It wasn’t even nine o’clock yet. An hour to myself, Sylvia thought. I can read a book. I can write a letter. I can just sit here and think about how tired I am. That last sounded particularly good to her.
She’d sat for about five minutes when someone knocked on the door. That should have been the signal for George, Jr., to come bounding out of the bedroom, demanding to know what was going on. But he didn’t: only soft, steady breathing came from there, not a little boy. Well, he’d been raising hell all afternoon, too; he must have run down as soon as his head hit the pillow.
Sylvia laughed to herself as she walked to the door. Try as she would, she had the devil of a time getting any peace and quiet. Here was somebody wanting to borrow some molasses or salt, or to tell her the latest scandal of the apartment house, or to give her some cookies or…a little community in its own right, the building was a busy place.
She opened the door. Standing there was no one she knew, but a youngster a year too young to do a proper job of raising the downy, fuzzy excuse for a mustache he had on his upper lip. He wore a green uniform, darker than the Army green-gray, with brass buttons stamped “WU.” “Mrs. Enos?” he said, and, at her automatic nod, went on, “Telegram for you, ma’am.”
Numbly, she accepted the envelope. Numbly, she signed for it. Numbly, she closed the door as the delivery boy hurried away. And, numbly, she opened the envelope with shaking fingers. It was, as she’d feared, from the Navy Department. REGRET TO INFORM YOU, she read, and a low moan came from her throat, THAT YOUR HUSBAND, ABLE SEAMAN GEORGE ENOS, IS LISTED AS MISSING IN EXPLOSION OF USS PUNISHMENT. NO FURTHER INFORMATION AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. YOU WILL BE INFORMED DIRECTLY SHOULD HE BE FOUND OR CONFIRMED LOST. The printed signature was that of the Secretary of the Navy.
She stared at the telegram till the words were only shapes on paper, shapes without meaning, without sense. But it did not help. The meaning had already been imparted, and lay inside her mind like an icy spear, piercing and freezing everything it touched. She crumpled the flimsy yellow sheet of paper. She felt crumpled, used and used up and thrown away by something bigger than herself, something bigger than the whole country, something eating the world. It was blind and sloppy, and it would not stop until it had its fill.
Her body knew what to do. Her mind did not fight it when it set the alarm on the clock by the bed, undressed itself, and lay down. It tried to make itself go to sleep, too. It knew how tired it was. But her mind had something to say about that, and said it, loud and emphatically.
She lay and lay and lay, mind spinning useless like a trolley wheel on an icy track. Convinced she would not sleep at all, she closed her eyes to look at the darkness inside her eyelids instead of the different darkness of the ceiling. She tried to guess when it was four, when five, when six and time to rise.
She jerked in horror when the alarm went off. She had fallen asleep after all. She wished she’d had a moment’s forgetfulness on first getting up, but no. She knew. As she had after the telegram arrived, she let her body do what needed doing, and roused her children, fed them breakfast, and took them over to Brigid Coneval’s apartment almost without conscious thought.
“Are you all right, dearie?” Mrs. Coneval asked. Her husband was in the Army. “You look a bit peaked, you do.”
“It’s-nothing,” Sylvia said. She kissed her children and left for work. Brigid Coneval stared after her, shaking her head.
Mechanically, Sylvia boarded the trolley. Mechanically, she rode to the right stop. Mechanically, she got off. Mechanically, she punched in. And, mechanically, she headed for her machine.
The mechanism broke when she saw Isabella Antonelli, or rather when her friend saw her. “Sylvia!” Isabella exclaimed, recognizing the dazed, haggard face staring at her for what it was. “Your husband, your Giorgio. Is he-?”
“Missing.” Sylvia forced the word out through numb lips. “I got-the telegram-last night…” She started to cry. She should have been working already. “I’m sorry, but-” She dissolved again.
Isabella Antonelli came over and wrapped her arms around Sylvia, as Sylvia might have done for Mary Jane had her little daughter broken a favorite doll. “Oh, my friend,” Isabella said. “I am so sorry he is gone.”
“Missing,” Sylvia said. “The telegram said missing.”
“I will pray for you,” Isabella answered. She said nothing more than that. Missing was a forlorn hope, and one all too likely to sink on the sea of truth. She knew that. Sylvia knew it, too. She would not have admitted knowing it, not if her own life depended on that admission.
Mr. Winter came limping along to see that the day shift’s run was beginning as it should. When he saw the two women huddled together between their machines, he hurried over to them. “Here, what’s this?” he asked, his voice not angry but not calm, either. For him, the line came first, everything else afterwards. “What’s going on?”
Sylvia tried to answer and could not. Calmly-with the sort of calm that comes from having experienced too much rather than not enough-Isabella Antonelli spoke for her: “Her husband, he is missing, she hears last night from the Department of Wars.” Sylvia didn’t bother correcting her.
“Oh. I am sorry to hear that,” the foreman said, and sounded as if he was telling, if not the whole truth, then at least most of it. He studied Sylvia. “Do you want to go home, Mrs. Enos?”
“No,” Sylvia answered quickly. If she went home, they would find a substitute for her, and they might keep the substitute, too. But that was not the only reason she spoke as she did: “I’d rather be here, as a matter of fact. It will help me take my mind off, off-” She didn’t go on. Going on would have meant thinking about what she most wanted not to think about.
Mr. Winter gnawed at his mustache. “I dunno,” he said. But Isabella Antonelli gave him such a reproachful look that he softened. “All right, Mrs. Enos; we’ll see how it goes.” Had he not been interested in Sylvia’s friend as something more than an employee, he might have decided differently. Sylvia noted that enough to be amused by it, and then got angry at herself for letting anything amuse her.
She went to her machine and began pulling levers. She hoped desperately to fall into the routine that sometimes overtook her, so that half the day would go by without her consciously noticing it. To her disappointment, it didn’t happen. Her body did what it had to do, pulling her three levers, loading labels, filling the paste reservoir, and her mind ran round and round and round like a pet squirrel in a wheel.
When she went home, she said nothing to Brigid Coneval. The Irishwoman’s green eyes glowed with curiosity, though; surely the whole floor and probably the whole apartment building knew by now that she’d got a telegram in the night. But explaining to Mrs. Coneval would have meant explaining to George, Jr., who, like any little pitcher, had enormous ears. She sometimes marveled that he could hear anything, what with all the noise he made, but here he did. George is only missing, Sylvia told herself fiercely. I don’t have to say anything till I know for certain. Time enough then.
She did her best not to let her demeanor show either of her children anything was wrong. That she was even more tired than usual from having slept so badly the night before probably helped rather than hurt her cause. The evening passed quietly, not too far from normal.
Four days went by like that. Sympathy replaced curiosity in Brigid Coneval’s face. “It’s a brave front you put up, Mrs. Enos,” she said, having drawn her own conclusions. When Sylvia only shrugged, Mrs. Coneval nodded, as if she’d received all the answer she needed.
Sylvia’s mood veered from despair to fury, with many stops in between. She’d expected a second telegram hard on the heels of the first, either letting her know George was well or-more likely, she feared-very much the reverse. Either way, she would have known how to respond. She couldn’t respond to nothing, though. It left her adrift on a chartless sea.