I nodded. I fumbled for my water glass on the side table and took another sip.
She said, “Let me know if you—”
But I interrupted. I blurted, truth be told. “I was in the war.”
She nodded as if this were to be expected. But I hadn’t meant to say that. “Which one?” she asked.
“The second one,” I said. “World War Two. I met my friend in basic training.”
“Basic training?” She looked puzzled, which was gratifying, because from puzzled it’s a quick step to curious.
“We were nurses,” I said. “Army nurses. They put us through basic training, like soldiers, even though in the war we never pitched tents or did close-order drill or any of that. Ours was at Fort Bragg.”
“In North Carolina,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “Her name was Kay.” To my astonishment, my eyes grew watery.
She nodded again, that irritatingly serene acceptance. “Was she killed?”
“No!” I was so startled I nearly shouted. I wiped without grace at my eyes. “No, she wasn’t killed.”
“Oh,” she said. “You lost touch after the war?”
“Yes,” I said, and then suddenly I didn’t want to say any more. I looked into my water glass.
“Where did they send you?” she asked. “After basic training?”
“England,” I said, still watching the water. “Then France, and from there into Austria and Germany.”
“So you were really in the war,” she said.
“I really was.” I said this snappishly, I think, because after that she didn’t ask any more questions. She repeated her advice—bathe and hydrate, let the water wash it away—and said her goodbyes. I stopped her after she’d opened the door. “Can you come back tomorrow?” I called.
I couldn’t see her from my position in the chair, but I felt her hesitation. After a moment she said, “Tomorrow?”
“Yes. Would you, please?”
She said she would. I’m embarrassed by how much I’m looking forward to it. It’s evening now, and she was here in the morning, but the effects have not worn off. How nice it is to go a few hours without pain. And tomorrow she will come again.
Let Ugly Be
Jennifer goes to Megan’s house for the playdate, despite her preference for a neutral site. The original plan had been to meet at the fire pole playground, but it’s raining, and Megan offered up her home like it was nothing. Jennifer hopes that this playdate doesn’t go well. She doesn’t want to have to reciprocate.
They are sitting on Megan’s couch, the boys doing God-knows-what upstairs, with excited chatter and occasional thunks and thuds. “What do you think that was?” Jennifer asks, for the second time. She’s going to have to resist the urge to pose this question every time they make a noise.
Some parents would shrug and say, “Who knows?” Once upon a time Jennifer would have. Megan smiles sympathetically and says in a confiding tone, “I’m not allowed to go see.” She settles back into the couch, tucking her legs up beside her carefully, so as not to spill her mug of peppermint tea. “It’s my own rule. It’s so easy to hover, when you only have one.”
Jennifer nods. She, too, is holding a mug of tea, nearly full. Megan handed it to her moments ago, after a prolonged period in which she studied photos in the living room while Megan made the tea in the kitchen, calling out chatty remarks from time to time. Jennifer knew she should go in and offer to help, or at least talk companionably, instead of just calling back, “Oh, really?” through the doorway. But she hadn’t been able to resist delaying this full-on conversational engagement. She’d imagined that time spent with Megan would be time spent distracted by the children. She hadn’t meant to go to the other woman’s house, hadn’t realized there would be an upstairs playroom, didn’t want to be in this position of intimacy on the couch, blowing on her tea.
“We’re having a lot of discussions about whether to have another one,” Megan says. “Of course being a sociologist I have to read all the studies—pros and cons of being an only child. Sebastian just says, if we want one we should have one. But it’s not as simple as want, is it? It’s about what’s best. What’s best for Ben, especially. Only children get more attention of course, and there are so many benefits to that, and all the old notions about how they’re cripplingly self-centered—well, the studies show those are mostly untrue. But on the other hand siblings are important. I don’t want to deprive him of what has the potential to be one of life’s most important relationships. And he’ll have these old parents, with no one to help him take care of them, no one who really understands what his childhood was like.”
“I’m an only child,” Jennifer says.
“Oh!” Megan offers a wincing smile. “Did I just suggest you’re cripplingly self-centered?”
“No, you said that’s untrue.”