We couldn’t send them all to Chavaniac, but we could save some, and it meant all hands on deck. Thus, I spent my mornings in a battle with lice, stripping children of louse-ridden clothes and shearing them like lambs. I spent my afternoons bathing ragamuffins until the tub water turned black. In the evenings I spooned broth into the mouths of children too weak to do it themselves.
All of this should have exhausted me, but I felt gloriously awake, and I resolved to confront Willie.
“I fear for you to go alone to see him,” said Emily. “I had Amaury pay Mr. Chanler a visit when you were gone. He found your husband in an agitated state, whistling, snapping his fingers, imagining conspiracies everywhere . . .”
“Yes, well, Willie does have a mind for international intrigue,” I admitted. On the other hand, morphine and alcohol also caused irrational whirling in his tempestuous brain. “But I’m not in the least concerned.”
I’d survived bombs; I could certainly survive Willie, and I meant to. So I went to his house and found him enthroned upon an armchair, surrounded by a clutter of books, letters, and various scribblings in piles on the floor. He didn’t seem drunk, but the day was young. No, the most alarming thing was that between portraits of prizefighters and racehorses, someone had nailed Willie’s rejected prosthetics to the wall of his home.
Had he decorated his home with plaster feet and aluminum peg legs to remind himself of his resilience, or to set a foreboding aesthetic for visitors? Whatever the purpose, the overall impression was that of an imbalanced mind. “Couldn’t stay away, could you?” Willie asked.
I cleared a stack of newspapers from the only available chair. “Who could pass up the opportunity to enjoy such a welcoming atmosphere?”
Willie smirked. “I meant you couldn’t stay away from the war. By my count, it’s your seventh war-crossing, and I can’t think of any relief worker, man or woman, who has taken the risk as many times as you.”
Now was plainly not the time to tell him I’d nearly been torpedoed in a bathtub! Instead, in a vain attempt to soothe myself, I tried to conjure up images of Max building bookshelves in a little white house and myself in an apron, learning to make cassoulet. “This will be my last great adventure—a relief to your mind, I’m sure.”
“Your last great adventure?” He lit up a cigar. “I don’t believe that for a minute. You won’t give it up now that you’ve become a real player. Truthfully, my lameness has made me pretty useless, and you’re the only one in this family keeping up its end in the war. I’m rather proud of you.”
Willie was proud of me? I didn’t think I still cared what he thought, so I was shocked to find myself moved. “Why, I think that might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Then your memory is failing you.” He snapped open his newspaper. “How are the boys?”
“Billy has been learning to play the bugle,” I reported. “And Ashley dreams of aviation . . . They miss you—it really would delight them if you’d write more often. And when you do, I think it’d help if you could sign your letters as Daddy and not Your Father, William Astor Chanler.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” he said. “How’s Billy’s speech?”
“Much better. He’s out of short pants, growing like a weed.”
“Good. Perhaps he can wear some of my old clothes.”
I crossed my legs, settling in for a longer discussion. “Are you hurting for money?”
“Everyone is hurting for money. The idiot ranters think the war was fought to line industrialists’ pockets, but it’s impossible to calculate the damage it’s done to wealth. Trade is disrupted. Factories bombed. Capital gone up in smoke. A whole generation of workers wiped out.”
He knew more about economics than I did, but I’d learned a great deal recently. “I suppose labor will have the upper hand after the war.”
“Who told you that? The communist agitators on your labor mission?”
“They’re socialists,” I protested. “And patriots.”
“Rabble-rousers,” he shot back.
“Well, I got on with them like a breeze. Strange, but true. I’m sorry you couldn’t be a spectator—you’d have had much to tickle your sense of humor!”
It was oddly comforting to argue with him again, until he burst forth with, “They’re all conspiring. Labor leaders. Bolsheviks. Catholics. Especially Jews—”