His fingers tightened on the brim of his hat. “His plane was shot down over the Pacific.”
The room seemed to spin. “Did he... did he bail out?”
Carl swallowed. His voice came out low and tight. “He was part of a formation, and no one saw any parachutes.”
“But still... maybe...?”
Carl pressed his lips together and blinked several times. “Addie—officially he’s MIA, but his family’s been told he’s presumed dead.”
“But if he’s MIA, that means there’s a chance...”
“What it means, Addie, is that they don’t have a body.” His voice broke on the last word. He glanced up for just a second, justlong enough for me to see his eyes. What I saw there killed all hope. “Joe made me promise that if anything happened to him, I would come and tell you.”
“How did you find out?”
“I was on a list he’d left with his aunt.”
I don’t remember much after that. I don’t remember Carl leaving, or going to my room. I remember being sick to my stomach, and Marge trying to get me to eat soup, and being unable to get out of bed the next morning, or the morning after.
I remember Marge coming home from work that day, and holding me while I sobbed.
“Addie, honey—you’ve got to pull yourself together, or Lucille is going to call your parents to come get you.”
That hit me like a pitcher of cold water. “Oh, Marge! What am I going to do?”
“You’re going to get your situation taken care of. This girl at the cannery knows a doctor who took care of her friend who was in a similar situation, and...”
“I can’t get rid of Joe’s child!”
“Well, Addie, you can’t have a baby.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Listen to me, sweetie. The paper will fire you when they learn you’re pregnant. And your parents—well, you know your mother.”
The thought rolled another wave of nausea over me. My upright, proper, virtuous mother would be devastated. And my father... The shame would likely kill him.
My mind sorted through various scenarios, the way it already had a thousand times. I could move away, claim to be a widow—war widows were becoming horribly common. But I wouldn’t receive a widow’s benefits. How would I explain that? Who would care for my child while I worked? The lack of money would create suspicions, and suspicions would create whispers. And oh, dear Lord—it would be so horrid for my child to have the taint of scandal attached to him!
I’d seen what it was like, how cruel life was to kids conceivedout of wedlock. I’d gone to school with a boy whose mother had never married, and he’d been treated as if he had some kind of contagious venereal disease. Parents had forbidden their children to play with him, so he’d been shunned and taunted. “We don’t associate with people like that” had been the mysterious explanation, and the dark tone of it had implied it would lower one’s own social standing to befriend him.
The wordbastardhad clung to him as if it were pasted on his forehead. He’d been bullied and badgered, and even some of the teachers had treated him with barely disguised disdain. He’d dropped out in eighth grade, then left town when he was barely fifteen. Word had it he’d hopped a train and become a hobo.
I didn’t want that kind of life inflicted on my child for my mistakes. I’d have to put my baby up for adoption—although that, too, was unthinkable. There were no options I could live with.
Unless... maybe Joe’s family would take me under their protection, and treat me as his widow. Maybe they’d help me care for his child, at least until I could get on my feet and support us both. If they backed me for just a little while, I could emerge from this as a respectable woman. “I’ll call his aunt,” I decided.
I got the number from Carl. It took me two days to work up the courage, and another one to find the right time when Lucille was out of the house.
My hand shook as I picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect me. “Mrs. Madison, you don’t know me, but I’m Adelaide LeDoux, and I was Joe’s fiancée.”
“Joe didn’t have a fiancée.”
“Yes, he did. You can check with his buddy Carl. We got engaged right before he left. And... and it turns out that I’m... well, I’m pregnant.”
I heard a deep gasp on the other end of the line, then silence for such a long moment that I thought the connection had dropped.
“Hello?” I said.
