Free Justice Done by Jan Burke

Elizabeth, Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Spencer Tracy, and other famous passengers. She tried to take in every detail of the displays of passenger accommodations and dining rooms.
    Robert, cheerful through most of their exploration of the ship, grew solemn when they reached the wartime exhibits on the Sun Deck. The subject matter deserved solemnity, Sarah thought. His mood, however, seemed to remain grim even after they left the exhibit. She felt much more at ease with him by then, which gave her the courage to ask him what was troubling him.
    He hesitated, then said, “Did you see how the soldiers were forced to live aboard this ship?”
    Sarah, recalling the photos of thousands of soldiers crammed together on the decks of the ship, shuddered. “Yes, it was very crowded—”
    â€œCrowded? You like numbers. The ship was designed to carry about two thousand passengers. On one of its wartime voyages, it carried over sixteen thousand men.”
    â€œIt carried sixteen thousand, six hundred and eighty-three,” Sarah said. “The largest number of people ever to sail on any ship—a record that still stands.”
    â€œSarah, think of what that meant to each of those sixteen thousand!”
    She had seen some of this in the exhibit, of course. Tiers of standee berths—narrow metal frames with a single piece of canvas stretched over them—six and seven bunks high, each only eighteen inches apart. The men slept in three shifts; the beds were never empty. Soldiers were given colored badges to be worn at all times; the badges corresponded with a section of the ship where the soldiers were required to stay throughout the voyage.
    But for Sarah, who had struggled for years with a fear of confined spaces, thinking about what it actually meant to each soldier was nearly unbearable to her. Suddenly, she felt dizzy, unable to breathe.
    In the next moment she heard Robert Parsons saying, “My God, I’m so sorry! I forgot! Let’s go outside, onto the Sun Deck.”
    She raised no objections, and found herself feeling a mixture of relief that she was once again in the open air and acute embarrassment that her grandmother had apparently informed Robert Parsons about her problem.
    When he tried to apologize again, she said, “I do believe you’re much more upset about this than I am. I’ll be all right.”
    â€œWhen did it start?” he asked.
    â€œMy claustrophobia? Didn’t Grandmother tell you that, too?”
    â€œNo. She’s never said anything about it. I’ve noticed it before—at her dinner parties. Too many people in the room and you have to go outside. On nights when it’s too cold to be outdoors in an evening gown, you step out for a breath of fresh air.”
    She was quiet for a moment, not sure what to make of his observation of her. Then she said, “I don’t know why this memory has been so persistent, but when I was about four, at the orphanage, I was once punished for something by being shut up in a closet. I don’t remember what I had done wrong, or even who put me in the closet. I just remember the darkness, the sensation of being confined, the smell of the coats and mothballs. I was terrified. I remember counting, singing a song about numbers to stay calm.”
    He put an arm around her shoulders, gave her a brief hug. But he seemed to know not to hold on to her—not when she was feeling so close to the memory of that closet. He let her be. As she felt herself grow calmer, she ventured a question of her own. “I’ve been thinking—the way you responded to the wartime exhibit—do you have problems with claustrophobia, too?”
    He shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
    â€œBut it was personal for you somehow, wasn’t it? You’re too young to have fought in anything other than the Gulf War—”
    â€œMy grandfather went to war on this