“Stop!” I shouted, and launched to my feet. “Just stop!”
He looked at me, startled.
“Why would you think of him that way? It’s, it’s …”
“It’s just what happened.”
“He could still be alive.”
“I don’t think so, Cee.”
“You’re wrong!” I snapped loudly, not caring if I woke Letitia and the world, and like that, I was out the door, not in control of myself, throwing my body at the night like a goddamned lunatic.
I ran across the weedy lawn, the damp grass soaking my socks and shoes and the hem of my dress. Then I stopped, dead center of the yard, mosquitoes rushing to feast on my neck and forearms. Right there, I made the decision to never, ever talk to him again, just like Mama and Papa had wanted me to. I cursed him. I imagined lashing out, beating him with my tight fists. How could he be so hopeless? How could he imagine you dead, his friend, his lover? He was perverse or inverted, whatever that meant. I couldn’t listen to him.
But as soon as I thought it, Jay called to me, urging me back. His voice punctured my anger, and for a few minutes, I just stood there, unable to move, my thoughts spreading out in front of me like a deck of playing cards.
I remembered the day Mama and Papa received notice you were missing. When I came home from school, Mama was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with the letter in front of her. She looked up at me but didn’t say a thing. Papa entered the room behind me and dropped his hand on my shoulder. He usually wasn’t home so early. He turned me around, bent down on one knee, and cupped his big hands over my shoulders, holding me in place. His eyes were red, and I could smell the stink of alcohol on his breath.
“Ceola,” he said, his voice watery and choked. “Your brother is missing in action. Do you understand what that means?”
I nodded. But I didn’t understand. “Missing” wasn’t a permanent state, after all. Papa hugged me. Then he went to Mama and tried to smooth her hair back like he would a wounded animal’s, but she jerked away, her face screwing up with pain. He picked up the letter and folded it real slow, making creases in it. Mama covered her mouth and turned away from me.
What was so horrible? You would be found. It was just a matter of days or weeks or months. You’d come back to us. You’d return home in the wake of the mail truck, like I’d always daydreamed about. You’d materialize out of a cloud of dust, the mist of early-summer pollen, glowing in the afternoon sun. Wisps of it would cling to you, spiraling away from you as you walked toward me. Sunlight would be all around, transforming the road and the field and the trees into a golden paradise. As you came closer, the light would flicker away like butterflies, and I’d see your face, clear as day. You’d be smiling, but it’d be a curious smile. You’d drop your duffel bag at the bottom of the porch steps and shake the bright dust off your fatigues. As you climbed the steps, I’d dash toward you, jumping at you, hugging you, just bursting with joy. You’d laugh and pull me close to you. Once you set me down, I’d take your hand and ask you, “Will you read a story to me?”
“Of course,” you’d say.
“Will it have a good ending?”
“Yes,” you’d say. “A very good ending.”
I needed to hear Jay’s story to the end, whether good or bad, so I turned around and went back to him.
Once inside his room, he handed me a glass of water and offered me a peace offering, a few Necco wafers he’d dug out of a drawer. I took them and ate a couple, making a face at their chalkiness. Although I’d cooled down on my trip across the lawn, my anger hadn’t entirely gone away.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Just give me a chance—”
“It’s late, and Mama and Papa are going to be so—”
“Please,” he said.
“Fine.”
He gave me a weary look and rubbed his eyes.
After reading the letter from Letitia, Jay took the next train to London. He spent his days slumped at cafés or limping through rubble and bombed-out buildings. At night, he drank. He would wake up in strange places, sometimes with men he didn’t know. He listened to the V-1 bombs fly overhead, waiting for their engines to cut, a silent warning telling everyone to take cover and now, because the sky was falling. He forgot about his work at the hospital, but he still carried his camera with him everywhere.
“It was as if my heart was trapped inside that camera,” he said, “and if we were separated, even for a day, I risked losing everything.” He looked at me. “Then, one night, I saw Robbie.”
While carousing at the Siren’s Song, a usual stop on his circuit of oblivion, Jay had glanced over, and a few tables away, you—or someone who looked very much like you—sat, smoking a cigarette and sipping a highball.
He gawked for a while, stunned and confused, playing and replaying a beautiful dream: You had escaped the war and found your way to England. You had come looking for him in Soho, hoping you two would cross paths in the magical land of fairies.
It took him a long time to muster the courage to ask the nice Brit he had been chatting up if he knew who your doppelgänger was. He just laughed and said, “That’s Miss Foxy Loxie, mate, the newest best-worst act in town. She’s becoming famous for being belligerent on stage, ranting about the war. You wouldn’t know, though, would you? He’s rather appealing without that dress on.”
After another drink, Jay decided to introduce himself. He went to your doppelgänger’s table and stood behind him. He turned and met his eyes, and Jay said, “Sorry, I don’t usually … You remind me of someone I once knew.”
“I hope that’s a good thing.” He smiled.
“You’re Miss Loxie.”
“Only onstage. I’m Terry Trober now.”
“Nice to meet you.”
They shook hands, and Terry asked, “Have you seen my act?”
“No.”
“Then you’re really missing something.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Someone has to make fun of this war.”
“Is that what you do?”
“I make fun of myself. It’s one and the same.”
They talked for a long time, drinking and smoking. For a while, Jay pretended Terry was you. After all, isn’t everyone supposed to have a double out in the world? He had your thick brown hair and black eyes, even your long, careful fingers. He also smiled a bit like you, but with more sarcasm, more confidence. There was a roughness about him, a manliness despite his swishy mannerisms. He explained why he had fled the Navy. Unlike Jay, he couldn’t hide easily among straight men. His captain mocked him, calling him his “little mermaid.” When he retaliated, calling the captain a self-righteous ass, the brute beat him with an ax handle for insubordination. He broke four ribs and his nose.
“Foxy was a phoenix rising out of the ashes, partially a creation of necessity,” Terry explained. “She’s the opposite of everything the military stands for—a man dressed as a woman, making jokes about the war.” He snickered. “She’s nearly traitorous, I know.”
Jay asked if Terry was afraid, but he just said, “If you’re afraid for long enough, you grow numb to it. Besides, they’re scared of me now.”
Jay told him about being an aspiring photographer and his time at Netley and his tour on the front, but he didn’t mention Darren. He told him he dreamed about living by the ocean one day, far from everything and everyone. When he said this, they were leaning toward each other, their knees almost touching.
“You’re the best-looking man I’ve seen in a long time,” Terry said, and leaned in for a kiss, taking hold of Jay’s hand.
Jay closed his eyes and pressed his lips against Terry’s, pretending he was you, hoping when he opened his eyes, it’d all be true. As he pulled away and saw a face he didn’t know, his heart sank, and he felt a terrible rush of sadness, so powerful he couldn’t breathe. He grabbed Terry’s beer and finished it in one gulp. Terry made him promise they’d meet up the next day. Jay nodded his head but knew he wasn’t go
ing to keep his word.
Jay started shooting photos again. He scraped together some money and purchased a collapsible wooden tripod for his camera. One sunny afternoon, not three blocks from his quarters, he came across a bombed-out hotel. The rooms had been split in two like the building had been sliced down the center with a gigantic cake knife. Jay was fascinated by the way the furniture was still situated at right angles and the paintings were still straight on the walls. It looked like a little girl’s dollhouse. He lugged out his heavy tripod and set up a shot of the hotel. Just as he was bringing it into focus, Terry stepped in front of the camera. He was wearing a beat-up leather jacket and white shirt. A loop of dark hair hung loose across his forehead.
“You stood me up,” he said.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“I thought we were getting along.”
“We were.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m just …”
“Scared.”
“Yes.”
“Of what?”
Jay sighed and said, “Remember how I told you that you reminded me of someone I once knew?”
“Okay?”
“That someone, he’s gone. MIA in the Pacific.”
Terry was close to Jay. “I’m sorry. But he’s gone. And I’m here.”
He reached out and grabbed Jay’s arm, holding it tight and looking at him. The buffed leather of his jacket reflected the sun, and the noise of the street faded into the background, and then it was just Terry and his dark eyes and his likeness to you. Jay wanted to pull him toward him and kiss him.
“Let’s get something to eat,” Terry said, letting go of Jay.
Jay packed up his camera and tripod, forgetting all about the shot, and the two went to dinner. That night, drunk on beer and cheap wine, Jay went home with him, fell into the fantasy again, and slept with him. In the morning, hungover and miserable, he slipped out before Terry woke up.
“I’d never planned on … ,” Jay faltered. “Everything had changed, you see.”
I gave him no sign I was judging him—I didn’t feel I understood enough to judge him—but I could see the fear in his face.
That night, Jay found Terry backstage before his show. He was applying makeup, stopping from time to time to take a swig from a bottle of Scotch. “Why didn’t you say good-bye this morning, honey?” he asked, as he rubbed rouge into his cheeks.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Hmmm.”
“I needed to get some air and think about things.”
“You’re frightened again.”
“No.”
“Hand me my wig.” Terry took it and attached it to his hair with bobby pins, arranging and fluffing the blond curls. “The war has changed us all. We’re all evolving into other people.”
“For the worse.”
“Maybe.”
“My shoes,” Terry said, flitting his hand at a pair of pumps. Jay gave him the shoes, and he slipped them on. “I don’t feel in character until I have her shoes on. Footwear can transform you, almost as much as a highball. Did I tell you how I got the idea for Foxy?”
“Revenge, right?”
He smiled. “That’s the motivation, my dear, not the inspiration. Several months ago, after a two-day bender, I was walking down Oxford Street, feeling blue, tired of turning tricks for cash. I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I was just taking in the destruction and watching the early-morning light scatter across the broken glass—the night before, the Luftwaffe had paid another visit to the West End. As I passed the blown-out windows of Selfridges, I saw Christmas trees in the street, like expensive tumbleweed, and department store debris everywhere. Under an overturned Formica dinette table, I saw a woman’s legs sticking out. I took action, amazed the Selfridges employees who were busy cleaning up from the attack hadn’t noticed this poor woman trapped under a heavy table. I tripped across the smashed chairs and ruined remains of a party dress display and heaved the table over to discover my damsel in distress was, in fact, an attractive blond mannequin. She didn’t have a scratch on her. Perfectly preserved. I started howling like a lunatic. I laughed myself dizzy and fell down in the middle of the street. That’s when I noticed her shoes. These shoes.” He kicked up his foot to make a point of it. “I remember looking at them and thinking, I bet my feet could fit in those. I could fool people, just as blondie had fooled me. So, from the ashes I rose!”
Terry laughed and winked. “I’ve got to go, but let’s meet afterward.” Then he stopped and said, “You’re going to survive this war. Both of us are. At this point, that’s asking enough.”
Jay joined the audience, and after a showy introduction by a small bald man in a tight three-piece suit who called himself Mr. Beet, Foxy Loxie made an entrance. The room broke into rowdy catcalls and jeers. She started off with bad impersonations of Eva Braun and Hitler in bed, the Führer stomping around and squawking at Miss Braun, demanding she spank him with a copy of Mein Kampf. She did another routine making Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok into two giddy lovers, leading the troops into battle. She made fun of Axis and Allies alike. As she performed, her lips smudged into a messy clown mouth, and her eyeliner streaked down her face in black tears, and her big earrings caught her wig and pulled it to one side. Her dress was soaked with sweat and splattered with the Scotch she tossed back between jokes.
The audience booed her, laughed at her, and hated her.
“Tonight, my friends,” Foxy said, as she was winding down, “we have a special guest with us.” She waved her gloved hand toward Jay. “He’s a sad dreamer, dreaming of a man who will never return from the war. I said to him, ‘Stop your dreaming and find a new man!’ but he’s a scaredy-cat.” She puckered her lips at him. “But, hey, girls, let’s give him a hand for keeping his dream alive. Maybe dreams do keep you warm at night.”
The room booed and laughed. All eyes were on Jay. One surly-looking man in a dirty T-shirt called out, “Let me suck your dick for five minutes, and you’ll forget all about him!” More laughter.
Jay shrunk in his chair, trying to hide his embarrassment and anger—and his broken heart. He wanted to get the hell out of there, to tear through the crowd and run outside, but he was frozen with fear. “No,” he said to me. “Horror. I was paralyzed with horror.” Eventually he unglued himself and fled.
His last day of leave was clear and cold, but Jay wanted to be out in it, nowhere near a bar. He packed up his Speed Graphic and roamed the neighborhood near his quarters, weaving in and out of Londoners as they went on their way. He wandered into Hyde Park, stopping here and there to shoot craggy, leafless trees or frozen ponds or fields of dead grass. Although his leg was hurting him, his head felt clearer. The horror that had pinned him to his seat the night before was looser around his heart.
“I thought about the photos I took of Robbie on the beach, or Robbie beside Culler’s Lake, or Robbie smiling back at me,” he said. “I felt calm … and then I heard my name called out from behind me.”
It was a man’s voice, but when he looked, he saw a woman. Terry had found him. Jay grabbed his camera and his tripod and limped away, using the tripod as a cane. He stumbled down a dirt path and into a thicket, ripping through the dead undergrowth just as quick as he could, stomaching the pain as it shot through his leg.
Once he broke free of the woods and into a clearing, Terry was close to him and clawed at him, catching him by the shoulder and spinning him around. As he did, Jay’s camera banged hard against his side, throwing him off-balance. Terry steadied him and said, “What are you doing? Why are you running from me?” His blond wig was combed and curled, and his makeup was neat, even pretty. He was out of breath and reeked of Scotch.
“I’m headed back to Netley tomorrow,” Jay said.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I’m not coming back.”
“You’re embarrassed by me?”
“Look at you.”
Terry was wearing a tailo
red suit with a button-front, white gloves, star shaped earrings, and black-bowed shoes. He shrugged and said, “Big deal.”
“You’re not who I thought you were or who I hoped you’d be.”
“I’m not Robbie, you mean.”
“You stood up there last night and spewed shit at everyone, like your word was the final word. You embarrassed yourself and offended all the soldiers in that room. It’s all a joke to you. A fucking joke!” Jay pulled away and stalked across the dead grass and uneven stones.
But Terry followed him. “That’s idealistic bullshit. The men in that room who have lost the most laugh the hardest.”
“They hate you,” Jay said over his shoulder.
“They hate the war.”
“They booed you.” He turned. “They tossed their drinks at you. They spit.”
Terry reached for him. “Please, Jay.”
“Get away from me!”
Air raid sirens began to wail. Everything stood still. The trees. The sky.
The self-guided V-1 bombs, like huge metal blackbirds, glided over them, their engines humming, propellers whirling—and then the engines cut, the propellers stopped, and silence rushed through the air, over the treetops, and to their ears, signaling the countdown. One–one thousand. Two–one thousand. Three–one thousand. The sky is falling. The sky is falling.
The first bomb hit nearby, a few blocks away, shaking the ground. Then another hit, even nearer. And another. Jay heard the screech of traffic and the bleating of ambulances. And shouts. They were closer to the street than he thought. Terry caught his arm and twisted it and said something, his face a blur of panic and curly blond hair. Jay jerked away and, in counterpoint to the explosions around him, hit Terry with the platform end of his tripod. His friend, his lover, fell to his knees, and he hit him again. He wanted to knock that wig off his head. Terry’s hands were up, little ghosts flapping at him. He wanted to smash Foxy Loxie out of him.
Dodging and Burning Page 24
