Chapter 1
She lived in a photograph over a mantle of crosses. She was in an image of moonless night black and milky white. While she is not in color I can still see her red lips and the beautiful string of golden pearls around her neck.
As I brush off his medals that hold blood-filled memories she watches me. She is not malicious, she just observes so she can soak up his life that she missed. I miss him too.
I knew he loved me, but I also knew that he too loved her. She was beauty, she was grace. She was someone I envied, but also someone I valued. She was almost like a perfect story, almost like a goddess. I thought of her sometimes as Athena or Persephone. Sometimes I wished I was her, with her perfect curls, her perfect skin, and her perfect eyes. Sometimes I questioned if he could love her, how could he love me?
What is my decision?
Through years I learned that love is something that is shared, not something that is held in a cage, like a desolate bird wishing to fly free. Love is the spirit of a flock of birds that dance in the sky and put on wonderful shows as timeless as Greek tragedies.
My love, his love, her love. My husband has filled my mind with her memory. It was almost as if I knew her. I imagined her delicate hands with bandages working quickly.
That day he spoke of her so clearly.
More than fifty years ago, ten years into our marriage, my husband and I sat down, both of us widows, to discuss the ones we had preached our hands to more than a decade before. He would discuss his first wife who lived in the photograph and I would discuss my first husband who lived in a cloth. He went first. He commenced the memories.
“I met her in French Morocco. It was so strange being there, it was a different place from what I knew. I was chewing on my sleeve, full of nerves when she came up and offered me a peppermint.
‘Try chewing on that, it’ll calm you a bit, and how about we run your hands under some water to stop the shaking?’ She walks me over to a tap and turns it on. Freezing water runs over my hands and my hands calm. After she pats me on the shoulder and walks away. Just like that.”
“What did she look like, dear?” I asked encouraging him.
“She had black short hair that straddled her ears, beautiful brown skin, deep, wide eyes. Her shoulders were pulled back in confidence, her chin held forward with grace, and her hands were soft and built for helping.” He paused for a moment “Does that sound strange?”
“No, it doesn’t sound strange.” I stop looking at my husband who was pressed into his favorite chair and gaze at my hands. What does he think of mine? He continues.
“I- I fantasized about her for days after that,” my husband stuttered. “I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted to be in her presence. I wanted to make her laugh, be there for her when she cried, and I barely knew her. I thought to myself that it had come to an obsession. I was caught in the claws of lust.” He smacks his lips. This conversation is foreign. It was a struggle for him to start. “So, tell me about him,” he says, passing the torch. I take it reluctantly.
My cheeks fluster. My first love did not live in a picture like his. He lived in a towel, folded up in a drawer under a mantle of crosses. She lived in his skin. He lived in my blood.
“He was funny. It’s the simplest of things but laughter is desperately needed in wartime. I was on the eastern front, eighteen, close to nineteen, and horrified out of my mind. There was a snowstorm outside that blew around snowflakes making it look like we were in a kaleidoscope. I was gripping a cup of pudding and when I slid back a curtain, I saw him. I wish I could say I noticed his lips or something romantic, but I noticed his nose-first. I was obviously broken. It was turned to the left brutally. Then I noticed his eyes. They moved sharply and every ten movements they would cross then snap back into place. I was captivated by him.”
“What did he look like despite his novelty nose and runaway eyes?” my husband chuckled. He was leaning toward me now. He was interested in him as much as I was interested in her.
“Pale skin from fighting in the Russian winter, round eyes, rough skin. I brought him his pudding and he thanked me before eating it almost ravenously. I don’t want to say that this was the moment I fell in love, but that was the moment I started walking down the path to love. When did you know you loved her?”
“Umm, I’m not exactly sure but I remember the shift. As you said, I knew when I started down the path. In Morocco, all the time I was thinking about her, but I had to go on with my responsibilities. There was fighting, so she became just a thought. As I said earlier, she became a fantasy; something to occupy my mind, but when we left Morocco and went to Sicily, something changed. It was like a shifting dial. I was sitting in the dirt, trying to pick some food from my teeth when she came and bent over me. It was like staring into the sun, she was so intimidating and enchanting. She was holding out a mint to me.
‘Here,’ she cooed with the sweetness of a morning dove that used to wake me back home across the Atlantic. So I took the mint and our hands lingered on each other a bit longer than acquaintances do. I was running down the love path then. Your turn.”
“Well, as I said I was captivated by him. So I would bring him his meals and I would get sucked up in conversation. He told me how he almost died. He stared down the face of a gun held by a German soldier. By some weird change of fate, or maybe a change of heart, the soldier turns around his gun and smashes him in the face with the butt of the gun instead of shooting him. It broke his nose, gave him a horrid concussion, and knocked his eyes about into a silly loop. He survived on pure adrenaline. He grabbed the gun and pummeled the soldier. He told me how pieces of teeth flew about. Then he ran; ran for his life. That’s how he came to the hospital on the eastern line. That’s how he came to me.”
“In August 1943, we won Sicily. After that, a plan to invade the boot of Italy was to take place. We did have a chance for celebration though. We seized every chance for a party.” My husband’s head began to drift to the side and his tongue skated on his lips. “My friends and I start drinking. Now I’m nineteen. I’ve barely had a drink ever. Maybe a small bit of wine has passed my lips, but nothing heavy. I’m the first one to tap out and then I’m out in the camp throwing up. The tents around me have a yellow glow like Christmas lights. It was like a holiday. When we were fighting we slept in holes. So anyway I’m spewing my guts out. My throat is burning and my mouth is warm. I feel a hand on my back and it’s her. She runs her hand over my head and pushes back my hair. Then she lifts a canteen to my lips. Water rinses out my mouth and it feels like I’m bathing under a waterfall in the garden of Eden.
‘A little too much?’ she laughs. I look into her eyes that are deep pools and flash her a half alcohol drunk, half love drunk smile. ‘Handsome, are you alright?’ she asks.
‘I’m sobering up,’ I say standing up and fixing my posture.
‘Get back to your tent safely,’ she says and her hand drifts to the small of my back.”
My husband holds his hands out trying to recreate the moment in the air. His fingers lighten gently to mimic dainty femininity. This causes me to draw my hands into my chest to try and imitate the strong masculine hold that I felt in 1943 that contrasted what my husband once felt on the small of his back.
“He would get nosebleeds all the time. So I would go in and hold an ice cube wrapped in a towel to his nose. Then we would go on walks. We’d sneak out of the hospital and go into the woods to smoke cigarettes. We would pretend to be soldiers protecting our little paradise in the pines. Through the snow, we would move like wolves desperate for a meal in the winter cold. One day we were out in the trees when I took off my gloves to grab a cigarette. I light one for him, then myself. We smoke for a bit, then snuff out the cigarettes in the snow. My fingers are freezing. I’ve lost my gloves. So he unbuttons his coat and slips my hands under his shirt. He cups my hands and holds them to his chest. My hands then began to warm and he kissed me for the first time. When did you kiss her?”
“We had a second night to celebrate. I paced myself that time but I did step out of the tent to walk about the night. I saw her standing in the middle of the camp. She was looking up at the stars. I went up to join her.
‘You came to find me,’ she says.
‘I’ve been thinking about you’ I replied.
‘I have the honor of you thinking of me?’
‘You have captured my attention.’
‘Well, handsome you have too.’ She reached into her pocket and pulled out a mint. I take it and pop the treat into my mouth. We look up to stars and watch the universe together.
‘You think there are some other people on a planet out there who aren’t fighting a war?’ I say tossing the mint around with my tongue.
‘I’d like to think so. I’d like to go there; to a place with peace.’
‘Let’s go together.’
‘Alright, soldier.’ Then under the shining stars, we kiss.”
I reach over to grab a glass of water that is sitting stagnant on the side table next to my chair. My husband watches me and once I take my sip and return the glass to its place, my husband slides to the end of his chair. Our lips drift together slowly like two ghost ships that were destined to meet by the tides of fate. “Tell me more about him,” my husband whispers. So I start up again about my first love.
“After we kissed in the woods, we dipped our toes into the relationship pool, but destiny put us down a different road. Once his concussion dissipated and his nose healed, he was discharged from the hospital and sent back to the fighting on the eastern front. We wrote to each other when we had the chance and we fell in love.” My voice began to waver and I had to push the words out of my throat now. “I loved him so much and every day I lived in agony at the thought of him being on the front line.” I had to stop myself then. I was walking on the line to close. I nodded to my husband and I slid back into my chair.
“We were together in Italy the whole time and we fell in love. When Italy joined the allies we turned our focus on France. She came along. We were together for the last months of 1943 and the first half of 1944. In those months we were together every moment that we could be. She once crawled into a trench with me. I cursed her but she just wanted to be close to me so I took off my helmet and set it on her head then held her close as I fought on the western front. We obviously couldn’t be married because we were in a war, if we made it back to New York we could have gotten married possibly, but either way, in those insufferable times we considered each other husband and wife.”
My husband swallowed aggressively once he finished speaking. He knew the hard part was coming. I was hesitant but I knew I had to speak.
“He and I were our own type of married for two years.” We had never married either but the Russian soldier and I liked to think we did. I began to sniffle. “You see- he always got nose bleeds. It was a winter night and I was feeding egg drop soup to a dying soldier. When the bowl is empty I go to wash my hands. A nurse that I’m friends with comes and pulls on my arm. We’re running through the halls and I’m fighting through a web of confusion. She takes me to a radio where other nurses have huddled around. They all look at me strangely.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘A battalion pushing east was massacred.’ I lean in closer to the radio and listen.
‘Isn’t that the battalion your boyfriend was in?’
‘Not possible. The Germans were being pushed back west! We were winning. No. It’s not a possibility. I will get a letter from him, I will.’ I run outside and I dry heave. The ground is cold and I never get a letter from him. After the war, I looked for him. I was told he was missing in action, presumed dead. They could never find a body. What I had left of him was a bloody cloth that I didn’t throw away when he left.”
My husband took a breath that he held until he felt he could steady his tongue.
“We were separated in late August of 1944. She was to stay in Paris to help with the relief efforts after the liberation of Paris and I was to press on. She set up a mailbox in Paris for me to write to her, so whenever I had a chance to sit down I would grab pen and paper and carry the words to the next mailbox. She was my first love; I spilled all of my ardor onto her. May seventh, 1945 the Germans surrendered. When I got the chance I made my way to Paris. I met another nurse there and she was the one to tell me that my wife was killed in a car accident on her way to a refugee camp two weeks before. She had left a photograph. It was a portrait of her in black and white. I had to go back home to New York and I went home with only a photograph of her and not her in my hands.”
I left my chair and went over to my husband. I sat upon his knee and he welcomed me into his chest. His head nestled in the curve of my neck.
“I love you,” I mewled.
“I love you. When I came back home to New York for years I wandered around the city feeling desolate. Then one summer day I get a craving for lemonade so I stop at this little store and I see a gorgeous woman sitting by herself drinking iced tea.
‘It’s scorching out there,’ I say.
‘Here sit,’ she says without hesitation. ‘Look you can see the heat rising off the street,’ she says as she points to the pavement. I sit next to her and we watch the world moving outside. Then we begin to talk. We land on the topic of the war. It’s 1952, the war ended seven years ago and the city has seemed to move on, but the two of us, strangers, have not and we have stories to tell. So to share these stories we go on dates. Then somehow we’re married.”
I smiled broadly as he finished the tale of our meeting. I steady myself and prepare to pick up the story; to carry the torch.
“Now the lovely couple sits on their tenth wedding anniversary and do what they do best: share stories.”
This was the end of our recollection. Our marriage moved on with us diving into caverns and soaring like eagles. We celebrated many more anniversaries and we lit candles for the black and white portrait and stared at the bloody cloth, but we never talked thoroughly about our first loves again. That’s why I found the decision so difficult after my husband died.
My husband died a few weeks after our fifty-sixth wedding anniversary. The house is still now and the air is warm on this summer night. She, his first love, lies in a cemetery not far from the city. She’s in a plot by herself, alone. My husband awaits in the morgue for my decision. I own a plot in the city, fit for two people, but my husband never disclosed where he must lay.
It takes me a night to make a decision. In the morning I am rocking in my chair and I know. I get up for a glass of water and my knees cry. My heart feels queer.
Whenever I feel too lonely in the apartment I take a car outside of the city. I go into the sea of stones of all types of people who want to leave their mark. The trees sway and under a pine there he lays with her.
Together again and forever they stay. I, on the other hand, when the tides of fate allow, will be buried in the city, my body alone but my name etched next to the name of the pale, crooked-nosed, crazy-eyed soldier.
