He also knew that eventually taking care of their mother would become too much for Audrey to manage on her own, but that time hadn’t come yet, and he hoped it wouldn’t for a long time, for all their sakes. It saddened him profoundly to see how his mother’s health had degenerated, and how much more hampered she was every year. He thought it noble of Audrey to go to nursing school so she could care for Ellen more efficiently, but it was so typical of Audrey. She was always doing for others and willing to sacrifice herself for them. She had given up her youth to do so, and never complained. To Audrey, the glass was always half full, and she met every challenge with love and enthusiasm, which filled Will with admiration for her, and gratitude.
* * *
—
Two weeks after Audrey’s graduation, Will left for Florida to begin basic training. He had no time to call them regularly, so communication from him was sporadic, but he sounded ecstatic, almost euphoric, whenever they did hear from him. He loved what he was doing, and everything he was learning about flying planes. His dream had come true.
Ellen tried to encourage Audrey to spend time with her old school friends in July and August, to catch up with them, and not lose touch entirely, but many of them were traveling with their families, or had gone to their summer homes, and wouldn’t be back until after Labor Day. A few had gotten married right after graduation. And she planned to call one or two to see them in the fall. In the meantime, she was used to keeping busy on her own, and was good at it, with her books and errands for her mother.
Audrey swam at a country club they belonged to, when she could get her mother to go with her. She even got Ellen into the pool a few times, which made her mother feel better afterwards. Audrey gave her mother long gentle massages, and they even managed to go shopping a few times to get her some things she needed for school. As August ended and September began, Audrey was excited about the adventure ahead of her with nursing school. It wasn’t going to be as dazzling as Will’s, learning to fly fighter planes. He had started with an N3N Canary, a “Yellow Peril,” as he called it. It was a biplane built by the navy, and he had graduated to more sophisticated planes by the end of the summer. The navy’s goal was to “train superb pilots.”
But Audrey was excited by what lay ahead for her too. It wasn’t just a training course to learn how to care for her mother. She would be a real nurse, if she chose to be, and was looking forward to the people she would meet in the process. This would no longer be just a bunch of silly kids in high school. These would be serious young women with career goals.
She was impressed by how mature they seemed on the first day of school. They were going to spend much of the first term in the classroom, which Will did during his flight training too, learning about aerodynamics and the complicated calculations he had to know how to make. And even during their first term, Audrey would be meeting and dealing with real patients under close supervision.
On Audrey’s first day of classes, she glanced around the room and saw half a dozen girls she would have liked to meet. They all looked older than she was and seemed very sophisticated to her. She suddenly felt small and inexperienced at life. She felt like she might have a panic attack as she observed the girl sitting next to her. She was beautiful and seemed so poised and adult. She was wearing a gray wool skirt, a white blouse, and plain, simple black high heels. She looked more like a secretary in an office than a nursing student. She had blond hair and big blue eyes. There was a halo of soft curls near her face, and her hair was pulled back tightly in a bun. Audrey was wearing an old navy blue suit of her mother’s that Ellen had loaned her when she’d turned sixteen and needed something to wear when her school took them to a performance of Swan Lake in Baltimore. Her mother had let her keep the suit afterwards. She was wearing a small string of pearls her mother had just given her when she turned eighteen, as a symbol of her adulthood. The pearls said she was no longer a girl but a woman.
Audrey glanced sideways at her neighbor, who smiled at her. They didn’t speak to each other until the first break, and then she turned to Audrey with a warm look.
“Hi, I’m Lizzie Hatton. From Boston. Where are you from?” Some of the girls were local, but many weren’t, like Lizzie.
“Here. I’ve lived here all my life,” Audrey said shyly.
“Everyone in my family is a doctor or nurse. I didn’t get in to nursing school in Boston, so I wound up here.” She seemed mildly embarrassed as she said it. Her grades had slipped a little during senior year. She was having too much fun and didn’t really care about nursing school. She mentioned that she was living in the dorm.
“Mine are all sailors,” Audrey said with a grin. “My father was a captain, my grandfather was a vice admiral, and my brother is a navy pilot.”
“That sounds interesting. What does your mom do?” Lizzie was intrigued by Audrey, who seemed very self-possessed, cool and collected, much more so than Lizzie felt.
“Nothing. She’s sick. But she didn’t work before that.”
“Mine is a nurse. My father’s a doctor, and so are my grandfather and uncle. My older brother is in medical school at Yale, and my younger brother is premed at BU. I wanted to go to medical school too, and they had a fit. According to my father, it’s fine for a woman to be a nurse, but not a doctor. I told him that’s an antiquated point of view. All they really want me to do is get married and have babies. They think nursing school is a suitable activity while I look for a husband.” Lizzie looked annoyed as she said it.
“Is that what your mom did?” Audrey asked her.
“More or less, but she doesn’t put it that way. After they got married, she helped in my father’s office until she had us. She quit when my older brother Greg was born. Now she volunteers at a hospital twice a week. She’s a Gray Lady with the Red Cross.”
“Why wouldn’t they let you go to med school?” That sounded puzzling to Audrey. She thought Lizzie was an interesting girl. And she was excited to be talking to someone her age. She hadn’t had time for a close friend since her parents got sick.
“They said it takes too many years of study for a woman to become a doctor, and men don’t want to marry women who work or have a career. That’s probably true. So maybe we’ll wind up spinsters after we’re nurses,” she said, laughing. There was something bright and bold about Lizzie that Audrey liked.
“But your father married your mother, and she was a nurse.”
“I don’t think she ever intended it as a career forever,” Lizzie admitted. “Just until she married.”
“I’m here to learn how to take better care of my mother. She has Parkinson’s,” Audrey confided in her. She was enjoying the exchange and confidences immensely.
“That’s serious,” Lizzie commented. “So you’re not going to work as a nurse after you graduate?” That seemed too limited to Lizzie. It did to Audrey too, when she said it out loud. Her life of dedication to her mother was hard to explain, and what her father had left them meant she didn’t have to work, as long as they were careful. Neither Audrey nor her mother were extravagant.