“I have.” Willie lowered his head and made a sound I’d never heard before. It took me a moment to realize he was sobbing. Not as an ordinary person might. He was sobbing like a man who had never wept before—like an animal in pain. He dropped the glass, splashing us both. I ignored it, reaching to comfort him, but he recoiled, curling in on himself, struggling to regain his composure. “Goddammit.”
“Oh, Willie,” I whispered softly. He’d never shed a tear in my presence before. He’d brazened out every difficulty, bearing up under any danger, whether it was rhinos charging in a blistering African sun or political opponents ripping him to shreds. There never was a moment Willie ever let anyone see him low.
Until now.
And I felt strangely moved and privileged to bear witness.
“Goddammit!” he roared, ripping his hand from mine as if horrified to show a weakness. “You should go.”
“Now? No. I’m not leaving you like this.”
“I don’t want you thinking I’m a wreck of a man.”
I knew better than to offer him soft, soothing words. “I’m touched you still care what I think about you.”
He glowered with bloodshot eyes. “Of course I do. You’re the mother of my sons.” I was his wife too, though he didn’t mention it. “This isn’t how I meant our reunion to be. I don’t want to be so beastly.”
“It’s always been part of your charm.” My smirk pricked the balloon of his gathering belligerence, and I stroked his cheek. “You’re not a wreck of a man.”
He turned his head, as if to escape my words, but in so doing, his mouth pressed into my palm. Then he kissed it. “Do you know, I still remember the first time I saw you. The night was hot, the theater chairs insufferable. I’d already decided to slip out at intermission. Then I heard you sing.”
He closed his eyes, as if hearing it anew.
Rhoda, Rhoda ran a Pagoda . . .
It was a song about a girl who clawed her way to the top of the heap, finding love and forgetting her humble past. Remembering it, an ember of the old fire sparked between us.
All at once, he tugged me into an intimate embrace. I wasn’t ready; wasn’t expecting it. We ought to have a conversation, I thought, trying not to surrender to his familiar touch, even though I craved it more than anything. We ought to have a real conversation about our marriage and if we intend to keep it . . .
Instead, our bodies did the talking. Willie needed to prove he was still a whole man, and he was. I needed to know he wanted me, and he had no difficulty demonstrating that either. We undressed hurriedly, as if we might think better of this if we had time to think. Perhaps he feared that I’d recoil from the sight of his missing leg.
Truthfully, I feared it too.
Afterward, damp with spilled whiskey, sweat, and tears, I mustered the courage to touch the puckered scar where his knee used to be. And I found it was infinitely dear to me. I softly kissed the red, raised flesh, for time was a cruel and greedy thief, stealing off with our hopes, our dreams, our bodies, our love.
All the more reason to treasure what remained.
If we were normal people, I thought, we’d now exchange tender sentiments.
Unfortunately, if I searched my heart to ask what our conjugal relations portended, I might not like the answer. And if I pressed him, he might very well swim back to Europe. So I affected insouciance. “What kind of family scandal shall we create? The one where I anger your saintly sister Elizabeth by leaving you to fend for yourself, or the one where I outrage your sanctimonious sister Margaret by staying the night without pajamas?”
He eyed me with a slow grin. “I’ve always taken a perverse pleasure in irritating Margaret . . .”
* * *
—
Condolences for my nephew’s death poured in. His body hadn’t been found yet, but funeral services were held at the American Church in Paris, flags of both France and the United States upon the altar. Here in New York, my long-planned Lafayette Day celebration turned into one long funeral procession. At every banquet and parade, Victor’s name was invoked, his eternally young smile on posters for all to see. His spotless life and brave death served to reproach the Wilson administration and tugged hard at patriotic sympathies.
I’d persuaded my nephew to become a pilot by telling him he could become a hero to millions. What I hadn’t told him was that if he died in the skies, he’d become an even more potent symbol of the cause. But he’d known . . .
He’d told me as much the last time I saw him.