Sentimental Journey (Home Front - Book #1) (14 page)

She hesitated, glancing over her right shoulder at him.

“About Martin,” he said, stumbling over the words. “I’ll try. I can’t promise anything more than that.”

She nodded and before he could say another word, the door swung shut behind her, leaving him alone with his dinner and his thoughts.

* * *

“What took you so long?” Eddie asked as she came down the stairs into the foyer. He was up on a stepladder, fastening some mistletoe to the ceiling light fixture. “Your mom said this was your job.”

“Sorry.” She held the ladder for him while he clambered back down. “I was talking to Johnny.”

“Right,” said Eddie. “The war hero.”

She threw her hands into the air in disgust. “Wonderful. Now I have two pigheaded idiots to worry about.” She pulled her coat from the closet and tossed it across her shoulders. “I’m going for a walk.”

“What about dinner? Les is about to carve the rest of the turkey.”

She wound a red-and-white knit scarf around her neck and jammed a matching cap on her head. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

“Come on, Cathy. It’s Christmas. You’re the only one I know here. If you don’t stay for dinner, how can I?”

Fumbling around in the deep pockets of her coat, she found her mittens. “By the way, who asked you to stay for dinner?”

Eddie looked affronted. At that moment she didn’t particularly care. “Nancy and your mother. If it’s a problem—”

“Everything’s a problem,” she snapped. “Go eat your turkey.”

Eddie folded up the ladder. “Tell me what he said about me. I can take it.”

“He didn’t say anything.” Eddie arched a brow in question and she glared at him. “Look, a few days ago he was in a hospital. He’s not feeling well. You can’t pay any attention to the way he behaves right now.”

“Nothing worse than a 4-F, is there?” Eddie’s tone was brash and brittle. “I mean, I’m not a Nazi, folks. I’m a full-blooded American citizen—not that that seems to count for much these days if you’re not in uniform.”

“Aren’t you being a little melodramatic?”

The ladder clattered to the floor. “Forget it. Tell your mom thanks, but now I’m the one who’s lost my appetite.”

“Where are you going?”

He grabbed his coat from the closet. “To get drunk.”

She stared after him as he stormed down the icy walk and disappeared down the street. She couldn’t very well go out herself now. Her mother had worked hard to make a delicious Christmas dinner within the boundaries of government rationing. Two absences from the dinner table would be unforgivable. She hung up her coat and scarf, and stuffed the hat and mittens back into the pockets.

“Come on over here, princess,” said Mac Weaver as she entered the dining room. He patted the empty seat next to him. “I’ve been saving this for you.”

She sat down and helped herself to turkey and all the trimmings, eager to put all else from her mind.

“Where’d Eddie go?” Mac asked, passing the sweet potatoes.

“To get drunk.”

Mac considered her words. “What happened?”

She speared herself some brussel sprouts. “You don’t want to know.”

Mac’s legendary nose for news could still sniff out a story. “That tangle with our friend upstairs?”

She nodded, glancing across the table to make certain her mother and Nancy were otherwise occupied. “Afraid so. Eddie didn’t imagine the problem. Johnny doesn’t want anything to do with him.”

“Danza’s overreacting, wouldn’t you say?”

“He thinks he has a right to feel the way he does.”

Mac leaned closer, eyebrows waggling. “Do I detect romance in the air?”

Her breath caught. “Where on earth did you get that idea? I barely know the man.”

“You have that look.”

“What look?”

“I know you too well, princess. I’ve seen that look before.”

“Don’t say that. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Take a gander in the mirror. It’s unmistakable.”

She rapped him on the hand with the back of her butter knife. “Stop teasing me. This is Christmas. Whatever happened to good will and peace on earth?”

Instead of a snappy rejoinder, his expression softened and he took the butter knife from her and clasped her hand in his. “It’s time to move on, kiddo. Doug would’ve wanted it that way. He was my brother. I know how he’d feel.”

She looked down, vision blurry with tears.

“There’s somebody out there for you, princess. I can guarantee it.” He chucked her under the chin the way he used to when she was a little girl. “He may even be right under your nose.”

Laughter bubbled up. “Are you flirting with me, Mac Weaver?”

“You can do better than an old man of twenty-eight.”

She blinked away her tears. “They don’t come much better than you.”

Her mother smiled with pleasure when Catherine told her that Johnny was tucking into his dinner upstairs.

“Poor boy,” said Dot. “I wish he could be down here with the rest of us.”

Les leaned forward in his seat. “That’s one fine young man, Dot. I got him to open up to me when I was helping him out this morning.” He shook his head fondly. “That’s some story he has to tell. Brought the war home to me, I’ll tell you that.”

“I know what you mean,” said Mac, with a quick look at Catherine. “Writing about it was one thing. Living it is something else again.”

Perspective, it seemed, was everything, and Catherine found her perspective shifting as she listened to Mac talk about the war. The real war, that is. Not the Hollywood version where Spencer Tracy and John Wayne and all the other big strong American movie stars single-handedly won battle after battle and never shed a drop of blood, but the one where boys like Douglas Weaver died and men like Johnny Danza made certain others didn’t.

Her mother got up to clear the table and impulsively hugged Mac. “We’re so lucky to have you back even if it’s only for a couple of days. It seems like you never went away.”

Catherine saw an odd look pass across Mac’s face, but he hugged her mother in return, then offered to help clear the table.

“I won’t hear of it?” Dot looked scandalized. “You sit there and relax.” Both Nancy and Edna got to their feet to help her mother.

Catherine knew she should do likewise, but something about the look on Mac’s face held her back. Les and her Uncle Frank were locked in discussion about the Allies’ incursion into the Ardennes forest. She’d heard enough about the Bulge to last her a lifetime. Nobody else was paying her the slightest heed. She touched Mac’s wrist. “Can I ask you a question?”

He gave her the cocky big-brother grin she’d known her whole life. “Shoot.”

“What’s it really like to be back home?”

“Strange question, princess.” He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. “How do you think it feels?”

“I saw your face, Mac, when my mother said it felt like nothing had changed.”

“Pretty observant. Have you ever thought about reporting?”

She waved away his words. “Really, Mac. How does it feel?”

He took a long drag on his cigarette. “You know what really hit me when I got off the train? The city was a lot smaller than I’d remembered.”

“New York City, small? Oh, come on, Mac. Tell me the truth.”

“That is the truth. New York’s just a collection of small towns. Doesn’t seem so impressive once you realize that.”

“What about seeing your family? Your friends? It must have been wonderful to sleep in your old room again.”

“Nothing fits anymore. I don’t fit here anymore. Things look older and shabbier—” He stopped and took another drag on his cigarette. “You all look so damn untouched by it all. Sure there’s rationing and blackouts, but except for Pearl Harbor we’ve gotten off scot-free. When I think of those families in England sleeping in the underground—” He shook his head. “This is like being on another planet.”

A shiver ran up her spine and she wrapped her arms around herself. “You sound almost angry.”

“Do I?” He looked surprised. “I suppose in a way I am.” He stubbed out his cigarette in a shell-shaped ashtray. “Not a real yuletide sentiment, is it?”

“No, but I think I understand. It’s a private club, isn’t it? All of you are in it together and the rest of us are outsiders.” Johnny’s reaction to Eddie Martin had been as simple as that.

His smile was without its old teasing big-brother edge. “You always were a smart girl, princess.”

GIs like Mac and Johnny Danza had been places and seen things that most other Americans—God willing—would never know. Who wouldn’t find the transition from blood-soaked battlegrounds to a festive yuletide table disconcerting? If Mac Weaver found it hard to break bread with his own family and friends, what on earth must Johnny be feeling?

She pushed back her chair and stood up. “Would you excuse me? I need to talk to someone.”

Mac grinned at her. “Private Danza?”

She met his eyes. “Yes. I think I owe him an apology.”

“Good for you, princess. That’s the first step.”

She didn’t ask him about the second.

Johnny didn’t look very happy to see her, but Catherine was determined not to let that stop her. Smiling brightly, she picked up the tray from the foot of her bed. “Finished?”

He nodded.

“How was it?”

“Swell.”

She peeked under the covered plate. “You didn’t eat much.”

“Not because it wasn’t swell.”

“I think it’s time for your medicine.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“I’ll put the tray out in the hall and get it.”

“Don’t rush on my account. If I never see that brown swill again, it’ll be too soon.”

“You won’t get better if you don’t follow doctor’s orders.”

He looked at her for the first time since she’d entered the room. “Save the lecture for someone else, okay?”

She made it halfway out the door, then stopped in her tracks. Putting the tray down on top of her chifforobe, she cleared her throat and said, “I’m sorry.”

His brows lifted. “What?”

“I said, I’m sorry.”

A look of suspicion replaced the look of pique. “What for?”

“I was pretty hard on you before about Eddie. I didn’t understand. Now I do, and I’m sorry.”

“Your dad told me you talked first and thought second.”

“Gee, thanks.” She could just imagine what manner of family secrets Tom Wilson had passed on these past eighteen months. “What else did my father tell you?”

“That you could take it, as well as dish it out. Not too many people can.”

She looked away, oddly pleased by the statement.

Johnny’s expression softened. “He also said you can’t take a compliment.”

“Sounds like my father said an awful lot to you.”

“Don’t worry. Nothing bad.” His eyes fluttered closed and she saw beads of sweat along his brow.

“Your medicine!” She dashed out to the hall bathroom and was back with it in a flash. “Sit up, Johnny.”

He opened one eye, then groaned. “I was hoping you’d forget.”

“No such luck.” She poured the brown glop onto the spoon and held it out to him. “Open up, Private.”

He did, then made a horrible face. “I’d rather be sick.”

“Sorry. You landed on our doorstep for a reason. When you leave here, you’ll leave here fit and healthy.”

“You’re a tough one, Cathy.”

“My dad tell you that, too?”

He shook his head. “I figured that out for myself.”

She sighed and recapped the bottle. “When my dad last saw me, I was anything but tough.” Douglas’s death had hit her hard. She remembered her father’s pain at leaving her after such a traumatic loss. That was one of the few things she could recall from those dark weeks. “I’ve done a lot of growing up since he’s been gone. You’d be surprised how fast you grow up when you’re running a company.”

He stifled a yawn. “The war won’t last another year. Before you know it Tom’ll be back and your life can go back to normal.”

“Normal?” She looked at him and laughed. “I don’t have any idea what normal is these days.”

“You know what I mean.”

“That I won’t have to go to work?”

“That you won’t have to run a company. You can go back to being a secretary.” He paused an instant. “If you don’t get married first.”

A sigh built inside her chest. “Marriage isn’t part of my plans, Johnny.”

His eyebrows lifted. “No new boyfriend?”

She met his eyes. “You know I have no boyfriend.”

They’d been writing to each other for more than a year and a half. He knew her daily schedule as well as she knew it herself.

“Don’t worry,” he said, echoing his words from a long-ago letter. “That won’t last forever.”

He looked away, his gaze drifting toward the window and the snow-covered street below. She thought she caught the ghost of a smile, but it might have been a trick played by the light filtering through the curtains—or the loneliness inside her heart.

* * *

Catherine was in her office bright and early the next morning, ready to work. Unfortunately she discovered that the entire tool-and-die department hadn’t reported in. Pressing the intercom button, she called for Eddie to come to her office.

“What on earth is going on?” she exploded the second he stepped through the door. “We have six thousand units to do by New Year’s Eve. We can’t afford to lose a minute.”

Eddie lingered in the doorway, head slightly turned. “They have a grievance,” he said, his words a bit muddy. “Barnes is supposed to present it to you this afternoon.”

“I can’t wait for this afternoon!” She rose to her feet. “Time is precious. If we don’t meet our commitments, our other contracts are in jeopardy. Would you talk to them?”

He shook his head. “I’m not talking to anyone today.”

“Eddie?” She stepped closer to him. “What’s the matter with your face?” He looked different somehow. Even in the shadows of the doorway she could see something was wrong.

He shrugged. “I got into a little scrape. Nothing serious.”

She walked right up to him. “You have a black eye! Your lip’s cut. Eddie, what on earth...?”

Catherine touched his cheek and he winced. “Think it’ll buy me points at the induction center?” He forced a smile. “The other guy looks a lot worse.”

She shivered. “I can’t imagine anyone looking worse. Have you seen a doctor?”

“I’ll live, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’d feel better if you saw Dr. Bernstein.”

“I’d feel better if you’d just let me get back to work.”

“What time can I expect Barnes?”

“Around lunchtime.”

She walked back and took her seat behind the desk. “I’ll be ready for him.”

* * *

Harry Barnes was a brash forty-eight-year-old man who’d fought in the last war and sometimes didn’t realize his side had won. He was argumentative, hotheaded and obviously one hundred percent right.

Catherine told him so. “I understand your feelings,” she said, praying he wouldn’t see the way her hands shook on her lap, “but there’s nothing I can do. My father isn’t in favor of unionization and I wouldn’t do anything to cross him.”

“Your father ain’t here,” Barnes pointed out in his belligerent way. “Who’s running the ship, anyway?”

She sat up straighter and looked him square in the eye. “I am.” She paused. “Temporarily, at least.”

“You’re gonna lose out, lady, if you don’t wake up and smell the coffee. If you want good workers, you’re going to have to give ’em what they want.”

“Wilson Manufacturing has the highest pay scale in New York City, Harry, and you know that.”

“And the unhappiest workers.”

She couldn’t hide her shock. “I don’t believe that! Not for a minute.”

“Don’t you listen to what we been tellin’ you? Don’t get me wrong—we don’t mind workin’ for you, Miss Wilson. But the fact is, there’s no security here.”

“No security? How can you say that, Harry? We’ve been in business thirty-three years. Why, my grandfather founded the company and my dad’s done a truly wonderful job making it grow.”

“All of that’s true,” Harry conceded, “but none of it changes the fact that no one can promise your old man will be coming back to work.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“Yeah, but it’s true. Working with girls on the assembly line is one thing. Working for the boss’s daughter is something else. I’m here to tell you that it ain’t going to work over the long haul.”

Her face flamed with anger and embarrassment. “I think I’ve done an excellent job,” she said, her voice low and controlled. “I doubt if my dad would disapprove of the choices I’ve made.”

Barnes shrugged. It was obvious he didn’t give a fig for anything she had to say. His mind was made up and nothing she said or did would change that.

If she had been a man, she would have punched him right in the nose. But she wasn’t a man, as he had so neatly pointed out, so she had to control her temper and use her mind instead.

“Why don’t your men present me with a list of grievances in writing, and I’ll deal with them on a case-by-case basis.”

“Your old man would’ve gone down into the factory and talked to the guys face-to-face.”

She took a deep breath and prayed for patience. “As you told me not five minutes ago, Harry, the men don’t want to talk to the boss’s daughter.”

Barnes looked discomfited and Catherine took some pleasure from that. He agreed to put the problems on paper, but made it clear nothing would come from the exercise.

“Eddie Martin,” she said. “Talk to him.”

Harry shook his head. “Martin’s a good egg, but all he can think about is getting into the army. First second he gets the nod, he’ll be gone so fast your head’ll spin.” He got to his feet. “Darn fool wants to join Uncle Sam so bad he gets himself into a barroom brawl. No, Eddie ain’t the one. You see what I mean? There’s still no one we can talk to.”

“I’ll do my best for you, Harry,” she promised, extending her hand to him.

He stuck his hands into the pockets of his work pants. “Like I said, what we need is someone who understands.”

“You and me both, Harry,” she muttered as he lumbered from the office. “What I need is someone I can talk to.”

* * *

Dot awoke that morning with a renewed sense of purpose. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew everything was different. Tom was alive and well! His precious letter rested beneath her pillow—not that she needed to read it again, for every single golden word was etched in her heart.

The long months of waiting for news of Tom were drifting into memory, and for the first time in ages she believed the war wouldn’t last forever.

The end wouldn’t come tomorrow or the next day. It may not even come next month, but it would come. The day was approaching when her beloved husband would stride up the front walk, looking strong and handsome in his uniform, and all the empty places in her heart would be filled.

But that was still sometime in the future. Today she had something else to be grateful for. Johnny Danza, the wonderful young man who had saved Tom’s life, slept soundly in Catherine’s bedroom, and it was up to the Wilson women to make certain he grew stronger and healthier with every day that passed.

Dot washed and dressed swiftly, then hurried downstairs to the kitchen. The girls needed so little from her, and with Tom gone, she found it hard to find ways to fill her days. She cleaned the house and shopped for groceries and watched the clock, waiting for day to turn to evening and evening to turn into night.

At least now that Johnny was staying with them, she had a reason to get up in the morning. How wonderful it was to have a man to fuss over again.

The morning sped by. While she warmed turkey soup for Johnny’s lunch, Dr. Bernstein popped by to check on his progress.

“Oh, to be young again.” Sy Bernstein shook his head when Dot ushered him into the kitchen after his examination. As she reached for the percolator on the stove, he added, “That fever would’ve felled any one of us.”

Dot poured coffee into two heavy mugs and placed them on the table next to a bottle of milk. “He’s doing well, then?”

“He’s doing well.” Dr. Bernstein fixed his coffee. “I’d like to take credit for it, but I have a feeling your TLC has as much to do with his progress as any of the medicines I’ve prescribed.”

Beaming, she took her seat opposite him. “You’re giving me too much credit.”

“Wish I could agree with you, Dorothy, but I have a feeling I’m not giving you and the girls enough.” He took a long sip of coffee. “Delicious. I’ve told Betty time and again to ask you your secret.”

“There’s no secret, Dr. B. Just Eight O’Clock coffee from the A&P and my trusty old Silex.”

They chatted awhile about Johnny. Dr. Bernstein explained something technical about the shrapnel wounds on Johnny’s chest and how they had affected his fever, but all she could think about was the fact that they would have the boy’s company for another few weeks. He was her link with Tom, and she welcomed a chance to repay his valor in some way, however small.

After Dr. Bernstein left, she bustled upstairs to Catherine’s room with the turkey soup and soda crackers on her grandmother’s silver tray.

Johnny was lying on his side, flipping through a stack of
Life
magazines. He glanced up when she entered the room, and her heart was gladdened by the look of pleased surprise on his face.

“Sit up,” she ordered brightly. “Lunchtime!”

He tried to do as she asked. She noted that he had trouble pushing with his right arm. The effects of the shrapnel wounds must be more far-reaching then she had realized.

“Ouch!” he said, rolling back on his side. “I feel like a pincushion.”

“No complaints, Johnny. According to Dr. B, you’re doing splendidly. It won’t be long before you’re out there jitterbugging again.”

“At least I’ll be good for something.”

She placed the tray on Catherine’s dressing table and propped some pillows behind the soldier’s back. “That’s a gloomy statement. Dr. B is so pleased.” She settled the tray across his lap and sat at the foot of the bed. “Is there something he didn’t tell me?”

He took a spoonful of soup before he spoke. “I’m doing great,” he said after a while, “but not great enough for the army.”

Maternal outrage filled her soul. “How dare they! Why, a body takes as long as it takes to recover from something as dreadful as the experience you went through. Who does the army think it is, forcing you out of your sickbed before your time?”

“That’s not it, Mrs. Wilson. What I mean is, they don’t think I’ll recover enough to go back in.” He explained that he’d been in the army since before Pearl Harbor, and his time in the service combined with the injury meant he was liable to be honorably discharged sometime in the next couple of months.

“Well, that’s wonderful news, Johnny! You’ll be safe and sound and you can pick up your life exactly where you left it years ago.”

He fiddled with the silver soupspoon that had been her grandmother’s and her grandmother’s grandmother’s before hers. She wanted to reach out and hug him the way she hugged her own children, but she knew men could be funny about things like that. If Johnny Danza knew she sensed his sorrow and loneliness, he’d back away from her quicker than a cat from a rocking chair.