When I graduated, they kept me on at Vanderbilt. My friend Grace and I rented a furnished apartment with two other girls. It was so small Grace and I had to share a bed, and we took turns sleeping on the lumpy side. It’s funny to think about people who were once the same as you. Grace stayed stateside. While I was overseas she got married and moved to Montana, where all manner of things doubtless happened to her. At Vanderbilt, I worked on the medical ward, although I would rather have been on the surgical one, where Grace was. There, nurses shaved skin for surgery, prepared recovery beds, changed dressings, wished people well and forgot their names. It felt like progress. People on the medical ward had diseases, cancer and pneumonia, and so many of them just wasted away.
Every day on the way to work I saw the same recruitment poster, with a nurse gazing down at her patient like she was about to kiss him, and lettering that said, SAVE HIS LIFE AND FIND YOUR OWN—BE A NURSE. I didn’t feel like I was saving anybody’s life. Maybe good nursing care did save the pneumonia patients, like the head nurse said, but I always felt like their recovery had more to do with natural resilience, and the healing properties of time. Ever since Pearl Harbor, I’d been living in one of those dreams where you know you’re supposed to be somewhere but you just can’t get there and time speeds by while you stand at the mirror, trying to pin up your hair. Every time I got on the bus to go to work, especially if I was late and had to dash for it and climb aboard disheveled with my cap bag swinging in my hand, and all those people looked at me, I seemed to hear what they were thinking: there I was, still in Nashville, unable to even make a bus on time, when I should have been at war.
Then one day in 1944 I stumbled off a train into the near dawn of Fayetteville, North Carolina. The platform was deserted and dark, my bag was heavy, I was supposed to get to Fort Bragg. I’d expected someone to be there to meet me, but no one was. I’d expected that person to tell me where to go. I considered sitting down on my bag and crying, until I imagined the look my father would give me. So I didn’t cry, I didn’t wait for someone to show up to rescue me. I dragged my bag across the street to the Fayetteville Hotel, a tall building with a single dim light in the window, and pushed through the lobby door. And there she was, Marilyn Kay, my fellow soldier. Waiting for me.
Lucy called yesterday. Fairly early in the morning, considering she’s on California time.
“Hello, darling,” I said, so pleased to hear her voice.
“Hi, Margaret,” she said. “How are you?” There was a hitch in her tone, a slight formality, that told me what I didn’t want to know. She could have hung up without another word and I would’ve known she wasn’t coming. We had to play out the conversation anyway, because that is what people do.
“How are you?” she asked.
“I’m lonely,” I said.
“Oh, Margaret, I know, I’m sorry,” she said. “And I can’t come see you any time soon, and I’m so so sorry about that. I really wish I could.”
She sounded weary and sad about it, and I believed she was. I was angry at her anyway. “All right,” I said.
“Is there any chance you could come out here?”
“It’s been a long time since I traveled.”
“I know.”
Then we both were silent. Maybe I could go out there—clear it with my doctor, pack my bags. The thought is terrifying. I was upset that she’d suggested it. I don’t like to be reminded that I’ve lost my taste for adventure.
“I really would like to see you,” she said. “I love you, you know.”
“That’s easy to say,” I said, though I of all people know it isn’t. “If you really loved me, you’d come.” Then I hung up.
Don’t think I report any of this with pride.
As for Jennifer, she meant what she said: no more unburdening. She’s come three times since she made that decree, and every time I thought she might relent, but she didn’t, and trying to think how to compel her I was so tense and unhappy under her hands that I felt worse after the massage than I had before. So I said we’d take a break from that, too. Instead of looking sorry she said, “All right,” and told me to call her if I changed my mind.
I have thought ever since about changing my mind.
It is easier to be alone when you’ve been a long time used to it. When you’ve forgotten the other possibility. But I don’t want her to come if she doesn’t want to come. That has been my position all along. The paper with Zoe’s number is still right here on the desk. I took the paper from Jennifer’s house even though she might’ve noticed it missing. Perhaps I wanted her to notice. But I shouldn’t call. I know I shouldn’t call.
I’m lonely, I said to Lucy. It strikes me that I’ve never said that aloud before. How very sad it is to be honest only when I want to hurt someone.