Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1942)

Janice heard her words reverberate in the ghastly silence, and she wondered — would she regret the decision she had made? Start reading this thrilling novel of a young girl faced with one of today's most heart-breaking problems 1 DON'T believe in mental telepathy or anything supernatural, but just the same I was having a hard time concentrating on my work that morning before Bruce walked into my office and told me the news that was to toss our lives into such an upheaval that they never would settle down again into the pattern we had dreamed for years. I was sitting before my typewriter in the little office that Station WUVG had assigned to my boss for preparing his program which you know as the Counsel of Common Sense. My notes were neat as usual, propped up before me in a good light, yet the curlicues of my shorthand simply would not resolve themselves into the worried questions of Dr. Dale's clients and his calm, well-rounded sentences of advice and reassurance. My eyes kept getting out of focus so that I would see instead the sand-blond close-clipped head of Bruce MacDougall above his stocky strong shoulders, and his blue eyes that were always clear — sometimes too clear; you knew, looking at them, that there was no chance of compromise with what he thought was right. Like the way he felt about our marriage. I'd have married him three years ago, almost from the time we met. I'd have walked right into those arms of his the minute I looked at him, I think, and been content to stay there, no matter what went on around us. I was sure Bruce wanted me there, too, but it was a long time before he told me so. Maybe too long. But I just waited, knowing his kisses would make up for any waiting. And they did! But after that the waiting was worse. Kisses aren't enough, after a while. And pretty soon the waiting begins to do something to your love. Three years is too long to hold your love down to safe, discreet limits, if you're young. Now I was twenty-three, and Bruce was twenty-five, and I was sure that we'd been wrong to wait so long. But what could we have done? I respected Bruce for his sense of honor and obligation, and I agreed that maybe our marriage wouldn't have the breaks it deserved if we tried to live in a small apartment with his younger brother Jamie. My salary plus Bruce' s salary in the broker's office where he worked wouldn't swing the kind of place we'd have needed while Jamie was still in high school. But now Jamie had graduated. He had a job in a shipyard, earning his own living, and after all these years we had our chance. Or did we? It was 1942. Bruce had a draft number and it would soon be up. You couldn't blame him for hesitating about marriage. But I began to feel some new and awful doubts. Suppose Bruce was really not so eager, way down deep, to marry me? Do you wonder I couldn't concentrate on transcribing nice commonsensible answers to other people's problems? I got up and walked back and forth in the office, stopped and stared out the window over the blue harbor where once some men had dumped some tea and started the first war for the freedom that Bruce would have to fight to hold. But I wasn't thinking of history and I wasn't seeing the rusty scarred tankers that came bravely plowing across that harbor now. I was seeing Bruce MacDougaLTs solid, freshcolored face and going back over my memory to try to find the love there that I wanted to believe. Funny that the door opened right then and he walked in. "Talk about angels," I said, my breath catching in my throat so that my voice squeaked a little. "And you hear their wings rustle." "Not wings," Bruce said. There was something breathless about his voice too. "You've put me in the wrong class, Jan. I'm just a humble member of the ground crew." "Bruce!" I sat down at my desk, too weak to stand. I looked up at him and saw that his eyes were shining with a different kind of brilliance from their usual clear blue. "Bruce — have you — you're not saying you've gone and — Oh, you're not — " He gave a funny little chuckle. "I have and I am," he said, his cheeks flushed. "I enlisted a while ago and now I've been accepted. I'll be called up any day." "Bruce — and you didn't tell me — " It was just a whisper because my voice wouldn't come now. It was all I could do to keep that hotness back of my eyes from turning into tears. "No, I didn't." His voice was earnest and reasonable but his eyes were pleading in their intensity. "I figured, why get us worked up over something that might not pan out after all? Time enough to talk about it when I'd passed the tests and everything was set. Besides, it works out all the same in the end, 16