“I think that’s a fabulous idea,” Brady announced. “In fact, I’m going to pick up a travel guide before I leave the city. Planning our next five Christmases will give me something to do on the blasted train other than daydream about a weekend at the Hilton.”
Their next five Christmases? CJ smiled again. “Don’t I get a say in our future holiday plans?”
“We’ll see.”
“Yes, we will.”
They were both quiet. Then Brady said, “I hate having to censor everything.”
“It’s becoming one of my least favorite activities too.”
“I wish we were in the same room right now, preferably nowhere near our parents.”
“They didn’t find out about your happy state, did they?”
“No, though I have been tempted to let it slip.”
“Hang in there. We’ll be back at Bliss in, what, ten days?”
Brady groaned. “Now you’re being cruel.”
CJ pictured the bedroom Brady had once described as a cross between Scarlett’s bedroom at Tara and the dream sequence in The Little Princess. She could almost see Brady sitting cross-legged on her carriage bed with the white lace bedspread, purple canopy and purple- and white-striped wallpaper she’d picked out in second grade—a dangerous age for anyone to be given the power to decorate her own bedroom. All at once, she missed her so much that her chest actually ached.
“I should go,” she said. “This is costing your parents a fortune.”
“They can afford it. But what’s your exchange? Can I call you on Christmas like we planned?”
CJ hesitated. “Why not? It’s not like my mother knows how integral you are to my happiness.” She gave her the number, and then they wasted more time listening to each other breathe over the scratchy long-distance line.
Finally CJ said, “I really have to go. I’ll see you soon, all right?”
“No, you won’t. But I’ll be thinking of you in Kalamazoo. Too bad I have no idea what Michigan looks like.”
“Probably a lot like Massachusetts minus the mountains. What’s L.A. like?”
“Picture El Paso minus Texans plus the ocean, movie studios and a million more people.”
CJ laughed. “Got it. I think. Merry Christmas, crumpet girl.”
“Merry Christmas, farm girl. Give my love to, you know, everyone there.”
“Right back at ya.”
They drew out their goodbyes another minute, until finally CJ forced herself to hang up. For a moment she stayed where she was, hugging her arms to her sides. If she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend that Brady was there holding her. The loudspeaker sputtered outside her booth, and she opened her eyes again, looking out on a familiar world that most definitely did not include Brady.
Bracing herself for the cold, she left the station and ran to her father’s car. As she drove home along the sunny, wintry streets, she pictured the Hollywood sign, one of the few images of Los Angeles that came readily to mind. Someday she would ask Brady to take her to see it, and they would drive together along the streets of L.A., convertible roof open to sunshine and ocean breezes and the warm, warm air of Southern California.
When she got home, she parked the Ford in the barn and returned the keys to their hook. Then she went inside through the back door, stomping her feet against the cold. Her mother and father looked up from the kitchen table where they were sharing a mid-day dinner of roast beef sandwiches and cold cucumber soup.
“Hi, honey. Did you manage to clear your head?” her father asked.
She glanced at her mother, who gazed back, her own eyes neutral. “I told your dad about your visitor.”
Clearly she hadn’t shared Sean’s revelation, though. This made CJ pause. She viewed her parents as a matching pair, perhaps because they had always tended toward a unified front.
“I don’t mind telling you now I never did like that boy,” he said. “I hope he didn’t give you too hard a time?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Rebecca’s dinner is on the counter,” her mother said. “Would you mind taking it up?”
CJ glanced at the kitchen counter, the scene of their earlier confrontation. Sure enough, there was a tray arranged with two plates, two glasses of apple cider, and a vase with a bundle of dried lavender. Apparently it hadn’t occurred to her mother that she might not come home.
“In case we haven’t said it enough,” her father added, “thank you for helping with your sister. I know it means the world to her to have you here, and to your mother and me as well.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” she said, retrieving the tray. “Rallying around each other is what families do, isn’t it?”
She thought she saw her mother flinch and couldn’t help a brief flash of satisfaction. But as she climbed the stairs, her smugness faded. What did it say about her that she wanted to hurt her mother the way she had been hurt herself? Brady was right. Family had always been important to her. But now that she was on a collision course with her parents’ moral convictions, she couldn’t afford to place as much value anymore on their feelings. If they could be close-minded about gay people, what else had they gotten wrong?
Upstairs, she sat at the desk in her old bedroom and allowed her little sister to grill her, careful to whitewash Sean’s visit. The day dragged, and though her mother put on a good face at supper, CJ could sense her pulling away more every minute. She conjured Brady’s face, trying to inoculate herself against the pain of her mother’s withdrawal, but with Brady so far away, relief was temporary.
The desk was stocked with writing supplies, and she longed to compose a letter to Brady pouring out her thoughts, her worries, her love. Such a letter would not only be cathartic, it would also make her feel like they were closer. But she didn’t get to write that letter, and neither did Brady. They couldn’t even say they loved each other on the telephone in case someone somewhere was listening in. God, it was infuriating.
She thought of all the women she’d met in Iowa, Illinois and Texas who had written letter after letter to their boyfriends, fiancés and husbands declaring their love and pent-up passion, and then sent those letters up the chain to be censored by their officers. Or all the women who had sat at the barracks telephone singing out their love for their men. They had no idea how fortunate they were.
As she lay in her brother’s bed that night, model airplanes and train tracks casting eerie shadows across the room, she realized that Sean had gotten his revenge, after all. The gulf opening between her and her mother was his doing. Toby had said not everyone had a problem with homosexuality, but so far CJ was oh for three—Sadie, Sean, her mother. Her mother, who was supposed to love her no matter what. Her mother, who believed in peace, tolerance and a loving God, but not, apparently, in her daughter’s right to be happy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“The President is giving a radio address this afternoon on the Cairo and Teheran conferences,” her father said the next morning. “Your mother and I were thinking it might be nice to listen together. Can you tell your sister?”
“Sure. Upstairs or downstairs?”
“Upstairs. You know the rules, Caroline.”
“But it’s Christmas Eve. Can’t we bend them a little?” When he lowered his newspaper to stare at her, she added, “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“If I heard correctly, you suggested we break a rule.”
“I said ‘bend.’ And it’s not like I’ve never broken a rule before.”
“Oh, really,” he said. “When?”
“At nearly every football game at Central sophomore year, for one. Carol Getz brought a flask to keep us warm, and you can bet it didn’t contain hot chocolate.”
Her mother, busy putting the finishing touches on Rebecca’s breakfast, appeared unaffected by this most recent revelation—underage drinking probably paled in comparison to sexual perversion in her book—but her father frowned. “Caroline, I’m surprised at you.”
�
��Relax.” She took the tray from her mother. “I graduated at the top of my class, didn’t I?”
She escaped from the kitchen before her parents could respond and high-tailed it upstairs. As she balanced the tray and entered the bedroom, Rebecca quickly tucked the letter she was writing—to Fred Dodge, no doubt—under her pillow.
“Don’t worry, I’m alone,” CJ said, setting the tray down on the desk. “But Mom and Dad will be up later. The President is giving one of his Fireside Chats on the conferences in the East this afternoon, and they want us all to listen together.”
“What time?”
“I’m not sure.”
“They better not preempt Mary Martin or Ma Perkins for a speech about some boring conference.”
CJ drew in a calming breath, but the surge of oxygen did little to help. “Those ‘boring’ conferences were held to determine the outcome of the war. Do you honestly care more about people who don’t exist than your own brothers?”
Rebecca had the grace to look chagrined. “Sorry. I didn’t realize.”
“Uh-huh. Now eat your eggs.”
The day passed in the usual way until midway through the afternoon, when her parents arranged a couple of chairs a few feet from the girls’ room as dictated by the Board of Health. CJ turned up the wireless set, and as the abridged family that they had become, they listened to their president’s twenty-seventh Fireside Chat, broadcast from his home in Hyde Park on the Hudson.
“My friends,” he began, as he always did, “I have recently returned from extensive journeying in the region of the Mediterranean and as far as the borders of Russia. I have conferred with the leaders of Britain and Russia and China on military matters of the present—especially on plans for stepping up our successful attack on our enemies as quickly as possible and from many different points of the compass.”
Briefly he detailed the number of Americans serving overseas, from the Caribbean to the Middle East, before warming up to his main topic: the Allied leader conferences in Cairo and Teheran. In Iran, he had met Joseph Stalin in person for the first time. There, along with Churchill, they had “agreed on every point concerned with the launching of a gigantic attack upon Germany.”
CJ heard her parents gasp, but she wasn’t surprised to hear the president reveal that five million American service men and women would be overseas by the following summer. Nor was it surprising that General Eisenhower would lead the attacks on Germany. Ike had proven himself as commander of the North African Allied Expeditionary Force against Rommel’s Afrika Korps and again in the invasion of Sicily and Italy.
President Roosevelt went on, praising American troops spending their second and third Christmases overseas for their hard work and sacrifice, acknowledging the families back home for their dedication and commitment. He warned that Americans needed to prepare for large casualty lists in the near future. “There is no easy road to victory,” he cautioned. “The massive offensives which are in the making both in Europe and the Far East will require every ounce of energy and fortitude that we and our allies can summon on the fighting fronts and in all the workshops at home.”
CJ glanced at her parents. She could see the fear in their faces, the same terror she felt in her gut. But she pushed the fear back, as she knew they and countless other Americans were doing at that very moment across the nation, tamped it down into a small, manageable thing. Her country needed her, and she was prepared to give whatever was required to do her part to rid the world of evil. They were the good guys working to free the rest of the world from tyranny. God must be on their side—assuming He took sides.
As the President wrapped up his address with a Christmas prayer, CJ found herself wondering if Brady was listening. And Joe and Alec, were they somewhere celebrating the holidays with their comrades, picturing the tree at home decorated as it had been every other year since they could remember, the serene prospect from the back porch so different from the views their current positions afforded? She wished they could all be here for Christmas, Brady and Alec and Joe.
Wishful thinking wouldn’t help anyone, she reminded herself as the president’s address ended. Her parents returned the chairs to their rightful places and then lingered outside the bedroom doorway, gazing at their daughters silently, eyes brimming with emotions that CJ couldn’t quite identify. When they finally turned away, heads bowed and shoulders hunched, they looked aged, defeated.
Sons, CJ knew, were usually considered a blessing. But glad must be the parents now who had only daughters.
* * *
A short time later, the telephone rang. CJ’s heart lurched—could it be Brady? Then she remembered they weren’t scheduled to talk until the following day. Sighing, she turned back to the puzzle she and Rebecca were putting together for the fourth time in nearly as many days.
“Caroline,” her mother called. “It’s for you.”
She was tempted to leap from her chair and bound down the stairs, but she forced herself to move at a more dignified pace. Downstairs she took a seat at the table in the front hall and lifted the receiver, aware of her mother in the kitchen ten feet away preparing Christmas Eve supper.
“Hello?”
“Hiya,” Brady said cheerfully.
“Why, what a surprise to hear from you.”
“Your mother is standing behind you, isn’t she?”
“Close. We’re having supper in a little while. What about you?”
“Me? Oh, I was lying here thinking about kissing my way down your luscious neck to your even more luscious…”
CJ coughed, her cheeks suddenly hot. “Brady,” she whispered. “Party line, remember?”
Her laughter carried clearly across the thousands of miles that separated them. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist. So did you listen to the speech?”
For the next few minutes they chatted about the radio broadcast, comparing notes on the conference takeaways. Brady had listened to the address alone, since Isabel was off for the weekend, her little brother was visiting his girlfriend and her parents were out with another couple.
“They left you alone on Christmas Eve?”
“Sure.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“No. Should it?”
CJ lowered her voice. “I think I’m envious.”
“Of what?”
“All of this would be easier if I didn’t like my parents.”
“In that case, don’t be. I’m not sure who dislikes whom more at my house.”
“I’m sorry,” CJ said, wincing at her own obtuseness. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s fine. It’s not like I haven’t said worse things myself.”
“I know, but you get to. They’re your family.”
Brady paused. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“You feel more like my family these days than anyone else.”
CJ rested her chin on her free hand. “I know just what you mean.”
Later, after Brady made her laugh yet again and her mother had paused near the kitchen doorway one too many times, CJ reluctantly said she had to get going.
“All right.” Brady sighed dramatically. “I suppose I’ll have to find some way to amuse myself here alone on my bed in my skivvies…”
CJ groaned under her breath. “Thanks for that image. Now I won’t be able to think of anything else.”
“That was the plan. I love you, you know.”
“I—” She caught herself in time. “Me too. Happy Christmas Eve.”
“You too. Talk to you soon?”
“I hope so.”
“Sweet dreams.” The line clicked and Brady was gone.
As she replaced the receiver, she heard a noise at the top of the stairs. Rebecca, the little eavesdropper.
“Who was that?” her sister whispered.
“Brady, my friend from California.”
“Is she your best buddy? Isn’t that what they call Army friends?”
�
��Sure. She’s my best buddy.”
Among other things. But Rebecca didn’t need to know that.
Her mother stuck her head out of the kitchen. “Could I have a little help in here, please?” she asked testily.
“Of course,” CJ said, biting back her own irritation. The last thing she needed was to be barred from the telephone. She didn’t think she was strong enough to resist the lure of the train station again.
* * *
On Christmas morning, instead of celebrating with friends and family like they usually did, CJ’s family exchanged gifts on the second floor landing. Even then, Rebecca wasn’t allowed to open hers for fear she might contaminate them with scarlet fever germs. CJ tried to talk her parents into celebrating Christmas later, after Rebecca was well again, but they wouldn’t hear of it. She was home from the Army only for a week, they pointed out, and besides, the boys overseas didn’t get to have Christmas at all, did they?
CJ’s gifts from Mexico were a hit. Pete loved his riding bridle, her father was pleased with the leather belt and billfold, and her mother even smiled briefly at the sight of her shawl. Rebecca begged to be allowed to try on the blouse that Brady had picked out for her, to no avail.
“No wonder I like rules,” CJ commented. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Her father snickered but ceased all movement as his wife cast him the withering glare she typically reserved for unruly classrooms.
Opening presents didn’t take long, not like when they were kids. Afterward, they had breakfast—waffles and canned fruit from their garden, a Jamieson Christmas morning tradition—and then Pete and their parents got ready for the special Christmas Day service at First Baptist. They weren’t planning to go, her mother had told her a few days earlier, but CJ had insisted. She was fully capable of looking after Rebecca. Wasn’t that why she had come home?
“You came home because you should be home at the holidays,” her mother had replied, touching her cheek. “But thank you. It would mean so much to us to be there.”
How much had changed in a few days. Now her mother could barely hold her gaze without looking like the world was about to end. Damn Sean, anyway.
In the Company of Women Page 32
