The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (12 page)

I had not yet thought of this. That I had arrived in this era with a gun my other self had bought and cleaned and loaded for me and placed in my hand, the safety off. Twenty-five years old. Handsome, clever, those eyes. Who was he to me? I thought of the only kind thing I could say, the only thing I knew:

“You’re my sweetheart.”

He took the word as a suffering man takes medicine, hoping it will work.

“You’re my sweetheart,” I repeated, and then he took me in his arms and quickly kissed me. I did not resist him.

In a moment he pulled back and looked at me as if searching for the latch that would open me. Breathing hard, cheeks spotted with red, closing his eyes, and who knows what he saw there? I only know he held me away from him and opened his eyes.

He nodded and said, “Ah. Your sweetheart.” It was almost enough. But not enough, I could tell. The medicine had not done its job. He released me, stepping away to the railing. “Let’s find your aunt, the steps are hard to manage.” He laughed at himself.

“What is it?”

His hand went to the trapdoor.

“Isn’t that what I am to
you
?” I asked.

“No, Greta,” he said, looking away, to the east where those steam clouds, lit by gaslight, rose like spirits into the night sky, up to stars I had never seen from light-crowded New York, and had to travel all the way to Saratoga, one summer, to view, looking up from a late walk with my mother and asking what the starry cloud was up there. And her saying:
It’s the Milky Way, darling, it’s the galaxy we’re floating in, haven’t you seen it before
? There it was, above us, as it would never be seen in the city again. Spectral, silvery, the backbone of night. It did not belong here; I did not belong here. This young man who was not mine, standing by the ledge with his back to me, thinking so hard about what I had asked him, waiting a long time before he took a breath and said, laughing a little: “Greta. You’re my first love.”

F
ELIX CAME BY
to visit, but wouldn’t tell me much about his encounter with the police, though I could tell it had shaken him. He stayed only briefly and sat at the window the entire time, smoking, staring at the birds. “I didn’t tell Ingrid about it,” he said. “I didn’t want her to worry. Just police mischief, but she’s so delicate. She’s such a good chance for me.” The autumn light caught his long freckled face and I wondered what to do with him. If I could even talk to him about his life. In a moment, he smiled the old smile I remembered and kissed me good-bye. “See you later, bubs. Don’t look so worried. The war has to end soon.”

And it did. It was later that week that I heard the trumpets on the streets. I heard the crowds shouting, “It’s over!” and went out to see them hugging one another with joy. What a strange and magical scene to have been summoned for. I came home, where Millie handed me a folded note—Leo wanted to meet me at eight, under the arch—then informed me meekly that folks were gathering at my aunt’s. It was already packed with people when I went down there. Ragtime was playing somewhere—“
C’mon and hear! C’mon and hear!
”—competing with military marches playing somewhere else, and of course no conversation could be heard above the racket of talk and laughter. On the sofa, a dark-featured man in a toga sat speaking to a group of well-dressed girls gathered at his feet; as I passed by, he kissed each one on the forehead and they swooned. Around the corner, I did at last recognize my aunt, standing under a ridiculous lamp of Prometheus bringing fire to the mortals (the fire was an electric bulb), her jet-beaded back to me, shimmering like a fall of rain. In a moment she turned around and saw me. Her expression was a fireworks of joy. She shouted something at me I couldn’t hear. She shouted again. Only on the third try did I make out:

“It’s happened! The war is ending just when you said it would!”

“Did I?” It must have been that tattletale: 1941.

“You said November eleventh. At the eleventh hour.”

We think we have a rippling effect on life, and perhaps we do. But perhaps, at least for me, not on history itself. Not on the big events, the wars, elections, and diseases. How could I have thought so? Such a small person as I was in the world. Someone in this room, surely, would make it into books, be studied and written about. If they had traveled to other worlds, in other times, things might have shifted like an earthquake. Some people were like that. Aunt Ruth, perhaps. But not little red-haired Greta Wells.

Aunt Ruth leaned in; I could smell she had been drinking something stronger than red wine. “My dear, you’re a prophetess.”

I was that, at least. I wondered what else I could tell her, what could be of use to her or anyone I knew. That yes the war would end, but another one would start in barely twenty years—twenty years!—and this time there would be new horrors to contemplate? That her plague would end as well, and it, too, would be replaced in sixty years by something just as deadly? Why hadn’t some future Greta, some prophetess or angel, come to my time to tell us it would end, our own trouble, that the boys would stop dying by the thousands? That the world would care, and cure it? Instead of sneering at the bodies lined up for burial? Where was that woman? Why had I been chosen as the last, the final version of myself? Surely there was a better, wiser one who could show us all how it would end.

The recorded music stopped and the raucous sound of voices rose at first, then broke, like a wave, into murmurs as a piano tune began to play nearby. I saw the long-haired bartender pounding stridently at the keys, and singing. What, I could not hear. Ruth leaned in close to me again, a new gleam in her eye and her lips parted to speak. Then all at once—a common sound of joy:

Johnnie, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun . . .

I could have wept. To see them all so drunk with wine and relief, that at last the horror had ended. That so many had died was unbearable. But no more would die. Out there in the mud, they were all saved.

Take it on the run, on the run, on the run
.

Hear them calling, you and me
,

Every son of Liberty
.

The one who used to sell the bread, the one who groomed the dogs, the bartender, the waiter. All the ones gone off to war, surely to die as all the others had died; they were coming home! They were saved. The thought of them being saved. I had to turn away from Ruth. The sobs were uncontrollable, the shock I felt when I appeared on Halloween and saw the young men, the thought that others would come home. That it was over. The idea of a horror being over, how could they know that I understood? That I had never thought I’d see a day like this? The boys were saved.

Over there, over there
,

Send the word, send the word over there
,

That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming
,

The drums rum-tumming everywhere
.

An old drunk man in a long Chinese robe was pounding his chest. Two young women embraced; surely they loved someone. These same soldiers would come home, never speaking of what they’d seen, and marry those girls and raise children, and they would send those children off to war again. With Germany, again. We would be here, again, in this parlor singing this same song. I stood there, in wonder, at the madness of it all.

We’ll be over, we’re coming over
.

And we won’t come back till it’s over over there!

I
T WAS ONLY
later that Felix arrived, and when I saw him laughing in his frock coat and holding his top hat, I felt my heart shaking inside me, ridiculously, like a dog left alone for days—”Felix!”—and he looked over at me curiously. He was flushed with wine already, from his chin up to his neatly combed hair, and he looked more fragile than ever. A white rose wilted in its buttonhole. I pulled him to me. But once I began to talk to him I saw I had misunderstood; he had not just arrived, he had been here for some time, hidden in the thicket of people, and was just now taking his leave. Felix said he was heading to some other party.

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

“Not this time, bubs,” he said, blushing deeply. “It’s not a party for married ladies.” I could tell at once it was a lie.

I laughed. “I can do as I like.”

That surprised him. He had removed the rose from his buttonhole and was pulling it apart with his fingers, letting the petals fall into a bowl. My comment made him stop. “I know this sounds crazy coming from me, after how I’ve acted these last years,” he said, laughing, then becoming sober. He stroked his chin. I could see him deciding on his words. And then he said something really remarkable: “But I want you to think about our family reputation. I’m marrying a senator’s daughter in two months. They care about these things.”

I asked him what he was talking about.

“These people here are full of ideas,” he said meaningfully. “Free love. Other things. Don’t fall for it, trust me. For my sake, Greta.”

A shift in weather, and we are a different person. The split of an atom, and we change. Why would I expect my brother to be the same one I’d known? Free spirited, bold, selfish, foolish, drinking and smoking and laughing too much with his gap teeth wide in his face? It takes so little to make us different people. Who knows what this Felix had lived through? What cloudy day, or snowfall, or shifted atom made him into this Babbitty little prude? Engaged to a senator’s daughter, talking about reputations, my brother who once had sequined gowns hanging in his closet? And was it now impossible to change him? Or was it as simple as another atom turning, this way toward me?

“You’ve lost your mind,” I said, then added boldly: “You’re headed to a sex party right now.”

He flushed again, this time in anger. “I’m going to a very high-level political event. It’s full of very high-level men.”

I laughed at that, and he grimaced at me and without another word he was gone. Was he lying to himself, or just to me?

I stayed at the party for much longer than I expected—mostly because newcomers had completely blocked the exit—and finally succumbed to the drunken revelry by taking a few sips of the “Versailles punch” my aunt was now passing around, a hideously sweet drink made from French champagne, English gin, American lemons, and German honey liquor. More than a little of it went onto the Persian rug, and I supposed the maid would not get Armistice Day off tomorrow. I spent a good hour chatting with a handsome bearded schoolteacher, in a trim blue suit, who talked about the need for national health care. The piano was still going—this time with a girl singing a love song unknown to me—and the booze left me smiling and twinkling at everyone. I looked at the clock on the mantel.

“Ruth,” I said, pushing my way toward her. There was now a very familiar smell that I associated with my own era, and I noticed the bartender with a girl in a long green dress, embroidered with daisies, passing a little cigarette. My aunt was supporting herself against a grandfather clock, and her own necklace swung in time with the pendulum. “Ruth, I’m off,” I told her.

“What, now?”

“It’s the actor.”

“Yes? What?” she asked, then let my words penetrate the drink in her mind. She frowned. “You know he’s going to be very sad.”

“I’m fine, I can handle him.”

She leaned back, those great eyes blinking. “The soldiers are coming home.”

“Yes, yes—”

“My dear girl,” she said, raising her eyebrows and cocking her head, “Nathan is coming home.”

H
E WAS THERE,
under the arch: a ragged version of the young man I’d seen there only nights before. Those eyes had seen no sleep, and his young cheeks had not seen a razor; still, Leo, always an actor, stood confidently under the arch, hands in his pockets as he looked around the park. A faint mist haloed the lights behind him. From all around came sounds of merriment, and rifles going off, and from somewhere invisible a band played marches, real or recorded, louder than was necessary. Looking at Leo under the arch, I thought perhaps he might be the only person in New York for whom the peace was misery.

I walked into the light, he saw me instantly, and I assumed he would take one step back in bitterness, like a man in a duel. Of all mad things, however, he smiled.

“Greta, you came.”

I shrugged and pulled my shawl around me. “My aunt was throwing a party, the whole city’s gone mad.”

“I know,” Leo said, raising an eyebrow. “My neighbors are throwing one plate after another against the wall.”

I laughed. “It’s wonderful news.”

“Yes,” he said, lowering his chin but keeping his gaze on me. “You knew it had to come.” I said nothing. He went on: “But we pretended it never would.”

The smile was gone. He put his hands back in his pockets, lifted his chin, and regarded me. “Have you heard anything from him recently?” he asked at last.

“A letter this week.”

“So he’s all right?”

I saw with a little horror what Leo was asking me. How selfish love is, though we never think of it that way. We think of ourselves as heroes, saving a great work of art from destruction, running into the flames, cutting it from its frame, rolling it up and fleeing through the smoke. We think we are large hearted. As if we were saving it for anyone but ourselves, and all the time we don’t care what burns down, as long as this is saved. The whole gallery can fall to ashes for all we care. That love must be rescued, beyond all reason, reveals the madness at the heart of it. Look at Leo, so kind and tenderhearted. Look at him. Forgive him for hoping my husband was dead.

“No, he’s alive,” I said severely. “He’s coming home. Perhaps he’ll tend the wounded.”

Nodding. “Of course. When do they come home, do you think? The soldiers?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“I was asking around,” he said. A visible swallow in his throat. “I heard some will be back in a few weeks. And others, maybe Christmas, maybe January.”

“It could be. I’m sure he’ll write me as soon as he knows.”

“Of course.”

There was a pause here, in which the whistling descent of a firework could be heard. As Leo turned to me, one could see how the mist had dampened his cheek. There was something angry in his eye. So dangerous, being with someone in love. Like standing beside a tiger.