The French War Bride (43 page)

1946

C
ome in, come in!” Adelaide McCauley stood at the door of her home, a lovely two-story Victorian on Oak Street. I stepped inside and she gave me a hug. Jack followed close behind me, with Caroline and Bruce on our heels.

Inside, the house smelled of baking bread, sautéed garlic, and mouthwatering spices.

“Amélie, Jack, I'd like you to meet Kurt Sullivan. He's the president of the local chamber of commerce. This is his wife, Alice. She's a master gardener and the mother of three adorable boys. Kurt, Alice, let me introduce you to Jack and Amélie O'Connor. Jack is a doctor, and his wife just moved here from France.”

We shook hands, then she brought us into the living room and introduced us to a local builder, Henry March, and his wife, Frieda, as well as a hardware sales representative, George Ruston and his wife, Poppy.

Next Addie drew me over to a tall, thin man standing by the fireplace. “This is my husband, Charlie. Charlie and his father run the local lumberyard.”

Jack greeted Charlie with a handshake. “Hey there! How's your foot doing?”

“Much better, much better.” Charlie looked at me, his gaze frankly curious. “So this is your new bride! How are you liking America?”

“For the most part, it is wonderful. It is a beautiful country. The people are friendly, and the stores have so much food!”

“You had a tough time under the Nazis,” Kurt said.

“Oh, yes. Yes, it was very difficult.”

“Amélie lost her home and all of her family in the war,” Caroline said. “And she worked for the French Resistance as a spy and a courier and a document forger.”

“Oh, my word!” Adelaide exclaimed. “You're a heroine!”

“No. I only did what I could to help my people. The heroes were men like Charlie and Jack and Bruce who left their own homes and fought for freedom. I can never thank them enough.”

The conversation, thank God, drifted to other topics. Jack talked about an overnight trip he was making to New Orleans on Monday for a symposium on communicable diseases, Charlie explained how the lumberyard was now carrying premade lattice panels, and the builder talked about the trend toward one-story houses, called ranch-style. Caroline told an amusing story about how enamored I was with American washing machines.

At length, Adelaide called us to the dinner table. Throughout the meal—which centered on a delicious Cajun dish, called shrimp étouffée—the guests repeatedly tried to steer the conversation back to me and the war. I kept trying to deflect the topic, but it grew very tiresome.

“I understand that you're taking over Dr. Thompson's practice,” Kurt Sullivan said to Jack.

“Temporarily, yes.”

“Temporarily? Why not permanently? Wedding Tree desperately needs a doctor. Why, the city council was just talking about it.”

“I'm helping Dr. Thompson look for another doctor to move here. I'll stay here in the meantime.”

My hands knotted in my lap. I hated that Jack was going to leave Wedding Tree because of me, but I understood that he didn't want to make life more difficult for Kat.

“Where are you moving?” Mrs. Sullivan asked.

“I'm not exactly sure yet.”

“Well, then, why would you move?”

“Yeah,” chimed in Mr. March. “I'd love to build you a beautiful home. I've got some tracts on the east side where we're putting up brick ranches. Thanks to the GI bill, you can get a VA loan and a very reasonable mortgage.”

I felt Jack's body grow stiff beside me. I had gotten rather good at reading his body language. In the last week, we had grown much closer. “Yes, well, I'm afraid the situation is rather complicated.”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Ruston asked. “How complicated can . . . Ow!” He looked at his wife.

“So sorry, dear.” She gave him a placid smile. “I accidentally stepped on your foot.”

Across the table, Frieda tittered.

Adelaide rose. “Who would like seconds?”

“Oh, not me.” Mr. Sullivan patted his belly. “I'm stuffed!”

The others groaned their agreement.

“I'll help you clear the plates,” I said to Adelaide, picking up mine and that of Mr. Sullivan, who was seated beside me.

Adelaide followed me to the kitchen. “I'm so sorry if things grew awkward.”

“It's not your fault. I'm getting used to it.”

I went back and retrieved more plates. “Where do you want me to put the scraps?” I asked when I returned to the kitchen.

Caroline just emptied uneaten food in the trash, which I found an abomination. Adelaide smiled. “Scrape them onto this plate, and we'll put them in the garden for the birds and squirrels.” Adelaide turned on the percolator, then popped her head into the dining room. “We're going to move into the living room for coffee and dessert,” she said.

“In the meantime, I'll take anyone who's interested on a tour of the garden and show you some of those lattice panels,” Charlie said.

I excused myself and went to the powder room, where I took several long, deep breaths and regained my composure.

As I walked back toward the kitchen, I saw Adelaide's husband through the window, showing Caroline, Bruce, and Jack the garden. I
was about to go join Adelaide in the kitchen when I heard Jack's name mentioned in the living room. I stepped forward and listened from the hallway.

“Jack was engaged to the doctor's daughter, Kat—she's a real looker, that one—and then he came home married to the Frenchie,” one of the men was relating. I wasn't sure, but I thought the voice belonged to George Ruston.

“Oh, boy. That's awkward,” said one of the other men.

“Wait, it gets worse. Kat hadn't received his letter breaking off the engagement—Amélie deliberately didn't mail it—so here poor Kat is, planning a wedding, only to learn that her fiancé is already hitched. To make matters worse, Amélie had forged Jack's handwriting and continued to send love letters to Kat.”

“Why on earth would she do that?”

“The way I understand it, she wasn't sure she wanted to come to America—something was wrong with her mother—and she thought she was helping Jack by keeping his options open with Kat.”

“How very odd!”

“Everything about her is odd. I'm not sure she's the type of gal a fellow like Jack would normally have married.”

“Such a shame. He had such a bright future and everyone just loves him.”

“Not so much anymore.”

“Why on earth
did
he marry her?” one of the women asked. “She's lovely and very charming, but Kat . . . well, Kat looks like Miss America.”

“There's a baby,” the man said.

Another woman gasped. “Well, if that isn't the oldest trick in the book!”

“Kat is just crushed. I heard the doctor and his family are leaving town for a few months,” said the first woman. “The official story is that Dr. Thompson is going for physical rehabilitation, but it'll give everyone some breathing room until Jack can find another doctor to take over the practice.”

“I hate that he has to leave Wedding Tree,” said one of the men. “He didn't look very happy about it, did he?”

“No, sirree. I passed a chain gang on the road today—and those men wore looks of total resignation. Jack had that same look when he talked about leaving Wedding Tree.”

“You're right about people snubbing Jack,” the woman said. “I heard Ben Campbell really gave him an earful yesterday—told him outright that his behavior was ungentlemanly. Jack put him in his place—told him he shouldn't speak about things he knew nothing about. But that sort of thing is happening quite regularly to him, I'm afraid.”

“Yes,” said the man I thought was Mr. Ruston. “He greeted a couple of old friends at the drugstore yesterday, and their wives just dragged them away—wouldn't even let their husbands talk to him. It's a darn shame, seeing a fine young man all caught up in a woman's web like that.”

“Well, now, it's not entirely her fault,” said one of the women. “It takes two to make a baby.”

“Yes, but you know what they say about those Frenchwomen—they really know how to get their hooks in a man. And you can bet it was deliberate. From what I hear, every one of them wants to snag an American husband. And as poor a shape as everything is in over there, you can't really blame them. Still, it's not right.”

“I'm sure she didn't hold a gun to his head,” the woman said.

“She might have held something else, though.”

Everyone laughed.

My knees nearly buckled. Oh, mon Dieu—how had I not realized what I was doing to Jack? I was driving him away from his home and friends, making him lose face in front of people he respected, thwarting all of his plans for the future.

What kind of horrible situation had I put this man in? He was a good man, a noble man, a kind man who had only tried to help me—and how was I repaying him? I was ruining his entire life. A man like Jack deserved a well-respected, upstanding wife—not a lying, conniving one who had tricked him into marriage. I wasn't good enough for Jack.

He was a man of his word, so he would stand by me, even if I made him completely miserable. He'd made that decision when he'd brought me here. What had he said?
That bridge is crossed and burned.

Not exactly the words of a man in love. Well, he might have burned the bridge to Kat—although I wasn't entirely sure about that; I suspected she would still take him back—but even with Kat out of the picture, I was still faced with the hard, cold truth: Jack was saddled with a woman he didn't love, and I was bringing him nothing but heartache.

Jack deserved to be married to someone he adored, the way I adored him. It wasn't fair to keep him bound to me through a sense of duty. He deserved a happy marriage.

The little group was coming in from the garden. I pasted a smile on my face and went into the kitchen, where Addie was slicing cake.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked as he walked through the kitchen door. “You don't look well.”

His attentiveness touched me. “I have a bit of a headache.”

“Let me get you some aspirin.” He left to fetch his bag, which he'd left in the car.

I knew what I had to do. The realization, as swift and hard as a Nazi's fist, left me reeling. I loved Jack; therefore, I had to leave him. I was making him miserable and standing in the way of all he wanted and deserved. I would have to be the one to leave, because he was too honorable to leave me.

And I would have to do it in a way that would free him from his sense of obligation and justify him in the eyes of the community.

He returned with aspirin. I took two with a glass of water. How I wished they could treat the pain in my heart.

“Would you like to go home?” he asked me.

“As soon as we possibly can.”

He smiled in a way that was touchingly conspiratorial. It felt, for that brief moment, as if we were a team, a real couple, as if it were he and I against the world. “A doctor always has an out,” he whispered. He turned to Adelaide. “May I use your phone? I need to check in with my service.”

“Certainly. It's right over here.” She led him to the hallway.

As he left the room, Jack gave me a little wink. My heart turned over, and I blinked back sudden tears.

1946

I
waited until after lunch on Monday, when Jack departed for his symposium in New Orleans. Caroline drove him to the train station in Hammond. I declined to go along, saying Elise needed her nap. As soon as the car puttered out of sight, I quickly packed a bag.

I had been by the bus station on Sunday—while Jack was visiting patients and Caroline and Bruce were at church, I took Elise on a walk—and learned that a bus to Baton Rouge left at two p.m. From there, I could catch connections to Reno.

I changed into my blue polka-dot dress and pulled on my overcoat, because the weather had turned cold. I put Elise in her coat and situated her in her stroller, then placed a note I'd carefully written in English on the kitchen table:

Dear Jack,

I am going to Reno to get an annulment. Our marriage can be dissolved this way because it was based on fraud.

I know that you have grown to love Elise, but Jack, I need to confess that she is not your child. I hate to tell you this, but it is for the best that you know the truth. I cannot live a lie any longer. You are not the father. I lied to you in order to bring Elise to America. I hope you can forgive me.

I see now that you and I are simply too different to spend a lifetime together.

I hope that your friends and family will not hold my sins against you. I am so sorry that I have sullied your name and reputation.

Elise and I are going back to France, where we belong. I will have the annulment papers sent to you at this address.

Thank you for everything.

Regretfully,

Amélie

I wrote him another letter in French and stuck it underneath his pillow. That one said:

Dear Jack,

Please use the other letter to explain things to your friends and family. I am so sorry for placing you in a difficult position. Now, hopefully, you can stay in Wedding Tree. Please place all blame on me. Feel free to show them the other letter and to talk badly about me; it will help your cause.

Please know that I respect and admire you more than any man I have ever known. It was an honor to be your wife. I envy Kat or whatever woman eventually becomes the object of your love and adoration.

Je t'aime toujours,

Amélie

Before I placed the letter, I lifted his pillow to my nose and inhaled his scent one last time. I wished his scent to become part of me. I wanted to memorize it so I could conjure it up when I needed reassurance that life was worth living. If such a man could exist in this world, then perhaps the world was not so awful a place.

The wind whipped hard as I left the house. Elise protested and I adjusted a blanket tightly around her. She was already cranky about missing her nap; the chilly weather didn't help.

My spirits were too low for tears as I wheeled the baby carriage to the bus station, pushing it with one hand and carrying my suitcase with the other. I had known grief and despondency before, but this was different. This time, there was no war that I could hope would end and no new beginning I could look forward to. Any future without Jack could not be as bright as the few bright spots I'd shared with him. This time, I was leaving my fondest hopes behind me.

The thought of starting over filled me with nothing but dread. I had no intention of going back to France; I fully intended to keep my word to Yvette and raise Elise in America, and I was certain Jack would know that. I'd only put that in the letter in order to satisfy Kat or whoever he showed the letter to that I was well and truly gone.

I had no idea how I would make it on my own in this new country. In the back of my mind, I thought I might get a job as a seamstress or maid in Reno, although how I would work and care for a baby, I had no clue. Perhaps God would help me, if I had not strayed too far from what he could forgive. If he did not want to help me, perhaps he would help Elise.

The six blocks to the bus station felt like six kilometers that day. It had rained the night before, and large puddles impeded my progress.

I finally arrived at the station, which was also a small grocery store, and bought a ticket to Reno with just a few minutes to spare. I took Elise from the stroller and settled on a bus bench outside, the baby on my lap. A woman in a nubby black coat sat down beside us. The yellow-and-black-striped scarf she wore over her gray hair made me think of a bee.

“Are you waiting for someone?” she asked.

“No,” I said, hoping to discourage conversation. It was a futile attempt.

“Then you must be going somewhere.”

I nodded.

“I'm here to meet my son. He was just discharged from the navy.”

“How wonderful,” I said.

“How old is your baby?” she asked.

“Nine months.”

“Oh, she's beautiful!”

She smiled at Elise, then started playing peekaboo, which made Elise laugh and coo. It softened my resolve not to engage with her. “You're very good with children,” I said.

“Oh, I ought to be. Raised six of my own, and now I have ten grandchildren, with another on the way. The oldest is fifteen; I can't believe I'm old enough to have a grandchild that age! That one belongs to my eldest son, Steven Earl. He's married to a girl from . . .”

I tuned out her words, my thoughts on Jack. What would our child have looked like? My chest ached with longing. If I had been pregnant, it would have changed everything.

I gazed at the filling station across the street. It was a small ramshackle clapboard building, only a little bigger than a shed, with two pumps out front and an attached garage on the side. An empty black Chevrolet sedan sat at the first pump. Through the open door, I saw a little boy, maybe four years old, with dark hair and chubby cheeks. He was bouncing up and down on his heels, obviously wanting his mother's attention, as she paid the attendant.

Jack and I might have had a little boy like that one, I mused.

“. . . and my second-oldest grandchild is thirteen,” the woman rambled on. “That one's a girl. She just loves horses, and . . .”

Inside the gas station, the attendant handed the woman some change. She leaned down and gave the little boy a coin. It must have been a penny, because he went to the gumball machine and tried to put it in. The coin slipped through his chubby fingers. He dropped to his knees and crawled after it.

A large blue Buick pulled up to the second pump. The service attendant tipped his hat to the woman with the boy, then loped outside, a cigarette dangling from his lips.

The driver of the Buick rolled down the window. Oh, my heavens—it
was Minxy! I slunk down on the bench and pulled up the collar of my coat, my heart pounding, not wanting to be seen.

I immediately realized that the concern was absurd—Minxy would be nothing but delighted to see that I was leaving town. Given the way she'd snubbed me at the children's shop, I had no reason to fear she'd cross the street to start a conversation.

No. It wasn't fear that had me slinking down, hoping to become invisible, I realized; it was shame. I was ashamed of what I'd done to Jack's reputation—ashamed to be seen in Wedding Tree, and ashamed to be seen leaving it. Oh, dear God. I was a vessel full of shame!

Beside me, the woman—I mentally dubbed her the bee woman—droned on. “. . . her mother worked in Covington at the coffee grinding company during the war, and . . .”

Across the street, I realized I needn't have worried about Minxy; she didn't glance my way at all. She spoke to the attendant and climbed out of her car. She was wearing a burgundy dress with a fitted skirt and high heels. She must have been somewhere fancy for lunch. I watched her swing her hips as she walked into the station, stepping around the little boy, who was still crawling on the floor, searching for the penny. Minxy plucked a key attached to a large wooden
L
key fob off a peg on the wall, and turned to the left, toward what must be the ladies' room.

The attendant watched her, too, his cigarette dangling from his lips as he unscrewed the gas cap on her Buick and fitted the nozzle into the tank. Minxy had disappeared, but he kept his eyes on the open door and watched for her reappearance.

Something about the scene struck me as wrong. My stomach clenched with primal foreboding. My gaze latched on the glow at the end of his cigarette. As I watched, some ashes dropped.

There was a loud whooshing sound, and then an explosion and a blinding flash.

Oh, mon Dieu! It was the French farmhouse all over again! But this time, I knew what to do. I jumped to my feet.

“What's happening?” the woman asked.

I thrust Elise into her arms. “Take the baby and go inside.”

I dashed across the street. The gas pump was an inferno, and fire was snaking across the pavement, toward the building. But my attention was riveted on the attendant. The right shirtsleeve and pant leg of his gabardine uniform were ablaze. He ran in circles, flapping his flaming arm, screaming.

I tackled him and knocked him to the ground, only a few yards from the fire. I rolled him over, smothering the flames. We rolled right into a big mud puddle. I heard the hissing of his burning clothes—and maybe his burning skin—being extinguished.

I jumped to my feet and yanked him up by the back of his jacket. Where I found the strength, I do not know. “Across the street,” I ordered. “Go!”

He was in a daze. He stared at me. “Go!” I roughly shoved him. “Cross the street. Now!”

He staggered off in that direction.

The fire was leaping high. Minxy's car was ablaze, as well as an oil drum beside the pump. The wind carried the flames to both the Chevrolet and to the wooden shingle roof of the station.

I dashed inside and found the woman trying to pull her child out from under a tabletop display of motor oil. Her skirt was too tight to allow her to kneel down. “My car,” she said, her voice shrill with panic. “I've got to get my car out of here!”

“No. There's no time.” I crawled under the table and grabbed her child.

“Hey!” She tried to pull her child from my arms, but I straightened and headed for the door. She trotted alongside me as I hurried outside, away from her car, to the grass at the side of the building.

Another explosion rent the air. I pushed the woman to the ground and fell on top of her, the little boy between us. Glass and metal rained down around us. After a moment, I got up, and pulled both of them to their feet. “Run across the street. Now!”

The woman lifted her wailing child into her shaking arms and staggered away from the fire, toward the bus station.

I turned around and surveyed the situation. The woman's car had
just exploded. The gas station itself was now ablaze and Minxy was still inside.

I pulled off my overcoat, dunked it in a puddle, and headed back into the building. One of the explosions had blown out the glass, and flames were leaping inside around the display of motor oil cans.

The coat over my head, I ran to the back, and to the left. I could hardly see through the smoke. I pounded on the restroom door.

“Wait your turn!” Minxy yelled.

“Fire!” I bellowed. I tried the door. It was, of course, locked.

A can of motor oil exploded. Flames crawled across the floor.

I ran to the cash register, praying that they kept extra keys to the restrooms. Thank God—there was a key with an
L
key fob in the drawer under the register. I ran back and unlocked the door just as Minxy was flushing the toilet.

“How dare you!” she said, eyes flashing.

“The building is on fire.” I took a gulp of air; the metal door to the bathroom had kept out most of the smoke. “We must leave now.”

Her eyes grew large as she smelled the smoke and saw flames outside the door. “Oh, my God. Oh, God!”

“Come on. We have to go.”

“I can't go out there! There's a fire.”

“You can't stay in here. There are no windows, no exit.”

I pulled at her. She wouldn't budge. She was as frozen as a glacier.

I threw my coat over her head. Like a parrot in a covered cage, the darkness seemed to calm her. “Just walk with me,” I told her. “Hold on, and walk with me.”

It was almost too smoky to see. Holding my breath, I guided her through the garage and onto the grass, then took my coat off her head. She blinked and stared at the building. As we watched, the roof collapsed.

“Where is my car?”

“It exploded.”

“That's impossible,” she said. “It's brand new.”

The disconnect between what one wants and what one gets can
sometimes make the brain misfire. “Come on.” I herded her across the street. As we neared the bus station, another explosion rattled my teeth.

—

The ticket agent was standing outside. He stepped toward me, his mouth hanging loose from the jaw. “I never saw nothin' like that in all my live-long life, and I was in the first war.”

“I was in the second,” I said.

He held the door open for me, then reached out his hand. “Here, ma'am—let me take your coat.”

I realized the overcoat I was clutching was charred, mud-soaked, and sopping wet. I handed it to him, then went indoors and took Elise from the arms of the bee woman.

She was, thankfully, speechless. The ticket agent handed me my purse and diaper bag, which I guess he had collected from the bench outdoors. He set my suitcase beside me.

Just then, a bus pulled into the station. The door wheezed open, and a man around thirty years of age bounded down the stairs. “What the hell's going on across the street?”

The woman who'd held Elise ran toward him, sobbing. He caught her in bear hug. “Hi, Mom. What's with the fire?”

Sirens sounded in the distance. The bus driver rose from behind the wheel and hefted himself down the stairs. He opened the storage bay on the side of the bus and quickly extracted a bag. The young man—apparently the bee woman's son—picked it up.