“Well done, Alex. Good on you. You’re braver than I would be.” He was 4-F due to his football injuries from Harvard, where he had had a serious knee injury and damaged his spleen as captain of the football team. He was sitting out the war at home, and thought Alex’s enlisting as a nurse was impressive, although he was relieved that his wife didn’t have the same patriotic ideas.
Alex’s volunteering as an Army Air Forces medical evacuation nurse gave rise to considerable comment during dinner, but by dessert the conversation had moved on to the war in Europe, how difficult it was to buy a car these days with wartime production on, how sad that no one could travel to Europe, and a cousin of Astrid’s said that her sister-in-law in San Francisco had lost all their Japanese domestic help and gardeners, when they were sent away to internment camps. Several of the men commented on how fortunate it was that Robert’s wine cellar was so well stocked with French wine, and hoped it would last through the war, until France was liberated and he could stock up again.
At one point, Alex’s father caught her eye during dinner and saw the look on her face. It was one of sad dismay, listening to the people she had grown up with and how insensitive they were to what the war really meant to the people suffering in Europe, and dying in the trenches. She felt as though she was constantly out of step with them, and she knew they considered her pathetically eccentric, and a rebel, to have enlisted to do whatever she could to help turn the tides. To these people she had known all her life, and no longer had any respect for, it was only about buying cars, French wine, and the unavailability of Japanese domestic help on the West Coast. She found it profoundly shocking and realized that she’d had nothing in common with them for years. Her parents had wanted her to select a husband among them, and she couldn’t even remotely imagine it now. Even Eustace, who was a decent guy, only thought of himself and his spoiled self-indulgent wife. They had a house full of maids and nannies and a butler in Connecticut. Charlotte never lifted a finger for anyone but herself. She was beautiful, but Alex didn’t think that was enough. She didn’t care about her own looks, and never thought about it.
Alex had worn a black velvet evening gown to dinner, with a big white satin bow at the low-cut waist in the back, to please her mother. She looked lovely in it, but she was almost sorry she hadn’t worn her uniform to remind them that there was a war on in the real world. They didn’t live in the real world, and never had. They were trapped in another century. The only thing they had noticed was the unpleasantness of the stock market crash fourteen years before, which had removed some of their friends from their social circle when they lost their money. But they were quickly forgotten, and others with larger, more stable fortunes had taken their place.
Their values made Alex feel sick, and she couldn’t imagine being married to any of them. It would have been her worst nightmare. She felt like a stranger in her own world, and even in her own home. She was sad to think that her four nieces would be brought up with her sister’s superficial values, believing that only people in their own limited world had any merit, and a woman with a job, or an occupation of any kind, was to be treated as a pariah, ridiculed and shunned. Alex had every intention of continuing nursing after the war, and she knew that would be a battle with her parents too. Everything she did elicited their criticism. She could barely make it through dinner without speaking her mind and losing her temper, but she managed to slip away when everyone moved into the drawing room for coffee and brandy. The crowd was large enough that her absence wasn’t noticed, and she sat peacefully in her own large pink satin bedroom, smoking a cigarette, and having a glass of champagne alone. This wasn’t her idea of the spirit of Christmas, a night of showing off, snobbery, and insensitive bragging, but it was the way her family spent it, and her older sister fit in perfectly with all of their views and traditions. Alex never had, and now even less than ever.
She was startled when there was a knock at the door. She said, “Come in.” It was her mother’s maid, a small Frenchwoman who had worked for her family since Alex was a child.
“Yes, Brigitte?” She was surprised to see her, in her evening uniform of black dress with white lace apron and cap. Alex knew only too well that if any of her fellow nurses in the army had seen the trappings of her home life, they would have ridiculed and shunned her too. She was a misfit everywhere, and she had kept this side of her life well hidden from her colleagues in the army, even Lizzie, whom she considered her best friend. But there were some things she just couldn’t share. They would never have understood.