I spend one night in Station Hospital, with Nicholas at my bedside. There is a phone in the room, which he uses to call home, breaking the news to Mama and Papa. I am only vaguely aware of the conversation, as sedated as I am, but I am glad not to have to speak to them. I can imagine that Papa is profoundly disappointed and that Mama is equally relieved, and that they are both struggling to hide their feelings from each other. In the morning, Nicholas goes back to the bunkhouse to pack my things for my trip back to Sheboygan. He tells me, before he leaves, that Papa will be coming to pick me up.
I know that Nicholas and I would not have been assigned to the same divisions, probably not sent to fight in the same battles. But the worst part of becoming suddenly becoming a 4F, like Papa – more than having to give up the great generational opportunity to fight for peace and to help defeat the forces of evil – is letting my brother down. He is good at masking his emotions when he wants to, and he is doing that now. If the situation were reversed – which I concede is unthinkable – I think I would feel disappointed and a little bit angry, but mostly anxious about venturing out alone. Not that Nicholas will be alone. He has made some good friends at Fort McCoy, and he will make many others when he is sent to whatever corner of the world awaits. But a twin is like an appendage, like an extension of yourself that you have come to take for granted, and a sudden, unexpected separation is like an amputation.
At eight o’clock in the morning, Nicholas returns to my hospital room. He tells me that Papa left before dawn so he could be back at the Atheneum for the lunch crowd. So I dress, with my brother’s help, and I am quickly discharged, loaded into a wheelchair, and pushed out the hospital door without ceremony. It is a bright, cold morning. I have been sent off with a thin, olive-colored Army-issue blanket, and I struggle to wrap it around my shoulders. A few of the guys have assembled near the front gate to see me off. Hawk is there, looking typically grim. I can imagine what he is thinking – although, when we stop, Hawk steps up and shakes my hand as if I have achieved something worth celebrating. And Noah Aaronson is there. We make eye contact, and he quickly looks away and shakes his head. I do not see Red Mullin, and I wonder if he has been disciplined for his role in what happened. I hope not.
Nicholas waits with me at the gate. The others have left, and I am glad for that.
I’m sorry, I say, when it is just us. That was stupid and I’m sorry. I wanted to get through boot camp with you.
I know, he says. And that is all he says.
This is what Mama wanted, I guess.
Nicholas looks at me and frowns. This isn’t what she wanted. There was an accident. Nobody wanted this to happen.
I guess. I feel stupid all over again. The anesthetic is wearing off and I can feel my foot throbbing.
A few more minutes pass before either of us say anything else. When we do talk, it feels strange – as if we are dancing through and around a conversation we have never had, but one that I will need to remember.
Where do you think they’ll send you? I ask.
Probably Europe somewhere. I don’t know. It’d be weird if they sent me to Greece or Italy. Right? Nicholas smiles weakly.
I hope they let you come home first. Mama would want to see you before…
He nods. I don’t know. We’ll see.
It is late October and I can feel the approaching chill of another Wisconsin winter bearing down. The sun is out and a bank of gray clouds is skittering off to the west, but a steady wind is blowing across the fields. I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders.
It is almost nine-thirty when Papa arrives. He gets out of the car, looks at me and tries to smile, but I can see his disappointment. Then he stands there for a moment with his hands on his hips, looking at the place where Nicholas and I have spent the last seven weeks. I suppose he is imagining himself here, his wife and sons back home in Sheboygan, preparing to ship out to fight in this great war, to test and prove himself, to give something back to the country that he and Mama left before Nicholas and I were born and to the country that welcomed him, offered him a new home and a new family.
Finally, Papa walks over to Nicholas and embraces him. Papa has always been stoic about displaying emotion, and his hugs are usually brief and almost formal. But he holds tight onto my brother for a long time, and after a second or two, Nicholas reciprocates. His face is buried in Papa’s shoulder, so I cannot see his expression. At last, they pull apart.
Will you be coming home, my father asks, before they send you overseas?
I don’t know, Papa. I hope so.
Papa gives one of his complicated, enigmatic half-smiles, and I imagine everything behind it: pride, sadness, anxiety, fear… I do too, he says. Your mother will want to see you.
I try to make conversation on the long drive home. I talk about running laps around the fort with a heavy pack on my back, about meeting local girls at the dance, about the night I threw up after eating two plates of reconstituted potatoes on an empty stomach, about Mick Washburn dropping the hand grenade and trying to kick it away, about crawling across a muddy field and under a roll of barbed wire. I do not mention that Hawk promised another crawl across the field beneath live machine gun fire before training was over.
Maybe don’t tell some of those stories to your mother, Papa suggests. He does not seem angry, but I can see that his mind is somewhere else, so I finally stop trying to make conversation. The fields unroll ahead of us. I picture Mama waiting for us at the restaurant and, back at Fort McCoy, Nicholas hoisting his pack onto his shoulders, preparing for another punishing day.
The week passes slowly. On my first mornjng back, Papa drives me to the doctor’s office so he can examine my foot and change the dressings. The doctor tells me to not put any unnecessary weight on it, so there is not much I can do at the Atheneum. Mama suggests that I sit near the front door of the restaurant, greet customers and hand out menus, but I know this is an unnecessary task and I have no desire to see any of the people from my old life. Especially now that my new life is about to revert to my old life. So when Mama and Papa leave in the morning, I throw on a sweater, hobble out to the back yard, situate myself on one of the uncomfortable lawn chairs, and watch the crows circling and alighting and lifting over the fields. I spend mornings reading short stories out of my old high school literature textbook and writing long letters to Nicholas that I am not sure I will ever mail, and that he will ever read. The temperature has continued to drop, and I find myself shivering through the long morning and afternoon hours. But being warm and comfortable inside is a pleasure I have not earned.
On Friday, after Mama and Papa have left for work, Father Gregory drops by. From my perch behind the house, I hear someone knocking on the front door, and after deciding that my visitor is not inclined to leave, I hobble back inside and out to the entryway.
I was told I’d find you here, Father Gregory tells me. He seems inappropriately delighted.
I ask if he wants to come inside, which of course he does. I offer him coffee, which he accepts. Mama has starting drinking instant coffee – one cup only, as soon as she gets out of bed. It is another source of mild disagreement between her and Papa, who cannot stand either the taste or the idea of instant coffee. But its presence in the kitchen cupboard means that I can make coffee for Father Gregory without brewing a pot, which would allow him to extend an unwelcome and unwanted visit.
He asks how my injury is healing. He uses the word injury because, I think, asking about a foot might seem base. Then he tells me, as I expected, that everything happens for a reason. Your mother, he says, has been having a very hard time with both of you boys enlisting. She has dreams of you and Nicholas going off to war and not coming home.
I know that. I feel angry that Father Gregory is telling me something about my mother’s dreams – something so deeply personal. And I know all about Mama’s anxieties. She made no secret, before Nicholas and I left for Fort McCoy, about how she felt, and she has made no secret since my return.
Father Gregory shifts uncomfortably. He looks off in the direction of the kitchen, where the kettle is beginning to whistle. I stand and hobble away to make his cup of coffee, my gait a bit more theatrical than necessary. The doctor suggested I use a cane, and Papa found one for me in a secondhand store, but I use it only when he and Mama are around.
What I’m suggesting, says Father Gregory, when I return with his coffee, is that God has a plan for each of us. That your brother’s plan was to serve his country in battle, and that perhaps your plan is to serve your family and your community here at home. Although, he hastens to add, we know that God’s plan is infinitely mysterious.
Infinitely, I say. I watch Father Gregory sip his coffee. He makes a face as if he finds the instant coffee as distasteful as Papa would, but I ignore it. I am not interested in what he has to say, or in God’s mysterious plan. I know that Father Gregory prefers me to Nicholas, for reasons that completely escape me. I imagine that he still entertains thoughts of my becoming a priest. After my weeks at Fort McCoy, that idea is somehow even more absurd than before. I want to tell him this, but I don’t have quite that much cruelty in me. Almost. But not quite.
I hope to see you at church Sunday, he says, perhaps for lack of anything else.
Maybe. It’s a little hard to get around. We’ll see.
He takes a few more sips of coffee, asks a few questions about boot camp. I recount a few of the episodes I shared with Mama, including the dance. I want Father Gregory to know that, as inexperienced as I am, girls hold much more attraction for me than the religious life. But it occurs to me, not for the first time, that he favors me over Nicholas because I present more of a challenge, and by narrating my evening with Jean and Patricia and Florence I may have simply elevated the challenge.
On Sunday afternoon, Nicholas calls to report that he has completed basic training and that he will be coming home for a week before being sent overseas. And that he will be serving somewhere in Asia.
We have one phone in the house, and Mama and Papa are huddled around it. Almost imperceptibly, Mama pulls the receiver toward her. I am standing behind her, but I can clearly hear my brother’s voice.
Asia! Mama shrieks. Why do they need you in Asia?
I don’t know, Mama. We just go where they assign us.
You boys should be going to Europe, says Papa, and I am glad at least that there will apparently not be another disagreement between my parents.
If we had a choice… Nicholas says.
And one week! Just one week home and then you’re gone again… I can tell from the wavering note in Mama’s voice that she is fighting to keep from one of her angry crying fits. But I am not surprised at how hastily everything is happening. We were told at Fort McCoy that the Army is in a hurry to send in replacements for all the soldiers who are being killed or wounded in battle, in Asia as well as Europe. So eight weeks of basic training before sending a young man off to war is now considered adequate, apparently. I try to imagine myself running across an open field somewhere, carrying my rifle, trying to dodge machine gun fire. Maybe, like McNulty was suggesting, my accident was not entirely an accident.
There is so much I want to ask my brother. I had put some of these questions in the letters I wrote and never sent. What was that last week of basic training like? Did Hawk follow through on his promise to send you crawling across the field under machine gun fire? Was I the subject of discussion or gossip in the bunkhouse? Did anything happen to Red Mullin? And what are Nicholas’ plans with Lynette? I have not seen his girlfriend since I returned to Sheboygan, so I have no idea if they plan to be married after the war or to wait and see how things develop. The possibility has occurred to me that they were secretly married during one of those occasions when Nicholas disappeared in the night, before the two of us left for basic training. There are even secrets between twins, I have learned. But I think I know Nicholas well enough to know that a secret marriage is not in his character.
Early Monday morning, Papa makes the drive back to Fort McCoy, and I join him. I am relieved to see that Nicholas is waiting for us at the gate, alone. I saw my brother just a week ago, but he seems to have changed in some fundamental way that I cannot put my finger on. For most of the trip home, with Papa’s presence standing like a wall between us, I find myself with nothing to say to my brother.
Nicholas spends most of following days at the Atheneum, working with Papa in the kitchen, clearing tables and talking with customers who hug him and wish him godspeed and tell him that they are proud of him. Evenings, after dinner, he spends with Lynette, not sneaking out of the house this time, and not returning home until after midnight. I am always awake when he comes into the room. This is our best chance to talk. But Nicholas is always dead tired and wants to sleep, and he drops off before I do. Until his last night home.
So this is it, he says, undressing in the dark.
I guess so. This will be, I realize, our last real conversation for a long time, and the enormity of the moment suddenly feels like a heavy weight. So how do you feel? Excited? Nervous.
Nicholas tosses back the blanket and climbs into bed. The curtains are open, and a faint shaft of moonlight illuminates his face. For a moment, he looks like nothing more or less than my brother – the twin from whom, until this past week, I had never been separated for more than a day, and never by more than a couple of hundred miles. All that, he says when he is settled in his bed. All that and more.
You and Lynette… Have you talked about…when you get back?
He takes a deep breath. She wanted to get married this week. Before I shipped out. We talked about it. But that didn’t feel right. So we promised it would happen as soon as I was back. I just hope it doesn’t drag on. The war…
I want to tell him that it would have been all right, that Mama and Papa would have accepted it. It had taken them a while to warm up to Lynette, Mama especially. But when they realized that the bond Nicholas had with Lynette was different from the bond he had had with any of his other girlfriends, they came to accept her as one of the family. A future Pappas. But Nicholas and Lynette have talked, and made their decision, so there is no point in reopening that box.
Do you have any idea where they’re sending you? I ask.
No idea. The Philippines, maybe.
But you’ll be able to write home and tell us. So we can follow what’s happening.
I’ll write. I don’t know how much I can say.
This is no surprise to me. In basic training, we heard a hundred times how loose lips sink ships, which is why all mail from the front is being screened and censored.
We talk for an hour or more. I tell Nicholas, finally, how much I will miss him and how hard separation will be. I wish we could go through this together, I say. Like we always talked about. It will be weird with you being on the other side of the world and me being here. I hope you’re back soon.
Nicholas says nothing for a long time. Finally, he gets out of bed and crosses the room, and he lays down next to me, his arm around my shoulder. This is how we used to sleep, when we were boys, when we were a pair of innocents. After graduating out of the crib, Mama and Papa had bought us separate beds, but Nicholas and I usually ended up sleeping together in one bed or the other. Back then, it had felt right, like the reconnection of two broken halves. Now, again, it feels right.
Nicholas’ first letter home offers no clues as to exactly where he is. We know that the letter has been opened and reviewed because there is a censor’s stamp on the envelope, which was then clumsily resealed. The description of Nicholas’ orientation and his routine could describe pretty much any unit, anywhere. Aside from the military censors, I know that Nicholas self-censored himself out of a sense of obligation to Mama, appreciating that there is news she would rather not hear. Mama and Papa know this too, of course, but it goes unmentioned.
The days pass. For a time, I continue to use the cane around the house, when Mama and Papa are home. But eventually I am walking without much pain and with only a slight limp, so even the façade is unnecessary. I hang the cane on the clothes rod in my closet, where I see it every morning and every evening – a reminder of my betrayal of Nicholas.
I have begun working again at the Atheneum. Papa has lost one of his cooks to the Navy, so he enlists me in the kitchen and begins schooling me in how to prepare each of the dishes on the menu. I already know how to make souvlakia and stifado and Papa’s egg-and-lemon soup and a few other dishes. At least I think I do. But Papa does not take shortcuts, and he leads me through every step of every dish until the mechanics of it begin to feel like second nature. Making dolmades always looked rather easy, but I learn that, in Papa’s kitchen, there is a science to stuffing grape leaves – placing the leaf flat and shiny side down on the plate, placing a teaspoon of rice in the exact center of the leaf, folding over the leaf’s stem end first, then folding each side so the filling is completely enclosed, rolling the leaf from the stem edge toward the tip into a compact roll, finally squeezing the roll gently to seal the edges.
I am a long way from being able to step into Papa’s shoes, and he has not yet taught me, among other things, how to make his unique Damianos Pappas version of baklava, with three types of ground nuts. But at least I am being useful. Papa watches me carefully, allows me to make small mistakes and scolds me when I make large ones, like the unforgivable sin of forgetting the bread crumbs the day I was idly stuffing tomatoes with feta cheese.
I am dreading the holidays. I think my parents feel the same way. The dinner table at which we have always eaten is square, with a chair on each of its four sides, so my brother’s absence creates a conspicuous imbalance that holiday meals, I am afraid, will somehow accentuate. Or that is how I imagine it. Thanksgiving has always been Mama’s opportunity to flaunt her adopted American heritage, roasting a turkey while she busies herself with sweet potatoes and dressing and green beans and pies. But the war has cooled Mama’s patriotism, so the possibility occurs to me that Thanksgiving 1944 will be different from past Thanksgivings – and not just because Nicholas is on the other side of the world.
Papa is the first to bring it up, which tells me that we have been thinking the same thing. We need to pick up a turkey, he says at Sunday supper, a week and a half before the holiday. If that’s what we’re having for Thanksgiving this year.
Today’s supper is yesterday’s stifado – Papa’s beef-and-onion stew, of which he makes extra on Saturdays during the late fall and winter months. Papa’s stifado is one of the dishes he is especially exacting about – studying each clove and bay leaf before it goes into the pot, cutting each piece of chuck steak exactly the same size, pouring the red wine into a measuring cup before adding it to the stew. I did most of the work on yesterday’s stifado, under Papa’s scrutiny, of course, and I am proud that it tastes just as good as all the other stifados we have eaten around the Sunday supper table.
Mama stabs at an onion on her plate, scrutinizes it, then looks up and gives Papa the same examining look. Why don’t you make Thanksgiving dinner this year, she says. I’m tired.
Papa puts his fork down. You’re tired? We’re closing the restaurant on Thanksgiving, like always. You’re saying you don’t want to roast a turkey?
If you want turkey, why don’t you buy it and roast it?
I had expected Mama to feel ambivalent about the holiday, but this degree of hostility astonishes me. For a moment, Papa is speechless as well.
I would be quite happy, Mama continues, having a big bowl of beef stew, and maybe a nice fresh salad. I don’t think we have much to be thankful for this year, so why the pretense of great big Thanksgiving meal?
You always make turkey, I say, unnecessarily, and the pies and everything.
Mama looks at me as if she is just now noticing my presence at the table. By all means, she says, if you and your father want to collaborate on Thanksgiving dinner this year, I certainly won’t object.
Papa finishes chewing whatever is in his mouth, swallows and gives Mama a quizzical look. Katerina, dear. Nicholas is away, but we have much to celebrate.
Papa is, I know, talking about the war in Europe. Despite my brother’s deployment to Asia, he has continued to follow developments in Europe, and especially in Greece, where German forces finally agreed to leave the country. The evacuation began in Athens, when Nicholas and I were still at Fort McCoy. By the end of October, the mainland was free of all German soldiers.
So now you’re Greek again? says Mama. I recognize this as one of those long-running arguments that is periodically interrupted by fragile truces.
I’m an American, as are you. We’re Americans, but that doesn’t mean we’re not Greek as well. And Nicholas, who was born here in America, along with Julian, is now serving his country. The war will be over soon. Nicholas will be home, and we’ll celebrate a great victory. This year, this holiday season, families are all making sacrifices. This year we sacrifice so that next year we can celebrate.
Mama smiles, apparently seeing her opening, her victory. Then next year we celebrate. When Nicholas is home and the war is over, we celebrate. This year, I am not roasting a turkey. This year, I am tired.
So Thanksgiving passes pretty much like any other weekday, except that the Atheneum is closed. I had thought that maybe Papa would rise to Mama’s challenge, buy a turkey at the market and make a proper Thanksgiving dinner. But Papa knows when to stand up to Mama and when to back down. And as much as I like stifado, I am getting very tired of it.
Christmas approaches with the same heaviness. With German forces gone from Greece, I expected that the country would rediscover its equilibrium and disappear from the headlines. But about a week after Thanksgiving, Greek police and British troops – who are still occupying the country, for reasons I do not understand – fire on a crowd of mostly young people in Athens who are protesting something or other, killing 28. In the kitchen of the Atheneum, Papa tries to explain to me why, with Germany and Italy out of the picture, Brits and Greeks are now shooting and killing Greeks. I listen, but it makes no sense. And Papa knows not to make this a topic of conversation at home, so I am his only audience.
Most of the war news is about the fighting elsewhere in Europe. There are occasional reports from Asia – mostly about Japanese ships being torpedoed and sunk, and Jap kamikaze pilots dive-bombing American ships, which thankfully has nothing to do with my brother. The letters from Nicholas arrive more or less weekly, all of them filled with little anecdotes about the terrible food and how he is finally learning to wash his own clothes and the kid in the unit who sings himself to sleep. One letter that arrives contains two blacked-out sentences, which for Nicholas is an unusual slip. Mama holds the letter close to her eyes, as if she could decipher what Nicholas was trying to convey. She is unusually quiet for the rest of the day.
The week before Christmas, Papa suggests that we invite Lynette Markey for supper on Christmas Eve. The thought seems to take Mama by surprise, but she takes a moment to consider it.
Lynette has her own family, she says finally.
They’ll spend Christmas Day together, of course. I was suggesting we invite her to join us on Christmas Eve. It’s a Sunday this year, so the restaurant wouldn’t be open anyway.
Yes, Damianos. I know what day Christmas Eve is. Mama shakes her head, looks briefly at me and then stares off into space. I cannot tell how she feels about the idea – if having Lynette to the house would help bring Nicholas back into our lives for a few hours or if it would make her miss her son all the more. But she is apparently too tired of arguing with Papa, and she gives up with a shrug.
Like our family’s Thanksgiving tradition, meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas have always been Mama’s domain. Every year, if the Atheneum is open, Papa and the staff handle Christmas Eve lunch while Mama stays home preparing pork roast, stuffing cabbage rolls, baking bread and almond cookies. And at two o’clock, Papa closes the restaurant, assembles a platter of spanakopita, and returns to a house full of wonderful aromas and anticipation. If Thanksgiving is a uniquely American tradition, with a big American meal, the year’s other holidays have always, stubbornly, been Greek celebrations in the Pappas house. This year, with the Atheneum closed, I hover in the kitchen doorway watching Mama work. I see that she is making an effort, and I am grateful for that. Papa has run off to the restaurant to retrieve the spanakopita. I had offered to come along, but Papa had said that I could be more help at home with Mama. So I busy myself washing pots and pans as Mama dirties them and generally trying to keep out of her way. Mama usually talks to herself when she cooks, in a voice low enough that no one can make out what she is saying, and today that is how the conversation goes.
Around noon, Papa returns with the spanakopita and a basket of fruit – a gift, he says, from one of the Atheneum regulars. The afternoon passes and finally, just before three o’clock, Lynette arrives. I have seen Lynette around town a few times since Nicholas was sent off to Asia, and we have acknowledged each other and exchanged a few awkward words. But she looks thinner now than I remember her, more serious and somehow older. She is wearing a light green dress that seems more appropriate for spring, and I can see that she has spent some time on her face and hair. She has a pretty smile, although she brings it out sparingly, with Nicholas gone. I understand my brother’s attraction to her.
Papa and I are tasked with entertaining Lynette while Mama completes the dinner preparations. Papa has opened a bottle of red wine, and he pours a half-glass for each of us. We sip and avoid each other’s eyes as Papa tries to make small talk, which he is not very good at. We all know exactly what is bringing us together this evening. In an odd way, Nicholas has never been more present in the house than he is now.
I like your tree, Lynette says during one of the awkward conversational lapses. Papa finally bought a Christmas tree last weekend, much later in the season than usual. There was, he reported, not much of a selection, explaining why this is not much of a tree, despite Lynette’s compliments. Papa and I dragged it into the house and stood it up in the corner of the living room reserved for the occasion. He strung the lights, and then he and Mama and I hung the ornaments. Mama, I could see, was going through the motions. There was one piece – a pink glass globe – that Nicholas had given her as a gift one year, and she held it up for the longest time, just looking at it, before finding the right spot for it.
At dinner, Lynette occupies the fourth seat that my brother always occupied. Mama is inscrutable, so I do not know how she feels about this. As for me, I am feeling that an imbalance at the table has been momentary corrected.
Lynette, dear. My mother smiles and offers Lynette a cabbage roll. Do you hear from Nicholas? What do you hear from my son?
Lynette glances quickly at Papa before answering. I wish that Mama had waited at least until we had begun eating before beginning her interrogation, so that Papa’s dinner invitation – which I know was well-intentioned – would not seem blatantly transparent. But Mama has spoken.
He writes when he can, Mrs. Pappas. I wish he could write more often, but I understand.
That’s right, says Papa. And the government censors. Right? But I suppose they’re doing their jobs and they need to be careful.
Mama makes one of her irritated, dismissive sounds. Lynette acts as if she did not notice, but she is not that oblivious.
So, Lynette, Mama repeats. What do you hear from Nicholas?
Lynette touches her napkin to her mouth. I can see that she was expecting this. I imagine it’s the same thing he writes to you, Mrs. Pappas. Long days, cold weather, uncomfortable nights, bad food. A lot of boring hours. Wishing he was back home.
Mama lets out a deep breath. Boring hours. You know, dear, that’s exactly what I wish for my son. A lot of long, boring hours.
Lynette smiles at this. It is a genuine smile. If there was tension at the table when we all sat down, it is gone now, replaced by an unspoken bond between Lynette and my mother that did not exist a minute ago.
The breadbasket is sitting on the table to Mama’s left. She lifts the cloth and extends the basket to Lynette. Why don’t you start, dear? Mama says.
Lynette takes the basket as if she is accepting a gift. Inside is a loaf of Christopsomo, Mama’s spiced bread. She has made it every Christmas Eve for as long as I can remember, and this year it looks exactly as it always has – golden brown, crowned with a white cross and a scattering of chopped walnuts and raisins. It has always been Papa’s role to tear off the first several pieces of bread and pass them around the table, but he is not objecting, this year, to Lynette taking over the job.
The new year arrives, along with what seems to be a genuine, widespread optimism and a real expectation that the war will finally end in 1945. We have been promised the same thing before, but the tide this year does truly seem to be turning. I see that even Mama permits herself to hope and, in the occasional moment, allow a small measure of happiness to creep into her life. To my surprise, and Papa’s, she even bakes a loaf of her traditional Vasilopita for the occasion. Although the coin, she tells us, will not be found inside. Because the coin represents good luck, she has baked it into a bun which she is saving for Nicholas.
Vic Yarborough is one of my few male high school classmates who is still in Sheboygan, and although we did not know each other well, I find that we are bonding now. Vic was classified 4F because of a cardiac condition. His father and grandfather both died of heart attacks before the age of forty, and Vic apparently inherited their weak cardiovascular genes, although it went undiagnosed until he tried to enlist.
After being rejected for military service last summer, around the same time Nicholas and I enlisted, Vic went home and slept for three days, started drinking, was arrested for disorderly conduct, stopped drinking, got a job working in a local garage, and started drinking again – although this time, he insists, in moderation. His disqualification from service is due to no fault of his own, unlike mine. But we share the same sense of exclusion and guilt – earned or not – and we have found that we can talk about things with each other than we cannot talk about with other people, including family. Especially family.
Vic is the first person to whom I mention trying to reenlist.
I know how you feel, Pappas. It is nine-thirty at night and we are sitting on the breakwater near the Sheboygan lighthouse, drinking a bottle of moonshine that Vic bought from an older mechanic at the garage. We did not bring cups, so we are passing the bottle back and forth. The honey-colored liquid inside seems to be disappearing quickly. It has snowed three times this week. Tonight is clear but brutally cold, and the rocks on which we are sitting are like giant blocks of ice. I actually do not mind the numbness.
My foot’s all healed, I say, as if this were an argument. There’s no medical reason for them to turn me down.
Vic takes a long draw on the bottle, and this time he holds tightly onto it. I know how you feel, Pappas. But think about it. You went through seven, almost eight weeks of boot camp. You’re going to do it all over again? Christ. By that time, the war will be over for sure.
He is right, about all of it. This is the third time Vic and I have had some variation of this conversation. And I think we both know by now that, in my heart, I have no intention of reenlisting, that my alcohol-fueled patriotic rant is an attempt to convince myself that I could have done it, that I could have finished boot camp and put on the uniform and followed my brother off to battle. In my more sober moments, I doubt that any of this is true.
Just my luck, I say.
You know it, brother. Just our luck. Vic finally gives us his death grip on the moonshine, and I choke down another healthy swallow.
Winter gives way to spring, in that reluctant Wisconsin way. Vic and I spend two or three nights a week at the breakwater, although since the night in February when we both passed out and nearly froze to death we have moderated our drinking – and switched from moonshine to bottled beer, which provides a less potent, more dependable bump. I can feel the muscles I had developed at Fort McCoy softening, and I am developing a paunch that my clothes are unable to hide. But I do not care enough to do anything about it. Mama and Papa know that Vic and I drink when he picks me up in the evenings. At times, I almost wish they would say something to me, so that everything would finally be out in the open. And one morning, before leaving for work, Mama surprises me, saying casually, I don’t care for your friend. But she says nothing more, and we all continue to live our lives. I am still working alongside Papa at the restaurant, and if he chose to retire tomorrow I could probably step in and run the kitchen myself. But Papa is still fairly young and healthy, and he has no intention of retiring.
On April 12, we get the news that President Roosevelt has died. It seems unreal. More than that, it seems wrong that the war has not ended, yet President Roosevelt is no longer here to reassure the country that everything will work out. But the war is reaching its conclusion, at least in Europe. A few weeks later, there is news that Adolph Hitler, accepting the inevitable, apparently killed himself. And a few days later, Germany surrenders. But in Asia, the fighting goes on. The letters from Nicholas are now arriving more sporadically, and with a heavier hand from the government censors.
I don’t know why they couldn’t have sent Nicholas to Europe, Mama complains one Sunday morning as we are driving to St. Spyridon. Instead of halfway across the world. If they had sent him to Europe, he’d be coming home soon.
In the evenings, when Vic and I are not at the breakwater, I take the World Atlas into my room, turn to the Asia section, and try to imagine where my brother is. Twins are supposed to have a psychic connection, and there have been times when I have felt it. But the maps of Asia are vast and confusing, and I know that Nicholas could be anywhere.
At three-fifteen on the afternoon of Sunday, May 27, a car with the words Western Union imprinted on the door pulls up in front of the house. Papa is in the living room, listening to the radio. Mama and I are in the front yard. I am pulling weeds and she is clipping flowers. When she sees the car, Mama’s body goes limp. For a moment, I do not know what it happening. I run over to Mama, try to pull her up but it is almost as if she has become rooted to the ground. I yell for Papa, and a moment later the front door swings open. At the same time, the car door opens and an older man steps out. He is wearing some kind of uniform and a gray cap, which he touches with the fingers of his right hand. Mama begins to wail. It is a sound I have never heard before, more animal than human. Papa is momentarily frozen, and then he recovers, runs over to Mama, drops to his knees, hugs her.
I’m sorry to be delivering the news, says the man in the uniform.
Please go away, Papa says. Please.
I want to tell the man that he has the wrong house. I want to hate the man. I want him to get back in his Western Union car and drive away. But he walks slowly toward the house, stops a few feet in front of us, and drops an envelope at Mama’s feet.
It is Sunday, May 27, 1945, and we are living the worst day of our lives.