Radio Mirror: The Magazine of Radio Romances (Jan-June 1943)

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I did not realize when Eric said that he would see me before and after the program on Saturday, that those few hours — spent in the ride to and from Butte — would be the only time we would have together until the following Saturday, which would be passed in the same dismal fashion. Somehow, before, time spent with Eric had not seemed like time at all, but — well, just pure happiness without beginning and without end. After he left me the glow remained at first, vividly, strongly, as if he had not yet gone, but it did not stay long enough. Not nearly long enough. In the interval between our meetings I went over every word of our last conversation together, recalling his every expression, the way he reached out to touch me sometimes as if to reassure himself that I was really with him, but even so, I had not had enough of him to keep me company while he was away. I planned things to say to him when I saw him next, as a girl in love thinks of things to say to a new and exciting man; I sorted and saved accounts of little incidents which occurred around the boardinghouse and in the town — there were few enough of them — which I thought would amuse him. But when the long, empty days had dragged by, when I saw him again, I had forgotten the things I had stored up, and worse, I found myself tense and almost tongue-tied at the realization that in a few hours he would again be gone for another series of endless days. UROM then on life became unbear•* able for me there. There was absolutely nothing I could do to pass the time. I had never considered myself completely lazy and resourceless, but I tried everything I could think of, and I still found nothing to do. I read until my eyes ached. I walked until I was sickeningly familiar with every inch of the town and the surrounding territory. I began to learn to knit, and the local department store promptly ran out of yarn. The town's one theater changed pictures once a week, and on more than one occasion I paid to see the picture for the third time, simply because it gave me the illusion, at least, that I was doing something. There were plenty of women to keep me company, but they, too, were without their men, and we succeeded only in boring and depressing each other with interminable recitations of the last time we had seen our husbands. Worst of all, I felt that Eric and I were growing farther apart, a separation encouraged by the very circumstance which the authorities had arranged to help keep us together — visiting days at the camp. I grew to fear those days as much as I had at first looked forward to them. On visiting days a bus carried me and forty other women in circumstance much like mine to the camp, where we were privileged to sit with our husbands on a bench on the edge of the parade grounds for a couple of hours until we we could catch a bus back to town. On rainy days we met in the Y.M.C.A. building. Nevertheless, outside or inside, it was equally bad. There was absolutely no privacy. We sat like strangers, talking stiffly, being polite. Eric felt it, too — I knew from the way he gripped my arm as he helped me to the bus, clutching at it as if to reassure himself and me that we really weren't losing e?ch other. ¥ KNOW now that I became hyper ■*■ sensitive about his attitude. His very consideration was a reproach to me. I knew that he worried about me, and because he so carefully avoided even mentioning the subject, I was sure that he would have been happier if I had stayed in Allensport. There came that Saturday morning when I did not want to get up and face the day which held no hope and no interest. I lay late in bed, feeling miserable and feeling also that I had no energy to rise. The sun forced me up, finally, beating through the window and heating the room to suffocation point. I got to my feet, breathing with difficulty in the close, hot air, and pushed at the window. It stuck, as usual. I flung my full weight against it, and, as it gave and receded upwards, I felt suddenly cold, colder than the rush of summer air should have made me, and blackness closed me in. Somewhere, somehow, in the midst of that faint, I learned its cause. It seemed really less like a loss than like a detachment of consciousness, as if the most sensitive and receptive part of me were taken into a sacred place where the rest of me could not follow. Then the sensation passed, and the detached parts of me were again one, and I became aware of the world around me, a brighter world, with the sunlight more yellow, the sky a clearer blue. I got to my feet, moving carefully this time, knowing my body to be suddenly and infinitely precious. "Eric," I thought. "I must tell Eric. We are going to have a baby, and I must tell him right away." I couldn't tell him right away, of course, but I was so elated at my discovery that I felt impelled, for the first time in days, to go down to breakfast. I planned, as I went down the stairs, to go out to camp to see him that afternoon, even though it was Saturday, and he would come into town in the early evening to take me to Butte with him. At the table Stella was, as always, holding forth with her usual quota of town gossip picked up in the course of her travels the night before. As I came in she was saying something about "that poor kid at Hurley's Cafe" and I, feeling unusually gay and sociable, asked brightly, "What poor kid at Hurley's?" "The little brunette, Rose," said Stella. "What's poor about her?" I asked. Stella gave me one of her worldlywise, pitying looks. "Why, she's going to have a baby, that's all." The way I felt that morning I could look Stella right in the eye and challenge her opinions. "And what's wrong with that?" I demanded. "Wrong with it!" Stella exclaimed. "What's right with it? Her husband's Continued on page 54 RADIO MIRROR