As soldier after soldier passed through the station and onto Hay Street, the sounds of the band were broken up by a new cacophony: honking horns, ringing church bells, whistles from the mills and locomotives. There was joy all around him.
My God, how women had changed — the shorter skirts, the bare, smooth legs, what seemed to him garish makeup, and then the confidence with which they took over the streets. She was changed now too. He knew it from her letters.
And her not being here—
Still, in spite of what he knew, he waited. He hung back near the entrance of the station, trying to avoid the flood of people that wanted to push him across Hay Street toward the new municipal building. The humidity was overwhelming — already his dress uniform felt damp. The clock above the train station crept toward the half hour. From his vantage he could see the trolley cars as they followed the yellow line up and down Penn Avenue. They paused and unloaded their passengers. No Lorraine.
After an hour’s wait, he started up Ross Street, following the familiar path home. He passed the post office, Buke’s Grill, and the Ross Avenue Methodist Church, where he was baptized and married. He passed beneath the shadow of the Carl Building where people streamed in and out, on their way to and from doctor’s appointments. His heart pounded. He tried to ready himself for the confrontation.
Oaks lined the road, shielding the Queen Anne and Romanesque houses from the harsh summer sun, houses similar to the one he was now headed toward. They had bought it a few months before he was called up, thinking it the perfect place to raise a family. Plans — oh, they’d made them. He was supposed to land a job at Westinghouse, just like his father had. They’d buy a brand-new car at Bauman Chevrolet. He would join the Elks and volunteer to coach one of the sandlot football teams. Lorraine said she’d volunteer for their church and the Young Women’s Christian Association (he was passing their building right now). They’d put their children, when they came, into scouts and the youth orchestra.
None of those plans had presupposed the war. Or men who didn’t go to war.
Lorraine had cried the day the telegram arrived. She cried at everything, happy or sad, granted, but she loved him then. Or so he thought.
He didn’t know anymore.
His bag was heavy. He wanted to stop, but he kept going. A couple walked in front of him, hand in hand, the guy’s blue jacket casually tossed over his shoulder. The man turned slightly and offered him a polite nod before turning back to his companion. The woman was talking, talking, filling the man in on everything he’d missed and everything they’d do now that he was home safe. The man listened in silence, a curious smile on his face.
His arm ached where a bullet wound permanently puckered the skin. He paused and massaged the muscle, then wound up his shoulder like a pitcher on the mound. He’d been soft before the war; now he was lean and sinewy, his face permanently creased by things he’d seen that he wished he could erase from his mind.
The neighborhood had changed very little in four years. There were trinkets of patriotism everywhere he looked: Old Glory waving from poles, starred flags winking from windows, flowers chosen because of their hues of red, white, and blue.
He was a hero. He’d killed four enemy soldiers, maybe more. He’d found out he was tough.
A woman tending her garden looked up at him and smiled. “Welcome back,” she said. He fought to remember her name. Mrs. Parker? Porter? She had a yippy little dog that got loose whenever it rained. He’d called the dog warden on her because of the urine pooled on his front porch. Now the woman was smiling. A new beginning, courtesy of the anonymity provided by the U.S. Armed Forces.
Letters — him trying to be the man of the house no matter how far away he was. Don’t forget to open up the damper on the furnace. You can’t let a week pass without starting the car or the engine will choke, especially in the winter. Don’t pay for a subscription if you’re not going to read the paper every day. Tell the milkman to cut the order down to a pint. He thinks now she hated those letters.
She wrote asking him to talk about himself. He didn’t. He didn’t know what to say about k-rations or the men he humped with who had nicknames like Bug and Hickory.
He kept walking and he felt his stomach drop when he passed Roger Cleveland’s family home. She didn’t have to say it in the letters. He just knew, the way you know a thing like that. They’d been best friends, Roger and him, until he was called up and Roger was declared 4-F.
He turned the corner. He was only two blocks from home. The image of his house remained crisp in his mind, everything about it, every inch of it. Lorraine wrote to him about it, things she was doing to the house and yard. She had hoed the earth on her own, turning the yard into a victory garden to help with the war. The first attempt didn’t work. The seeds got washed away by torrential rain. She’d started again a week later and her efforts were rewarded with lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
He continued up the street, surprised to find that he now conquered with ease the hilly road that had once left him breathless. Some of the neighborhood had gotten shabbier — well, the men weren’t there to fix things — porches cried for paint, sidewalks were choked with weeds, roofs needed new shingles to replace those blown off during a flurry of early-summer storms.
Lorraine had painted the inside of the house too, he knew. She’d shown him what she’d chosen by dabbing the V-mail with the wet brushes, turning the austere government-issue paper into stationery colored mint-green (living room) and a sunny yellow (kitchen). She did the work herself, she said. He didn’t believe it. The news ate a hole in his stomach.
Don’t do any more. Wait till I come home, he wrote.
In answer, she explained that staying at home, being a wife with no husband to tend to, was driving her crazy. Do you miss me? she asked in another letter. I had a dream last night that you were with another woman. She was a pretty nurse you met at the officer’s club.
At first this letter confused him. Then he realized the question was really a... sort of warning, or maybe a permission, because she didn’t want to say what was going on with her.
It wasn’t pretty young nurses the men turned to, but prostitutes. And at first he didn’t, then he did.
Her letters grew briefer. Mr. Palmer lost two apple trees in last week’s storm. We have a hornet’s nest under the front porch eaves. Roger stopped by. He’s working at U.S. Steel now. He told me to tell you hello.
He was powerless from far away, so he played the guilt game. You might want to mention the hornet’s nest to Roger and see if he can take care of it for you. I’d hate to think of my girl getting stung.
The next letter said nothing about the hornet’s nest. She told about how she had to wait in a line that stretched two blocks if she wanted to buy butter at Kregar’s. Isaly’s no longer sold meat on Mondays. Toppers Newsstand was operating twenty-four hours a day now. I’m going to get a job. All of the mills are hiring women.
Don’t, please, he wrote. Mills are dangerous.
For a while he didn’t get a response. Then: You’re right. Of course you’re right. Roger said the same thing. In fact, he says the women are paid barely a pittance, nothing compared to what the men make.
Roger Cleveland. Friend turned enemy.
The Tinsley boy hasn’t cut the grass the last two weeks. It’s starting to look like our house has been abandoned. Do you think I should ask Roger if he would be willing to mow it?