Following him to the parlor, Ebbely murmured, “Just be loyal, John!”
When Ebbely stopped by her house to say good-bye, Jane felt it was somehow different from the many such times before. As the little taillight of his flivver disappeared in the haze of early morning, it was as if suddenly all of him was gone. Even Michael must have felt deserted—for he began to cry until she took his hand and walked back into the house.
18
By the time Jane stepped off the trolley it had begun to rain—a penetrating drizzle that seemed to herald yet another brutal winter. Hugging her cape, she tried to shield her Red Cross uniform. She had marched in a victory bond rally in the city, rolled bandages, then missed her trolley, and had to wait for the next—it had been a very long day.
Pulling her shawl closer across her chest, she rose from her chair, extinguished the lamp—and in a voice that sounded her exhaustion said good night to her husband. “Buonanotte, John.”
Looking up from his evening paper John replied, “Go ahead, you look tired—buonanotte, Ninnie—I’ll lock up.” She smiled her gratitude and went upstairs.
When he moved, she half-asleep, as accustomed turned onto her back accepting his weight. His hands gentled her face—one slender finger traced her mouth, descended to the hollow of her neck, where it remained, stroking lazily along the line of her collarbone as though hesitant of reaching the pleasure of her. Something stirred in the woman he was fondling and John felt it. A response so unexpected—so new it arrested his exploration of her. She moaned—that primal entreaty calling him to her, he entered her as though his need to explore her newness overpowered him and she gloried in it. During the night his hands once more caressed—first choosing her small breasts, pretending aimless direction as they slid down between her thighs and Jane reawoke to being woman.
In the morning, he was gone and she was lost. Utterly confused—slightly ashamed, even shocked … her body no longer an ally, now an incomprehensible stranger—Jane surveyed her nakedness as if it belonged to another woman she had yet to meet wondering who she might be. Hearing her children calling, she dressed quickly knowing that whatever had happened to her during the night would have to wait until she had the time to think it through. With legs strangely unsteady, stirring a memory quite shocking in its delight—she hurried to her daily duties.
Being a rare pie-making day she couldn’t avoid seeing Hannah unless she pretended one of the boys was ill—Jane never liked to tempt fate with such lies and so arrived at Hannah’s as expected. Having been admitted, hanging her and the children’s coats and hats on the hall tree, she called to Hannah back in her kitchen, “I’ll be right there. I’m just taking off my galoshes. I brought the apples,” and wondered why her voice sounded so girlish. Securing an imagined strand of hair back into her sensible bun, Jane entered the kitchen and Hannah dropped her rolling pin! Bending down to retrieve it hiding a smile, she murmured, “It’s de grease on my hands make it slip.” And without further explanation continued to roll out her dough. “You look nice, Ninnie—have a good night?”
Blushing Jane nodded.
Those nights when her husband explored her, she who had always found his hands beautiful—now savored their knowing touch—waited—heart pounding—breathless for that moment when his need of her overwhelmed—demanded her willingness to welcome him inside her—where his passion resided—and her loving began.
Those nights when work kept him from her—she sewed. Wanting him became the catalyst of her days until his return to claim what was his.
Riding along the riverbank John’s thoughts were of his wife. Jane’s surprising response had unsettled him. No, he corrected his thoughts—not actually unsettled—confused perhaps—certainly surprised. As the horse stumbled he pulled it up, steadying its gait. It was the feel of her that lingered—that clung, its memory too pleasant to be ignored as simply sexual. Women as such had never bothered him beyond the confines of enjoyment. Certainly a willing woman be she a professional or simply accessible, was a normal man’s bodily relaxation. Making love, that misnomer of all time—had never been a part of John’s sexual affiliations. Love was such an intangible emotion—so multifaceted as to its very origin, dependent on so many individual concepts as to its source that very often when love was used as convenient catalyst for sex it could impede the very enjoyment sought of it. For most men love really had a way of getting in the way of a vigorous enjoyable form of exercise needing no further impetus. To find sudden recognition of physical delight within his marriage rattled John sufficiently to shy away from the woman who had fostered it, seek out those who had gained his confidence by allowing the game to be played without interfering emotion. Adjusting his grip on the reins, John lit a cheroot. Shielding the flare of the match against the slight breeze coming from the river he heard its approach. Often when riding this stretch of the Rouge—he caught the soft rippling sound of the electric boat that Henry Ford had given his wife when their Fairlane estate was first completed. John had heard its silent gliding approach often, never taking much notice of its passing, its intended destination, nor who was its captain.
As Jane’s body yearned and waited, her mind forming excuses for John’s many absences—death prepared itself for a global feast.
It came, as death so often seems to enjoy, first disguised as casual discomfort. A slight fever, a minor headache, a rolling cough that though it seemed strangely persistent, all were to be expected at the end of a particularly raw September. From Boston, where he had entertained recruits at Camp Devens, Ebbely telephoned the Geiger house, sounding the first alarm.
“Fritz?”
“Ja, it’s me.” As all who need to speak in a language not their own, Fritz didn’t like talking to a face he couldn’t see.
“Fritz, listen to me and listen carefully …”
“Ebberhardt, Hannah is not here …”
“I don’t want to speak with Hannah …”
“Oh—why not?”
“Because what I have to say may frighten her—but it must be said, so please listen!”
“I’m listening.”
“Something very strange is happening here. Healthy young recruits are suddenly becoming ill, and no one knows why—the army doctors are going crazy. So many sick here—not enough cots, not enough sheets, they are lying in hallways, in the mess halls, everywhere—all as sick as dogs …”
“Why—Ebberhardt—what is it? Typhus?”
“No—nor cholera either, nor yellow fever. It’s like some monstrous pneumonia—but even that doesn’t fit—although the doctors think it could be because something like this has started in Spain. Fritz, just in the past twenty-four hours, there have been a hundred new cases and more than fifty deaths!”