47
Gina’s letter distressed me. I was unfairly envious of her friendship with her coworker. I’d never met Sarah. Never even heard Gina mention her before, and although I had no right at all to my jealous feelings, I couldn’t tamp them down. Her letter drove reality home to me: Gina had a good friend who wasn’t me, and even if I could figure out a way to leave Hickory and my marriage, I didn’t have anyplace to go.
I had no friends in Hickory. That was the sad truth. Lucy’s friends viewed me as an old married woman and, of course, Lucy’s dislike of me poisoned their feelings about me. The women in Ruth’s social circle still seemed to view me as the hussy who had trapped Henry into marriage. So it was not unusual that I was home alone when the Charlotte hospital called a couple of days later. The hospital receptionist or whoever she was put a doctor on the line, and in a cool, clinical voice, he told me that Butchie Johnson was dead. Without even realizing it, I rested my hand on my empty belly. I asked for details and received few, only that the disease had spread too quickly through the boy’s little body to save him.
I sat still for a long time after hanging up the phone, wishing I could miraculously change the last few minutes. Hattie was at the store and I was glad she wasn’t home. I dreaded telling her. I dreaded telling anyone and thought Henry should be the one to deliver the news. When I gathered my thoughts, I picked up the phone again and called him. He answered a bit gruffly, and I knew this was a terrible time to give him bad news with all that was going wrong at the factory. He was so silent after I told him that I thought we’d been cut off.
“Someone has to tell them,” I said, picturing Adora’s little yellow house in Ridgeview. I remembered her cheerful round face as she spoke to Henry and me through the open window of the Cadillac. “Maybe you can tell Zeke and he can go over to tell them?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said finally.
“It’s so sad,” I said.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“I can relate though,” I said. “I just lost a child.”
I heard him scoff. “It’s not the same thing in any way, shape, or form,” he said, shutting me out. He hung up abruptly and I sat for a moment, staring at the phone in my hand. I was hurt by his continued unwillingness to acknowledge that our son had existed. But I supposed he was right that this loss didn’t really concern me. I barely knew Honor. Still, for the rest of the day I was consumed by a deep sadness that felt like it might suck me down if I didn’t fight it.
Hattie cried when I told her, and so did I. Only I did my crying in the bedroom where no one could tell me I had no right to the tears.
48
A few days later, I woke to the sound of someone pounding on the front door. I sat up in the narrow bed, groggy and disoriented. The pounding stopped and I supposed that either the person had gone away or Ruth had answered the door. I looked at my alarm clock. It was only a few minutes past six.
Henry rolled in my direction and opened his eyes. “Did I hear someone knocking?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said. “I don’t know if—”
Ruth suddenly flung our door open. “Get up, get up!” she commanded, breathless from the climb up the stairs. “The Allies attacked the French coast!” she shouted. “Teddy Wright just came over to tell us to turn on the radio.” She was smiling broadly and I could see the pretty young girl she had once been in her face. “There are thousands of troops!” she said, clasping her hands together. “Thousands upon thousands! Hurry downstairs.”
I didn’t think I’d ever seen Henry move so quickly. He nearly leaped from his bed, reaching for his robe as he ran to the bedroom door. I was right behind him, grabbing my own robe and stepping into my slippers.
In minutes, all four of us plus Hattie, already dressed in her uniform, sat as close as we could get to the radio in the living room, awestruck by what we were hearing.
“The Allies stormed the northern coast of France,” the excited announcer said. “A fleet of more than five thousand ships carrying one hundred and sixty thousand troops has invaded Hitler’s Europe and are fighting their way up the beaches.”
A hundred and sixty thousand troops! I tried to picture the scene as the commentator described it. Thousands of soldiers fighting their way ashore, a cloud of fighter planes above them in the air. All those young men. All that courage! I wanted to cheer and cry at the same time. I hugged myself, leaning over to get closer to the radio, listening to every word. Please, God, I thought. Let this horrible war come to an end.
“Casualties may reach a dreadful toll,” the commentator said.
I thought of the boys from my Little Italy neighborhood who’d enlisted or been drafted, picturing them among the hundreds of men on that beach in France.
“Thousands are known to be dead or wounded,” the announcer continued, and Lucy covered her mouth with her hand. She knew boys over there too. We all did, and in that moment I thought each one of us was filled with both fear and gratitude for those young men. Henry’s jaw was set. He rubbed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand with his right, the way he did when he was upset or stressed. I imagined every house in Hickory was filled with the same mixture of emotions at that moment. Every house in the country.
“Teddy said the church is open.” Ruth got to her feet. “Everyone’s going. I’m getting dressed and calling a cab to take me there myself. Lucy and Tess, you come with me. And Hattie, you can go to your church too, if you want.” As if on cue, church bells began ringing throughout the town and we all laughed giddily at the timing.
“I need to go to the factory,” Henry said, standing up. “I should let everyone off today to go to church.”
“Mr. Hank, can you stop by Adora’s on your way to the factory and tell them what’s goin’ on?” Hattie asked as she got to her feet. “They ain’t got no radio and you know they ain’t allowed out.” Adora, Honor, and little Jilly were still under quarantine. They hadn’t even been allowed to attend Butchie’s funeral, which seemed unbearably cruel to me. Henry had attended with Ruth and Lucy. They’d probably been the only white people in the church.
“Might Honor’s husband be one of the troops?” I asked. I knew Henry hadn’t been able to get word to Del that Butchie had died.
“You mean the father of her children,” Ruth said, with clear disdain. “Certainly possible, I suppose.”
“Oh, Mama.” Lucy scowled. “You’re so hard on Honor.”
“That girl’s a thorn in Adora’s side.” Ruth headed for the foyer. “Now get ready to go or I’ll leave without you,” she said.
I didn’t miss the sorrowful look on Hattie’s face as Ruth criticized her cousin Honor. I didn’t think Henry missed it either. He rested his hand on Hattie’s arm.