How to Make an American Quilt (25 page)

S
O
C
ORRINA SPENT
her days and every third weekend (including the nights) in the switch house. She was allowed to listen to the radio and write letters. She saved her money to pay for the trip to Paris that she and Jack would take someday. His letter said,
Paris is incredible, wonderful, it’s tops. Despite all it’s been through. It calls you to my mind
. And:
I want you to see the Eiffel Tower. It looks like iron lace, unfinished, piercing the sky. It looks like the structure of something it means to be one day. I want to stand with you at its peak
.

Jack sent her a pair of ivory-and-silver earrings that looked very old, as if they had been passed down. And a pocketbook made of imitation leather.

He talked about the “great guys” he was meeting (she reads this in the solitude of her job), from all over the United States. He even met a couple of expatriates, who told him that they could not help but see Spain, France, and Germany in a different, confusing way. The expatriates felt differently about America, too, though Jack was not clear as to what they meant by that. He wrote her that the bread was unlike any he had ever had before, heavy, crusty, rich; the wine not too unlike California wine—though he had to admit he was hard put to tell the difference.
They say my palate is too American
.

W
HAT HE DID NOT DISCUSS
in his letters to Corrina was what he saw when his regiment liberated one of the concentration camps. He moved as if in a daze, as if he were looking through a window to another universe that resembled the earth and its inhabitants, but not quite. These people they found did not seem like the same species, their humanity transformed by their suffering and hollowness, making him feel foreign and embarrassed standing before them in his own good health. He could not properly identify the smell that skirted the camp.

Jack threw up behind a barrack. He was assailed by a gamut of emotions: He wanted to rush from this place, find a woman, make love to her, hold her close, and keep her safe. He wanted to gorge himself on food or void his bowels or sleep for twenty-four hours or run to the point of exhaustion. Witnessing the deprivation here, he was moved to excess.

As he stood, wiping his mouth, eyes, and nose on his sleeve, removing all traces of sickness, he wondered,
Is this what the absence of God looks like?
He could not believe that God did not exist—even with this vision before him—as much as it seemed that He had decided, inexplicably, to go underground for a while.
If someone described this to me, I would not believe it
, because he could not believe that God would watch and not act; he could not accept that.

Again, he was overwhelmed by the desire to caress a woman, push himself up inside her until his entire self was buried within her womb and he could be reborn innocent, pure, never having witnessed this at all.

C
ORRINA DID NOT PRAY
for Laury. She had prayed before, when Jack was overseas. Her reserve of patience had been used up when
Jack was in Europe; none was left for Laury, who remained unheard from. She could not pray because she wanted to shake her fist at God, at the unfairness of being forced through the ordeal of waiting for a soldier, not once in her life, but twice. She wanted to scream, How much am I supposed to endure? And because she questioned God, she could not ask for His blessing. Perhaps this was the curse of Eve.

Still, she went to church on Sunday with Jack and Joe; but she spent silent time, with head bowed, accusing and bartering with God and not really praying.

J
ACK, TOO
, was aware that he was less than sympathetic to the war, but he would not show this to the citizens of Grasse, who regularly asked about Laury. It would not stand right with them and then there would be an argument and he could not argue something that held his boy in such danger.

He would prefer not to go to church with Corrina and Joe, but he would never mention this either. After his own experience in the war, he had been in conflict over his belief in God, unable to come to any resolution. He understood that the nature of spiritual faith calls for uncertainty, testing, and renewal, but the image of those prisoners seemed a greater testament to negligence than he could explain. And now that his own son was probably a prisoner somewhere, he could not help but see those scenes in vivid relief, Laury’s face in each captive.

W
HEN
J
AMES
and Hy Dodd open their front door to Corrina and Jack Amurri, they reach their hands out to them, as if to draw them into the house, as if they would be reluctant to enter if left to their own prerogatives. Corrina steps in before Jack, while Jack follows
wearing the cool air on his overcoat. Corrina and Jack stand, as always, with a slight space between them, as if they are careful to leave it open in case their child would be back any minute to fill it, bring them closer again.

After they exchange social amenities, Hy says, “We wanted to tell you we never stop thinking about Laury. You must admire him.”

“Not like me,” says Will, who steps out from behind his father to quickly kiss Corrina’s cheek, dodging her hand before it comes to rest on his thin arm.

“He’s a little distraught,” confides Hy as Will leaves the room, to which James says, “We don’t know what the hell he does at that college of his and
art
—how do you major in
art
? What is the point of going to college if you are going to study art?”

It is clear to Corrina that Hy and James are puzzled, embarrassed, and displeased that Will has a college deferment and is using it to study something that seems like fluff. They can’t even say, “Well, he is going to be a doctor or engineer or architect.” No, out of the war and into art.

“We suspect,” Hy’s voice lowers, “drug use.”

“Now, we don’t know that, Hy,” says James abruptly.

“Of course,” says Hy, absentmindedly rubbing her husband’s arm. “You’re right.” But it has crossed Corrina’s mind as well. It’s all one hears about these days, and he is in school up at San Francisco State, with all those other students and their protests (
Not my thing
, he had told her during one of their phone conversations) and free love and doing whatever the hell they feel like doing when they feel like doing it, and none of them even knows her boy’s name.