Dream When You're Feeling Blue (21 page)

“A
SMIDGE TOO MUCH ROUGE,”
Tish said. She was sitting on the edge of the bathtub, watching Kitty get ready to go to the train station to meet Hank. Tish herself had been ready for half an hour; she and Louise were coming along. Kitty was glad for this, but she hoped her sisters would leave after a while; she wanted time alone with Hank. It was only polite. He was coming to see her, after all, not all of them.

“No it isn’t too much rouge,” Kitty said. The winter had made her pale. She wanted to look healthy. Well, she wanted to look pretty.

“It is!” Tish insisted. She came over to Kitty and rubbed away at one side of her sister’s face. “Look now. See how much more natural that looks?”

Kitty regarded herself in the mirror. Darn it, Tish was right. In such matters, she was always right. Even before she had taken her job selling cosmetics at Carson’s, she had been good at makeup. Kitty rubbed away at her other cheek, then tossed her black curls back. Her hair had come out wonderfully well. She’d used that Kreml shampoo that the John Robert Powers models used, and she’d made two perfect off-the-face rolls. She had on her new red Max Factor lipstick, a shade worn by Maureen O’Hara herself.

“What hat are you wearing?” Tish asked.

“The black one I just bought.”

“I wanted that. My coat is black!”

“My suit is,” Kitty said.

“You’re wearing that black suit?”

“Yes.” She tried to sound nonchalant. The suit was new, too. Kitty had decided she needed a new outfit, and not because of Hank. Now that the war was going better, a girl could splurge on herself occasionally without feeling guilty. Her other clothes were all just so old. She’d gone to Field’s after work on Friday night and tried on a few things: a fuchsia wool daytime dress, a striped jersey blouse and a gray wool skirt with a pleat up the front, a black skirt with a soft white blouse and a red flannel weskit. The saleswoman, an older, highly knowledgeable woman named Violet Marshall, had recommended a black Lilly Daché felt hat to go with it. But then she had suggested Kitty try on—just for fun!—a stark black suit in a simple dressmaker style. But what style! The cut made her waist look even smaller and her chest more womanly. Kitty had stared at herself in the mirror, and Violet had put her finger to her chin and said, “Yes, that’s exactly how I thought it would look.” She’d suggested a Persian muff to go with it, as well as a Persian hat that sat low on the forehead and was decorated with red and green grosgrain bows. Next Violet had added a geranium-red ruffly-fringed scarf tied flirtatiously at the neck, and Kitty was a goner. “I’ll take everything,” she’d said, and Violet had said, “Well, of course you will.”

“Isn’t that suit awfully fancy just to meet a friend at the train?” Tish said.

Kitty shrugged. “We might go into the night.”

“What do you mean, ‘into the night’?”

“Why don’t you go help Louise get ready? She probably needs help finding a good lipstick color. She always goes pink when she should go coral.” Kitty leaned in to inspect her eyebrows.

“Louise is ready. I’m ready. You’re the only one who’s not ready. You’re taking all doggone day to get ready.”

“I’m done!” Kitty said. But she wasn’t. She wanted to know how she looked from behind. She wanted to see how her skirt would move should they go dancing. She wanted to blow into her hands and check that her breath was minty, she wanted even to sniff under her arms to make sure she was “dainty,” as the ads in the women’s magazines suggested she should be. But she couldn’t do all that in front of Tish. She didn’t want either of her sisters to know how excited she was. Hank Cunningham III. A high little sound escaped her, and she turned it into a throat clearing.

“Nervous?” Tish asked, tauntingly.

“Of course not. Now, let’s go.” She started out of the bathroom.

“Kitty?” Tish said, pointing.

Her new purse. A balloon bag of black wool with a tortoiseshell fastener. Forgotten at the side of the sink. Kitty grabbed it and went downstairs for her coat.

“Invite the boy to dinner,” Margaret called, as the girls were on the way out. “I’m making lamb pie with potato crust topping and a lemon sponge cake.” Kitty pretended not to hear and went out to the porch, but Tish called back, “We will!”

Kitty stopped in her tracks.
“Tish!”

“What?”

She stood there, thinking. Finally, she said, “Nothing. Hurry up or we’ll miss the streetcar.”

“You’re the one who’s dawdling!”

“THAT’S HIM,” KITTY SAID, POINTING TO THE TALL,
dark-haired man coming toward them. Golly, he was a handsome man, more so than she’d remembered. And he was staring directly at Kitty as though…well, as though she were his wife or something! Kitty didn’t know where to look. She glanced at Hank, then away, back at Hank, then away. Her throat was tight; she doubted she could speak. But she had to speak! She had to introduce her sisters, and she had to think of things to say to keep the conversation rolling along. Although Tish was with them; she’d talk all the time, mostly about herself. And Louise was wonderful at drawing people out. Kitty wouldn’t have to worry about talking much at first. But later, when she and Hank were alone, she’d have to guide the conversation. She’d have to keep things cheerful and light. She wanted him to think she was attractive—what fun it had been dressing up for a man she knew rather than for whatever random soldier she might dance with at the Kelly Club! But she’d have to be careful not to be too attractive to him, especially after she’d made such an effort to establish that they were just friends. She wouldn’t be able to linger too long looking into his eyes. She shouldn’t admire his strong profile. She’d have to be careful not to brush hands when they were walking or to dance too close. If they went dancing. If they were together that long. Who knew, his plans might have changed, soldiers’ schedules were always changing, women would travel for days on overcrowded trains, sitting on suitcases in the aisles, just to meet their husbands for a few hours before they shipped out, only to find on arrival that they were already gone. Hank might just say hello and then say he was scheduled to depart on another train that was leaving in an hour. It would be a relief, actually. She and her sisters would have coffee with Hank, wish him the best, and then they could go shopping and to a matinee.

He was only a few feet away. Her heart beat so hard inside her. Her sisters were smiling, but Kitty felt paralyzed, her hands in fists she couldn’t unclench. And now here he was before her, giving her a chaste little hug—oh, he smelled wonderful! Some spicy man’s scent, and he was freshly shaven, how had he done that?

“Hello, Kitty,” he said, and she said nothing for fear she would begin to cry. That was what she felt most overwhelmingly, the need to cry. But it was all right that she didn’t speak, because Hank turned immediately to her sisters to introduce himself. And they were charmed on the spot, she could tell, even as she had been. There was just something about him.

She stood watching him, thinking that there were things she had to remember. She mustn’t take Hank’s arm, because a serviceman needed both arms free: one to salute any superior, one to smoke. But when he said, “How about we all of us take a tour of the town and then have lunch at the best place you know?” she took his arm immediately. And stood too close to him. And wished that by the end of the night she would have kissed him a thousand times.

“WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT TO KNOW
?
”
Hank asked Kitty.

Alone since after lunch, they were now sitting in the Black Hawk restaurant at the Congress Hotel, listening to the band play “G.I. Jive.” It was late; Kitty was afraid to ask what the time was. She had had too much to drink—she’d wanted to try a martini with a twist, she liked the sound of it, but it had been much too strong for her. She was dizzy, but in a not entirely unpleasant way. Hank had told her all about how he’d learned to fly, how he’d been put in a simulated cockpit that spun rapidly about so he could practice defensive twists, turns, and dives. He had told her some of the things he’d learned about infantrymen, Kitty having told him that Julian and Michael were in the infantry. He said a lot of the men had pets: dogs, kittens, a Himalayan bear; he said one outfit in the Philippines had even adopted a little baby girl, but she’d been taken away from them after a month. He said that the infantry were the ones who were really fighting the war, that they had it the hardest. He told her about how their lives went from crushing boredom to bloody chaos, how when they fought it was sometimes for days at a time. They went without sleep, often with nothing more to eat than emergency K rations, which Hank described as really just big candy bars full of vitamins.

Kitty had tried to imagine herself doing that: staying awake for days on end, going without bathing for a month, wearing the same socks for weeks, pressing her face down into the dirt of a foxhole while bullets whizzed by overhead, or even more frightening, moving ever forward right into those bullets. It didn’t seem possible that she could be sitting here in her pretty dress at a nice table with a white tablecloth while Julian was on the other side of the world, living in the way that Hank had described.

She stared down into her glass. Cleared her throat.

Hank spoke gently. “I’ve made you sad. I’m sorry.”

“No, I wanted to know.” She shrugged. “Gosh. The whole thing just seems so crazy.”

“It is.”

“But what else do you do when someone like Hitler comes along?”

“Well,” Hank said. “That’s a whole other discussion.”

“You don’t really believe in fighting. You were a conscientious objector.”

“Right.”

“When we first met, you told me you’d explain in a letter why you changed your mind and enlisted. But you never did.”

“I didn’t, did I?”

He stared at her intently, and she felt again the kind of thrill she’d been feeling all night, every time he looked directly at her. He lit a cigarette, and she admired his long lashes, his strong hands. He was so handsome. But there was something else about him. A kindness, and a guilelessness—she felt confident that he would never lie to her or anyone else about anything. And he so enjoyed her! He appreciated her observations, her questions, her jokes. And she knew he thought she was beautiful. She knew that.

Hank’s face changed. He put out his cigarette and sat back in his chair. “Okay, I’ll tell you why I enlisted. You know the guy I took care of in the hospital, the one who made me change my mind?”

Kitty nodded.

“That was my kid brother. Nineteen years old. He was injured in the Philippines, terrible burns. It was a wonder he survived at all, but he did, he survived and he came home and he was doing all right. He never complained, and I know the pain he suffered during his dressing changes was ungodly. He kept his spirits up, too; he knew he was going to look like…Well. he wasn’t going to look like himself anymore. But he would joke about it, say he was going to wear a photo around his neck with a message: ‘This is the real me.’

“We talked a lot about the war; he very much believed in it. He didn’t see any other way to respond to Hitler’s madness, and he felt his sacrifice was worth it. But then he ended up with an overwhelming infection, and he died. I was with him. I had seen people die, working in a hospital, but this was…” Hank shook his head. “This was different. And at that moment the war became very personal for me, and I couldn’t sit on the sidelines anymore. I couldn’t kill anyone, but I could help others do it for me. My enlisting was a cowardly thing, in that respect. But that’s why I’m flying. My brother made the ultimate sacrifice, and I’m now making my own, for him.” He shrugged, looked out at the dance floor, and said, “Aw, nuts. What do you say we dance? Let’s just dance.”

He took her hand, and they moved out to the dance floor. The band was playing a ballad. Hank pulled her to him, and Kitty closed her eyes and very gently put her lips to his neck and kept them there. He held her even closer. He didn’t smell of cologne anymore. He smelled of his own sweet flesh, and Kitty felt an overwhelming urge to bite him. She giggled.

“What?” he said, and she said, “Nothing,” and giggled again.

When the song ended, Kitty excused herself and went to the powder room. There, she sat in front of the mirror trying to sort out her feelings. How could she be so exhilarated? So full of desire? So sad and so happy? It was all mixed up! You heard such terrible things, and they made you want to grab on to everything beautiful and hold it that much harder, maybe that was it. Or maybe it had finally happened to her, the things she’d heard other girls talk about. She thought of Hank sitting at the table waiting for her return, and it was all she could do not to run back out and fling her arms around him. She wanted him in a way she’d never experienced want before. It wasn’t physical attraction, though that was there, too. It was more a feeling that she had met her man. That one. The only one.

Oh, how could she be thinking such things when she’d learned so much about all that Julian was enduring? Was this what the Dear John girls went through, coming to the sad conclusion that they weren’t in love with their fighting men after all, that in fact they were wildly in love with someone else? Hattie had told her about one woman who had written to a sailor, saying she was sorry but she’d met another “very nice” man.
I hope we can still be friends,
she’d told him, and had followed that deadly statement with something even worse—in a P.S., she’d asked for the photos she’d sent of herself to be returned. In a P.S.! Hattie had been aghast at the cruelty. But now here Kitty was, out on a date with another man and feeling head over heels about him. She had thought she loved Julian, but now she knew different. She had been attracted to Julian, but the two of them had never run deep, ever. Look at the difficulty she’d had writing to him. They couldn’t talk to each other! What kind of a relationship could two people have when they couldn’t really talk to each other?