The French War Bride (39 page)

1946

I
f the train ride from Reno to Baton Rouge was awkward, the one from Baton Rouge to Hammond was excruciating. We rode in silence for about half an hour, Jack's jaw looking as if it were set in cement.

The saving grace was Elise, who fussed and cried and demanded constant attention. Jack gave her medicine and then she reached for him, giving her gummy smile. That's the wonderful thing about babies; they bring you out of yourself and into the present moment. When a baby smiles at you, you just have to smile back, and that changes your mood. Jack took Elise onto his lap and the tension between us melted a little.

“I know that telling Kat was very difficult for you,” I ventured. “I'm sorry it didn't go more smoothly.”

“She was shocked,” Jack said. “It was a hard and unexpected blow.”

“She seemed more concerned about what people would think than about losing you,” I remarked.

“She was shocked,” Jack repeated. “Shock makes people react in odd ways.”

“In my experience, it usually shows a person's true character.”

“You can't judge her on how she responded.”

Yes, I can
, I thought. “Based on the language she used, I'd say you're the one who dodged a bullet.”

“I'm sorry you heard that.”

“The entire train station heard it.”

“She was not herself. I'd just turned her world upside down. And she was already reeling from the blow about her father.” He gazed out the window and sighed. “I feel like the worst kind of cad.”

“Well, I know the truth, and I think you are very noble.”

“Noble?” His voice and his glance were bitter. “I broke her heart.”

“I don't think it's her heart you broke.”

“What the hell do you know about it?”

He was right; I knew nothing. I wanted to dislike her because she was so beautiful. My heart was seething with something very much like jealousy. No; it
was
jealousy.

I hated to think that Jack loved another and was stuck, instead, with me.

—

On the trip to Hammond, Jack and I discussed what we would tell people when they, inevitably, asked about the circumstances of our meeting. Jack's family knew that he originally had been with an evacuation hospital in La Cambe. Since I had, truthfully, worked as a courier for the Résistance, we agreed that the story would be this: We had met when I arrived at the hospital to deliver a message to Jack's camp commander. I asked the first American officer I saw—Jack, of course—to take me to him. Because of troop movements, I was unable to leave the hospital for several weeks. That is when we fell in love and married.

—

Jack's sister, Caroline, and her husband, Bruce, met us at the Hammond train station. Caroline bore a striking resemblance to Jack—she, too, was tall, black-haired, and blue-eyed. My first impression was of a lovely woman in a navy coat and red hat, calling Jack's name and running toward him. Jack set down the bags, caught her in a bear hug, and swung her around.

“Jack! Oh, it's so good to see you! Let me look at you.” She stepped back. “You look older.”

“I am older. And, if I may point it out, so are you.”

She gave him a playful hit on the arm.

“You know I told you on the phone I was bringing a surprise?” Jack said.

“I hope it's champagne,” she said.

“It's better.” He turned and motioned me to come forward. “Caroline, this is my wife, Amélie, and our daughter, Elise.”

“Oh, the army has turned you into jokester, has it?” She turned to me and smiled. “Let me guess; he met you on the train and convinced you to play this role. He's very persuasive, our Jack.” She shook her finger at Jack. “Take my advice and don't try this on Kat; she won't find it one bit funny. She . . .”

Caroline froze in mid-sentence. Her mouth not only stopped, but slightly opened. She looked from Jack to me then back again, apparently reading the truth in our expressions. She put her palm over her mouth. “Oh. My. Word!”

I shifted Elise to one arm, stepped forward and held out my hand. “It's very nice to meet you, Caroline.”

She limply shook my hand, all the while looking at Jack. “You're serious?”

He nodded grimly.

“Does Kat know?”

“She drove to Baton Rouge and I told her.”

“Just now? She just now found out?”‘

“Yes.”

Caroline was clearly flummoxed. “But this baby . . . how long have you . . .”

It was clear I needed to step in and fix the situation. I'd been turning it over in my mind ever since Baton Rouge, when it had become clear that jilting Kat would cast Jack in a very bad light. “We married in July in La Cambe,” I said. “And I'm afraid the secrecy is all my fault.”

“Amélie.” Jack's voice was a warning.

I tried to imitate my mother's flinty-eyed determination. “No. You tried to protect me when you spoke to Kat, but it's not right. You should not shoulder blame that's not yours.”

“Stop it,” he said.

I ignored him. “We met shortly after he arrived in France. I was working for the French Resistance, and I delivered a note from Paris to the commander at Jack's evacuation hospital. We married two weeks later. It was very sudden, very impetuous. The war . . . well, when you think you're likely to die at any moment, time speeds up and things happen very quickly. Jack wrote a letter to Kat and gave it to me to mail. I am sorry to say that I did not mail it.”

“Amélie.” Jack's expression was so dark I had to look away. “Don't do this.”

“It's okay, Jack. It's better to tell all.” I turned back to Caroline. “At first I forgot. The day I returned to Paris, I learned my mother had fallen and broken her hip in my absence. Then she developed complications and it looked like she would never walk again. I am an only child; I couldn't just desert her and move to America.

“So I wrote Jack that I must stay in France to care for my mother. I loved him, but I didn't want to ruin his life, so I told him that the best thing would be for us to divorce and for him to go ahead and marry Kat. I told him I had not mailed his letter to her breaking off the romance.

“And then, when the army mistakenly sent a letter from Kat to my address—which was also listed as Jack's address—well, I wrote her back.”

“She didn't recognize it wasn't Jack's handwriting?”

“I am an expert calligrapher. Part of what I did for the Resistance was forge false identity papers for Jews and travel papers for resistance workers.”

“Stop it, Amélie.” Jack's face was hard and cold. “Caroline, she's just trying to put me in a better light.”

“No. I can prove it,” I insisted. “I will show you my calligraphy skills. Jack is trying to protect me, so I won't be hated in Wedding Tree. But I think it is better for everyone to know that it was my fault and not Jack's, and that he tried to act honorably.”

“She's right, Jack,” Caroline said. “If you're to be trusted as a doctor here, you can't be seen as someone who would so callously jilt his fiancée. For goodness' sake, let her talk.”

“I discovered I was pregnant, and then my mother died,” I said. “After that, there was no reason I had to stay in Paris. I still loved Jack, and I wanted my baby to grow up with her father. So Jack and I made up, and I came on a bride boat to America.”

“Oh, my goodness!” Caroline turned to her brother. “But, Jack—why didn't you mention your marriage in any of your letters to the family?”

I had thought this out ahead of time. “He couldn't,” I said, “because Kat did not yet know. She needed to be told first.”

“Oh, of course.” Caroline seemed stunned.

“Here is the part of which I'm most ashamed,” I continued. “I only admitted to Jack that I had been writing to Kat, pretending the letters were from him, right before he left for the United States. He was very, very angry.”

Jack glowered at me, unwittingly reinforcing my story.

I hurried on. “I persuaded him that since things had gone on so long, it was better to tell Kat in person rather than to tell her over the phone. He planned to come to Wedding Tree a couple of days before I did—he thought it would be easier if I weren't yet in the picture—and talk to her father. He was going to try to gently break the news to her while she was surrounded by her family. But when he called her to arrange that, he learned her father had suffered a stroke and your mother has pneumonia, and our baby was sick, too sick for me to manage alone, so . . . here we are, all together.”

“Oh, my! Oh, heavens! Oh, you poor dears! Oh, what a mess!”‘

“We were, each of us, only trying to do what seemed right at the time, but I have put poor Jack in a terrible situation, and I'm afraid he is horribly angry with me.”

I smiled at Jack. His face was, indeed, thunderous.

“I warn you, Caroline—he will say I am lying,” I continued. “He will do anything to try to protect me. He told me he is worried that I will be hated and ostrich-ized.”

Caroline's husband howled with laughter. “I think you mean ostracized.”

“Yes. He is willing to take the blame fully on his shoulders. He is such a hero that way. But I need for you to spread the word that it was I, not Jack, who kept the secret from Kat for so long.”

“Yes. Yes, of course! I will go talk to Kat.”

The conversation, thankfully, moved on to the topic of Jack and Caroline's mother as we piled into Bruce's Ford and arranged our luggage in the trunk. Jack and I climbed into the backseat.

“And how is Dr. Thompson?” Jack asked.

“He's awakened from his coma, but he's paralyzed on the left side, and he can barely talk.”

Jack's face grew somber.

“Kat's mother is in denial that he was ever unconscious,” Caroline said. “She insists he was only resting.”

A gloom of silence hung in the car. At length I said, “Bruce, I understand you served in the Pacific.”

He nodded. “I left a kidney in Guam.”

“He's lucky to be alive,” Caroline said.

I had hoped to steer the conversation onto more cheerful topics, so I said, “Jack tells me you are an attorney in Wedding Tree.”

“Yes, that's right. Mainly wills and probate—not very interesting, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, some of the things people put in their wills are quite interesting,” Caroline said. “And he does a little criminal defense, as well. Bruce, tell them about the boy who tried to drive the bread truck over a car!”

Bruce launched into a comical story. Jack smiled and laughed at the appropriate part, but he did not say a word to me the entire trip.

—

Bruce drove us to his and Caroline's house—a charming two-story Acadian-style home with three bedrooms and two—two!—full bathrooms upstairs, and a powder room below. I could scarcely imagine the luxury.

I settled into one of the bedrooms with Elise. Bruce drove Caroline and Jack to the hospital to see their mother and Dr. Thompson.

While they were gone, I rummaged through Jack's bag for an example of his handwriting. I found some notes about a new method for removing a gallbladder.

I tore a page out of a notebook I had brought from France, crumpled
it just a bit, then smoothed it and, copying Jack's handwriting, carefully penned a letter to Kat. I dated it July 9, 1944. I folded and refolded it several times, making it the size to fit into a small envelope.

Reaching under the bed, I found some dust against the baseboard. I had learned as a hotel maid that no matter how good the housecleaning, there is almost always dust on under-bed baseboards. I rubbed a tiny bit onto the edges and folds of the paper, where dirt settles on a document. I handled it a little more to make it look aged and worn, then I tucked it into the bottom of my suitcase.

—

I gave Elise a bath, then foraged in the kitchen. I pulled on a red-checked apron I found hanging in the pantry, then located some leftover chicken in the fridge, as well as a half-opened bottle of wine. I added some potatoes, carrots, celery, and spices, and set it on to simmer.

“Something smells wonderful!” Caroline said when she and Bruce came through the door around six o'clock.

“It is coq au vin.”

“But how did you find anything to cook? There was barely any food in the house!”

“Barely any food?” After what I had gone through in France, I was truly shocked. “You had a feast in your refrigerator!”

“It was just leftovers,” Caroline said.

“Well, it was more than enough for a meal.”

Caroline lifted the lid off the pot and inhaled appreciatively. “You're a miracle worker! No wonder Jack married you.”

Jack had no idea whether I even knew how to boil water, I reflected. “Where is Jack?”

“He's gone to see some patients. There's a flu epidemic, and word spread that Jack has returned.”

I stirred the stew. “How did things go at the hospital?”

Bruce and Caroline looked at each other for a moment. Oh, la; I could read in their expressions that it had been a difficult visit.

“How is your mother?”

“She was very glad to see Jack,” Caroline said. “She's feeling much better.”

“Better enough to be a pain in the neck,” Bruce grumbled.

“She asked for her makeup and perfume and hair rollers and a lace bed jacket,” Caroline said.

“And her cigarettes,” Bruce added. “She's on oxygen, and she wanted her cigarettes!”

Jack had not said much about his mother's personality, aside from telling me she never got over being a debutante. He'd also said that she'd been widowed by the banker two years ago, and was now in the market for a new husband. “How did she react to the news of Jack's marriage to me?”