Losing Julia Read online

  Names, endless names impaled accusingly on endless white crosses.

  “I always think of the mothers,” said Julia, holding herself as though she was cold, her arms crossed in front of her. I remembered the sound of men calling for their mothers; how common it was, so that you came to expect it. Only once did I hear a man call for his father, and that was in German.

  “Maybe they should bury everyone in the same cemetery,” I said. “All of them, so that people could visualize the toll. Can you imagine it, millions and millions of headstones and crosses and Stars of David in row after row, with one war right next to another?”

  “No, I can’t imagine it,” she said, leaning against my shoulder.

  We walked back to the car in silence.

  Driving to Fort Douaumont we saw several signs posted at various angles by the roadsides warning of leftover shells and grenades. The Zone Rouge. When we passed two laborers loading shells into the back of a truck, Julia asked if we could stop.

  “Those are live shells?” she asked, as we stood near the stack of two dozen dirty cylinders.

  I nodded. The Frenchmen smiled, then carefully picked up one of the shells, held it close to my head, tapped his ear and then shook the shell back and forth. I heard the swooshing sound of liquid inside.

  “It’s a gas shell,” I said, stepping back. The Frenchman gently laid the shell down on a wooden palette in the back of the truck, then turned to pick up another.

  “What are they doing with them?”

  “Getting rid of them.”

  “Are there many left?”

  “They’re all over the place. The Germans and the French together fired tens of millions of shells just here around Verdun, and some ten percent of them never detonated.”

  “They‘ll be cleaned up somehow?”

  “Not in our lifetimes. France doesn’t have the money or the manpower now to do much but cordon the worst battlefields off and hope the damn things rot.”

  “Will they?”

  “Eventually.”

  “So they‘re just sitting out there in the earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God.”

  At Fort Douaumont—a massive, concrete polygon embedded in the area’s highest ridge—we walked to the top and stood next to a seventy-five-millimeter gun turret. Then we slowly spun around, sweeping our eyes across the rolling hills of the Meuse Heights. The few forests were sickly looking with the tallest trees barely a decade old and huge bare patches where nothing would grow. Everywhere the landscape looked churned and unnatural. “What is that?” Julia asked, pointing to a large building under construction.

  “That’s the new Ossuary.”

  “Ossua… ”

  “Where the unidentified remains are kept.”

  She looked over at me, then walked to one edge of the battered fort and looked down.

  “You’re standing atop what was considered one of the mightiest fortresses in Europe,” I said.

  “It fell to the Germans?”

  “For a few months. But they say it still fought for the French.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was an explosion, among the ammunition. It started a chain reaction and more than six hundred of the German occupants were killed. There was no way to bury them properly, not with the constant shelling, so the burnt bodies were simply walled up behind one of the casemates.”

  “They’re still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like the shells.”

  I came up next to her. “Like the shells.”

  AT FORT VAUX we traced our hands along the crumbled and pockmarked walls and watched as a Frenchman—one of the many decorated gardiens of Verdun’s memorials—chased three schoolboys who were climbing over the ruins aiming stick guns at each other. Another Frenchman in a wheelchair with medals pinned to his chest sold postcards while a third offered his services as a guide. “Hear the true story of Verdun,” he said in a thick accent, as he pulled at one end of his mustache with two fingers of his left hand.

  We smiled politely and walked away.

  In the city of Verdun we explored Vauban’s impregnable Citadel with its miles of subterranean passageways and galleries where thousands of French soldiers hid from the German guns and where, many years earlier, English prisoners rotted during the Napoleonic Wars. Then we walked down Rue Mazel and had lunch just across from where the massive Victory Memorial was under construction. In some parts of the city entire blocks remained cleared, waiting to be rebuilt. Scaffolding was everywhere.

  “It’s overwhelming,” said Julia, as she spread her napkin out on her lap, “that feeling that the dead are here. Now. With us. If a person believed in ghosts… ”

  “They’d be here.”

  She signaled the waiter for menus, which we studied silently before ordering. “When I was in London I went to see the Cenotaph,” she said. “It’s a great big slab of concrete near Parliament; an empty tomb that was dedicated a few years ago. And there were twelve other women from all over Britain standing there staring at it, as though looking for traces of loved ones. Some of them had traveled across the country just to see it, like a pilgrimage. One woman, a mother from Kent, told me that during the Battle of the Somme she could hear the guns across the Channel, especially at night. She said they rattled the dishes in her cupboard so that her whole house made noise. She could actually lie in bed and hear what her son was going through. It was that close.”

  As I ate my lunch I thought of how grateful I was that my own mother never had to hear that sound.

  I DON’T FOLLOW the news anymore. I used to, folding the newspaper just so over breakfast and muttering about the various idiots that ruled the world. But now it all seems remarkably irrelevant, like the weather in Tahiti when you’re stuck in Buffalo. I do read the obituaries each day, poring over them with the same intensity that brokers study the stock tables. I’ve noticed lately that most of those dying are considerably younger than me and to be honest, I find this a bit discouraging. Actuarially speaking, I’m on rather thin ice.

  I prefer the shorter obits to the longer biographies, which can be a bit deflating for those of us who never cracked a code in the war or won a patent or forged a booming business that we’ll bequeath to our well-groomed and valedictorianed offspring. And I always study the photographs. Are they submitted by family members? In almost every case I am certain there must be a more flattering picture of George or Henry or Martha or Carol. Good Lord.

  I also notice that no matter how old people are when they die, their obit photographs invariably show a man or woman smiling from the safety of middle age, that glorious high-water mark of life before everything turns to shit.

  Ah yes, middle age, the smug summit of life. How arrogantly we strutted our stuff, those of us now physically bent into submission as we shuffle along the nursing home corridors, clinging to our metal IV stands. We had our three-bedroom houses and winding driveways and symmetrical hedgerows and rose gardens and barbecues and hammocks and swing sets. We had wall-to-wall carpeting and hardwood floors and chandeliers and pantries and basements and dinner every night at seven sharp with children stampeding down the stairs and dogs barking. We had cars and bicycles and flatware and silverware and dressers and desks and reading chairs and sofas and workbenches and tool chests and by God all the responsibilities at work and home and the church and our community! The sheer importance of it all! Honey, it’s the phone for you, long distance!

  What is it with all that busy-ness? All that stuff? Do we secretly entertain the hope that if only we are preoccupied enough, if we but accumulate enough, the Grim Reaper will mistake us for immortals?

  Maybe the best way to calculate the precise pinnacle of middle age is by raw tonnage. On Tuesday, August 12, 1959, the dear recently departed, then a perky forty-eight, was the rightful owner of 2.9 tons worth of clothes, furniture and bric-a-brac.

  Then it begins, a series of sell-offs, fallbacks and setbacks that cut you at the
knees; retrenchments and retreats that lead all the way to a hospital gurney.

  “YOU’VE GOT GOOD color today, Patrick,” said Sarah, standing next to me as I sat on my bed. She slowly brushed my cheek with the back of her hand.

  “It’s my Irish blood. That’s why we look so healthy when we drink. Christ, I get red when I bend over to pick up a penny.”

  “And you should see him when he can’t find the penny,” said Martin, sitting on the edge of his bed and searching for his slippers with his toes.

  Sarah laughed. “There’s some sort of financial planner speaking in fifteen minutes in the rec room if you two are interested,” she said.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’m taking it all with me.”

  “And Patrick here thinks old King Tut packed light,” said Martin.

  “What about you?” she asked, looking at Martin.

  “What the heck, I’m not doing anything.” He pushed off the bed with a low grunt and headed toward the door.

  After he left Sarah sat down on the bed next to me. “I want to ask you something,” she said.

  “Anything.”

  “Are men as awful as they seem or is it just me?”

  “They are worse,” I said. “Far worse.”

  “I just found out I’m dating—or was dating—a creep.”

  I felt a sudden jolt of jealousy. “So now will you have me?” I asked, wishing she would take my offer seriously. Lately my crush on her had become so consuming that just looking at her made me wince.

  She smiled and leaned against my shoulder. “Why is it so hard to find one kind, semiattractive and intelligent man?” I suppressed the urge to flail my hands in the air like a shipwreck victim trying to attract a passing plane. “It’s crazy. All of my friends are either divorced or unhappily married. You should hear the things they tell me about their spouses! It’s like everyone is just hanging in there for their kids’ sake, only the kids are wise to them.”

  “The more I learn about love and marriage, the less I’m prepared to say.”

  “I think I’m going through a bad period.”

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, so am I.”

  She smiled and patted my back. “You don’t want to hear my stupid little problems.”

  “Beats thinking about my stupid little problems.”

  She hesitated a moment, then sighed and said, “I don’t know, I just feel like I’ve got a lot of stuff eating away at me. I bought three self-help books after work yesterday. That’s a personal record.”

  “Careful with those things. When I had my bookstore I met some of the authors and let me tell you, never have I come across such a bunch of neurotics in my life.”

  “That’s not encouraging.” She leaned closer to me, so that my nose was inches from her cheek. “I was reading this book last night about how I should be more accepting of myself and I thought, does that mean I should also accept the parts of myself that are anxious and self-critical too? Or am I only going to find peace by repressing the unpleasant parts?”

  “Maybe peace is aiming a little high,” I said.

  “Maybe I just need a good pharmacist.”

  “That bad?”

  She nodded, and I suddenly realized that she was one of those people who look happier than they feel, which changed my whole sense of her. Does that suddenly catch up with you, or can you go through life with all the scars on the inside?

  “We’re all quietly going crazy. Or some not so quietly.”

  “Like you.”

  “Like me. And to deal with it, with all the stress, everybody goes overboard on something: food or drugs or work or relationships or religion or what have you. Everybody needs to worship something. I’ve never met an exception.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Damn straight I am. What matters is how destructive your particular obsession is. Can you live with it or are you going to weigh three hundred pounds by Christmas? That’s the question.”

  She smiled. “I don’t mean to bitch so much. I’m just having a bad day.”

  “You can bitch to me anytime.”

  She put her hand on my knee and rubbed it softly. The rest of my body began contracting toward the point of contact.

  “You’re so sweet,” she said, standing up. As she reached the door she turned, blew me a kiss and whispered, “Thanks.”

  I nearly passed out.

  WE WATCHED A dogfight this afternoon. Two Fokkers were lazily dancing high over our lines like big black gnats when two Spads appeared from the southwest. The Fokkers disappeared into a cloud and the Spads went in after them. Moments later all four planes came out the other side, only this time one of the Spads was in the lead and a Fokker dropped down behind him and starting shooting. The machine-gun fire sounded tinny from the distance and was nearly drowned out by the approving roar of Germans in their trenches. Then the Spad started to smoke and it dropped down steeply, whining louder and louder as it sped toward the ground.

  “He’s trying to put out the fire,” said Daniel. “He’s got to put it out before he gets too low.”

  “Come on, come on.”

  How many men were watching this one man’s struggle? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Odd, but his fate seemed so much more important than ours. So much more heroic.

  “He’s pulling up.”

  “No he’s not.”

  “Oh shit.”

  The Spad slammed into the ground just behind the German lines, which erupted in applause.

  Above, the remaining Spad and the second Fokker disappeared again in a big, lone cloud that hung high above no- man’s-land. Then both planes suddenly emerged and headed toward us, one just above the other. They swerved left and right then left again and we could see the heads of the pilots.

  “Come on, get behind him!” I yelled.

  “Keep your heads down,” said Page.

  “Jesus, I don’t think I could stomach that,” said Giles, as the planes abruptly looped upward until climbing almost vertically. Then the Spad broke off to the west, dropped low and headed over our lines toward home.

  We fired a few potshots at the German plane, which broke off the pursuit and banked sharply south and then east, dipping its wings as it passed over the German lines.

  I’VE BEEN taking my sketchbook everywhere with me. It’s not very big and I like to have it handy in case I feel the urge to draw. I try watercolors and charcoal and pencil and ink and pastels. Some days I wake up certain that this will be the day that I get it right, though I never do. But I am getting better.

  This afternoon I was sitting out back on a bench painting with watercolors when it started to rain. My picture actually improved as the first drops hit it. Julia’s hair streaked down her shoulders and ran across her cheeks and her lips fattened before merging with her cheeks. I made no effort to cover her up. Instead I enjoyed watching the droplets bounce off of her as the colors gradually began to swim.

  After I got back to my room I carefully laid the picture out to dry on my dresser. When I came back from dinner and looked at it again, I was struck by how much the swirling reds and browns and oranges and blacks reminded me of the night sky in France during a bombardment.

  I MAY BE no artist, but at least I’m not hard of hearing. I may be the only inmate at Great Oaks—we are inmates, all of us, on death row—who can still hear the owl that lives in one of the trees out back. Yet everyone yells at me nonetheless, conditioned by the sight of white hair.

  “GOOD MORNING MR. DELANEY!”

  “HOW ARE YOU TODAY MR. DELANEY?”

  “DID YOU ENJOY THE SOUP TODAY MR. DELANEY?”

  If I go deaf, it won’t be because of my age.

  And then there are the things I am not supposed to hear, conversations that take place within my range as though I am deaf, dumb and blind, as oblivious as a suckling.

  “I don’t know. I think he’s looking worse. He’s so thin.”

  “Stomach cancer is the worst, poor dear.”

 
“I feel sad for him. Not a single visitor at Christmas.”

  The hard of hearing are easy to spot because they miss so many cues. Their heads are always slightly cocked, not sure if they should be smiling or frowning or even listening at all. At mealtimes someone’s hearing aid is always buzzing or whistling or humming, while the changing of the batteries goes on day and night; ridiculously old people hunched over ridiculously tiny little devices trying to remove and then install shiny little silver objects that they can neither see nor feel, and certainly not comprehend.

  “How in the world do they put E—LEC—TRICITY into something so small?” asks Helen, looking even older than usual.

  “Oh damn, I dropped the battery again!” howls Oscar, issuing the second battery alert of the day. I once counted five battery alerts in one afternoon, though I’m sure that’s not the record. We all stare at the ground helplessly, as if we were gathered around a pool where a child had fallen in and none of us could swim.

  JANET LOOKED through me today. I’m sure she didn’t mean to. But she did. Right through me. As though I wasn’t there.

  That happens a lot now. In old age we are all Invisible Men.

  WE SPENT THE day hiding beneath trees to avoid detection by German fliers. We were somewhere outside the town of Villers-Cotterêts near the rail line to Soissons. At noon a large truck passed by pulling a balloon on a long wire. A few hours later the balloon was shot down. We watched the observer fall.

  Up until dusk no one was allowed to step beyond the protective canopy of trees without permission from an officer, which wouldn’t be forthcoming anyway. I slept on the ground, then wrote a letter, then slept again. In my letter I tried to explain how we careen from intense fear to intense boredom, but I couldn’t get it right.

  We got mail today but most of the letters were unreadable. They had gotten wet somewhere between there and here and the ink had run, diluting entire paragraphs with blots of blue and black. I’ll never forget the look on men’s faces as they struggled to decipher page after page of blurry ink, which had dried like watercolors painted by a child. Some of those watercolors had announced births and deaths; others were responses to marriage proposals. Now all the men had were sheaves of crinkled paper, paper that they kept nonetheless on the off chance that it might one day reveal its secrets.