“It’s the damnedest thing.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “You won’t believe me if I told you. You’ll think I’m a lunatic.”
“I’ve thought you were a lunatic since the day we met, so that ship has sailed. You might as well tell me.”
“I can still sometimes feel the missing leg, and it hurts like the devil.” That did sound like lunacy, but he’d never admit to it if it wasn’t true. While I tried to form a response, he continued, in a rush, “When it’s not the missing leg, it’s the stump chafing against the prosthetic, or the bruises from the crutches under my arms, or the ache in my back from swinging my body like a chimpanzee.”
He said all this angrily. As if it were a personal affront that his once-perfect body should betray him this way. “Oh, Willie . . .” I reached for him again, trying not to be too gentle, lest he shrink from my pity. “If you’re in pain, why won’t you take the medicine?”
“It’s morphine,” he said. “They need it at the front.”
Unaware of shortages, I wondered if—well, if he were somehow punishing himself. “Don’t be prideful when it can keep you from getting well.”
Willie sighed. “I don’t want to end up like some opium-addicted sultan, wasting my days away.”
An unbidden memory returned to me of my childhood. Of men stumbling out of opium dens in a glassy-eyed trance. In a choice of vices, perhaps my husband was right that liquor was the better one. Certainly it was the more socially acceptable. “We’ll have to see what else can be done for you,” I said, running my thumb against the harsh line of his lips to soften it. “Wholesome food, good rest, ocean air . . . and perhaps a little restorative amusement.”
Willie smirked. “Are you going to sing for me?”
I did more than sing for him, but even in love, he wasn’t a tender man, and I hadn’t the faintest idea how to pull down the wall between us. I would’ve nursed him if he’d allowed it, but for now I decided simply to indulge him, even if it meant his drinking got worse.
And it did get worse.
A few days into our trip, he was drunk before noon, which made him short-tempered. He was particularly hard on Billy and his stutter, making him repeat himself at the lunch table until he got it right.
“You’re embarrassing him,” I snapped.
“A little embarrassment never hurt anybody. He’s got to practice his diction if he means to become a leader of men.” At which point, my husband attracted the stares of passersby with a boorish ten-minute lecture about the way children were disciplined in the tribes of deepest Africa. I bit back a comment about what sort of discipline he might exert over himself, since he was so drunk he couldn’t have stood up even on two legs. I’d said that he wasn’t a wreck of a man, and I’d be damned if I let him become one. Still, I wanted to be understanding. It was just hard to do when my boys were both wary of setting their father off like a powder keg. And especially when I didn’t have Emily to confide in.
Oh, how I missed her! She was married and with child, so much in love, and so devoted to her husband, that perhaps she’d have counseled me to be patient with Willie. Or perhaps she’d have advised me to push him into the sea.
I wrote her a letter, but letters were no substitute. Certainly, I couldn’t write down everything I felt. The knowledge that she was making a real contribution as a nurse, while I was soaking up the sun, made me restless and discontent. Maybe Willie and I weren’t so different after all. We both wanted to be in the action but had children who needed us. That’s what made me think that perhaps we should team up to do something at home for the war.
On the morning we went out on the yacht, Willie made the boys laugh by hobbling with a pirate’s shout. His mood was good, and once his fishing line was off the side, I took advantage. “I’d like your help opening a toy shop in New York.”
Willie eyed me. “A toy shop?”
He thought it a frivolous endeavor, so I challenged him. “Marie-Louise LeVerrier and Clara Simon have come up with an ingenious way of funding refugees and giving work to maimed soldiers. They have the wounded creating French dolls, and the Lafayette Fund has been selling them. Ask me how much money I raised selling French dolls at the Knick.”
He grunted, waving a hand. “A small fortune, I don’t wonder, but you have enough projects already. Fundraising is all well and good, but—”
“I’m also doing my part to undermine the German economy, a large part of which is toy manufacture.” This remark stopped him short, and he scratched the back of his head. Since it was so rare to catch him speechless, I hurried forth with, “The kaiser needs money to buy bullets, doesn’t he? . . . There are other ways to fight, Willie, even from this side of the ocean. And don’t you remember what a good team we made?”