At the sound of her best friend’s voice, Rose didn’t turn her gaze from the darkening surf, but she did allow a wry, self-effacing smile to grace her lips. “I’ve always rather thought myself a female Dionysus. Toying with mortal love is dull. I’d much rather drink and be merry.”
At least she used to.
“Is that who you’re dressed as, then?” Myrtle assumed a position next to Rose on the balustrade and fingered the white gossamer sleeve of Rose’s costume.
The light chiffon fabric floated about Rose’s body, so different from the stiff fabric of her khaki uniform. Except for the last few years, she’d lived most of her life in gowns like this—silky confections that fluttered luxuriously against her skin. But now they felt ... wrong. Too loose. Too airy. And just notright.
“Nike.” Rose answered her friend’s question about whom she was pretending to be for the fancy dress ball.
“Ahh.” Myrtle dropped the fabric. “The goddess of victory. Fitting, considering we’re celebrating the German surrender.”
“Yes, fitting,” Rose repeated rather hollowly as she rolled her unlit cigarette between her fingers. “Although technically it is just a cease-fire. Real peace has not been declared.”
It was hard for Rose to believe that all the death, all the violence, all thedevastation, had ended, truly ended. She wondered if it ever would in her mind. She’d gone to the war searching for some type of meaning but had returned emptier than ever. What had she accomplished? What had any of them? Here she was, back where she’d started, at another glittery, gilded party. She’d thrown itherselfin another vain and this time foolish attempt to fill her emptiness—as if a celebration of victory would make all the sufferingmeansomething. Instead it just placed a magnifying glass on the futility of it all.
Myrtle gave Rose’s shoulder a friendly nudge as they both leaned on the balustrade and watched the Atlantic Ocean crash against the broad white sands spread before them. “Imagine you being the one to argue semantics instead of me.”
“They say war changes a person.” Rose lifted the Lucky Strike to her mouth and closed her lips around it. She wanted to light it, but her lungs wouldn’t take the smoke. She’d start hacking like a sick goose. Mustard gas and a bad bout of influenza tended to leave a woman like that.
“It does,” Myrtle said quietly. “So it does.”
Rose was glad that her old college chum didn’t pry for details. She was the only one of Rose’s acquaintances who didn’t. Tonight had made that especially apparent when every single one of her guests had stopped her and begged for stories about her time “Over There.”
There was the ubiquitous “Was the shelling as dreadful as they say, darling?”
Why, yes. Would you wish to know the details of exactly what it can do to a person’s body? Because I can tell you, Mrs.Smith. Is that what you wish to hear as you sip champagne in your flouncy Bo Peep costume and make eyes at the widower Mr.Jones? Should I tell you of the deathsI witnessed—the terrible sacrifices that allow us to continue in our own blithe folly?
And then another favorite question, especially from those of the male sex: “Is it true that you were one of the few women who drove to the front line? It must have been absolutely ghastly for you. Why the Belgians and French would allow a gal that close to the fighting is beyond understanding. No Man’s Land is no place for the delicate sensibilities of women.”
And you believe that dressing up as George Washington and donning a cheap white wig makes you fit to comment on military strategy? You know little, Mr.Buckley. I went only as far as the poste de secours, the field dressing stations closest to the fighting. I was never in No Man’s Land. And there’s a reason they call it that. It’s no place for anybody—woman or man. Yet soldiers did brave it, but here we are claiming victory in luxury.
But Rose, the society darling with a reputation for a wicked tongue, had given none of those flippant answers, for she did not wish to cheapen the sacrifices and deaths of so many just to shock those who would never understand.
She’d thrown this party to forget, but it had instead forced her to remember. Rose had even donned the literal garments of victory as if she could convince herself it was all true and that she had therightto feel a sense of accomplishment. But she was as silly as her own guests, thinking a pantomime had anything to do with patriotism or reality. Her costume just exposed her fraud. She hadn’t even been on the Western Front for the last few months but had watched the end of the hostilities as a faraway observer in Florida.
Rose sucked on her cig but not enough for the tobacco to fall into her mouth. She hated the taste of it—unlike the bitter smoke. After weeks of an illness that had brought her home from France, she no longer missed the effects of the vice but merely yearned for the physical act. Rose needed the excuse to have something in her hands, somethingto distract her, something to wave about or to angrily stab. She’d be crushing the butt against the balustrade now if she could.
“It was a mistake, throwing this party,” Rose said, whether to herself or to Myrtle, she didn’t know.
Myrtle gave a sympathetic sigh as she turned away from the ocean.
“Everyone expected it of you,” Myrtle pointed out. “Perhaps even you. It is natural for you to want to return to your old routines, your old life.”
What kind of frivolous person had Rose been that her old everyday habits involved throwing massive parties on a regular basis?
“Belle of the Ball, Hostess of Hilarity, Denizen of Drama, Motoriste of Mayhem.” Rose didn’t know why her voice sounded so bitter when she used to love those nicknames.
After Rose had fulfilled her original time commitment to the French Army, she’d stayed despite the hopelessness. Like they all had. To fight a war, despite no one really, truly understanding why they were there in the first place.
“You’ve still managed to hold the masquerade of the year despite just leaving your sickbed last week,” Myrtle said. Her blue eyes softened before she spoke again. “We were really afraid we were going to lose you.”
Rose pulled the cigarette from her mouth. Staring down at the now-floppy butt, she wished she could feelsomethingabout her near death from the endless, relentless fever. Yet she did not. Not joy at her recovery nor fear at what could have been.
Until yesterday, Rose had been planning on returning to France. After all, her parents’ staff were the ones who had arranged for her to be transferred back to the States in the first place when she’d been out of her mind with delirium from fever. If her parents had bothered to ask her, she would have said that she wanted to stay. Yet they hadn’t, just as they hadn’t spent long at her bedside. They’d absently taken care of her needs in the way that they’d seen fit, not realizing that once again they’d set her adrift.
Rose didn’t want just material comfort, but she didn’t know what shediddesire. Returning to her old life wouldn’t grant her peace. And with the cease-fire just declared, she no longer had any plans, no chance at finding direction.
Again.
