One hospital orderly got one good look at Flick and exclaimed, “Oh my God, this kid’s going to die!”
Flick opened his blackened mouth and laughed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Alma Johansson floated and sank. She rose back to the surface again, gliding forward. Now and again it seemed people spoke to her and around her, in kind gentle voices, but she wasn’t listening. She was dreaming her way back to her nineteenth birthday, which she had celebrated very far from home, near a small seaside city called Truro in Cornwall, England.
The parlor table was set with an oilcloth and three heavy china cups, saucers, and small round dessert plates. There was a plum cake in the middle of the table for her, for Alma. There were only three place settings—her hosts had not counted on anyone else coming—but four of them were squashed around the little table, and Mrs. Burnham rushed to set the fourth place, as if it might be bad luck, not to mention bad manners, not to have foreseen the young British soldier’s presence there.
His name was Albert Dean and he was only twenty-one years old. He looked older, because his expression was nearly always serious. He was not much taller than Alma was. He and Alma were in love, though they had never spoken of this. They talked instead about the cinema shows they went to see every Saturday night. War movies and romances, mostly, and an occasional children’s cartoon, just for fun. They chatted about the weather. Sometimes Albert lifted one brown, square hand and pointed out some detail about the English coastal scenery. Then they talked about the landscape. Sometimes about the kinds of seabirds. He seemed to have the capacity to pay attention to everything around him all at once. Albert’s hair was brown, his eyes the bright blue of a clear blue lake. Alma thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen—but she never let on about that, either. She could keep a secret. All four sat and ate the birthday cake in appreciative silence, with an occasional sigh or nod of approval.
Afterward, Alma walked Albert to the door. The next day he would be leaving for the Far East. His kit bag was packed, and his duffel ready, British Army issue. The situation in Korea was not terribly dangerous, and not likely to last long, but the army needed all hands on deck. He should be back in about ten months, he said. He repeated that number now, offering it like a bouquet of flowers.
“Ten months is not so long,” said Alma, calculating the number in her head. She tried to convey everything possible in those six words. That she would wait. That she would not be tempted to accompany some other young man to the cinema or afterward, out to the Lymington strand or to one of the little shops or eating establishments overlooking the Isle of Wight. Not now or ever. But her heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it bounced on her tongue. She could not force any other words past.
Albert Dean appeared to study the cloud-streaked sky. He took her hand. They kept silent together a moment. He said, in his clipped, careful, timid voice, “I love you very much, Alma. And I always will. I want you to know that.”
She let his words sink in, down, down, to the very core inside of her. It was the happiest moment of her young life. Every cell in her body lit up with joy. It was a moment worth celebrating, something much bigger than her birthday. In the secret cupboard of her heart she had known for some months now that Albert Dean loved her. They had ways of showing each other, of course. But hearing the words said out loud made it feel suddenly solid—not a niggling little worry, not like the uneasy way she’d been feeling almost seasick for the past few days, dizzy even when standing on dry land. As if nothing around her were solid at all.
She supposed it was the constant washing motion of the Cornish waves, all around on every side. A foreign land. The dazzle of sun, the smell of seawater and fish. It might have been her nerves, too. She was from the inland part of New England, where rivers made a long run down to the sea; she came from the thick central slice of Massachusetts. When she’d first told Albert she hailed from a place called Worcester his eyes had lit up and he’d said, “So you’re English then!”
She was not English, and he was not American, but they wouldn’t let that get in their way. They were so very young, and life was a great adventure.
AFTERWORD
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
In the winter of 1968, in Worcester, Massachusetts, a terrible tragedy took place in a neighborhood called Indian Hill, and five young people lost their lives in a fire on that hill. My fiancé, John Swenson, was one of the lucky ones who had left earlier that evening. He had been gone about twenty minutes when the entire shack went up in flames.
Indigo Hill is a work of fiction, and like all works of fiction, it is chiefly the work of imagination. I have changed a great many details to suit my story. I do this not out of disrespect for the past, but quite the opposite, to try to honor the truth by telling the best story I could make. So I have taken great liberties with facts and events, and I ask forgiveness of reality.
Many communities suffer a tragedy like the one at Indian Hill, if not in scope then in sorrow, and those whose lives it touches never forget it, even if the rest of the world may seem to march on, oblivious. I wrote this book partly to honor John and his remarkable group of friends, both the living and the dead. Nearly every family has its secrets, too. Mine is no exception. Perhaps yours is not, either. As George Bernard Shaw said, “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2015 Jonathan Cohen
Liz Rosenberg is the author of more than thirty books, including the critically acclaimed, bestselling novels The Moonlight Palace, The Laws of Gravity, and Home Repair. She is also a prize-winning poet and children’s book author. For over twenty years, she was a book review columnist at the Boston Globe. She teaches creative writing and English at Binghamton University. She has also guest-taught at Bennington College, Colgate University, Sarah Lawrence College, and Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She divides her time between Upstate New York, Florida, and Worcester, Massachusetts. She lives with her daughter, Lily, and their dog, Sophie. Her son, Eli, a comic and podcaster, lives in New York City. Visit Liz on Facebook for updates, extraordinary photos of ordinary beauty, and more information.
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