Oh, Rita. He called me Ladygirl.
Love,
Glory
P.S. HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, LITTLE SAL!
I am so happy he is such a big, brave boy. I’ve sent a basket for that bike. Let him ride like the devil, but tell him that sometimes he must stop and pick some flowers for his grandma.
April 11, 1945
IOWA CITY, IOWA
Dear Glory,
One year. How is it possible?
Here I am, getting my garden ready, washing the dinner dishes, mending a skirt, writing—so much the same, yet so much different. Now a sturdy toddler helps me plant my sunflowers. And dear friends place bouquets on my front porch, a reminder that sorrow can bring sweetness as well.
One year.
I woke up this morning and asked Sal to give me a sign, something to let me know he was still present, still watching over me. I dropped Little Sal at the USO and walked to work, eyes bright, searching.
I came up blank.
Dr. Aloysius Martin asked me into his office after lunch. The university has begun preparing for increased enrollment when the boys return from overseas. Florence met a naval officer in San Diego, so they’ll be looking for me to go full-time during the school year, when Roylene returns, of course. My performance has been exemplary, he said.
I stood there looking at him for a minute. Was this it? It was the only extraordinary thing to happen to me all day. Was this Sal’s sign?
Then something struck me. It’s time for me to stop asking Sal to give. He gave me everything when he was living; why do I keep asking him to pull double-duty?
I decided right there to take the doctor’s offer. It was a sign, but not from Sal. It came from me. You once said I honor Sal by taking care of Toby. What you also meant was I honor him by living. Which I intend to start doing.
It’s time to start jumping off some cliffs.
As part of my pay package, I’ll be eligible to take courses free of charge. I’m going to take advantage of this. Charlie thinks I should take Advanced Psychology. Irene votes for Creative Writing. I might take both, thank you very much.
With all this consideration of the future, I can’t help but get excited thinking about our reunion. Hopefully by next summer this war will be over, and I can bring my family to meet yours. It simply will happen—the soul meeting the body, so to speak.
Love,
Rita
May 8, 1945
VE Day (very late at night)
ROCKPORT, MASSACHUSETTS
Darling Rita,
This should be (and is!) a day of great celebration. And celebrate we did! Impromptu parades and rallies and cheering commenced almost in conjunction with the sunrise. What a day. A day for the history books. A day for the ages. I’m sitting here in my nightdress curled up in your sunflower room and I can still hear the people on the beaches with their bonfire celebrations. The smoke and laughter floating in with the night breeze. I can feel it trying to coax me into its wonderfulness.
But it can’t. This day is such a sad day, too. I think that’s what I was feeling all day. Relief, yes. And pride. I’m so, so proud of our fine soldiers and our wonderful country. But I’m so sad, Rita. Too sad to let anyone know about it but you. It makes me feel selfish, this sadness.
Just yesterday I bought the Life magazine with the photographs of the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Did you see it? That woman photographer Margaret Bourke-White took them. (Part of the reason I wanted it was because she’s a woman in a man’s world creating amazing things.)
Did I ever tell you that Anna is Jewish? Marie, too. So there I was with it spread open on my lap, sitting in the small meadow that separates my property from Anna’s, and it was surreal looking at those horrific photographs of bodies piled on one another while there I was in real time with the meadow just blooming with clover and sea grass. Marie walked over to me and sat down on my blanket. I thought of hiding the magazine but didn’t have much time, or any hiding place.
“Don’t worry, doll. I’ve already seen it,” she said, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Just awful,” I said, and wanted to choke on the sterility of those words. Of course it was awful. What was I thinking?
Marie put a hand on my shoulder. “Have you ever heard of tahara?”
I told her I hadn’t and then she explained. It seems that there is this amazing and ancient Jewish tradition, part of a burial rite, actually, wherein women gather and wash the bodies of the dead repeating, “She (or he) is pure, she is pure, she is pure,” and then they drape the body in pure white cloth, like a heavenly outfit. Well, the point is that none of the people who were killed by the Nazis were given the right of tahara. She said it was one of the things that bothered her the most.
I left the meadow after speaking to Marie and felt an aching for the world that I can’t describe. And then earlier today when everyone else was celebrating I was thinking about them. All of those who died in this war. All who will die yet.
Oh, Rita. The absolute injustice of it all. Something must happen from all of this loss. A tide will turn. I’m thinking of things I see in my own sweet town. Hatred of Negroes, fear of the Jewish among us. A misunderstanding of any culture different from what we are accustomed to. I’m thinking of my childhood caretaker Franny...and how if we were in Nazi Germany or occupied by Nazi Germany how many of us would be killed? Would I know the faces in the piles of bodies? Would I be in the piles because I speak out for women’s rights? Would my children be in the piles? Would you be in the piles because of a last name like Vincenzo?
This must be a day of celebration but also a day of reckoning. A day to remember human rights.
I love you, dear Rita. I love you and I pray that someday you come to me, because I don’t think I can do all this work without you. And there is so much work to do in a world that’s gone mad. So many rights to fight for and preserve. I don’t feel like I can do it alone. I need you. I’ll always need you.
And I know, in reality, that you have a full life there in Iowa. So forgive me this moment of weakness. But in all sanity I’m telling you right here in black and white (and on a day that ends in so many ways the beginning of our relationship...) that this room is always here for you. It will be yours forever. And I will always be here, waiting.
Love,
Glory
June 9, 1946
ROCKPORT, MASSACHUSETTS
Dear Sal,
Remember the time we got up in the wee hours to drive to the county fair in Marengo? I balanced my famous strawberry-rhubarb pie on my lap the whole thirty miles, only to drop it in the dirt ten feet before the judging table. I bawled so hard I scared Toby. But you...you picked up the mess and started eating with your hands. I think I called you a damned lunatic—I don’t remember, but I know my mouth and what came out wasn’t nice. I clearly remember what you said. “I’m not tasting this pie. I’m tasting all the pies you’ve made since you cut me a slice and passed it across the counter at the Mondlicht Café. I know what you can do.”
Oh, you wonderful man. You saw everything inside me, every pathway to my heart. Every thought, profound to petty. You laughed away the bad and celebrated the good.
To be known, really known, is the essence of love. To live without love is a shadow life. I crept in that darkness when you left for training, Sal. And it nearly swallowed me whole when you died. In a way, I wanted it to.
Until someone decided she knew me well enough to point out why I had to live. I’m sitting in the room she painted for me right now. The sunflowers on the wall reach for a heaven that’s lucky to have you. She’s stenciled your name on one flower, and mine on another, and Toby’s, Roylene’s and Little Sal’s on the leaves tying them together. She knows what’s in my heart. And she knows because you taught me how to let myself be known.
We arrived yesterday, a two-car caravan—one f
or us, and another for Mrs. K., Charlie and Irene. The ancient road slowed the wheels, and we chugged up the path like a cab heading to the peak of a roller coaster. So, so slowly. My breath went shallow, then stilled in my lungs. My heart pounded louder than the struggling engine.
The house was smaller than I’d imagined, and painted a peaceful shade of off-white, like fresh milk in a saucer. A woman stood in the screen door, her figure outlined in shadow. She cried out as she skipped across the porch, the wind lifting her dark curls in welcome. I pushed out of the still-moving car and tripped into the brightness of a New England sun. We’d both shrugged off our shoes, though we didn’t know it. Our feet barely touched the ground.
I took her in, no words, no sound, nothing but her steady gaze, a balm to soothe what the terrible war had ravaged. Her capable hands called to me. They held the pen that kept my soul afloat when I wanted to drown it in a bathtub full of grief, and still they reached, their strength holding me up yet again.
We pulled at each other, tugged even—making sure we were real flesh and blood, a dream come to reality. We laughed. We caught tears with the pads of our fingers.
It was glorious.
I’ll remember this moment forever, I thought. I will take its beauty with me.
She was the one who told me I could do that. When I felt you slip from my grasp, she showed me how to dance cheek-to-cheek with my dashing soldier. She taught me how to take the past and press it carefully onto the present moment, so, so gently, as to not mar the future.
It is in these moments, when the past gives the present its rosy glow, that we will find each other.
So I’ll be seeing you, Sal. When your grandson laughs delightedly as his mother pulls a face, I’ll be seeing your sense of humor. When your son sits under an oak tree, scribbling epiphanies in a composition notebook, I’ll be seeing your erudition. When I catch myself swaying to a tune on the radio, I’ll be seeing your grace.
And as I sit here in a room warmed by the sun, in the house of a woman you brought me to, I see your love.
I’ll be seeing you, Sal. Always and forever,
Rita
Published in
The Daily Iowan,
July 28, 1946
War Bonds
by Toby Vincenzo
A recounting of the poet’s mother meeting a wartime pen pal
There was a waiting time,
when the people made sense of God’s mess
A nightmare objective
Fields of the dead
And through it all, two women wrote
intentions
dreams
loss
on paper with steady hands.
Trusting friendship and humanity they wrote
as the pages flew across time and space
Little by little
pace by pace
a war bond grew
Something new
and green among the red fields of war
And somehow, she here, her there
It became a bigger thing than even all their lives
And a triumph was no good without the other
tragic things come and go
nothing was real that wasn’t written
Down
She here, her there
they forged a mighty thing
a garden all its own
to grow and sing
Soon the letters couldn’t be enough
The long dry seasons in between
she here, her there
and in the air
a buzz of wonder:
Does her hair shine?
It was time.
She here, her there
to be together in the everywhere
A date was made
To mark the big event
Families, long known but never seen
gathered like chickens to the fence
here there everywhere
They met at the ocean place of one
where the sunflowers carried the name of the other
And the car couldn’t chug up the gravel road
fast, fast enough
She was out and running
as the other slammed the screen door,
flowered dresses,
hair askew
High heels tossed in tandem.
Nothing else but them.
Family gathered around
no sound
to watch them touch each other’s faces
and link arms
silent now no words
turning away from all the rest of us
Walking down the path to where the ocean meets the whale rocks of the sea
Flowers blooming in their wake, they walked.
What miracle is this?
That they didn’t notice.
* * *
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Loretta Nyhan
Home Front Girls, a book about the power of friendship, would not exist without the generous spirits and open hearts of my friends listed below:
To my fantastic agent, Joanna Volpe, the miracle worker, who always knows how to take a sad song and make it better. You’re the greatest, Jo! Huge thanks to Nancy Coffey, Kathleen Ortiz and the incredibly smart, hard-working team at New Leaf Literary and Media Representation.
To the talented Erika Imranyi, the best editor two writers could possibly hope for, whose sharp eye and kind heart truly brought this novel to where it needed to be. I can’t imagine Rita and Glory’s story in anyone else’s hands. Thanks also to Leonore Waldrip, and the entire team at Harlequin MIRA.
To my early readers and writer buddies: the kindly assassin Kelly Vaiciulis, my walking partner Kathleen Bleck, Jenny Kales, Mike Callero, Erin Nyhan, Anna Maria Koch and photographer extraordinaire Alexa Frangos—thanks for your wisdom and good advice.
To my LGP ladies, especially my book club, Baby’s Got Paperback, for their kind support, and for welcoming me with open arms. Thanks also to the Terry Family, especially Margaux, for her enthusiasm.
To all my New Leaf agency sisters, who cheered me on from the start, especially Erica O’Rourke, Holly Bodger, Kody Keplinger and Amy Lukavics. The Team Volpe retreat needs to happen, and soon.
To the patron saints of novenas and prosecco, Lisa and Laura Roecker, who always held me up from afar—I’m forever grateful.
To Jean Lawlor, who never laughed when I added Cherry Coke to my beer, and always partnered up with me for square dancing in gym class. Thank heavens for Wendy’s salad bar, circa 1984.
To my wonderful in-laws, Tom and Maureen Nyhan, and the rest of the Nyhan clan, especially Mike, Dan, Ann, Seamus, Liam, Erin and Alex Sinvare. I am a lucky girl to have married into such an amazing family.
Special thanks to my brother, Steve Roach, his wife, Lori, my godson, Liam, my brother-in-law, Brent Georgi, my nephew, Alex, and my sister, Joyce, who knows me better than anyone, and still loves me. Thanks, my sista.
To my parents, Henry and Maxine Roach, who have always supported me, even when they probably thought I was a little crazy. They’ve given me the most important thing parents can give a child—the knowledge that she is loved. I can’t thank them enough.
To the three great loves of my life, my heroes, Tom, Dan and Jack, who have brought me so much joy.
And to Suzy. Oh, Suzy. Someday we will meet, and I’ll take your hand and never let go. Thank you, my friend. For everything.
Suzanne Hayes
I’d like to send my sincerest thanks to my husband, William, and my three daughters, Rosy, Tess and Grace, for being so patient and for cheering me on.
And to the readers of the many incarnations of this project: Jan Nichols, Michelle Esposito, my mother-in-law, Margaret Palmieri, and my great-aunt, Rita Palmieri.
To our amazing editor, Erika Imranyi—what can I say? Your vision for this novel was mightier than mine, and it carried me through. A great editor is an artist, and you, my friend, are indeed great. Thanks, also, to the ever fearless Leonore Waldrip, and the entire Harlequin team, whose tireless efforts brought this book into fruition.
To my mother, Theresa Cooper, and to my grandmother, Fay Barile. Two independent women, so stubborn and so beautiful, this is really for you.
To both my fathers, Robert Mele and James Sterling Cooper. Sometimes there are no words....
And, of course, to my writing partner, Loretta Nyhan. Oh, friend. Though I have yet to meet you (upon the writing of this note), you are the keeper of my heart, and the friend I dreamed about when I was a little girl. Without you, this novel wouldn’t exist—but more important, I wouldn’t know you, which would be the greatest tragedy of all. Thank you.
POSTSCRIPT
APRIL 2019
Loretta
Two major events transpired since our first publication of this book.
First off, I finally met Suzy.
We hugged. We brought sunflowers. We went out to lunch and got to know each other in the real flesh and blood. Like Rita and Glory, we ran for each other, tugged on each other, made sure the other was real. It was, just as in the book, totally and completely glorious.
The second event was the opposite of that. On a bright Saturday morning in May of 2016, my husband, Tom, my Sal, left to play a round of golf and never came home. He died of a sudden massive heart attack at the age of forty-five, right after telling his buddies a joke. He was gone before I got to him. Like Rita, I never had the chance to say goodbye.
My friends and family provided a lifeline that got me through that dark, dark time. Also, in some strange cosmic way, Rita pulled me through as well, her experience suddenly becoming my own, her wisdom reminding me that the only way to honor the dead is to continue living.
While I was writing her story, had I understood, on some unconscious level, how much the future me would find comfort in those words as I grieved? I’ll never know. What is clear to me, however, is that making sense of loss is not a process best done alone. My wish for everyone who reads this book is that when it’s your time to reach a hand out, there is a loving friend to grasp it.
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