tempted to find her way back across the country in time to spend Christmas Eve in L.A.
* * *
The train ride home took two and a half hours. At the station in Kalamazoo, she passed the public telephone booth and continued out to the taxi stand. She had surprised her parents a few times when she was in college, and their joyful response had always made her feel particularly loved. Right now she could use the extra sentiment, especially as she still wasn’t sure if she should tell her parents about Brady. Sadie’s response had done little to bolster her confidence on that front.
Their property was fifteen minutes from the train station: a few blocks west and a dozen or so more north, and there it was. Kalamazoo went from red brick storefronts and factories to red painted barns and alfalfa fields fairly quickly.
CJ had the cab drop her off at the foot of the long circular driveway. Suitcase in hand, she walked briskly up the gravel drive to the two-story farmhouse, winter sun cutting weakly through the gray haze overhead. With Rebecca quarantined, her parents would be home, most likely in the kitchen at the back of the house getting ready for the mid-day meal. They would be spending the holidays at home too, foregoing the usual day-trips to Detroit to see her mother’s family and to Muskegon to see her father’s brother and his family. His other siblings lived farther away, and CJ’s mother didn’t like to travel in winter.
As she neared the house, the first thing she noticed was the foot-long, bright red sign attached to the front door: “SCARLET FEVER. Keep out of this house by order of the Board of Health.” It was official then. Somehow seeing the sign brought home the seriousness of the situation. Most people came through scarlet fever fine, but in a few it could cause rheumatic fever or other complications. Accustomed to worrying about her brothers in their separate combat zones, she hadn’t considered worrying about her little sister.
A curtain flickered in the upstairs bedroom she and Rebecca shared whenever she was home, and then a shape appeared at the window: Rebecca, waving furiously at her. CJ smiled and waved back. Even from here, she could see the telltale rash scalding her sister’s face, chest and arms—it looked like a terrible sunburn with tiny red bumps, as she recalled from examining her own diseased body in the mirror on the back of the closet door. Little wonder Rebecca was excited to have a visitor. Any change in routine would make the quarantine period go by faster.
Ignoring the Board of Health’s warning, CJ opened the front door and stepped into the vestibule, where she dropped her suitcase and stepped out of her shoes. Then she opened a second set of doors and walked into the front hallway.
“Hello!” she called. “Where is everyone?”
Rebecca’s head poked out from the second floor, peering down at her from the top of the stairs that lay directly ahead of the front door. “CJ!” she said in a stage whisper. “You’re home!”
“Hiya, kid.” She smiled up at her younger sister. Other than the rash, Rebecca didn’t look sick. CJ’s worry faded as she unzipped her borrowed bomber jacket.
In a moment the door to the kitchen swung open, and her mother strode forward, wiping her hands on a dish towel. Quickly Rebecca made a shushing motion and vanished back toward the bedroom. She probably wasn’t “allowed” to leave the bedroom. CJ recalled sneaking out a few times herself.
“Caroline,” her mother said, smiling broadly. “You’re certainly a sight for sore eyes.”
“So are you,” CJ said, tears pricking her eyes as her mother tossed the towel on a sideboard and pulled her into a warm hug. She had never gone this long without seeing her mother. It had been even longer for the boys. Did they miss home as much as she did?
Her father emerged from the kitchen looking hearty and hale and unaccountably older in his usual work uniform: plaid flannel shirt and blue jeans with creases. “CJ?” he said, making it sound like a question, and then he enveloped her and her mother in his broad, strong arms.
Family hug, she thought, remembering years of such embraces. Usually they involved additional participants.
“Nice jacket,” her father commented, smoothing down the leather collar.
Her mother held her away at arm’s length. “And who is Lieutenant Hendricksen?”
CJ wondered if she’d imagined the note of hope in her mother’s voice. “We’ve never met. His lost jacket has become my gain.”
“Doesn’t wearing it constitute impersonating an officer?” Her father was a volunteer member of the Michigan State Troops, a reserve corps formed after the Michigan National Guard had been called into federal service.
She half-smiled. “It’s a minor impersonation.”
“Look at you,” her mother put in. “How is it you’ve only been away half a year and yet you seem all grown up?”
“I don’t look any different,” CJ protested. “Except maybe for the permanent grease stains under my fingernails.”
“That’s not true. You’re—I don’t know, exactly. You seem surer of yourself than the last time I saw you. Do we have the Army to thank for that, or is there something else going on?”
CJ’s cheeks warmed, and she turned away to hang her coat and hat on the curved wooden coat tree in the vestibule.
“The Army does have a tendency to reveal your true nature,” she said. “Now what do I smell cooking? I’m starving!”
“Your mother is making your favorite, of course.” He cast his wife an affectionate look. “Turkey soup and garlic toast.”
She filled them in on her trip as they headed into the kitchen, where a large pot bubbled on the white enameled electric range. Funny, she still thought of this stove as “new” even though her father had bought it for her mother half a dozen Christmases ago to replace the old green Windsor stove that had come with the property.
“The soup is for supper,” her mother said, “but there’s plenty of turkey for sandwiches. Why don’t you wash up and go say hello to your sister? I’m sure she’ll appreciate physical contact with someone other than Dr. Forrest and Nurse Green.”
“Poor kid. When did the quarantine start?”
“It’s been a week and a day already. You should have seen how excited she was when we told her you were coming home.”
Upstairs, CJ had barely knocked when the bedroom door flew open and Rebecca launched herself into her arms.
“Geez, big sis, what took you so long?”
Laughing, CJ picked her up and whirled her around like she always did when she came home from college. Then she pretended to stagger. “Boy, oh boy, little sis, you’re getting too big for me,” she recited from the script she’d memorized long ago.
“Are you taller?” Rebecca asked, peering up at her.
“No, you’re shorter.”
“I’m serious, you look taller. Maybe it’s the hair.” She stared at CJ. “I like it. Most girls couldn’t pull it off, but short hair suits you.”
“I’m not most girls and neither are you.” She flopped onto her old bed against the far wall and surveyed the room. Her star charts and world maps had long since been replaced with posters of Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and an anonymous bare-chested sailor, but an object on the desk was new. “Mom and Dad bought you a radio?”
Rebecca sat down at the desk between the twin beds. “They only got it because they felt guilty for locking me in for a month.”
“I had scarlet fever, and I don’
t remember them springing for a radio.”
“That’s because they probably didn’t make wireless sets this small back in the olden days.”
CJ wrinkled her nose. “Gosh, and from my own sister.” She rose and made a move toward the door. “I guess if you’re going to feel the need to be obnoxious…”
Rebecca flew to the door, blocking it with her body. “I’m sorry,” she said, wheedling like she used to when she was little. “I promise, I’ll be nice. Please don’t leave me alone!”
“I won’t, kid.” She ruffled her sister’s hair. “I like your ’do, too. Rollers?”
“It’s called natural,” she started in her haughty teenager’s voice. Then she caught herself. “I mean, thanks.”
“Uh-huh.”
While Rebecca talked a mile a minute about her unbearable eight days of solitude, CJ rifled through the closet. Some of her old clothes were still here, shoved into a back corner. She pulled out a pair of pants, one of Alec’s hand-me-down chambray work shirts and a red wool cardigan. There were skirts and blouses from her university days too, but these suited her better.
“Don’t you have to stay in uniform?” Rebecca interrupted herself to demand.
“Not when I’m at home with two guests or fewer,” CJ said over her shoulder. “Given the lovely quarantine notice on our front door, I doubt we’ll be having visitors.”
Rebecca giggled.
CJ backed out of the closet, wool socks and leather boots in hand. “Will we?”
It turned out that Fred Dodge, Rebecca’s latest in a long string of boyfriends, had sneaked a ladder up to the bedroom window several nights previously and talked to her through the glass. The conversation barely lasted a minute before their father discovered the boy perched against the side of the house at what he claimed was a dangerous angle. He insisted on escorting Fred home immediately and informing his parents of the whereabouts of their son—and their ladder. Then he set up a rope with a bell attached to it below the window sill to prevent anyone else from trying such a “stunt.”
“I don’t think he has to worry,” Rebecca said glumly. “It’s been far too cold for anyone else to come see me.”
Ah, the ingenuity of teenagers in love. Or, really, anyone in love, she corrected herself, remembering her urge of the night before to hop the first AAF flight to Southern California.
While CJ changed into the outfit she’d picked out—“boys’ clothes,” Rebecca deemed them snootily—her sister turned on the wireless.
“What’s on?”
“The Romance of Helen Trent,” Rebecca said, turning up the volume.
“On that note, I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Uh-huh.”
Rebecca was staring at the radio as if the soap opera actors might somehow materialize from inside it. CJ left the bedroom, stopping to wash her hands with hot water and soap before heading downstairs. Her mother had reminded her of the quarantine routine—wash your hands every time you even thought of the patient, basically—but she would have recalled the protocol on her own. It didn’t seem that long ago since she’d been the one stuck in that bedroom, her life on hold while everyone else’s continued on without her.
“She’s into the soaps, isn’t she?” CJ commented as she and her parents carried turkey sandwiches to the oak oval dining table in the alcove off the kitchen.
“She says she even dreams about the characters sometimes,” her mother said.
“Better than nightmares, I guess.”
She took a bite and sighed in appreciation. Everything tasted wonderful—the bakery bread, the turkey her mother had baked and seasoned, the cold potato salad served on the side. How she’d missed her mother’s cooking.
“I don’t know.” Her father lifted an eyebrow. “Dreaming about soaps sounds like a nightmare to me.”
“So how are you?” her mother asked. “Your letters are always so cheerful, but I know life in the military can’t be all hops and three-day passes.”
“Look at you with the lingo. And you’re right, Army life isn’t without its difficulties.” Friendly fire incidents and rules against dating fellow Wacs, for example. “But in general, I’m happy.”
Her parents exchanged a look.
“What?” she asked, looking from one to the other.
“Nothing. It’s just, well, you always did like rules,” her father said.
Her mother nodded. “You seemed happiest when there was an established structure of some sort—school, team practices, field rotation schedules.”
“Swell. I sound like an automaton.”
“Not at all,” her mother insisted. “You like order, that’s all. Your ability to create order from chaos has allowed you to excel in whatever you put your mind to.”
“It’s probably coming in pretty handy in the service too,” her father added. “Have we mentioned lately how proud of you we are?”
“A dozen times, at least.” Even her mother was nodding and smiling, eyes warm as of old. Had she finally forgiven her for breaking up with Sean? Brady’s image flickered through CJ’s mind, but she pushed it away. She wasn’t ready to risk losing her mother’s good will again. “Anyway, tell me everything. How is Pete’s team doing?”
She ate heartily as her parents filled her in on her brother’s basketball exploits, enjoying the talk of familiar people and places. She hadn’t realized how homesick she was until now. She wondered briefly if Brady’s homecoming was similarly edifying, but how could it be? Brady wasn’t close to her family, not like CJ was. For a moment she wished she could be in California with Brady, holding her hand through what had to be a difficult, lonely time. Then again, it wasn’t like they could actually hold hands in front of anyone. She remembered how her parents had welcomed Sean into their home, how her mother had smiled fondly whenever they sneaked off together for a turn on the porch swing or a tour of the farm. Somehow she doubted she and Brady would experience the same reception here or in California.
After lunch, she delivered a sandwich to her sister and let herself be sucked into an episode of Jack Armstrong, All-American Boy. It felt slightly decadent to lie on her childhood bed listening to the radio. Even though keeping her sister company was precisely what she was here for, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there must be work she should be doing.
When The Lone Ranger came on, she pulled herself away and headed out to the barn. It was a low-sky kind of day, and she surveyed the winter landscape. She had missed the place of home almost as much as the people. Despite the fact it was currently barren and gray, the land here pulsed with the promise of returning life. When she looked out across the rolling hills, she saw summer ponds and autumn trees, winter clouds and spring fields all at once. Unlike Texas, Michigan was always on the cusp of change.
The first stop she made was the corral near the alfalfa field. Bessie and May, the milk cows, were huddled near the barn, but Molly and Jay, the horses, were eating from a pile of hay near the windbreak on the other side of the corral. When Molly saw CJ climbing up on the split-rail fence to whistle, she whinnied in reply and trotted over. CJ had come armed with carrots and apple slices, of course, but she waited until Molly drew close and nuzzled her coat pockets before pulling them out.
“How are you, girl?” She gazed into the mare’s liquid gold eyes and rubbed her muzzle as she munched the treats. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You probably thought I wasn’t coming back, but I promise I always will. As long as I can, anyway.”
She was thinking of the night flight with Nell, of course, but also of the look in her mother’s eyes after she refused Sean’s proposal. Would she still be welcome here if she told her parents conclusively there would never be a wedding in her future?
Alec’s horse, Jay, must have smelled food, for he came trotting over and butted his head against her bomber jacket. “Okay, okay,” she said, laughing, and held her palm open. He sucked the apples and carrots up quickly before Molly could shoulder him out of the way.
Both
horses’ winter coats had grown in, and CJ removed her wool gloves briefly to feel inside their ears—cool but not cold, as they ought to be. They looked good, healthy and strong despite the old snow piled in the corners of the corral and the near-freezing temperatures currently hovering over the region. She was always amazed by the insulating ability of a horse’s winter coat. Standing beside a thousand pounds of shaggy horse made her feel like a puny, naked human under all her layers.
When he realized she had run out of apples, Jay wandered off in search of other food sources. Molly lingered, though, watching her with one eye and then the other. She even butted her head against her chest, and this time, CJ knew the mare wasn’t looking for food. She hugged her, pressing her cheek against Molly’s cold, furry neck. How many times had they stood like this over the years? Any time she got to feeling lonely, thanks to the seemingly inexplicable differences between her and her schoolmates, Molly had always been there to pet, to hug, to commune with. The horse accepted her for who she was, loved her, even, the way kids her age couldn’t seem to.
“She’s missed you.”
CJ turned to see her father watching them. “I think Jay misses Alec more.”
Molly whinnied, and her father came over to stroke her nose and cough up a few apple slices from the pockets of his winter coat. Then the mare drifted away, following Jay on the search for more food.
In the Company of Women Page 29
