This Is How I'd Love You (6 page)

“Is that what you’ve written?” Hensley asked, sitting up.

“Partly. I won’t bore you with the rest. But it is the only thing I can do. That is why I do it. I must. It is not a choice. It just is.”

Hensley watched his face, the corners of his mouth twitching with emotion.

“But if our participation would quicken the end . . .” she began, echoing what she’d heard from classmates and teachers.

He turned away from her and pounded the mantel, making the mirror beside it tremble. “Where is the absolutism of religion now? Morality is not negotiable, Hensley. Unleashing a war machine in order to end a war? An absurd Olympics of semantic excuses. Ludicrous.”

Hensley threw the blanket off. “Meanwhile, the slaughter continues,” she said, “while we stand on our very firm moral ground.”

Had she known that less than a year later she would be lost in her own sea of moral ambiguity, she might have paid closer attention to her father’s certainty. Wrong is wrong.

Because the first time that Lowell Teagan met her at the theater to look at her sketches and placed his hand on the curve of her waist to inquire about the placement of a seam, she knew it was wrong. They were not family and they were not betrothed. But even more than that, his touch was not demonstrative or inquisitive. It was authoritative. He was begging her to question his authority, to doubt his own morality, but she did not. Instead, she took his hand in her own and placed it slightly lower, just where her hip bone flowered, and correctly showed him where the pleat would begin. In this way, she became a living mannequin they each manipulated, displaying the way a fabric would drape or taper on her own figure.

The other girls might have been jealous of this time he spent with her, backstage, placing his own pencil marks on her paper and plying a straight pin from her mouth, his fingers grazing her lips, lingering slightly on her delicate chin, because nearly every girl in the play had developed a wild crush. But he saw the players every day for rehearsals, his attention captivated by each of the girl’s efforts to become her character, to inhabit the skin of a wholly imagined person. His entreaties both terrified and thrilled them. “Nobody wants to see
you
onstage, Miss Coe. How disappointing. You must
become
Mr. Johnstone completely. Dispose of all your boring, girlish teenage gestures. I do not want to see you place your hands on your hips while you are on that stage. Get inside Mr. Johnstone. This is your chance, don’t you see? You are allowed to step inside of him, feel his skin, taste his food,
move
his body. There are not many opportunities in life for that kind of intimacy.”

All the girls hung on his words, longed for his gaze, shrank from his questions. But none of them had felt the weight of his hand on her hip nor the heat of his exhale on her neck, except Hensley. For this she was both ashamed and elated. In the wake of her father’s moral absolutism, she was utterly confused.

 • • • 

T
he first time he kissed her, it seemed like a foregone conclusion. As though, perhaps, they were both just occupying the same space and their lips had no choice but to touch. It was merely an extension of their work together. He did not place his hands on her, nor try to extend the contact. He simply smiled, which was rare, exposing his one physical flaw—undersized teeth. They appeared shrunken, immature, as though he were still waiting for his adult teeth to arrive. Hensley swallowed hard, trying to decipher the tingling that had begun in her lips but was now traveling across her chest. Was it fear or longing?

Before she left the theater that night, he placed a hand on her elbow and said only, “Your talent takes my breath away, Hensley. It is difficult for me to contain my admiration. Please forgive me.”

Hensley merely blushed and let him slide her coat onto her shoulders.

Walking home with Marie, she smiled the whole way. “What, you, too?” Marie asked as they crossed Broadway.

“What?”

“You’ve gone ’round the moon for him, too? We’re such a bunch of sillies. Of course, since I’ve
become
Old Granny, he’s not that keen on me.”

Hensley laughed but she wondered about the other girls. They did all adore him. He was undeniably the most interesting man she’d ever met. Of course, she hadn’t met many men except her brother’s Columbia chums, who were the epitome of dull. But she thought of Sara Coe and Lily Benton, with their perfect, shiny hair and melodious voices. It was she, not they, whom he had kissed. It was she, not they, whom he found irresistible. She didn’t dare tell Marie that Mr. Teagan had kissed her. But she wondered, as Marie walked beside her in the fading spring daylight, if that kiss would be the beginning of their love story.

 • • • 

A
s she and Marie parted ways and she turned onto her block, her lighthearted mood shifted. A newsie called out the headline, “Wilson to ask Congress to declare war!” She could see from the street below that the light in the apartment was lit. Her father would be writing, the sound of his ink stretched across an unending stack of paper.

“Daddy,” Hensley said as she took off her hat. He was not writing. He was sitting on the sofa, his spectacles in his hands. She sat beside him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “I saw the headline.”

Her father placed his hand on hers. “I remain appalled but hardly surprised. It’s been a long time coming.”

“But aren’t you going to keep writing? I mean, surely you can’t just give up. You have to speak your mind.”

He smiled, then wiped at his eyes, which looked tired. He looked at her anew, as though he hadn’t done so in years. “You are turning into a lady. Right here before my eyes. How are the costumes coming?”

“Fine, just fine. I met with the director tonight. Lowell Teagan. He really likes my ideas. I’ve a veritable closet of clothes to sew, however.”

Her father nodded. “Of course. Splendid.”

“Daddy? Maybe we should go out for dinner. A little distraction this evening might be nice.”

He shook his head. “I’ve had a slight setback at the paper, Hensley. I’ve been taken off editorial completely. They are putting a noose around my neck. Just about the only thing I can write about is the weather. And the worst part is that they assume it has something to do with my heritage.”

“That you sympathize with Germany?”

He stood. “Well, I do. I sympathize with the whole world. But I believe in peace, Hensley. Not one country or another.”

“Well, just tell them,” Hensley said.

“I’ve written nearly ten thousand words this month alone, Hensley. They are not listening. Nobody is.”

At that moment, Hensley wanted more than ever to be back in the theater, behind the dusty red curtain, with the scents of chalk and wood polish and Mr. Teagan’s hands manipulating her body with utter confidence.

“Well, I don’t know, Daddy. I suppose you’ll have to write about the weather, then.”

His face conveyed the kind of darkening that a rain cloud does to a blue summer sky. “Like bloody hell I will,” he said. “In fact, the idea of writing about absolutely anything else is rubbish. I’d rather dig ditches than pretend this doesn’t matter—that every ounce of ink in New York shouldn’t be spent on it.”

“You would tell me, if I happened to be the one speaking in such hyperbole, that dramatics are not a sound debate tool.”

Her father started to speak and then did not. He replaced his glasses and looked back at the papers on his desk. He nodded. “There is no turning back. Wilson will get his vote and our boys will be sent away before summer.”

“Harold?” Hensley said, thinking of her brother, the freckles that stretched across his cheeks and rimmed the tops of his ears.

Her father shrugged. “Perhaps.”

Hensley reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief she’d tucked there and wiped her eyes. Her father glanced at her gesture and then looked away. “If not your brother, somebody else’s brother. They do not recruit soldiers from some reserve of the unloved and unattached.”

In her mind, Hensley imagined an emporium, like the large fabric store she liked to browse on Forty-second Street, filled entirely with lonely, solitary men holding their lunch pails, waiting to be given a uniform and a weapon.

“I don’t want Harold to go.”

“That will be up to him, Hensley. Or the Congress.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell him he can’t.”

“Your brother has never taken my instruction well, Hennie.”

“And what about us? What will you do?”

“I am looking into other ventures. Your mother’s cousin, Thomas Wright, has asked me to look after a mining interest of his.”

Hensley didn’t hear anything more he said. Would Mr. Teagan sign up? she wondered. Would his long fingers and piercing eyes soon be in France or Belgium? Would every good and strong boy be sleeping in the trenches far, far away?

“I’d better get to work,” she said, standing and holding her sketches close to her chest. “I’m sorry, Daddy. About Wilson and the paper and all of it.”

He nodded but was already sitting at his desk again, dipping his pen into the inkwell.

Hensley stood in her room in front of the glass, examining herself. She liked the way her bosom looked in the tunic and the way her newly bobbed hair just skimmed her jawbone. Her nose was too long and her eyes a little too wide, but altogether, she thought she was a striking girl, whose refinement was underappreciated by boys her own age, who only thought about whiskey and sports. She looked closely at her lips, startled that they’d been so recently touched by Mr. Teagan’s. But she also decided, as she moved her own finger across their soft expanse, that there was no better use for them. There in front of her own reflection, she became grateful for his audacity, enamored of his disregard for politesse, and terrified that he would be lost to the war.

W
hen Charles’s post is handed to him, the envelope from Mr. Dench is markedly different. Drawn on the back of this envelope is a small green tree with a little owl peering out of its branches. In a speech bubble, it says, “Hoot.” This is unlike anything Mr. Dench has ever done before. Charles wonders momentarily if the censors have added it. But it is too whimsical and delightful for that. Slowly, he pulls at the paper, careful to preserve the strange little drawing.

In the margins of Mr. Dench’s reply, there are faint scribbles in a hand he does not recognize. For some reason, this small act of mystery sends a jolt of life down Charles’s spine. It is unexpected, refreshing, wholly strange. It jars him from his hardened, protective armor of practicality.

Mr. Dench’s daughter has pirated his reply and placed her own mark upon it. Her ink across the thin onionskin paper seems to wink at him with its audacity. Quickly, before Rogerson has finished reading his own dispatch from his mother, Charles shoves the letter into his jacket pocket. He is afraid, already, of discovering that it’s a mirage—something the monotony of war has constructed in his mind. But he knows his own mind. This could not be his own invention. It is outside his idea of what is possible.

Usually, the two of them share all correspondence. It is one of the small rituals they’ve settled upon without speaking of it. But this night, Charles doesn’t take the letter from Rogerson. “Keep it, man. I’ve got nothing. Mr. Dench botched it. Sent an empty envelope.”

Rogerson looks at him hard. He and his mother and sister live on a vast farm in Minnesota along the Canadian border. Their isolation has bred an instinctual skepticism. “You two having a love affair?” He punches him gently on the shoulder. “I saw you reading something, chap. Hand it over.”

Charles shakes his head. He makes no move to retrieve the letter from his jacket. He wants to study it on his own, to read again the delicately curved, feminine lettering.

“Come on, Reid. Even better if he’s declaring his love for you. It’s almost like being in the theater. High drama.” Rogerson pulls at Charles’s jacket.

Charles swats his hand away. “It’s not like that. It’s just . . . I need to read it again myself. You know, figure out my next move. I don’t want the bastard to win this one.”

Rogerson pulls a cigarette from his own jacket. He lights it and blows the smoke toward Charles’s face. “I got moves, too. We can figure it out together.”

Charles shakes his head and fiddles with the salt and pepper. Rogerson places his lit cigarette on the table in front of him. Charles knows what might be next, but he keeps his eyes on the small black char Rogerson’s cigarette is burning into the tabletop.

Rogerson wraps his strong hand around Charles’s wrist and, in one motion, sweeps it around to the middle of Charles’s back. A hot ache is born in his shoulder and a shard of pain travels all the way down his back into his hips. With his free hand, he pulls his jacket together. Their struggle is a simple test of strength, and they both know what the outcome will be. Rogerson pulls hard against Charles’s grip, and an army green button from his jacket flies across the table, landing soundlessly on the straw-covered ground. Rogerson shoves his hand inside Charles’s coat, while Charles tries to grasp his jaw the way Rogerson gripped him back in May-en-Multien. His hand is no match for Rogerson’s wide, square jaw, though. As his fingers dig into the sharp bristles of his whiskers, they merely pucker Rogerson’s mouth into an ugly, wet pouch. Rogerson easily pulls the envelope out of the place close to Charles’s chest, its sweet little drawing still preserved just below the open slit.