If Only In My Dreams

“Well, I would imagine so. Her father had her mother beheaded, didn’t he?”

“You know some history,” she said, nodding.

“Just what a fella can pick up at the movies.”

“I’d love to visit England some time, now that the war is over.”

“It’s pretty. Very green.”

“Oh. I wasn’t thinking. You were there, of course. I didn’t mean to bring that up.”

“It’s okay. I liked it there. Of course, we were stationed out in the country. I’m sure it has it’s seedier parts, like anywhere else.”

“I see you brought a magazine,” Dorothy said.

Joe picked up the True Detective, glanced at the cover, then tossed it back down.

“The porter gave it to me. You know, that kind of thing just seems foolish to me now. I should have got a book at the PX or the station in Philly.”

“I’ve got a book you can read,” Dorothy said, with a hint of excitement in her voice. She looked into her shoulder bag, then pulled out a hardcover book and held it up to show it to Joe.

“The Great Gatsby,” he read aloud.

“It’s terrific.”

“So I’ve heard.”

She handed it to him. He sat back and opened it, then looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Property of the Chicago Public Library?”

Dorothy chuckled nervously. “Yeah. I took it out just before I went to Pittsburgh, and forgot I had it.”

“The card says it was due back on March 18, 1942.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You don’t think they are going to charge me with more than three years of fines, do you?”

“I don’t know,” he said, grinning, “They might throw the book at you.”

“Maybe I’ll just throw it at them and run away.”

“Please tell me that you aren’t going back to Chicago just to return an overdue library book.”

She let out a hearty laugh, then shook her head. “No, I’m going home.”

“Where is home?”

“Pilgrim Street. It’s just a few blocks from Wrigley Field.”

“Oh no,” he moaned, “Not a Cubs fan…”

“You’re darn tootin’! We almost won the World Series this year.”

“Right. Almost.”

“At least we didn’t cheat to win.”

“The White Sox…”

“Black Sox.”

“…didn’t cheat to win, they cheated to lose.”

“Oh, well, that’s so much better.”

They both laughed, then turned back to their books. But Joe could not concentrate on reading. His eyes kept drifting to Dorothy. She had a habit of slightly moving her lips as she read, and he found that sweetly amusing.

Dorothy was aware that Joe kept glancing at her. She was flattered, but wondered why he was not more openly flirtatious. Then it occurred to her that he was probably badly out of practice. The real question was, did she want him to flirt with her? She thought she did, but that she’d have to make the first move.

She closed her book. He continued to read for a moment. When he finally raised his eyes for another peek at her, she was looking right back at him.

“How many of the people in this car snore, do you think?” she asked.

He furrowed his brow for a minute, as if he were calculating. “Hard to say,” he answered.

“I guess we will find out soon enough.”

“Are you asking because you hope no one does, or because you don’t want to be the only one?”

“I do not snore!” she exclaimed.

“How do you know?”

“Well nobody ever…I mean…” she blushed and stammered, then said, “I suppose if you always slept alone, you’d never know, would you?”

“You could always join the army.”

“I wouldn’t need to sleep with that many men!” She realized what she had said, and laughed loudly.

Joe grinned and sat back. “No,” he said, “I suppose one would do.”

“Well, if he was willing to put up with me snoring, that would probably prove he was the right one.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment. Dorothy broke it by asking Joe, “Did you ever go to Navy Pier?”

“Of course I did,” he replied, and for the next hour or so they made small talk. Each of them intuited that there were places the other did not want the conversation to go, and were very careful to keep it to neutral subjects; the books they were reading, places they both knew in Chicago, movies they had enjoyed when they were children.

The couple sitting in the booth across the aisle signaled for the porter. He came and spoke with them for a minute, then they got up and exited toward the dining car.

Joe and Dorothy watched as the porter made quick work of converting their booth from seating into bunk beds. Pulling a lever here and tugging a strap there, in less than a minute the seats had become the bottom bunk.

He reached above his head and unfastened a rack, which lowered to make the top bunk.

“That’s quite an ingenious design,” Dorothy said.

Joe nodded in agreement and looked at his watch. “It’s past eleven. We probably ought to have him set ours up as well.”

The porter overheard him. He looked over his shoulder and said “I’ll be obliged to get you all set next. Generally, what folks do is go to the dining car and have a nightcap. When they come back, they can tuck right in.”

He excused himself and set off down the aisle, returning a minute later pushing a cart stacked with pillows and blankets. He made the two beds, adjusted the curtains, then stepped back. “Now, if you’d like me to get yours set?”

“Thank you,” Dorothy said, “And I could certainly use a drink.”

She stepped out into the aisle and Joe followed her.

The atmosphere in the dining car had completely changed since Joe’s supper. The lights were low and soft jazz was playing from somewhere. The murmur of voices and clinking glasses reminded Joe of nightclubs he had been to around Uptown Square before the war.

They sat down across from each other at one of the small tables. A waiter came to take their drink order.

“Do you like martinis?” Dorothy asked Joe.

He shrugged. “I’ve never had one.”

Dorothy held up two fingers to the waiter. He nodded and disappeared.

Outside the window, scattered lights were appearing in the darkness. Joe leaned on his elbows and looked out. The lights grew more numerous. They were rolling through a city somewhere in Ohio, Youngstown perhaps or maybe Akron.

“I’ve noticed,” Dorothy said, “That every time we go through a city or even a big town, you seem really interested in looking at it. And I don’t mean just glancing. You’re sort of intense about it.”

“Am I?” Joe asked.

“Seems so. Why is that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. But he did know. He struggled to find the words to explain, not because he didn’t understand, but because he wasn’t sure he wanted the conversation to go where he was sure it would inevitably lead. At the same time, though, he realized that he wanted to tell her.

“It’s just that…” he stared out the window as the city receded back into the darkness…“They’re still here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re all still here. They’re not bombed out shells and piles of rubble.”

The waiter brought their drinks. Dorothy took a sip, then reached across the table and put her hand on top of Joe’s.

“I didn’t mean to bring up any bad memories.”

“No. That’s Okay.” He took a sip of his martini. “And this is really good.”

“You might feel better if you talk about it,” Dorothy said.

Joe looked into her eyes, and what he saw wasn’t curiosity, but concern. She was not coaxing him to talk about the war to get some vicarious thrill, but out of genuine kindness toward him.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes.

Dorothy sipped her martini, her hand still touching his. She hoped he would want to talk, even though she was afraid to hear what he might tell her. She had liked this man from the first and she had decided that she really wanted to know him. If that involved hearing some hard things, that would just be something she would have to deal with.

Joe drained the last of his glass. He took hold of her hand and squeezed it. “I am going to need another drink first,” he said.

CHAPTER FIVE

Joe ordered another round but when it came, he just stared into the glass.

“You don’t have to say anything,” Dorothy said.

Joe shook his head. He wanted to talk, and it wasn’t just to get it out of his system. It was her. He wanted to tell her.

“We shipped out on D-Day plus five,” he began, “We went ashore at Omaha Beach but the fighting was all inland by then. The obstacles the Germans had put along the beach had been cleared, and below the high tide line the waves had washed away any sign of the fighting. It looked like any beach. It could’ve been California or Florida or anywhere. But when you got above the high tide mark there were marshy areas where the water was still tinted red.”

Dorothy drew in a sharp breath. She squeezed her eyes tight, trying to hold in tears.

“Maybe we should just have our drinks,” Joe said.

Dorothy shook her head. “No, please. Go on.”

“We moved up. The third day we were in France we came under fire, but nothing much came of it. The next day we lost the first man in my platoon. Karl Overmeyer. Funny thing was, his family was German. He was shot by a sniper, shooting out of the hayloft of a barn. We took cover and called it in. A Sherman tank rolled up and blew that barn into a million pieces. There was hay flying everywhere.”

He paused for a second. “Some poor farmer’s barn. And you know… more than anything what bothered me the most was not so much the death, bad as that is, but the pure goddamn waste. That soldier’s life was thrown away, but on top of that, what’s the farmer going to do? How is he going to feed and shelter his livestock? If they are even still alive.”

“So many people suffering…” Dorothy muttered.

“I mean, we saw it in England,” Joe continued, “When we would go into town we saw buildings that had been bombed. But they were like a novelty. And, yeah, I know the big cities took a beating. But in France, it seemed like it was everywhere. We spent the whole summer marching across northern France, and then Belgium. In every town we went through there were buildings burned out or bombed into rubble. People’s houses. Stores. Even churches.”

“We walked down the country roads and there would be stone walls chipped with bullet holes. Whole herds of cattle or sheep dead in their pastures. You’d smell them before you’d see them. But we didn’t have too tough a go of it. We got in a few fights. I fired my rifle a couple of times, but I don’t know if I hit anybody. We lost a few men wounded, but didn’t have any more killed.”

He took a long pause and a big drink.

“By the first snow we thought the war was pretty much over. The Germans were just running away in front of us. Seemed like they were beat pretty bad. They started to surrender in good numbers. A lot of them were old men or boys, fourteen-fifteen years old. Someone said ‘how did this bunch conquer Europe,’ but I understood that all their best soldiers were already dead.”

“We figured the winter would finish them off. We billeted in a little Belgian town, just on the edge of the Ardennes. I didn’t expect we’d be moving forward again until spring. The Germans had other plans.”

“The Bulge,” Dorothy muttered.

Joe nodded. “They threw everything they could at us. The idea was to bust through, split our lines and take the port of Antwerp. That have would cut off most of our supplies. We were ordered to move into the forest and hold a crossroads about ten miles in. By the time we got there, the Germans had already taken it.”

He looked Dorothy in the eyes. “We took it back. I’m not going to tell you the details.”

Dorothy nodded that she understood.

“That wasn’t the end of it though. It was just the beginning. We got some reinforcements, but so did they. For ten days we fought over that cross roads. We were out of food. We melted snow for drinking water. We came damn close to running out of ammo. But we held that crossroads and the 99th Infantry held the ridge. We lost a lot of men. I lost some good friends.”

Joe went quiet. Dorothy waited. If he wanted to say more he would, in his own time. After a few minutes, he resumed.

“On Christmas Eve, the Germans finally gave it up. If you read what the newspapers said, it was because the weather cleared and our planes started bombing them. But I believe they had just had enough, planes or no planes. Maybe they all said ‘Fuck it, we’re going home for Christmas.’ Oh…excuse my language.”

“It’s okay,” Dorothy said with a smile.

“So, anyway, they pulled us out, back up to Liege. I had some shrapnel in my leg. Nothing too bad. Just about every man had some wounds. Many a lot worse than mine. They patched us up and fed us some canned turkey for Christmas dinner. After we ate, we had mail call. First time in weeks.”

“That must’ve cheered everyone up some,” Dorothy said.

Joe slowly shook his head. “For most, yeah. I got a Christmas card from my aunt Daphne and a letter from Judy.” He paused. “My wife.”

Dorothy felt a flutter in her stomach. He had not mentioned having a wife.

“She told me that she wanted a divorce.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“But why? What happened?”

“She was working in a garment factory, sewing uniforms. She said she got lonely and started going out on dates with a fellow working in the office there. I guess they got serious. She didn’t want to wait anymore for me to come back.”

“I’m sorry, that must’ve been terrible.”

“I wasn’t going to try to make her stay with me,” Joe said with a shrug, “I wrote her back, said if she sent me the papers I’d sign them. So, that’s what I got for Christmas last year. A few scraps of iron from the Germans, and a Dear John letter from my wife.”

“At least this year, you got an oatmeal raisin cookie,” Dorothy said. For the first time since he began his tale, Joe grinned.

“We rested for about a month. Then we marched into Germany. It was wrecked worse than France. Whole cities blown to smithereens. And the roads were filled with people, everywhere we went. Homeless civilians. People who had escaped from the labor camps trying to get back to France or Poland or wherever they had come from. Whole platoons of soldiers just sitting in fields waiting for someone to take them prisoner. When we reached the Rhine, they ferried us across on a barge. In the middle of the river, I took off my wedding ring and tossed it in the water.”

He let out a deep breath. “I need one more drink,” he said, signaling the waiter.

Dorothy wanted desperately to console Joe, but did not know what to say. Everything she thought of seemed trite. Finally, she said, “There were some women I worked with at the steel mill who were playing around while their husbands were overseas.” She shook her head. “I understand loneliness. In fact, I’m an expert on loneliness, but I didn’t understand that.”

Joe was puzzled by her comment about loneliness. He leaned closer across the table.

“Why did you go to Pittsburgh?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s time for my story now, is it?”

“Only if you want to tell it.”

CHAPTER SIX

After a moment of consideration, Dorothy decided she did want to tell Joe her story. She had made up her mind that she wanted to see him again, and it would not be fair to either of them for her to withhold it.

“When I was just out of high school I got a job in the financial office at the University of Chicago. It was a good job. People were friendly, the work was easy. Of course, most of the students were men around my own age, so I got asked out a lot. I always said no. I mean, come on, I was a working girl. They were college students. Who was even going to pay when we went on a date?”

Joe chuckled.

“Then I met Mike. He came in one day about a problem with his tuition and I straightened it out and… I don’t know, we just hit it off. You can call me crazy, but my intuition about men is very good.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“Thanks. So, Mike was an engineering student from Pittsburgh. We dated for about a year and then we got engaged. A month later, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. His older brother David enlisted in the Marines, and wanted Mike to join up with him. I told him that he ought to apply for officer training school or something. He had a student deferment, there was no rush. But there was no getting around it. He wanted to go be a Marine like his big brother.”

Joe winced. He didn’t think much of the Marines. They were glory hounds with more guts than brains, in his opinion.

“The problem was, their father had died a few years earlier, and Dave was taking care of their mother. Against my better judgment, I agreed to stay with her while they went off to war. So, our wedding was put on hold and I moved to Pittsburgh. I got a good job at the US Steel plant, driving a forklift. Mrs. Mason was a wonderful roommate. We took care of each other, really. Now, Dave is coming home, and so am I.”

“And Mike?”

Dorothy’s expression went blank. She stared off into nothingness for a long moment, then spoke in a flat voice, drained of all emotion.

“Dead on a beach, somewhere in the Solomon Islands.”

Joe waited until she focused her attention on him again before speaking.

“I’m sorry, Dorothy.”

He thought he detected a flash of anger when she replied, “Dave spent the whole war guarding the Panama Canal.”

“It’s not his fault, Dorothy.”

She looked away. “I know that. But I don’t think I can ever look at his face again.”

“I understand that.”

“You do, don’t you?”

“I think so.”

“Last Christmas, Mrs. Mason and I went to her brother’s house for dinner. Everyone was polite. But I could tell that they all wished I wasn’t there. They looked at me and all they could see was that Mike wasn’t.”

She sniffled and wiped her eye. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“No need to be.”

“Yes, there is. I’m fussing about my miserable Christmas, but it was warm and safe and there was a real turkey, while you…”

Joe shook his head forcefully. “The war was hard on everybody. It’s not a contest.”

She bit her lip, then asked, “So, what are you going to do when we get to Chicago?”

Joe blushed. He felt embarrassed by his circumstances. “I figure I’ll stay at the YMCA for now,” he told her. “I’ve got a good amount of back pay to get me by for a while. After Christmas, I’ll get a room somewhere and find a job.”

“Seems like a lousy homecoming for a war hero,” Dorothy said.

“I’m no hero.”

“Yes, you are. You all are.”

“There are plenty of guys who did a lot more than I did.”

“You held the ridge. You kept the Germans out of Antwerp.”

“Not by myself.”

“True. But you might have been the one grain of sand that tipped the scale. You’ll never know, will you?”

“I guess not.”

Dorothy took a deep breath, let it out slowly, then, in a voice that almost quivered, asked, “If I give you my phone number will you call me?”

The expression on Joe’s face was caught between a smile and a scowl. “Uh…I just…I think you deserve better than me,” he said, “You at least deserve a man with a job.”

“Everybody’s hiring veterans,” she replied, “You’ll get a job right away, and you can take me out for New Year’s Eve. 1946 is sure to be better than ’45, right?”

“I don’t see how it could be worse.”

“Well then?”

“Well then, what?” Joe asked.

“Are you going to ask me out for New Year’s Eve?”

“Oh. Sorry. Will you go out with me for New Year’s Eve?”

“I’ll think about it,” Dorothy said, laughing. When Joe frowned, she added, “Of course I will. I hope you like to dance.”

“It depends on the partner.”

The waiter crept up to their table. “Folks,” he said, “Can I get you a last drink? We need to be closing up shortly.”

“Should we have one more before we call it a night?” Joe asked Dorothy.

“Sure. One for the railroad.”

Joe looked at his watch. “I can’t believe it’s so late.”

“Time goes by fast when you’re with good company,” Dorothy said, smiling.

The waiter brought their last round of martinis. Joe held up his glass and clinked it against Dorothy’s.

“To the Broadway Limited,” he said.