“I felt so sorry for him, and for his family. His parents were terribly upset. But...” I sucked in a breath. It felt callous saying it, but I was on a mission to tell the truth. “It didn’t jar me into a sudden realization that I couldn’t live without him.”
I fell silent for a moment. I was surprised to hear rain pattering on the roof. “I kept him in my prayers, of course. And I wrote him more frequently, trying to cheer him up, telling him I was praying for him, just generally trying to make him feel like he had someone rooting for him. I even knitted him a scarf. This happened just before I met Joe.”
“Joe was the man you fell in love with?”
“Yes.” Joe’s face floated into my memory, his smile calling up one of my own.
“What was he like?”
“Oh my. He was...” The years were falling back now, peeling back like bedcovers, inviting me to climb right in. “He was really something.”
Poof!
•••
All of a sudden, it’s 1943, and I’m in New Orleans. And this time I’m not just watching a film in my mind; this time I’m reliving it. I’m pretty sure I’m telling Hope about it, but I can’t hear the words, because the memories are so crisp and clear, it feels like it’s happening all over again.
8
adelaide
APRIL 1943
NEW ORLEANS
It was cold that Friday night, a damp cold that went right through you—which was a little unusual, because it had been unnaturally warm that April, although early spring can be a fickle season in New Orleans. I’d worked all day in the darkroom at theTimes-Picayune—I’d gotten a job at the newspaper three months after high school graduation; thanks to the shortage of men, they’d taken me on as a photographer’s assistant—then dashed back to the little house in the Irish Channel, where I was staying with my friend Marge and her aunt Lucille. Fridays were dance nights at the USO.
I wore that green silk dress for the first time. First-time wearings were special. Heck, store-bought dresses were special! I’d bought this one on sale at D. H. Holmes. I talked the sales manager into marking it down even more than the sale price because it had a little rip under the arm right by the seam, so I got it for a song. I was handy with a needle, and all I had to do was take it in, which it needed anyway.
The dress rustled as I stepped into it. Marge zipped me up. “That dress fits you like a dream.”
She was wearing a new dress, too—a red one that complemented her permed black hair and clung to her curvy figure like wax. The dress was so low cut as to be a little immodest. She wore a buttoned-up white sweater to make it past the USO door chaperone. We were running late because she’d wanted to style her hair like Barbara Stanwyck and had trouble getting the bangs just right.
“Tonight’s our lucky night, I just know it,” Marge said as we rode the streetcar down St. Charles. I knew what Marge meant by “lucky”: we were both hoping to meet the love of our lives.
Marge was looking to marry and settle down, and I... well, I was looking for love like the movies portrayed—dramatic, exciting, adventurous. I wasn’t against marriage—no girl wanted to be a spinster; that was a fate worse than death—but marriage was somewhere off in the distant future. I had a hazy, Hollywood-fueled vision of passionate kisses and a deep soul connection—something far more glamorous and thrilling than anything I’d shared with Charlie.
Romance aside, I was pretty much living my dream, residing in a city and working as a photographer. True, I spent most of my time in the darkroom, but the assignment editor had sent me out on a few stories when they were shorthanded, and I had high hopes that given just a little more time, I’d be out on the street every day. With a little luck, I’d build a portfolio that would lead to a job as a travel photographer, and when this darned war ended, I’d be off to see the world.
If there were still any world left to see, that is. It was a fearful time, I have to tell you—but I was young, and like all youth, I had an irrepressible streak of optimism. I was more afraid of having to go back to Wedding Tree than I was of the world ending.
It hadn’t been easy, getting my parents to agree to let me come to New Orleans. They were both strict, tight-laced conservatives, and they thought a young woman should live with her parents until she married.
I’d worked on them in stages.
Stage One: I’d swanned around the house, looking bored andheartbroken, complaining bitterly about how there were no decent jobs in Wedding Tree.
Stage Two: I’d convinced them to let me take the train to New Orleans to visit my friend Marge from high school and her war widow aunt—both of whom worked at the Zatarain’s cannery—for a long weekend.
Stage Three: While in New Orleans, I’d applied for a job at theTimes-Picayune.
Stage Four: I’d come back talking about the fantastic job opportunities in the city, but complaining about how strict Marge’s Aunt Lucille was (which was a total fabrication; Marge and I seemed invisible to Lucille).
Stage Five: When I was offered the job in New Orleans, I said I wanted to live at a boardinghouse—which prompted my parents to insist that I live with Marge at Lucille’s.
Stage Six: Voilà—exactly what I wanted!
I’d been living there since August, paying a few bucks a week to share a room with Marge. We worked pretty long hours, and most evenings were spent on chores—washing and ironing clothes, cleaning house, grocery shopping, cooking, and tending our victory garden—not to mention shampooing, rolling, and drying our hair. Everything took longer then.
