There’s so much to write, and I feel as if I need to write it all in one place or I’ll never write any of it. I hope you’re settled in somewhere to read this.
It’s been ten months since that terrible day I was supposed to board the ship, and I never heard from you after the telegram I sent that day, and I don’t blame you. But there are things that I need you need to know. They all involve you, whether you want them to or not. Just like when I pushed my bloody hand onto your knee, you’re stuck with me, in so many ways that you didn’t ask for.
The first thing I need to tell you is that I’m going to have a baby.
The second is this: that I don’t know how many ways I can apologize and have it mean enough.
I’ve spent so much time since that day trying to figure out what went wrong. I know how angry you must be. I know that you waited for me all these years, or at least I hope you did. And then I didn’t come. I know you were counting on me.
I still don’t understand it completely myself. But here’s my attempt to explain.
The morning I was supposed to board the Cunard, I swear I didn’t have a thought in my mind about turning back. I got to Southampton early and waited in line like everyone else. I’d already said my good-byes, and while my sisters and brothers and parents were insisting I’d be back—in my mind I was already gone.
It was a foggy morning—stepping out of the train into the city, I could swear I smelled the North Sea already. The gulls were circling, the breeze was soft, and it all felt so exciting. I stood on the docks with my ticket along with the rest of the crowd, and the line moved along slowly. There was a crowd of people protesting, circling with picket signs and shouting about poison in the air. I couldn’t hear myself think for all the noise.
I stepped up to the edge of the gangway just like the person did before me. I handed over my ticket to the porter. That’s when I was overcome with terror. And I knew immediately that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get on.
My hands shook and the world swayed and the porter took my arm, so it must have looked like I was about to fall over. The only way I could force myself to walk was to walk away, out of the crowd and away from the ship. I rushed toward the taxi stand, and I swear I couldn’t breathe, and I kept unlacing the belt of my dress, but it didn’t help.
All this is a long and overdone way of saying that I was too afraid to come—too afraid of going down like the Lusitania or of getting to America and not finding what I came for or . . . I don’t know what. That’s the awful and humiliating truth. And I’m sorry I couldn’t send anything but a telegram to let you know. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to write until I could say something intelligible, and I suppose I still haven’t.
I know you’re disappointed in me. But believe me, you couldn’t be any more disappointed than I am in myself. For all my anger with James for not staring death in the face by fighting in the war, I couldn’t even get on a boat.
I’m so tired, Beth. For now, I’m going to bed, and I will write more in the morning.
MORNING, MAY 1, 1920
It seems like every time I think things will settle down and life will stand still for a while, something shifts. And the things I get so scared of aren’t the ones that actually end up happening; other things come along.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I’ll explain, though even writing this is making me so tired.
For weeks after I got back from Southampton I walked around in a daze. My parents were happy to have me home, of course, instead of far away with you. But I think most of all, they wanted me to be happy—and Mother kept coming to my room to stroke my hair and chat, to try to get me interested in things. She started having her friends over for cards and dinners again, and getting involved in the business—sticking her nose in the ledgers and asking Dad to fill her in on his days at the office.
She’d started taking regular day trips to London, to shop and to sightsee, and a few times she talked me into going with her. Looking back now, I think I was thinking of James the whole time. Hoping I’d spot him. But London is a big place, and nothing came of it.
One afternoon I walked down to the cottage. I half expected and half hoped for him to still be there. I walked up quietly so I could take him by surprise, but I didn’t need to. It’s funny how quickly a house can go back to feeling abandoned. Some sticks and leaves had fallen in so the floor was covered in debris. A portion of the roof had already crumbled. And it looked like the spiders had moved back in. It was obvious he hadn’t been there in weeks, maybe since the night I told him to leave.
And I should have felt vindicated and glad. But I didn’t.
Life got back to normal. I went on my little trips with Mother and worked long hours at the factory office and went for walks. I was already getting happier, even then.
I guess people are right when they say that time helps grief. I don’t agree that it heals, but maybe it wraps our losses up deeper and deeper inside so we can get on with being alive. I started having fun going to films and lying in the pasture with my books.
This went on well into the winter, falling into a routine—work, home, London. Along the way I convinced myself that I never really wanted to go to America anyway. And if I’m honest about the lies I told myself, Beth, I also decided that you were never that good of a friend to me. I listed the examples in my head of how you’d let me down. It went on like this for months.
And just when I least expected it, everything changed again.
Whenever we went to London, we always took the train to South Kensington, which is close to the British Museum. Of course, it always made me think of James and his imaginary famous family. I’d even go linger out in front of the museum while Mother went to a fitting or some other time-consuming appointment. I’d stand there and picture all those shells and bones inside, but never go inside. I’d imagine the people James had spun in my head. It felt like a memory or a dream full of light.
It was an afternoon in early May when I saw him. I was standing there looking up at the windows when I decided it was idiotic to loiter there on the steps without going inside. He was right there in the main hall standing beside a towering stuffed elephant. He had a big box in his arms and was discussing the weather with a security guard. He stood tall, confidently, as if his scars were invisible now, even to him.
I stood there bewildered and on the verge of ducking outside again when he turned around and saw me.
Then he very politely came up to me and reached to shake my hand.
“Lenore,” he said. I didn’t like that he didn’t call me Allstock.
He was so composed, and I was not. “What brings you to the museum?” he asked politely, not a trace of the past in his voice. He’d gotten past it.
“What are you doing here?” I sputtered back.
“Oh.” He looked down at the box in his arms. “Getting ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“I’m going away,” he said brightly. “To Indonesia. Remember?”
“Oh?”