Apologies for not posting last week. A health event got in the way.
Onward for Chapter 2, in which we are introduced to Annie’s sole supportive relative and receives bad news.
Love’s Brilliant Wreckage, Chapter 2
Saturday, March 17, 1945
I woke at five. Dawn had yet to break. After a quick breakfast of toast and eggs—at least here on the farm, eggs weren’t so dear—I set the sourdough. Kneading bread was not my favorite activity, but this morning it allowed me to vent my anger.
I seethed about my father’s decision to move my things to the dining room and use my old room for two unnecessary boarders. Mike’s decision was stupid and inconsiderate and selfish. He’d more than lived up to all three attributes.
His drinking had grown worse. Of late, he’d either passed out or thumped around in a towering rage. I tried to stay away, but it would be harder once I moved to the main floor and only a closet separated our rooms.
I gave the dough a quarter turn and punched it harder.
What choice did I have? The farm had passed to him on my mother’s death. He held all the cards. I couldn’t afford to move out on my own, and what good would it do with the war escalating to an end? Either Jimmy returned and we married to settle wherever he found work, or . . .
No. Every ending resulted in happiness. He’d been gone for over three years and had so far escaped anything the war had thrown at him. I had no reason to doubt he’d survive a few more months or however long it took the Japanese to accept defeat.
I flipped the dough into a greased bowl, covered it with a square of flannel and washed up. A pile of laundry begged to be washed and hung on the line, but it could wait. I needed to get out of the house before I screamed.
Crisp, cold air greeted me as I opened the service door that led to the utility room containing the water heater and pump. I bypassed the wringer washer and pushed open the door to the outside.
Frost lay like a translucent ice blanket on the ground. It crunched under my boots as I picked up a bucket of potatoes I’d separated into eyes on Thursday night. Grabbing a hoe and a pair of work gloves from a hook, I set out for the garden.
A hundred feet square, it lay beyond the barnyard gate and to the left of the dilapidated chicken coop, which leaned against an elm tree. Mike had plowed it the weekend before, and crows picked out worms in the freshly turned dirt.
I pushed through the garden gate and walked to the rows at the north edge, where a hollow maple tree cradled what had once been my brother Donny’s treehouse.
Anger made planting less tedious. Jab the dirt with the hoe, throw in a potato eye, hill it with three or four scrapes of the hoe and move onto the next one. By the time the sun crested the empty hay field to the east, I’d planted two rows, enough to harvest four bushels in the fall. I’d have to plant at least twice as much to keep us fed next winter.
I stopped for breath and stretched the tightness in my back. The longer the row, the less my fury raged. Mike, and Dr. Smith, for that matter, couldn’t help being the men they were. Society dictated their attitude, and women taking over men’s factory jobs, or fuming on my part, wouldn’t change them.
But, I could control my reaction. As Mike had said, as soon as Jimmy returned, we’d get married and move away. Why should I care where I lived until then? I’d have to leave my room behind sooner or later.
I finished planting and returned to the house. By noon, laundry snapped on the clothesline outside, fresh made butter cooled in the refrigerator, and six loaves of bread baked in the oven.
The kitchen door slammed and someone shouted, “Annie! Yoo-hoo!”
I turned from washing dishes.
Maggie, my favorite aunt and one of my mother’s younger sisters, waddled into the kitchen. She balanced a half-bushel basket of last year’s apples on her hip. Jonathans, by the look of them.
Maggie hefted the basket onto the table then turned and hugged me. She smelled of vanilla extract and cooking sherry.
“If you can’t use them, feed them to the pigs,” she said with a wave of her hand. “If they sit any longer in my root cellar, they’ll go bad.”
“You’re not going to use them?” I hefted an apple in my palm. They looked perfectly all right.
Maggie and my uncle, Harlan, rented on the west side of town, two streets beyond the railroad tracks. She stopped by as often as possible because she thought of herself as a surrogate mother to us.
Maggie shrugged and sat in one of the kitchen chairs. Her brown eyes, identical in color to mine and Donny’s, wouldn’t meet mine.
A shaft of cold shot through my heart.
“Is something wrong?”
My aunt picked an apple from the basket and twisted the stem, reciting the alphabet until it broke off.
“H,” she said, satisfied. “They say the stem will break on the first letter of your future spouse’s name. I guess those old wives are right.”
I slid into a chair. “Mags, what’s wrong?” My aunt’s refusal to answer my questions worried me.
Maggie tossed the stem aside and met my gaze. “Harlan’s lost his job. We can’t stay on Walnut Street past the end of next month.”
My heart sank. Harlan worked at an appliance store, but with the scarcity of steel and everyone pinching pennies, it should have closed months ago.
“I was afraid of that. What are you going to do?” An offer to stay with us was at the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t dare say it. Mike didn’t get along with Maggie at all. My mother’s death had burned any bridges between them. Besides, where would they stay? If Mike hadn’t promised the new boarders my room, I would have gladly moved into the dining room for Maggie and Harlan to have it.
Maggie pitched the apple back in the basket. “Harlan’s brother has offered us a place with him.”
My heart shrank. “Oh, but—”
“He lives in Grand Rapids. We’ll have to move out of town.” She grabbed my hand and squeezed, but I didn’t feel reassured. “I hate to leave you and Donny alone.”
“We’re not alone.” But we were. Lost in a sea of strangers living in our home, neglected for the most part by our father. We’d had no one in our corner since our mother died two years ago.
“You can still visit.” My lame suggestion fizzled almost before I said it. Gas rationing made everyday travel a trial.
Desperation for my aunt’s company made me say, “I’ll consider living with Aunt Agnes again.” My mother’s other sister lived in Grand Rapids. Because I was older than the other trainees and the shortage of dormitory rooms at Dunlap-Dodge Nursing School, I’d stayed with her, five blocks away. I didn’t know which had been harder, learning about the human body, or facing her displeasure. She’d raised three children by a set of strict rules and didn’t understand anyone pursuing their own thoughts and dreams, like me wanting to be a nurse.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Living with Agnes is worse than living with Mike, and that’s saying a lot.”
Maggie got along with everyone with two exceptions, whom she’d named in the same sentence.
“You’ve less than three months of training left under Dr. Smith. Annie, you’d give that up to be closer to Harlan and me? I’m flattered, but it’s unnecessary.”
She was right. If I could endure ten more weeks of Dr. Smith’s grumbling and displeasure and he saw fit to write a good review of my work, I’d graduate. I’d miss Maggie’s company and her dropping by, but she had to do what was best for her family.
And I had to do what was best for me. The burdens I carried were small compared to completing the dream I’d nurtured since, at age eight, I’d decided to be a nurse.
“There, now,” Maggie said, releasing my hand. “Your mother’s good sense runs in your veins. Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face because you’re losing your biggest supporter. I’ll still be around.”
“I’m not losing you,” I said with a more heat than I intended. “You can still take the bus to Elmwood. It lets off right in front of the house.” I hated she wouldn’t be close by, but, like so many things nowadays, events didn’t take my feelings into consideration.
“What will Harlan do now?” He wasn’t the type to sit idle or join the breadlines. For as long as I could remember, he’d been full of energy, ready to tackle any job.
Maggie waved away my concern. “His brother is sure he can get him in at the ball-bearing plant where he works. Now enough about me. Tell me what’s happening with that handsome fiancé of yours.”
I could tell her a hundred things about Jimmy. What I couldn’t say, under any circumstances, as close as we were, was about the dream I’d had the day before. Or, locked in the tiniest corner of my mind, lurked the worry that it hadn’t been a dream at all.
**As always, the full, complete novel can be purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Loves-Brilliant-Wreckage-WWII-Novel-ebook/dp/B07D6ZRN2F/
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