“I guess others will too eventually. It’s brave of you, Elizabeth.”
“Not really,” Lizzie said quietly. “It just felt like the right thing to do, for a lot of reasons.”
She called Audrey and told her that night.
“I just hope they don’t send you anywhere too far away,” or where she’d be in danger. Audrey hoped they’d keep her in the States. Lizzie thought it was likely they would, but she was willing to go anywhere. “I’m going to miss you, if I can’t see you.” Audrey doubted that she’d be able to leave her mother again. Ellen’s health had deteriorated sharply since Will’s death. The shock of it had hit her hard.
“Will I have to salute when I see you?” Audrey teased her, trying to make light of it. She was sad thinking about Lizzie going away.
“I’m not even sure that nurses get a rank. And no one’s going to get rich on the pay. I think the people doing it, like me, are doing it because they figure they owe it to our country. And someone will have to take care of the wounded, so it might as well be me. There’s no glory in it, and no glamour, from everything I’ve heard. It’s a lot of hard work. That’s what I need right now.” They both knew she had a broken heart, and she was trying to put it to good use, to serve others. There was merit in that. It was an ugly war, and it had already cost them both too much.
Chapter 5
When Audrey and Lizzie had entered nursing school in September 1938, earnestly intending to apply themselves to their nursing studies, Alexandra Whitman White was on the cusp of the most exciting time of her life. An aristocratic, almost regal-looking, statuesque blonde with striking, movie star good looks, she was preparing for her first official social season in New York. Related to Astors and Vanderbilts on both sides, with Morgan cousins, and distantly related to the Roosevelts, she was going to be presented to society at the same cotillion where her mother and grandmother had come out. In the week after the cotillion, her parents would be giving her her own private ball in their mansion on Fifth Avenue. Her sister Charlotte had gone through the same process five years earlier, with considerable success. She had met her future husband at a friend’s coming-out ball in the same season. They were engaged within six months, married the following Christmas, and were now happily married with three little girls.
The purpose of making one’s debut in previous centuries was to bring young ladies out of the seclusion of the “schoolroom” at home and help them find suitable husbands in the same social set. It was the accepted way of finding a husband then, and some brilliant matches—and equally brilliant and often lucrative mergers between important wealthy families—were made. The couples barely knew each other when they married. A similar system had existed in England for centuries, among the aristocracy. Ideally, there were no unfortunate surprises, and decent marriages were the result, although that wasn’t always the case. Alex White’s older sister, Charlotte, was very happy with her husband, a prominent New York banker from a blue-blooded family like theirs. Alex and Charlotte’s father, Robert White, was a banker too. Banking was thought to be the only truly respectable career for a gentleman. None of the women of Alex’s mother’s generation worked. They had no reason to, and it would have been considered inappropriate. The few women who had jobs or careers were severely criticized, and they rarely married. Nothing in their earlier education had prepared them to work. It was considered more important for them to have a solid understanding of art, appreciate theater, opera, and the ballet, run an elegant home, and speak several languages. Alex spoke fluent French, and passable German and Italian, taught to her by her nannies while she was growing up. Her mother, Astrid, and her friends were involved in charitable committees to benefit those less fortunate. It was a value system based on traditions that had existed for generations.
Alex was excited about her debut. She loved going to parties and had envied her older sister all the special events and balls she went to when she came out. Alex had a gregarious nature, and at thirteen, she had sat upstairs on the landing the night of the ball their parents gave her sister, Charlotte, wishing that she could be downstairs dancing with the guests and wearing a fabulous white gown.
Astrid had selected and ordered Alex’s debut dress with her in Paris that summer at Patou. It was a wispy creation in white organza, and Alex couldn’t wait to wear it. She had another one for her own ball, which they had bought in New York. She was going to wear her dark hair swept up for the first time. She had two escorts for the cotillion, as was the tradition, and her private ball was going to be spectacular. It was going to be the most exciting time of her life, and she felt like Cinderella every time she thought about it. What she loved about it was the dancing, the party, and the hundreds of people present when she curtsied. What she didn’t like about it was the idea that she was expected to find a husband, marry within a year or two, and start having babies. It would be even worse if she had to move to Connecticut, as Charlotte had, or to a horse farm in New Jersey and ride all the time. Alex hated horses, and she had no desire to marry for several years. She had known the boys coming to her party since they were in third or fourth grade, and they seemed ridiculous to her. She had no desire for children, or at least not for a long time. She had wanted to go to college, as a few of her more progressive friends had, and her parents had decided it was unnecessary. Neither Alex’s mother nor her sister had gone to college, nor had either of her grandmothers. Her sister Charlotte was perfectly happy never having gone to college, and just being a wife.
Alex had shocked her parents at seventeen, when she volunteered at a well-known hospital, and then at the Foundling Hospital, helping to care for the babies there. Her mother had explained to her that charity work was something you did on a committee, not actually working with the patients or the poor. You did things that benefited them, you didn’t ever actually meet them. Alex had realized then that she was different from her family, and she had no idea why. But she was still excited about her debut. She was eighteen when she came out as a debutante, and although she went to every party she was invited to, and had a wonderful time, she didn’t meet a single boy she thought was interesting, and none of them snagged her heart. It was an exhausting year of constant parties. And by her second season, the war had begun in Europe a few months before in September 1939. Although it didn’t affect any of them personally, it bothered Alex that another deb season had begun, while people were suffering in Europe during a war. That seemed so wrong to her. She had continued her hospital volunteer work despite her mother’s objections. Her father had agreed to let her continue it. And after her second season as a deb, with no engagement in sight, she didn’t want another season. She regretted more than ever not having gone to college, and allowing her parents to talk her out of it. Her mother told her that overeducated women did not appeal to men, which seemed odd to Alex too. Why wouldn’t a man want an educated, intelligent wife, or one with a career?
After her second season, her volunteer work at the hospital no longer seemed like enough to her. Without consulting anyone this time, she signed up for an accelerated course at a nursing school in the city. It was January of 1940, and she was scheduled to graduate in June of 1942. Alex was thrilled with what she’d done. Her mother tried to convince her to withdraw, and her father said it might be simpler if she did, rather than upset her mother, but Alex refused. She was nineteen years old, and her sister suggested that it was some form of belated adolescent rebellion. Whatever the reason for it in the first place, Alex loved her nursing classes and did well.