Free A Cup of Tea: A Novel of 1917 by Amy Ephron Page A

turned and looked at Jane. “I never have the right response anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to wave a flag. I’ll wave a flag when he comes home.”
    Jane held Rose’s arm a little tighter as the ship began to pull away.

 
    O nce abroad, entrapped in a regimen he barely understood, where everything was minimal and stripped away and basic and terrifying, and though he could admit this to no one, plagued with lingering doubts about his ability to lead and the nature of war, images of Eleanor kept coming to his mind. He sent her a letter from France. A letter she read so many times that the paper had grown thin in the places where she held it.
    She was sitting on a stool in the workroom rereading the letter, although she had no need since she knew it by heart, when Dora walked into the workroomcarrying a black hat. She immediately hid the letter in the pocket of her apron.
    Dora held the hat out to her. “Would you mind…? We have a delivery to make. Mrs. Lawson—her husband,” said Dora as if no other explanation were necessary. “I’ve grown to hate this war. But my mother always used to say, one should always be prepared and keep a black hat in the closet.”
    Eleanor couldn’t tell whether she’d just been told a life lesson or one of Dora’s eccentricities. She took the hat from Dora gingerly and put it in a hat box. Forgetting that the letter was in the pocket, she took her apron off and hung it on a hook. She nodded as Dora handed her the address.
    “Although,” said Dora as Eleanor turned to go, “I guess I could understand wanting a new hat under the circumstances.”
    It was terribly hot and humid. A group of children were playing around an open fire hydrant, barefoot, unmindful of the fact that their clothes were getting wet. Three women, presumably with some relation to the children, sat exhausted, legs splayed, fanning themselves on a stoop. Eleanor walked by carrying the hat box. She felt like a messenger of death. And as she walked down the street, the words in Philip’s letter, the letter she’d been reading, the letter she hadn’t expectedto get and hoped for every day, sounded over in her mind.
    “I have heard of people having flashbacks when they returned from war,” he wrote. “But I began to have them as soon as I arrived. Flashbacks of you. They come unbidden. I’m hoping you can forgive me and give me a chance to make right what is wrong. In the meantime, I am left with memories of you. The way you looked when you opened your door at night…And how it felt to lie beside you…”
    A taxi honked at Eleanor as she crossed the street. She hurried on oblivious. The sounds of the city became intermingled with the sound of war in her imagination, an explosion in the distance, planes flying overhead.
    “Did I speak to you about duty. I meant to…”
    Eleanor walked down a residential street that was lined with brownstones with a uniform facade.
    “Duty and honor. And what it is like to be bound to one thing when your heart wishes you to do something else…”
    The sound of a bomber overhead, intermixed with traffic noise as it strafes the sky.
    “What it is like to fight a war when nothing about a war makes sense except a sense of duty.”
    The sound of a single bomb now on a swift trajectoryto the ground as if for one moment she were by his side.
    “Don’t question my love. Try, if you can to forgive me. And know that I am coming home to you.”
    And then, unmistakably, the sound of a bomb as it hit and exploded on the ground.
    The Lawson house stood out because of the yellow ribbon on the door that was tied like a Christmas package, but in the center where the bow would be, hung a black wreath. Eleanor walked down the stairs of the brownstone to the servants’ and delivery entrance and knocked.
    The door was opened by the fat cook, Emma, whose normally cheerful countenance was stained by tears. The sight of the hat box was enough to start her off again, but she had