Losing Julia Read online

  “What I need right now is a big fucking steak,” he said, holding his bayonet up to eye level to examine it, then placing it back in its scabbard. I had grown to like Giles immensely, except for his habit of talking about food, which was almost pathological. I think he used food as a metaphor for all that he missed about civilian life, but regardless his descriptions were excruciating. “A great big juicy steak, cut thick, and maybe some—”

  “Would you shut the fuck up,” said Lawton, who was lying on his back on a wooden bunk, hands clasped behind his head. I’d only recently learned that Lawton’s mother had died when he was five and his father had left him and his younger brother to be raised by an aunt, who beat them. He told Daniel all about it one morning, as though it was important for at least one person in France to know. Now when I looked at him, he reminded me of an overgrown puppy that had never been loved.

  “Yeah, why the hell have you always got to talk about food?” said Lee Chatham, a Kansan with thick stubby fingers and a complexion that was frequently compared to no-man’s-land. A preacher’s son, Chatham had just joined the squad a few days ago, freshly minted and full of illusions. His brother had joined the Lafayette Escadrille two years earlier and been shot down over Verdun. Chatham was here to avenge him. I had tried to think if there was anything I could say to prepare him for what was to come but I couldn’t. You never could. Instead I made a note to myself to stay close to him during his first shelling.

  “I’d trade a herd of cattle for a good fuck right now,” said Lawton, whose favorite pastime was torturing us with descriptions of what it might be like to do so-and-so with so- and-so. His lisp—so at odds with his great bulk—gave dirty words an amusing urgency. (I could thur use thum puthy.)

  “Don’t even think about jerking off in here,” I said.

  “Yeah, why don’t you go up top and see if you can hit the German lines,” said Giles, who would take a good steak over a naked woman any day. “I’ll start a pool.”

  “I got ten Lucky Strikes says he can hit Berlin,” I said.

  “Aim for the Kaiser,” said Giles.

  “Or Ludendorff,” I said. “Yeah, hit the old bastard right in the fucking eye.”

  “You ladies are just jealous,” said Lawton.

  “You know what you are, Lawton?” said Giles, pausing to clear his throat and spit. “You’re a fucking goat.”

  “I know all about you farm boys from Ohio,” said Lawton, flicking the stub of his cigarette butt at Giles. Lately I’d noticed a certain strain in Lawton’s expression and I wondered whether maybe he talked about sex so much to cover up his fears.

  “So besides fucking, what do you intend to do with yourself when you get home?” I asked. “You going to stick with carpentry or maybe open a whorehouse or something?”

  “Hadn’t thought of that. I suppose I could build one from scratch.”

  “Yeah, but you’re going to have to share with your customers,” said Giles.

  “I’ll give you a first-timer’s discount,” he said.

  “Kiss my… I take that back, don’t kiss nothing.”

  I turned to Daniel. “What about you? What are you going to do when you get home?”

  He looked up from the letter he was writing. His hair was matted down and his lean face unshaven. “I don’t know. I’d like to write, or maybe teach. The war has sort of changed what’s important, don’t you think?”

  “So what’s important?”

  He thought for a moment. “Personally, I can only think of three things left that make sense doing.”

  “Well, let’s see, we’ve covered eating and fucking… I’m stumped,” said Giles, rubbing his jaw. Giles constantly suffered from toothaches (he’d had one pulled already), as well as debilitating heartburn, which he blamed entirely on the army diet, particularly the canned beef imported from Argentina by the French but widely derided as “monkey” or “Madagascar” meat.

  Daniel smiled, then turned back to his letter.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  He looked back at me. “Well, I’d either like to reduce human suffering in some way, like being a doctor or helping the poor; create some sort of art, which is really a protest against suffering; or teach, especially young children, which might prevent further human suffering.”

  “Isn’t Daniel a fucking sweetheart?” said Lawton, who was now picking at his teeth with a small splinter of wood peeled from a nearby beam.

  “No shit,” said Giles. “My money says he’s gonna be famous someday.”

  “Bet you can get a scholarship somewhere,” I suggested.

  “Talk to Page, he’s the college man,” said Lawton.

  Nathaniel Page, a Harvard student, glanced up from the corner where he sat reading. Despite his education, upper-class background and good looks—tall, square shoulders, strong jaw—Page never put on airs. Still, you could just tell he was smart by the way he reacted to things, not cautiously but with obvious deliberation. I liked him immediately when I met him, and I was fascinated by his efforts to grapple with all the war’s larger implications. Here was Harvard meets Hell in the flesh: a guy who could speak three languages, including Latin; had actually read Newton’s Principia; and yet couldn’t find even the simplest words to describe the horrors of trench warfare. He was more fastidious than most of the men, which made him amusing to watch in a water-filled trench, yet he kept his discomfort to himself. He thought the war would go on until people at home in America and Germany and Britain and elsewhere realized just how awful it was, only there was no way to make them realize that. That was what bothered him most, knowing how indescribable it all was.

  “What did you study at that fancy school anyway?” asked Lawton. “Fox-hunting?”

  “Philosophy.”

  “I’d love that,” said Daniel.

  “It was a waste of time,” said Page, who’d become increasingly sullen.

  “Why do you say that?” asked Daniel, who looked almost hurt.

  “Because it’s the truth.”

  “No shit?” said Lawton. “You mean the rest of us aren’t such dumb fucks after all?”

  “Precisely.”

  “So what did you have to pay to learn that?” asked Lawton.

  “Get off him,” I said.

  “A fortune,” said Page, returning to his book. As I looked at him sitting there in the corner I felt suddenly sorry for him, imagining how desperate he must have felt inside when all his learning failed him.

  “What about you, Delaney?” asked Giles, turning toward me.

  “What about me?”

  “What are you going to do with your miserable self when you get home?”

  “The first thing I’m gonna do is to attend to several women waiting for me.”

  “How many sisters you got?” asked Lawton.

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  “So seriously, what do you want to do?” asked Daniel.

  “Hadn’t thought much about it. I guess I’ll go back to school, I don’t know.”

  “I’m not in such a hurry to get home,” said Giles. “I’d like to see Paris. Maybe find a French girl.” For Giles, the great redeeming aspect of the war was that it offered an escape from farm life back in rural Ohio; I don’t think he ever intended to go back.

  “Good luck,” said Lawton.

  “I’m serious. I’ve been in France for six fucking months and I haven’t seen shit. Where’s all that great French civilization I heard so much about?”

  “You’re too late,” I said. “Didn’t you hear there’s a war on?”

  “Anybody ever been to Germany?” asked Daniel.

  “My parents are from Germany,” said Carl Frueller, a tall, skinny bank clerk from Pennsylvania whose shyness made me feel protective. Frueller was another recent replacement, and I wasn’t sure he could hit a pumpkin from ten paces.

  “You speak any German?” asked Giles.

  “Sure I do.”

  “You got any relatives over there?”
/>   “Some.” Frueller looked embarrassed.

  “Do you ever think about that, that maybe some of your cousins are in those trenches there?”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “It doesn’t bother you?”

  “Not so much as I won’t shoot them.” He forced a smile.

  “Too bad the Germans don’t stick to making beer,” I said, trying to change the subject.

  “My mother got a letter back in 1914 saying two of her brothers had died on the Marne,” said Frueller.

  Nobody said anything.

  “She hates the Kaiser.”

  “Is it true he’s got one arm shorter than the other?” asked Lawton.

  “Yeah, he keeps it tucked in his shirt like Napoleon,” said Daniel.

  “Did it ever occur to you all that maybe that’s why this whole thing started?” asked Page. “You know, like Napoleon being touchy about his height? That maybe we’re sitting here in this little hellhole because the Kaiser is embarrassed about his short arm?”

  I thought about that for a while: a generation of Europeans killed because a man is shorter than average; another because a man’s arm is shorter than the other. The absurdity of it made me laugh out loud as I headed up the stairs for gas duty in a sap that jutted out from our line twenty feet toward the German lines.

  WE WERE on patrol in no-man’s-land some time after two a.m. when Chatham coughed. He and Frueller were shot dead instantly while Daniel and I were pinned down in a shell hole for three hours. We decided not to say anything about Chatham coughing. It didn’t seem necessary.

  CHRISTMAS MUSIC IS piped into Great Oaks from November through New Year’s, typically fifteen hours a day. “Robert, do you have any idea how many times I’ve heard this song?” Robert is an orderly, and more orderly than most. In his twenties, he recently married a beautiful young woman named Debbie who paid a special visit to the ward after they got engaged.

  “Kind of gets to you, doesn’t it?” he says, smiling.

  “Gets to me? Robert, my boy, I’ve heard ‘Greensleeves’ 738 times since Thanksgiving. I think ‘Jingle Bells’ started playing in October. We’ve got five more weeks to go, Robert. Five more weeks of nonstop around-the-clock Bing and Frank and Prancer and Dancer.”

  “You’re just gonna have to hang tight, Mr. Delaney. Hang tight.” He walks over and empties my trash can.

  “And soon the Easter decorations will be up! Eggs and bunny rabbits everywhere, Robert! Hop hop hop!“

  At Great Oaks it is always either Christmas, Easter, Independence Day, Halloween, or Thanksgiving.

  A week before Christmas a young women’s church group drops by with pets for the elderly to pet; lonely puppy dogs and kittens, which they plop in our lonely laps like Alka-Seltzer tablets into a glass.

  I prefer dogs myself for the obvious reason that dogs prefer humans whereas cats think only of themselves. (Is there a more narcissistic creature on God’s green earth?)

  “Hello, my name is Anne and this is Baxter.” A tall brunette with closecropped hair places a baby basset hound in my lap. I am more interested in Anne than Baxter but take what I can get. I look down at Baxter, who stares up at me expectantly, his rear flailing madly. I stroke his neck gently, enjoying his warmth. “That’s it,” Anne says. “There you go now.” She addresses the old man she sees, not me. I tell the old man to behave and be thankful.

  I remember hearing faint yelps and barking from the basement one Christmas Eve as I lay curled beneath the covers watching the snow gather on my windowsill. I couldn’t sleep for hours as I thought of names for my new puppy: Rags, Scotty, Paws, Chester. I was six that Christmas; twelve when Chester was kicked by a horse on the street in front of our house. I held him as Father went to get the veterinarian and I remember that there was no blood but his fur was hot and wet. I also remember his eyes full of fluid and pleading and staring up at me with questions. “The doctor says they have to put Chester to sleep,” said Father with his hand on my shoulder. I stared down at Chester through big tears that hung in my eyes and I felt that my throat would explode as they gently pried him from my arms.

  Good night, Chester.

  Good night, my broken-hearted boy.

  NEW YEAR’S EVE used to make me sad in that sentimental sort of way. Now it scares me. At Great Oaks the countdown starts in mid-December: who will make it to the New Year, which looms like red tape at the end of another senseless marathon? Few die just before Christmas; the expectation of family gatherings encourages survival. But New Year’s Eve is for lovers and revelers, not family. Not a reason to hang on.

  This year I watch Dave MacKenzie, a plumber who lost his left leg in a farming accident in Iowa when he was seven. I like MacKenzie, an utterly genuine man with a gentle voice and a pleasing laugh. The multiple wrinkles that stretch like rows of parentheses from the corners of his eyes to his temples suggest a merriment that has always eluded me.

  “You know what really gets to me,” he said one day when we were sitting out back by the trees.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m so goddamn full of good advice now and I can’t use any of it.” He laughed his gentle laugh. “Can’t use it on myself and no one else will listen. Especially not my sons.”

  “Is any of it original?”

  “Oh, I guess not. But it’s still great advice. Could save a guy a lot of trouble. Tell me, Delaney, why is it always too late when you have finally figured out what’s really important?”

  “At least you finally wised up,” I said.

  “I don’t know. It kind of makes it more painful, knowing all the mistakes I made.”

  “That’s wisdom,” I said.

  “Wisdom? Ha! Wisdom is nothing but a consolation prize for growing old,” he said. “A damn booby prize.”

  He was right of course. Better to be young and foolish.

  Now bedridden by prostate cancer and nearly blind, MacKenzie is suspended between pain and pain-killers. This Christmas all five of his children and their children visit the center, wheeling his bed out to the patio and enveloping him in chatter. My own two children are vacationing with their families this year, but I don’t mind. I am content to sit on my bench and watch as the MacKenzies pile presents on the patriarch’s lap, opening each one just inches from his face.

  “Look at this sweater, Dad. It’s PERFECT for you.” A daughter, maybe 40 and overweight, holds the dark blue sweater aloft. “And did you see these socks that Scott bought you? PERFECT, Dad.” He smiles, the first smile I have seen on his face in months.

  I watch as they leave, leaning one by one over MacKenzie’s bed for a kiss and a whisper. MacKenzie is asleep as the nurses wheel him back to his room, his sheets still littered with wrapping paper.

  JULIA?

  Yes, Patrick?

  I’m so lonely, Julia.

  I know you are, Patrick. I know you are.

  You know that theme song to Exodus? I listened to it all morning on my tape deck until the nurses asked me to turn it down. It just seemed exactly right.

  I didn’t mean for it to be like this.

  I know you didn’t. I don’t blame you a bit.

  Maybe it would have been better if we had never met.

  No, God no. I don’t regret it at all.

  You should have found another woman, Patrick. You’re a good man. A wonderful man. I’m just a crazy woman who paints all day and can’t even keep house.

  I didn’t want anybody else, Julia. I wanted you. I still want you.

  It’s too late.

  Too late? Why is it too late? Don’t say it’s too late, Julia.

  Patrick, my dear Patrick.

  You’re leaving, aren’t you?

  Soon.

  Don’t leave me. Why are you leaving me again?

  I must.

  Wait, please. Tell me you love me. I must hear at least that Julia, please.

  But then I’ll have to leave.

  I know. But just tell me. Just say the words.
r />   I love you, Patrick.

  And how does the story of Patrick and Julia go, won’t you tell me? You must tell me that before you go. Tell me how we start back in the beginning and every morning I awake to the smell of your hair and we read books together in bed side by side and we go to the symphony and we take our children camping in the summer can’t you tell me any of that, Julia? Can’t you?

  I have to leave now, Patrick.

  Can’t you stay, just this once? Here, lie down beside me and we’ll breathe each other s skin and I’ll make breakfast in the morning and sneak out to the florist to buy you roses.

  I love you, Patrick.

  You love me, you really love me?

  Good-bye, love.

  Julia!

  I awaken and stare at the clock: four a.m.

  MUCH TOO much pain today. Can’t think straight at all.

  Seemingly, as a miracle, all firing stopped, and the silence was amazing! Then, as we stood at our positions along the trenches, we heard a chorus from the German lines, which was only a couple of thousand yards away, a beautiful chorus singing “Silent Night.” We stood there, listening, and the strangest feeling came over us.

  —Albert M. Ettinger, United States Army.

  DECEMBER 31, I prowl the halls, whistling loudly to combat the music. There are pictures on the walls drawn by local schoolchildren who flood us with artwork each holiday. I enjoy the paintings but long for a Monet or Van Gogh to break it up. The infantilism of old age leaves me seething.

  I stop at the entrance to the recreation room, which is strung with red, white and blue streamers. The TV in the corner, always turned much too loud, celebrates another year we had no part in. The room, otherwise quiet, is filled with two dozen celebrants and as many wheelchairs, walkers, canes and colostomy bags. Those who can handle it—and some who cannot—drink cheap champagne from paper cups and stare at the flickering images; images of a world that is increasingly unrecognizable. I watch a nurse spoon-feed chocolate cake with pink icing to a wretched-looking man who sits low in his wheelchair wearing a party hat cocked sideways. A balloon hangs from his IV drip and his shirt is covered with ice cream. Paper horns are blown. A cup is spilled. Someone begins to snore.