Radio Mirror: The Magazine of Radio Romances (Jan-June 1945)

40 I'd said "No" to her sometimes when she'd wanted us to have a holiday or when she mixed people, up too much. Never had any sense about making the proper friends. I'd get real annoyed once in a while — but the house has seemed quiet, awful quiet, since she's been gone." He was talking to ease me over these bad moments of Philip's leaving. But he had seldom spoken of Mother before — it was as if my marriage had unlocked memories for him. "Am I like Mother at all. Dad?" How wonderful it would be if Philip were to think of me with the same longing I'd just heard in Dad's voice for Mother. "I don't know. I think so, underneath. But mostly you're like me. We're undemonstrative people — ■ we Brockmans. We feel things but we've got them so bottled up inside us that sometimes they just wither and die there. Pretty grim and stiff, some of our family are. Ashamed to admit they've got feelings at all. 'Salt of the earth' your Aunt Connie would call us. And maybe she's right, but your Mother was all sweet and spice. Crying one minute, laughing the next, temperamental— her little body could hardly hold all the spirit she had." T WAS surprised. Knowing Dad's na ture I had always thought my mother to be as quiet and unemotional as he. I had tried to model myself after the perfect housekeeper -and the unobtrusive companion I had imagined her. But perhaps he had missed something— something noisy and gay and tempestuous that Mother had given him. I felt bewildered and hurt. It was too much. For the second time tonight was I to be judged — and found wanting? "Why do things have to change!" I burst out. "Why can't they stay the same?" He patted my hand. "Change is growth, Mary. You can't go through life backwards." I thought about that when I was finally alone in my room. Dad was right. I must go forward. There was no room in my life now for regrets or for what might have been. My husband was a soldier and facing hardships I would never have to know. The least I could do would be to take the new name he had given me, the trust and the faith, and build a marriage he could come safely home to. And shut my heart to doubts. This— this other thing — his infatuation for Stephanie — was a sickness I was sure he would recover from. When he came back it would be to me. If he saw her on the street it would be with the eyes of a married man, looking at a closed chapter in his life. I would never have to worry about Philip cheating. Take core of Stephanie for me — I mustn't remember that! I must forget! Somehow I slept. Morning brought with it peace. Almost I could feel a door of my mind closing on the tortured broodings of last night. The telephone was ringing before I even got out of bed. The happy, teasing congratulations of my friends stamped my marriage as real. I took time after breakfast to slip over and tell Aunt Connie the news. "Well, it's about time!" Color came back to her face that was haggard with grief "I'm sorry it wasn't Henry, but I was reconciled to that a long time ago. I never thought you'd be getting married without me there to manage things. You and Philip are certainly right for each other, Mary. Sit down and tell me your plans." Her smug assurance that Philip and I were "right for each other" bolstered my confidence. "Plans?" I echoed. "We didn't have time, Aunt Connie." But just the thought of going windowshopping and apartment-hunting gave my marriage validity. It was something to do, something to write about to bridge any possible awkwardness between us. She sighed. "Time was when a young couple could start life together with pretty things and a little place of their own and settle down. But it will be all the nicer for you for waiting. It makes me feel terrible to think I wasn't there at the wedding— but — when I heard Henry was going overseas— " her voice broke and the tears coursed silently down her cheeks. "If I could just see him married to some nice girl!" I laughed. "Now, Aunt Connie! You know you don't think any girl is good enough for Henry!" On my waj* to the Day Nursery I thought about her words. I was fond of her, but just the same I was glad she wasn't my mother-in-law. But the plans she had mentioned — all the fuss and excitement that went with marriage in a small-town— had always seemed to me a necessary part, almost as much as the ceremony itself. The teas and kitchen showers, the hope chest brimming over with monogrammed linen to be admired, the little jokes and well-wishes, the solemn pricing of dining-room sets, the ransacking of parental attics for old bits of furniture— even the hateful charivari —I had expected these for Philip and myself. Our wedding seemed incomplete without them. Which was silly and trivial. Ours was a war-time wedding. And, in my heart, I knew I was consciously mourning these things to avoid thinking of the deeper loss— the lack of certainty and faith in our marriage. The children were already drinking their orange-juice when I arrived. "Well, Mary," Mrs. Lane's greeting was brisk. "Connie McCarthy stUl in bed? I hardly expected you here today. I should think a bride would be home sobbing in her pillow with her new husband off to the wars" And Margie Lane had never been noted for her tact. I could have told her I had done all my sobbing before my wedding. Now I was glad Ph.lip had left so suddenly -it would give us both time to get back on our old footing. All morning I worked and played with the children. When it came lime / stared, dazed and unbelievingThere was no mistaking the Ump form Philip carried in his arms. for their nap I gathered them around me at the piano. First a few son£, then a story to put them in the qfim mood for sleeping. I loved them a" Their faces upturned were so clean an smiling and alive and— so Attfia «■ All races, all creeds, and all adoraDKMy heart contracted. Someday rTuw and I might have children of our ow • It was after the younger ones w asleep that I came upon Susan uam crying in the cloakroom. . ■ , Are "Susan, dear, tell me what it isyou sick?" I asked. She was nUie' „ of five older children who came at for the hot lunch we served. „ob She flung herself upon me. Miss Brockman! We're going aw«k, we're going back to New ^ Momma doesn't like it here ana » *Z£*f*?Ti won>t need *«m much «»£yi ww* want t0 go! x want VictoX' n?s gom8 to look after my P™, harden if I go?" WDW. Susan!— who went into me flow p m her garden. Who brought she h^j ? M ** they were miracles I s£»,^scovered herself! But ihT*1-*6 chUd a* best I could. about h» meht * told Au"t Connie out of Z ""able to get her distress ^of my mind. "ems'a l°hVeS eTowine things so. It »" acart^ . e to have her go back to *ithom T £ Where she can>t see &*** , '1 knot l?f SF" si«" on "" •own faJTi'i ut lts one less Trailer *• GZwy'-Mary *"<* as ^e as amble *n't needed at the plant any more, well i „.. "But U'sTcnle ^'n80? riddance!" uprooting her ££ thaT*! "V ChUd' . "Roots, indeed!" AW rlprotested sitting bolt uprighfTh m"?JSniffed' Poster bed On? I ^ her old *omcrocheteTbedtrear^8"130^ the "Gypsies, that's^hat th em^^haven't any roots*" "** are! *»** JhrPK'riu^«y. that she was my see "us atrnosprTe-re^whrrefhrihfiv^1" and mv wi«h ♦„ — .. . """vea — right BnTT; "'"""ntly. that she her hapPy and^an^grtw10 S~ this atmnsnhor. _u7I s™wmg Aunt Connie, I told myself fiercely s^read^T ^^own-one ta? to Kghoii "s^n? s*r* would only leavHT only' shemTghfol gone Before Philip came back? <5tIJlad "° intention of "looking after" Kf""' I WOuldn't have known how to go about making friends with kff-^fn if her very name hadn't been torture to me. I knew she had no family except a Marine Sergeant brother; I knew she shared a trailer with an elderly woman she called Gramma" and who was no relation to her All this she had volunteered that night at the Old Mill. DUT she had been taking care of her** self for years and she would probably resent any overtures I might make. The only sensible thing was to let the matter drop. But what if Philip asked about her, in his letters? There was no time for a letter to come from him — before real tragedy struck, shattering my own personal problems to nothingness. As if he had clung to life only long enough to see me safely married, Dad died that Thursday morning. It happened so quickly — by the time I had reached Dr. Bassmer, Dad was already gone. * Aunt Connie had made coffee for me in the kitchen. Somehow she had managed to put aside her own troubles to share mine. "It will make you feel better — a good, strong cup of coffee, Mary. You mustn't take on so," she admonished. But there was no frenzy in my grief. The weak tears I could not check were regret that I had not been closer to Dad all these years. I knew, somehow, that he was glad to go— to Mother. For the first time I realized how empty his life had been without her. What had my Mother given my Dad that had kept his heart yearning for her all these years? What was that elusive something that women like Mother and girls like Stephanie possessed— and I did not? "Were they happy, Aunt Connie? Mother and Dad, I mean." It didn't seem right to be asking, but I had to know . .... j j Her mouth tightened. "It depends on what you mean by "happy. Flibberty-gibberty, she was. But I won t be speaking ill of the dead. She cut ^:t°teoLtarplyandbu3iedher of^Lfv.'"1! C,?nnie had not approved had S »tr! Ya£UeIy' the Dicture Dad one l£T ,°' hCr WaS placing the And ^r»n„ ,WayS Carried m W «"ind. And, strangely, I wanted to defend herto take her part against Aunt Conn"' I was confused. Had I inherited any 0 the challenge and the temperamem of this new picture of Mother' shrank from the idea. I wanted to be if ^lry Brockman, the child, the girl 1 had been; the woman I was now A,mtVUneral arrangements were in Aunt Connie's capable hands. I had nothing to do. Alone, in the hushed and darkened rooms, where the scent of flowers hung sickeningly sweet, I had too much tune to think and brood. For that reason, the envelope that came by messenger, with Stephanie Vosper's name in the corner, seemed to possess a malevolent life of its own thatseeped though my fingers. I tore it „£„, m,','™?,' Uary U hope V°U do»'t rnind my calling you that> ^^ th h met only once), 1 wanted to write you how sorry I was to hear about „our wh„t 1imu3t ^ve b*<™ we", from tcnat— here a name was scratched out and the word "everybody" scrawled above it"everybody said about him. l wish 1 had known him. My own Pa was a drunken bum, but he had had 1 i. . ll and he was Bood to me. I felt tembly tohen he died. So I know how you feel. If there's anything I can do, just call on me. Stephanie Vosper. Anger beat in me, suffocating me My own Pa!— with a few words she had managed to reduce our feelings to a level that was horrible! I tore the note to shreds. I felt sick. And then Philip's letter came, after so long a wait. Philip was overseas, but that was no shock— he had prepared me for that. I opened it wearily expecting almost anything. And the first words stole out from the coldness of pen and ink like a benediction. "My own dear wife—" it began. My own dear wife! Like shadows in the night, fear melted before the sure reality of his words. "I am writing this on the train that is taking me farther and farther away from you and I miss you more with every turn of the wheels. Keep a light burning for me, Mary, and I'll find my way back to you and someday we'll have that home you want and I'll finish law school at night and hang out my shingle over the Tilbury First National Bank, and we'll be a settled, honest-to-goodness married couple.' You mean home to me, darling. You're what I want to come back to. Right now Henry is playing his mouth organ, sitting on his cot — " But I didn't care what Henry was doing. I went back to the first and read it over. And read it again. My heart grew lighter and happier with each reading, until I felt it would burst. My own dear wife! I was Philip's wife. The boy in the torn corduroy pants with the unruly cowlick, the sunny smile — and the girl in the satin hair-ribbon — had known from child "