“Welcome home. How was it?” she asked, as Audrey kissed her.
“Oh, Mom, it was the best ever. You can’t even imagine how great it was. We even saw Will fly yesterday. You gave me, and Lizzie, the best gift of our lives.” She was going to tell her mother about Will and Lizzie later, but it was too late that night. It had been a long trip from San Francisco to Annapolis, and she felt like she was on another planet now. The trip to Hawaii seemed like a dream. When she went to her room she got the lei for her mother out of its box in her suitcase where she had carefully put it for the flight to San Francisco. It was still fragrant and beautiful, and she put it next to her mother’s bed as Ellen drifted off to sleep with a smile.
* * *
—
Helping to serve her patients lunch in the post-op ward the day after they got home, Lizzie felt like she was in a daze, but she smiled every time she thought of Will. She could see her future now. Maybe her parents had been right after all. Marriage and children no longer sounded like such a bad idea, even if it had meant giving up medical school. If she had gone to medical school, she would never have met Audrey or her brother, and would never have gone to Hawaii. She had put the lei carefully on her bed table the night before. Its delicate fragrance filled the room and reminded her of Will.
She had a long shift that day, and she wasn’t going to finish until nine o’clock that night. But she didn’t care. She would have worked twenty-four hours straight if she had to. The love they had discovered in Hawaii gave her the strength and courage to conquer the world. She wasn’t going to tell her parents about it yet. She didn’t want to give them a chance to examine it, or him, under a microscope, or pick it apart. She wasn’t sure that a navy pilot was what they had in mind for her. But she knew how much she loved him, and how right it was. That was good enough for her for now.
* * *
—
For the next week, Audrey and Lizzie called each other every chance they got, when Lizzie wasn’t on duty at the hospital. Audrey told her mother about Will and Lizzie, and all Ellen said was that she hoped it would last. They were both very young, and would be apart a lot for the next few years. She hoped that they would have the fortitude to stick with it, and stand by each other. She already loved Lizzie, so she was pleased. And not entirely surprised. Lizzie had been young before, when Will first met her. But at twenty-two, Ellen thought she was old enough for a serious love now. She was sorry that Audrey hadn’t at least had a brief flirtation in Hawaii, but Audrey didn’t seem to mind. She was so happy for her brother and her best friend that it seemed even better than a romance of her own.
Thanksgiving was on Thursday of that week. Lizzie had to work and Audrey and her mother shared a quiet turkey dinner. The holiday paled this year in comparison to the Hawaiian vacation.
The first letter Will wrote to Lizzie took two weeks to reach her from Honolulu, and he had written to her the day she left. She pounced on it as soon as it arrived, and his letter made her smile and laugh. He told her how much he had fallen in love with her, and that he had never felt this way in his life. She answered him the night she got his letter. She had been waiting to hear from him first, and she reciprocated all his feelings, and told him what she’d been doing since she left. She opened the letter twice before she sent it, to add lengthy PS’s and mailed it the next morning on her way to work. It was the first of December, which reminded her that Christmas was just around the corner.
She wondered if Will really would be able to get leave sometime during the holidays. He had said he would try. He hadn’t been planning to come back, since his leaves were usually short. But now everything was different, and he had said again in his letter that he would do his best to come to Boston as soon as he could, even if it was only for a few days. He was going to try and catch a military flight. They were notoriously uncomfortable, but he would have come strapped to the fuselage if he had to. And he wanted to meet her parents, so they would know he was serious about her. He was an honorable man, and he wanted to start building a solid future with Lizzie.
She worked double shifts for three days that week, but even that didn’t faze her. Thoughts of Will filled her mind during every waking hour, and the images of their time together in Honolulu were as vivid as the days and nights had been when she was there. She could still feel his lips on hers.
She had the weekend off and spent Saturday doing laundry and starching her uniforms. She took a nap, read some magazines, and called Audrey, who was busy bathing her mother with Mrs. Beavis and shampooing her hair, so she couldn’t talk. She promised to call back later, but she never did. Her mother had cramps in her legs so Audrey massaged them late into the night, and by then, she knew it was too late to call Lizzie. She would have woken the whole house if she did.
* * *
—
Audrey called Lizzie back on Sunday morning, but she had gone to church with her parents, which she occasionally did, now that she was living at home again. She did it mostly to humor her parents, since it meant a lot to her mother.
Audrey spent the morning writing checks for her mother, to pay their bills. Ellen’s handwriting was barely legible now, and she had trouble holding a pen, just as she did a fork and knife. Her mind was still clear and acute, but everything that involved motor skills—walking, writing, feeding herself, dialing a phone, even lifting a glass to her lips—was hard for her, and required Audrey’s help.
Audrey finished writing the checks at noon, and went to make her mother’s lunch. She had just put it on a plate an hour later. The phone rang as soon as she did. It was Lizzie, and Audrey was happy to hear her.
“We’ve been missing each other for two days. I’m sorry I didn’t call back last night.” She was smiling, wanting to chat with her for a minute, when Lizzie cut through what she said in a voice that was filled with terror.
“The Japanese just bombed Hawaii, Pearl Harbor.” They had gone there with Will to look at the navy ships. “I heard it on the radio. It’s still going on. Oh my God, Aud…oh my God…please God, don’t let Will be there today.” It was just after eight a.m. in Hawaii, and neither of them knew what he was planning to do that day. Then Audrey remembered that he sometimes went out to work on his plane on the weekends, and he had always been an early riser, even as a kid, and especially once he was in the military.
“I have to feed Mom, and I don’t want to tell her. Not until we know more about it. I’ll call you back after she eats lunch. And Lizzie…pray…”
Lizzie felt too paralyzed with fear to even speak, and just hung up and went back to the radio her parents were listening to. It sounded terrible. There were explosions and fires. One ship had been bombed four times. Lizzie sat listening, deathly pale, her hands clenched in her lap.
Audrey’s hands were shaking while she fed her mother, but Ellen didn’t notice, as she chatted to Audrey, who nodded and smiled and tried to act as though everything was normal, but nothing was. Ellen seemed to take forever to eat, and Audrey hurried back to the kitchen as soon as she could get away. She closed the door and turned the radio on just loud enough to hear, but not so her mother could hear it in the downstairs bedroom she slept in now.