A Star for Mrs. Blake (27 page)

Intimidated, she allowed him to lead her down to the water. He told her stories about growing up on a tobacco farm and his first days as an officer in the Philippines. Five minutes, she decided, and looked at her watch to be sure. There was no clear way to the river. Where the road quit and the streetlights faded was an impassable field of debris left over from the shelling. Gnarled pieces of iron, piles of splintered wood, whole planks and window frames, railings and hunks of concrete. Beyond it was a black ribbon of water, and on the other shore, the looming outlines of dozens of bombed-out homes, their faces ripped off to expose empty floors, guts kicked out and spilling down the embankment. Fragments of signs could be seen in the shadows—
“Maison des Plumes” “… des Gants”
—more terrifying than the rubble they had seen by daylight because the brokenness had become part of the night and the vastness.

“I hope the mothers don’t see this.”

“They should know what their sons died for. You’d better get used to it if you want to be an army nurse.”

“I have no intention of becoming an army nurse,” Lily told him. She’d started to shiver. Five minutes were up. “I need to go. Tomorrow at the cemetery is going to be trying. I hardly know what to say to them.”

“Not up to the challenge?” He flicked the remains of the cigar into the dark.

“I don’t see how what I say can change anything. Or, for that matter, how it will help them to travel all this way just to look at a marker in the middle of nowhere.”

“Have you ever lost someone?”

“Just my dog.”

“You’re right. You’re way too young for this. But so were their boys.” He’d dropped her hand. He was sober now. “Look, if we hadn’t been in this war, Europe would have fallen. If it weren’t for the bravery of the American soldier, this is what the whole piss-soaked continent would have looked like. Those mothers know it, and they’re proud as hell that their boys knew how to fight. You don’t have to say a damn thing.”

“I’m sorry—” Lily felt small and close to tears. “I just don’t know where I fit in all of it, and if—”

“It doesn’t mean a goddamned thing,” Perkins interrupted. “Right at this moment, all you need to know is you’re alive. We’re here and we’re alive. If there’s one thing I learned on the battlefield, it’s that we must never waste a moment of life, because it will be gone. Like that.”

He pulled her strongly to him and covered her mouth with his and kissed her deeply. No hesitation, no retreat. The first taste was inviting and her body wanted more, but almost instantaneously she thought,
This can’t happen
, and froze, trapped by the ironlike tendons in his arms, holding her so close she couldn’t move. She pushed against him until he released his grip, and swayed backward from the shock of having been so electrifyingly overwhelmed.

“Stop it,” she gasped.

He took her face in both his hands and gazed at her in the poor reflected light.

“You’re very pretty, you know.”

She looked into his eyes, afraid. “I have to go.”

“Lieutenant!” he said gently. “Don’t be shy, it’s okay. Are you a virgin?”

“None of your business,” she shot back despite the tremble in her voice. “Are you married?”

“Of course. I have four daughters. Which is why you’re right and you should go back to your Lieutenant Hammond,” he said, releasing her.

“I’m only meeting him for a drink,” Lily replied, adding defensively, “Lieutenant Hammond is a fellow officer. I’m engaged to a doctor back home.”

“Best of luck,” Perkins said dryly.

They walked up the street, side by side, his hands in his pockets. His mood shifted, and she hoped she was safely out of the woods.

“You’re not like these women, Lieutenant. Don’t let them depress you. They’re through, and you’re just starting out. You’re a ball of fire and men like pretty girls. You should use what you’ve got.”

“Use it, how?” She wondered if by some trick of fate this commander, with all his worldly experience, might know the answer to the questions she’d been asking about her future.

He laughed. “It’s how you live your life. The trick is being on the spot. When the need arises, the real warrior does what needs to be done. He acts cleanly, and never quits. He always moves forward, never just holds his position. He’s ruthless, and he’s a son of a bitch, but in the end, his actions benefit the kingdom.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Who gives a shit? I have to leave for Paris tomorrow. But you’ll be back there in a few days, and all of this will be behind you. Your first tour of duty. Mission accomplished, won’t that be great?”

He was so changeable, she thought it best to agree.

“Yes, it will.”

They were almost at the hotel. Perkins left her with a nod and walked into a pool of darkness, leaving her stranded. Thomas Hammond would be waiting. They’d gossip about Party A. Who had a headache and who was catty about whom? What was the schedule for tomorrow? They’d talk about where to go for a drink. Hammond wouldn’t have any money, so they’d end up at one of the tables at the neighborhood vegetable market, drinking cheap wine and straining to hear the music coming from the farther banks of the river at a café neither of them could afford, and all of that would be a relief.

“Where were you?” Hammond asked when Lily came into the lobby. Two women from another party were eyeing her suspiciously, as if she were a trollop off the street.

She had no intention of telling him what had just happened. “Just taking a walk.”

“I was about to give up.”

“Sorry. I needed the air.”

“You look nice.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll be done in a jiff.”

She saw his reports laid out on a coffee table. Hammond was perfect for the army. He would always do the right thing.

“I’m just making a note that Mrs. Seibert had another argument with Mrs. McConnell, and that Mrs. Russell believes her son came back as a parrot,” Hammond was saying. “I love them enormously, but honestly, sometimes it’s hard to keep a straight face.”

Lily barely heard him, suddenly exhausted.

“Should I put the parrot in the report?” he asked.

“Let it rest,” she said distractedly.

“You’re right. Next she’ll say he came back as that armchair.”

“Thomas,” she said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

“Feeling pooped?”

She nodded.

“Shame to waste that dress.”

“It’s not going anywhere. Will you give me a rain check?”

Thomas really was a sweet kid. Almost like a brother, like the boys she knew in high school.

“Of course,” he said. “Another time.”

She gave him a tired smile and left. A few minutes later, when the general came into the lobby smoking a fresh cigar, Hammond was still writing in his diary.

“Burning the midnight oil, Lieutenant?”

“All this paperwork.” He shrugged.

“I’m going back to Paris in the morning. But I’ll be reading your reports.”

“I’ll try to keep them interesting. Good night, sir. Have a good drive back.”

“Good night.”

Perkins retrieved his room key from the night clerk. Shoulders squared, he chugged up the stairs alone.

Griffin Reed stayed home, barefoot and in his pajamas. When he was writing he never needed to pass beyond the white walls of the garden. He barely saw anything around him; his mind chased a progression of ideas that kept evaporating whenever he got close. Occasionally a phrase would emerge like a neon sign out of the mist and he’d grab for it with pen and paper, miss it completely, then toss the note aside and veer away. Soon there was a trail of notes blowing across the property, each one urgent and forgotten. He snapped at the maid not to pick anything up. He’d find himself on the floor, on the bed, staring out the window, walking down the steps to make a cup of tea, clipping leaves in the potting shed, dropping the clippers, back in the kitchen, looking at the mail. He lived in a muffled corner of his mind that was not illuminated by any kind of logic or salvation. It was like drinking laudanum without the swoon. His stomach was still upset and his appetite was down. Sometimes he’d pop a chocolate in his mouth or peel an orange.

He had been a newsman who could deliver copy as fast as the Teletype could spit it out, but since the
Tribune
had shut down, living this pampered life with Florence had clogged the works of his writing machine. He felt like a middle-aged old codger compared to the hard body he had inhabited when he first came overseas for the Associated Press.
A strong spine
, his father used to say.
You need a strong spine in life
. He knew he had something in Cora Blake’s story. He needed to put into words the power that had taken hold of him.

The problem was that Cora’s story was not unique. Nor was it really a story. There was no corruption to expose, no crime to make the reader cringe. There was no dramatic crisis, except for the death of Private Sammy Blake at Meuse-Argonne, and that was very old
news. As he worked it in his mind, he first saw the angle as a close-up look at a victim of politics—a decent, hardworking woman who had no choice in her country going to war and claiming her only child. An ordinary tragedy.

Too ordinary. Too often told. For a newspaperman, there was never doubt. The hook was there in capital letters:
THIEF STEALS LINCOLN’S HEAD. DEAD BABY FOUND ALIVE
. But this was something new. He had to look inside
himself
to discover the core. What had drawn him to Cora Blake out of the crowd in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel? Why was he so burned when Clancy Hayes tried to bully her that he punched the guy out?

Was it because the moment he saw Cora he had wanted her—in the way he would have before the injury—watching her body move inside the too-big dress, and a virtuous profile you could carve on a cameo? Under other circumstances he would have been happy just to pursue her, to be close to her by any means. Was it because when they were together he felt like his former self; but the only way he could possess her now was in words?

His bones ached. He unhooked the mask from his ears and gently pulled where the metal stuck to his skin. He wiped it down with antiseptic, noticing more chips on the metallic lining. They hadn’t gotten the results of the test for lead poisoning back yet, but in any case the English facial surgeon, Dr. Blackmore, had agreed with Dr. Szabo that it was urgent to replace the mask. Reed was to travel to London in ten days to prepare for a fitting that would require some preliminary surgery.
“Given your excellent health, even if the results on the test are positive for lead, you probably have several weeks before it begins to damage the organs, but science isn’t always accurate,”
Dr. Blackmore had written.
“Best to err on the side of caution, so please make an appointment at London General Hospital as soon as possible.”
The mask would be of a new material, even more lifelike, Florence said. She of course would accompany him to England and supervise the fitting. Maybe he’d choose a different expression this time, he thought. Maybe it would be the face of a snarling Chinese tiger. Reed swabbed the healed-over craters in his face, not thinking about Florence or the pounding in his head, back in the drift of his story.

It had to be Cora and her son and the things she’d told him when they walked back from the Luxembourg Gardens, freely and openly, out of kindness, or reparation to a wounded man, it didn’t matter. She’d talked to Reed because nobody else would, and now he’d do what was necessary to make people give a damn. A woman’s point of view was not the kind of thing newspapers generally reported. Maybe, he thought wryly, because newspapers were run by men. They assigned reporters to cover the pilgrimages, but the editors only wanted the pro forma stuff: names, hometowns, the sights they saw and how much it cost. But they never went to the core. If you went to the core, it would make readers weep.

He fitted the mask back over his ragged cheekbones and pawed through the mess on his desk until he found a small address book made of worn leather with gilt-edged pages. It listed the whereabouts of every American expat mover and shaker in Paris, from politicians to madams, and represented a decade of collecting information and knowing what to trade and with whom. He wondered what Clancy Hayes would say his little book was “worth.”

His old paper was out of business, so he looked at the entry for the
International Herald Tribune
. There were three names crossed out before the current news editor’s, Walter Marley. They hadn’t met before, but Reed knew he was also a veteran of the Associated Press, with a quick mind and no patience. To snag Marley’s interest, he’d have to get the story of the Gold Star Mothers down to one sentence. One phrase. Then he had it, in one word:
bravery
.

Over the phone, Marley said he’d like to have a look. He agreed the story had to run while the pilgrims were still in France, which meant in the next few days. Reed had stayed up until four in the morning writing, and by ten o’clock was on the
métro
on the way to the Champs-Élysées, where the
Herald
was headquartered. On the train he took the typewritten pages out of his portfolio but could not restrain his pencil from continuing to work them over. The story of a mother and son, separated by duty but united by courage, was rich. Maybe, if he told it well, and if Walter pushed it hard, this would turn out to
be a classic in war reporting, like Kirke L. Simpson’s articles on the burying of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington after the war, for which he’d won the Pulitzer Prize. Reed knew the famous quote by heart. Remembering it now, he found that the rhythm of the words seemed to match the rocking of the train:
“Under the wide and starry skies of his own homeland, America’s unknown dead from France sleeps tonight, a soldier home from the wars.”