Don't Talk to Me About the War (4 page)

T
he next morning, the apartment is quiet. Dad’s lunch pail is gone, so I know he went to work, and I guess Mom is still sleeping. At breakfast, I’m careful not to make noise. Sometimes, when the water is on full, the pipes bang, so I use just a little to wash my dish and knife.

I hurry out and feel guilty. I tell myself I rushed out so Mom could rest, but I know I didn’t want to see her hand shaking or hear her words slur when she tells me about the weather.

As soon as I leave our building I realize I should have looked out the window. It’s windy and cool for the end of May. I shiver on my way to Goldman’s. When I walk in, I see Beth at the corner table surrounded with newspapers as usual. This time she has the table to herself.

“Where’s your jacket?” she asks. “It’s cold.”

“The sun will come out. It will warm up.”

Beth points to a map in her newspaper and tells me, “There’s good news! The Allies are fighting back! British bombers hit some of the bridges held by the Germans, and the French sent in more soldiers. Oh, and look at this!” She closes the paper and shows me an article on the front page. “The British government is now going to draft even more men to serve in the army. Their new prime minister, Winston Churchill, says his people will keep fighting till the war is won.”

Beth tells me what’s happening here, that our Senate has voted to spend millions of dollars for our army and navy.

“Why did they do that? We’re not in any war.”

“But soon we might be,” Beth says, “even if we don’t want it. We might be attacked or we might decide to help fight the Germans. We can’t let them take over Europe!”

“Why? ”

That might sound stupid to Beth, but I really want to know why she’s so upset about what’s happening thousands of miles away.

“Because the Nazis are evil. That’s why. Don’t you know what they did to Sarah, that they chased her and her family from their home? And once they conquer Europe, we might be next.”

Beth carefully folds the newspapers.

Dad says fighting in a war often sounds like the right thing to do, until you do it. He was in Europe, in the Great War, and said he was in a muddy ditch most of the time. He was cold, hungry, and scared. He saw people killed.

We leave Goldman’s, and I look at Beth. I wonder if she would be so wrapped up in this trapped soldier stuff if her mother was still alive. I bet she would be thinking more about her mom’s illness.

As we walk past the bakery I just say it. “I’m worried about Mom.”

Beth stops. She turns to me and asks, “Why?”

I tell her about Mom’s shaky hand, her blurry vision, and that she drops things.

“What’s wrong?”

“We don’t know, and we’re worried. We want her to go to a doctor, to check her out.”

“I remember when my mom first got sick. It took a while for her to decide to see a doctor.”

And I know what happened to Beth’s mother.

We stop at the corner and Sarah is walking toward us. Beth looks at me. She wants to know if she could talk about Mom in front of her. I shake my head. I don’t need everyone knowing what’s happening in my house.

Sarah joins us, and Beth tells her that the English and French bombed German-held bridges.

“That is good,” Sarah says. “I am happy they are fighting back.”

The sidewalk is more and more crowded the closer we get to school. Children are talking, shouting, and laughing.

We walk into the building, and Dr. Johnson is standing there, his chest out, stomach in, and his hands on his hips. He says good morning to us, only it doesn’t sound like a greeting. It sounds more like a command, that he orders us to have a good morning.

Yes, sir!
I think.
I will have a good morning, sir!

He was a soldier in the Great War, a sergeant. That’s what my friend Charles said. Maybe that’s why he stands like that and why he’s so big on rules.

Sarah leaves us. She walks to the right, to go to her class, and before we go to the left, Beth whispers to me, “We can talk about your mother later, on the way home if you want.”

I nod. I want that, and not just because I like Beth. I need to talk to someone other than Dad about what’s happening at home.

Mr. Weils is standing by the door to our homeroom. He stands real straight, too, only he’s not nearly as tall as Dr. Johnson. I sit in homeroom and think about all that’s going on, about the war, the Dodgers, and Mom. At first, I don’t hear Mr. Weils when he calls my name.

“Duncan,” he says real loud. “Are you here or not? ”

I raise my hand.

“I’m here,” I answer.

Weird. He looked at me and asked if I was here. I bet if I had answered, “No, I’m not here,” or had not said anything, he would have marked me absent.

Mr. Weils reads a memo from Dr. Johnson. “Eating in the lunchroom is a privilege.” I know what’s coming next, stuff about not running, making sure we clean our tables—so I don’t listen. Mostly in school, I don’t listen.

During history, I’m thinking about Mom, and Mr. Baker, my history teacher, asks me some question and I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t even know what he asked.

“Tommy, try to stay with us,” he says.

I try, but he’s talking about the Constitutional Convention, the one in Philadelphia in 1787, and I guess if I had been there, it would have been real interesting, but listening to Mr. Baker talk about it is boring.

Beth is in history with me. I look at her. She smiles, and I feel better about sitting in class. The bell rings and we walk together to our lockers to get our lunch bags. Beth doesn’t say anything about my not listening in class. I guess she knows what I was thinking about.

We sit at our usual table, and Beth takes something from her bag and gives it to me. It’s wrapped in paper. “This is for you. End pieces.”

It’s the bread Beth baked. She even brought some for Roger and Charles. I taste it, and it’s better than what Mom buys from the bakery.

“Thanks,” Roger says, and bites into his piece. “Just the way I like it.”

“Yes, thanks,” Charles says real quiet.

In the afternoon, I have trouble paying attention again, even to Miss Heller in English.

What could be wrong with Mom? I wonder how long it was before Beth knew her mom was really sick.

Later, after school, it’s windy and raining. It’s hard to really talk, so I go into Goldman’s with Beth. We sit by one of the tables and Beth answers all my questions.

“It all happened so quickly to my mother,” she says. “There really wasn’t anything I could do. There wasn’t anything
anyone
could do.”

“Did her hands shake? Did her vision get blurry?”

“No, she just got weak,” Beth says. “She lost a lot of weight. She hurt.”

“Mom never tells us she’s hurting,” I say, “just that her legs are stiff.”

“You just have to hope she goes to a doctor soon, that he says it’s nothing serious, that she just needs to take some pill or get more rest or something.”

We sit there for a while without talking.

Then Beth looks at me and says, “Don’t get angry.”

“Why would I get angry?”

“I’m going to say something I’ve been thinking ever since you told me your mom’s hand shakes, that she drops things, and her vision is sometimes blurry.”

Beth looks at me, takes a deep breath, and says, “During the day, while you’re at school and your dad is at work, she may be drinking. Whiskey or wine. You know, she may have a drinking problem.”

“No.”

“She’s home all day. She’s alone.”

“No,” I tell Beth. “Not my mom.”

Goldman brings us each a glass of milk.

“Thanks,” Beth says.

I also thank Mr. Goldman, “But I can’t pay now,” I tell him. “I don’t have money with me.”

He smiles and says, “Don’t worry. No charge.”

Beth and I sit quietly and drink the milk. It’s real cold, real refreshing.

She puts down her glass. “In Buffalo there was a woman on our block who had a drinking problem, and her hands shook. She would make up all sorts of stories. You could never believe her. She said she was once a silent movie star, and she’d tilt her head to the side and say, ‘I was also a fashion model. A prince once proposed marriage to me and I said no.’

“I asked why her hands shook and she leaned in close and whispered, ‘Coffee. I drink too much coffee. The caffeine makes me shake.’ But you know what? When she was that close to me, I could
smell
the whiskey.”

I sit there and try, but I can’t imagine Mom in that big chair with a bottle of whiskey.

“Look around,” Beth tells me. “Look in the pantry, in the back, behind things. Look for a bottle. Check the trash for an empty.”

“You’re wrong,” I say again.

Goldman comes and takes the empty glasses. We thank him and he smiles. He wipes the table with a towel and goes behind the counter again.

Beth says, “Maybe I
am
wrong. I never met your mom.”

“I’ll look for bottles, but I know I won’t find them. My mom is
not
drinking.”

Beth walks with me to the door. She takes an afternoon paper from the bench,
The New York World Telegram.
The rain has mostly stopped. I say good-bye to her and Goldman and hurry home.

When I get upstairs, before I go to our apartment, I look in the incinerator room for empty wine or whiskey bottles. There are none, just lots of old newspapers. I take yesterday’s
New York Daily Mirror
, the paper Beth’s dad works on. It has a good sports section.

NAZIS TRAP THOUSANDS! is the headline on the front page. I turn the paper over. YANKS WIN WITH 12 HITS is the headline on the back. Beneath that is a picture of Dolph Camilli of the Dodgers at the plate swinging his bat with a caption that says it’s the ninth inning and he’s getting the game-winning hit in Tuesday’s game.

When I enter the parlor, Mom looks up. She’d been sleeping. It’s past three and there’s music playing on the radio instead of
The Romance of Helen Trent
.

Mom looks at the clock on the side table.

“Oh, my,” she says.

I quickly turn the dial to 570, WMCA.

I leave Mom and go to the kitchen. There’s nothing in the pantry behind the boxes of cereal and pasta. No bottle. I open the icebox. None in the vegetable bin or on the top shelf behind the milk and water.

I bring Mom a glass of ice water and say, “I thought you might be thirsty.”

Mom looks up at me, smiles, and says, “Thank you.”

When I set the glass down, I lean close and take a deep breath. Mom doesn’t smell of wine or whiskey. Beth is wrong. Mom doesn’t have a drinking problem.

But if Mom isn’t drinking, what
is
wrong? What’s happening to her?

I
throw my books on my bed and open the
Daily Mirror.
There’s a map of France, Belgium, and the English Channel with dotted lines, arrows, and numbers showing where the soldiers are trapped. ALLIES PANIC! is the headline on one of the inside pages. It looks serious.

Hey, I think. Why am I reading this? Why aren’t I reading the sports pages?

It’s Beth. She’s gotten me interested in the war.

I try working on my history homework, but after reading six pages, I can’t tell you one thing about it. It’s funny how I can read every word of something and not remember any of it.

Back in the parlor, Mom is listening to
Ma Perkins
and folding the laundry. Ma Perkins is worried about some boy who stole a purse and is in trouble with the police. She’s always worried about something! On the radio, in the afternoon, it’s one soap opera after another. Problems, problems, problems!

“Tommy, will you help me with the laundry? ”

I do, and as I fold the clothes, I notice her hands are steady. When she talks, her words are clear, not slurred. Next, I help her scrape and clean carrots and potatoes for a stew and set the table. Then I see how upset she is.