Free Next to Love by Ellen Feldman Page B

name explodes in the darkness, and Claude is coming toward her, not the Claude she said goodbye to last New Year’s but Claude all the same. He is lean and taut as an iron rail, and even in the dim light of the station platform, his skin is burnished to a reddish brown. The angles of his cheekbones and the hollows beneath them lengthen his nose. His face is sharp as an ax. She drops her suitcase, and he grabs her, and all around them eyes turn away in decency.
    He has managed to get a room. It’s only temporary, he warns her, as they make their way through the center of town. He is sure with a little footwork she can find something better.
    The rooming house needs a coat of paint. The entire building seems to list to one side. As they climb to the third floor, the stairs protest under their feet. He opens the door and switches on a light. She blinks against the glare of the uncovered bulb hanging from a wire. One wall has a stain as big and brown as a gorilla. Three rusty hooks jut out from another wall. There is no dresser, closet, or mirror, but the two windows have shades, and there is a straight-backed chair and, in the middle of the room, a bed.
    “I’ll start looking for another place tomorrow,” she says.
    He grins. “I missed you like nobody’s business,” he tells her, then adds that he has only forty minutes before the last bus back to camp.
    They get out of their clothes quickly and into the bed. The sheets are damp, and the mattress is lumpy, but they have never been in a bed before. An image of the stinking bathroom flashes in her mind like a cheap neon sign. She opens her eyes. He is watching her. She swims up into his gaze and molds herself against the length of him.
    He lets out a sweet velvet moan.
    The neon sign blinks once more, then goes out.

FOUR

    JULY 1942
    S HE IS A FRAUD. SHE LIES IN THE HOSPITAL BED, WITH CLAUDE SITTING beside her, holding her hand, and Millie tiptoeing in and out in her billowing maternity blouse, and pretends to feel what she does not feel, to feel the opposite of what she feels. Relief. Her relief is so huge it takes up half the hospital room. She is amazed no one else sees it.
    The doctor with the hard pebble eyes was wrong. Or was he? She will never know. But the fear dogged her. It hovered over her like the Confederate flag the justice of the peace had hung in the study where he married Claude and her, took up residence in the creaky bed in the new room she found, and kept her awake at night and on edge during the day. As soon as the other doctor, the one here in Rockfish, told her the news, she knew she would never stop looking for markers. She would rejoice in crooked teeth that needed braces. She would monitor the marks on the wall measuring growth, praying the child would not tower over Claude. She would hope for a bookish bent and despair over a major-league arm, though both could come from her. That was the point. She would never know. It was her life sentence.
    She and Millie went to the doctor in Rockfish together. After Babe left South Downs, Millie made up her mind to follow Pete to camp. Her trip was difficult too. She stepped off the train talking of long waits on sidings, and endless lines for the dining car, and no seats. “But everyone was so nice,” she told them. “The boys couldn’t have been sweeter.”
    Pete reached an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “How could they resist?”
    “Don’t be silly. They knew I was married.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her ring finger.
    Just as he knew I wasn’t, Babe thought, and felt a flash of anger at Millie, at all the good girls who played by the rules.
    Three months later, she and Millie went to the doctor. Millie could not wait to find out. Babe had been putting it off. A few days later they got the news.
    “Thank heavens,” Millie said. “It would have been awful if one of us was pregnant and the other wasn’t. I would have been so jealous.”
    The real surprise was