Thea spends most of 1950 trying to get pregnant. That sounds like it entails more energy and commitment than I intend, and there are plenty of other things occupying us – including our jobs at the Atheneum, which consume more and more of our time. And we sometimes go for days without thinking about children. But it inhabits a permanent corner of my mind, and I know Thea is the same way, and our failure feels all the more urgent as winter arrives.
Finally, a week into December, on our way home from the restaurant, Thea tells me that we need to talk. I momentarily panic, asking myself if I have forgotten about an anniversary. Maybe it is the 18-month anniversary of our wedding, or the one-year anniversary of our New York honeymoon. But I remember that both events occurred on the eleventh of the month, and today is only the eighth, so it must be something else.
What is it we need to talk about? I ask. The drive home takes ten minutes. I am hoping this is an in-the-car conversation rather than an on-the-sofa conversation.
When we get home, she tells me. But don’t worry. It’s nothing bad.
We often have a glass of red wine when we get home from the restaurant, but today Thea declines.
I think I’m pregnant. I didn’t want to say anything until I was pretty sure.
Pretty sure, I repeat. So you are?
They have tests. I could go to the doctor and take a test, but it would be a lot less expensive to just wait. I’ll know for sure by Christmas.
Waiting is agony. We agree not to say anything to our parents until we know for sure. I suggest finally that, if there is a test that will tell us for certain, maybe we should go ahead and have it done. Like most first-time fathers-to-be, I am pitifully ignorant about the science of pregnancy. I have done some reading since Thea gave me the news, and I know that the test involves injecting urine into a frog and waiting to see if the frog releases eggs – which sounds almost like witchcraft. I also know that the tests are not inexpensive, that we would probably have to drive to Milwaukee to have it done, and that the results would not be immediate and may not even be accurate. Thea obviously knows all this as well, which is probably why she chose the option of waiting until an announcement came from her own body. But I want her to know that I would agree if she has changed her mind.
But Thea has not changed her mind. So we wait.
The day before Christmas Eve, Thea tells me that she is pregnant, and that she is certain about it. How she is certain today when she was uncertain yesterday is a mystery, but I choose not to inquire. I am happier than I have been since our wedding day. We both are.
We can tell our parents tomorrow, Thea says. Mama and Papa have invited Thea’s mother, and us, to Christmas Eve dinner.
Are you sure you don’t want to wait? Along with the business about the frog, I have been reading about how first pregnancies can have all manner of complications, and it causes me to wonder if it might be better to wait until Thea is further along before saying anything to our parents.
But Thea dismisses the idea with a wave. We’ll tell them tomorrow. It’ll be the best early Christmas gift we could give them.
Which is true, if risky. But I trust that Thea knows best.
Papa is the only one who seems surprised at the news. If I didn’t know better, I would have suspected Thea of telling her mother and Mama privately. But they are all as exuberant about the prospect of becoming grandparents as Thea and I are at becoming parents. If this is to be our last quiet Christmas Eve for a long time, and our last quiet Christmas, it is one of the happiest I can remember.
And yet. I may have read too many books and magazine articles, but I know that the road ahead will be long and potentially perilous for Thea. The new year arrives, and she continues working her regular hours at the Atheneum. We know that this will have to end at some point, but she feels fine for now. And honestly, we need her wages. We were able to put aside some money during the months when Max Farley was paying our rent. But our bank account has been slowly depleting since then, and I have no idea how large the medical bills ahead will be.
In late January, Thea begins experiencing morning sickness. She tells me that the pain is tolerable, but I can tell that she is minimizing the discomfort, for my sake. We have six months before she is due to deliver. I wish I could share some of the pain. But of course this is not how biology works. I have no idea how so many women endure pregnancy and childbirth, and do it time after time, and have done it for thousands of years.
It is now February, and Thea’s morning sickness has gotten worse. She is out of bed early, making frequent trips to the bathroom. She eats bananas and toast and crackers, vomits, eats again, vomits again. The doctor had told us that the symptoms of morning sickness usually begin to disappear in the second trimester, but every patient is different. I had wanted a little more in the way of assurances. But Thea takes everything in stride, so I play my part. The reassuring husband. The calm expectant father. Inside, I am not calm.
Thea finally agrees to reduce her hours at the restaurant, as I have been pleading – to skip the lunch service and stay home until midafternoon. Mama says that she and Papa will continue paying her as if she is still the Atheneum’s fulltime hostess. I know that Mama can handle the lunch crowd, so I do not argue. But I know that if she has to bring in extra help to make up for Thea’s reduced hours, the restaurant cannot afford to continue paying both of us. I have no idea how we are all going to manage. After the restaurant closes one night, I see Mama and Papa going through the day’s receipts and talking quietly. For the first time, I wonder if Thea and I have made a mistake with the pregnancy. If it might have been better to wait. Parenthood is supposed to be joyful, but every day seems to bring more anxiety for me, and more discomfort for Thea.
The bouts of morning sickness persist through the month. And then, in early March, thankfully, they begin to abate. The doctor tells us that everything is proceeding normally. His definition of normal is not the same as mine, but his words do give Thea and me a bit of relief from our anxieties. He does, however, advise Thea to stay off her feet as much as possible. So her hours at the restaurant remain limited to dinner service.
In April, we experience some springlike weather. Thea and I spend an hour or two every morning sitting in lawn chairs behind the house, watching the birds circling over the open field. They soar, they dive, they land and feed, they squabble. When I come home from the restaurant one day, Thea takes me back to the patio and shows me a small flower garden that she planted while I was gone. A neighbor, she tells me, brought over a flat of seedlings and a bag of soil, and they worked together to prepare the bed and plant the seedlings. I have thought a lot about the possibility that we will have to give up the house, so planting a flower garden feels like an act of either defiance or hope. I am proud of my wife.
One morning in early May, as I am getting dressed for work, the phone rings.
That was my mother. Thea is standing in the bedroom doorway watching me buckle my belt. She looks unusually pale.
Is everything OK?
She slipped on the bathroom rug, getting out of the shower. She needs us to drive her to the hospital.
The hospital? Did she break something?
I don’t know, Thea says impatiently. I need to get dressed and we need to go now.
Thea does not know whether or not her mother is dressed, so she goes into the house first. A minute or two later, she appears at the door with Mrs. Apostolos, who is wearing a housedress and slippers. I help her into the front passenger seat, Thea takes the seat behind her, and we head to the hospital.
Thea spends the day at the hospital with her mother. There is nothing I can do, so I drive to the restaurant, telling Thea to call when she has news to report. I know that this is not the fault of Thea’s mother, but part of me feels vaguely angry that Mrs. Apostolos was not more careful, and that she imposed on her daughter when Thea should be home resting. At the Atheneum, two hours pass without a call. Finally, Mama steps into the kitchen and tells me that my wife is on the phone.
She broke her ankle, Thea says, whispering. They want to keep her at least until tomorrow. I’m going to stay with her.
My unreasonable anger surges again. You’re staying with her overnight? At the hospital? You should be home. You need to rest.
But Thea insists that she can rest at her mother’s bedside as well as she can rest at home, and there is no convincing her otherwise.
The next morning, Thea calls the house with more bad news. She might need to stay here another day, she tells me. And she’s talking about finding a smaller place to live.
Why? That is a lot of information to absorb, and I am not sure if I am asking Thea why her mother needs to stay in the hospital or why she might need to move.
The break was worse than they thought, I guess. They want to make sure she doesn’t develop an infection. That’s what the doctor told me. I don’t really understand it. Thea sounds weary, like she slept very little last night. And she is not whispering, which tells me either that she is not in her mother’s room, or that her mother has been moved elsewhere.
You should come home. I can pick you up now. You don’t need to be there all day again.
I will. You can come get me. But not yet. Maybe in an hour. I need to make sure she’s settled.
I am thinking now of what Thea said about her mother wanting to move into a smaller place. In the short term, I suppose she could stay with us. Our house has a second, very small bedroom where we are storing books and winter clothes and boxes of holiday things. In the short term, I could probably move these things into the room Nicholas and I shared at our parents’ house. Maybe it would even be good, for a time, for Thea to have her mother close at hand, especially when I am working. I am trying to do what Thea generally does, which is to cast every misfortune in the most favorable light possible. But I am not sure it is working.
When I pick Thea up at the hospital, I make my suggestion, before she has the chance.
Thea settles into the car, rolls her head back and closes her eyes. That’s a good idea, Julian. I think she’d like that, maybe.
At least for a couple of weeks, I say. That way, you can keep each other company.
It might be more than that. Until she can find a smaller place where she feels comfortable, and we can help her move.
But why would she need to move at all? We have exited the hospital parking lot and we are heading north, toward home. Traffic is light. After a brief chill, spring weather is back, and trees are beginning to leaf out. The yellow wildflowers will be reappearing soon in the field behind the house. One of our well-meaning neighbors has told me that the flowers are butterweed, that they are invasive and noxious and, if eaten, can cause liver damage in humans and death in cattle. I was happy not knowing anything about the wildflowers other than that they are yellow and beautiful to look at. There is nothing admirable about ignorance, but sometimes knowledge can be soul-destroying.
Thea’s eyes are still closed. I know that she heard my question, so she is either deciding how to answer or hoping that I will not ask again. We drive home in silence.
It takes Thea and me several hours to get the room ready for her mother. I load the car and make three trips to my parents’ house while Thea washes the walls and the windows. I take the mattress outside and pound the dust out of it. We put clean sheets and a light blanket on the bed. We drive to Thea’s mother’s house, retrieve a few bedside nick-nacks and framed photographs and arrange them in the room. Thea brings in a basket and fills it with magazines. Finally, she walks out into the field behind the house, cuts a few stalks of butterweed, puts them in a vase and places them in a shelf near the bed. It strikes me that butterweed, like most wildflowers, look much prettier in a field than they do in a vase. But if they cheer up the room for a day or two, I suppose they will have served their purpose. And I am fairly certain that Thea’s mother does not need to be told not to eat them.
Mrs. Apostolos apologizes endlessly for inconveniencing us. She promises that she will not be a burden, that she will do what she can to help around the house, and that her stay will not be long. We have not yet had a talk about her moving into a smaller place. I think maybe the subject embarrasses her, for some reason, so on Sunday night, after she has gone to bed, I ask Thea again why her mother wants to move out of her house.
Thea sighs. She can’t stay there, Julian. The house is more than she needs and more than she can handle.
But why?
For a long moment, Thea says nothing. She looks at me and shakes her head as if I have somehow disappointed her. Do you want me to say it, Julian? She can’t afford it. The house was fine when it was the two of us. Before we were married, I helped out with the rent. Which was only fair, because I lived there too. But now she has more space than she needs and she can’t afford the rent, especially not being able to work for a few weeks, maybe a month, and with medical bills she’s going to have to pay.
What if we moved in with her? Shared the rent payments? I don’t know what made me say it. I am sure that Thea has thought about it too, that she knows we may have to give up this house, as much as we both love it, even before the baby comes.
Thea’s face softens. I don’t know, Julian. It sounds like a good idea. But I think my mother has her mind made up. She was looking at places even before the accident. It’s a good idea, but in her head I think she’s already moved.
What if I suggested it? Would she consider it?
Thea nods. You can try.
And I do try. The next morning, after rehearsing it in my head several times, I explain to Thea’s mother that making rent is difficult for us and that we will have to move out of the house by summer. Maybe we should consider moving into your house and sharing the rent. Like you offered when we first got married.
Mrs. Apostolos looks blankly at me, as if she remembers nothing about offering to move into Thea’s room and giving us the master bedroom. She turns and looks at Thea. Finally, she drops her head, and for a moment I think she is about to cry. No, she says softly. No. I don’t want to live there. I don’t want to go back there. I want a smaller place. And I’m sorry, Julian, but I don’t want to talk about it.
Mrs. Apostolos stays with us for three weeks. She and Thea enjoy each other’s company for a time, but one night Thea tells me that she is ready for her mother to move out, and her mother is ready to be back on her own, alone. She has given notice that she is vacating her house at the end of May, and she has signed a rental agreement on a small ground-floor apartment close to downtown. My suggestion, it still seems to me, would have solved everyone’s problem. Thea does not disagree. But there is no longer any point in pursuing it.
It is now the first week of June. Thea’s due date is less than two months away. The wildflowers in the field behind the house are still hanging on, but they are losing their vibrant color as the weather slowly warms. The house itself has begun to feel like ours again, but I am also sensing that the end of our time here is close at hand. For a few days, Thea and I avoid discussing it, as if denial might alter the situation. Finally, Thea ends the evasion. We are having our ritual morning cup of coffee on the patio.
I think pretty soon I’m going to have to cut back to two or three evenings a week, she begins. The doctor said the last six weeks should be mostly time for bedrest. And I don’t want your parents paying me as if I’m still working all the time. That isn’t fair.
I nod and sip my coffee. If the doctor is recommending bedrest the last six weeks, you shouldn’t be working at all. Right?
I can’t stay in bed all the time, Julian. I’d go crazy. I want to go into the restaurant at least a couple of days a week, as long as I can. I want to see and talk to people…besides you. Thea smiles – to reassure me, I suppose, that she can imagine worse company than me. But I know what she means.
I tell Thea that I will talk to my parents when I get to the restaurant. Mama knows what lies ahead, and it will not come as a surprise.
And we should probably talk to them about moving in with them, Thea adds.
The thought lingers for a long moment. I guess so, I agree finally.* There is no longer any way of avoiding it. And I can talk to Max Farley about the house. We need to give notice.
Having to give up our first house is not exactly like suffering a death in the family, but it seems that Thea and I mourn in almost the same way. The house itself, I tell myself, will be here, fundamentally unchanged, after we move out. But a first house especially leaves an imprint on its young owners, and the owners leave an imprint on the house, and both are forever changed by the experience.
Moving back into my parents’ house feels a little bit like a defeat. But Mama and Papa are gracious about it, and they make room for the two of us…as well as the third, who has not yet arrived. This house is not much larger than the one Thea and I vacated, but it accommodated Mama and Papa and Nicholas and me for years, and now, again, it opens its arms without complaint to a new family.
On the 13th of June, hours before dawn, Thea wakes me and tells me that she is experiencing severe stomach cramping. Thea has not been sleeping much since the move, and I have seen how casually she deals with pain and distress, so for her to complain about cramping in the middle of the night tells me how serious this is.
We both dress quickly. I wake my parents to tell them I am driving Thea to the hospital. I do not want them to worry, but it would be more concerning if they came into our bedroom in the morning and discovered an empty bed. On the drive, I see Thea wincing, but after a few minutes the tightness in her face seems to ease. I ask her how much pain she is in.
It comes in waves. It’s not as bad now. Maybe we don’t need to go to the hospital after all. Thea gives me a weak smile.
I tell her that we are almost there and that I would feel better if a doctor checked her out. Thea does not argue.
The attending doctor is a young man who appears to be roughly my age. He asks Thea questions about headaches and fevers, swollen feet, lightheadedness and blurry vision that seem to have nothing to do with the pregnancy, or with the intense pain that brought us here. Then he dismisses me from the room while he examines Thea. This gives me time to sit and pace and conjure up every dire scenario imaginable – but when Thea and the doctor finally appear, he tells me that my wife’s only job for the next six weeks – or until the baby arrives – is to eat good food and drink water and rest with her feet elevated, maybe listen to soft music, and do nothing that would cause unnecessary tension and worry. And my job is to make sure she does these things, and nothing more. The abdominal cramping, he says, is a warning from Thea’s body that she is putting too much stress on her system and that she needs to slow down.
I don’t know how much more I can slow down, Thea says on the drive home. The visit to the hospital has reassured us both, and Thea is no longer in excruciating physical pain, but I can see that she is feeling discouraged.
I remind her what the doctor said about her only job, and mine. It’s only for another six weeks, I add, realizing immediately what a ridiculous remark that it. As if the pain and anxiety will soon be over, as if peace and harmony will arrive with the baby.
Mama and Papa are up when we return. Mama has long since given up on her one daily cup of instant coffee, and Papa has brewed a full pot. Thea starts by telling them that the baby is fine, that he was a little overactive during the night, that he has settled down and that the pains have abated. I don’t know if that is the medically correct description for Thea’s abdominal cramping, but it seems to allay at least Papa’s concerns.
And the doctor wants you to rest. And he wants you to pay attention to your body, says Mama – as if she had been there with us at the hospital. Thea, honey. No more working at the restaurant. We love having you there, but you need to take care of yourself. Julian can come home now and again to check on you, keep you company. But no more working the dinner shift at the restaurant. For now.
Thea’s daily routine becomes one, as she describes it, of sheer monotony. She reads paperback novels in bed, she walks out to the kitchen and eats a bowl of cereal and a banana, she lies down on the living room sofa with a pillow under her legs and listens to music on the radio, she makes frequent trips to the bathroom, she eats half a sandwich and a bowl of soup for lunch, she tries to nap in the afternoon, she walks out to the curb to see if the mail has come. Sheer monotony, but her body thanks her by minimizing the discomfort. It does not allow her much sleep, but the headaches and lightheadedness and the stomach cramping are, she tells me, manageable.
Thea is alone in the house on June 26 when a second letter from our anonymous St. Louis author arrives in the mail. That night, after work, she confronts me with it.
This was addressed to The Pappas Family, she says. No return address. I opened it, since I’m a member of the Pappas Family. Do you want to see what it says?
I take the letter without replying. I have so many thoughts swirling around in my head: Why now, again, after all these years? Is the letter actually directed at me, and did he know somehow that I was once again living with my parents? And how can I explain all this to Thea – along with the fact that I have been withholding it as long as we have been married, despite my pledge to be completely open and honest? I am glad at least that she decided to withhold the letter from Mama and Papa. Explaining everything to them would be even harder than explaining it to my wife.
The letter inside the envelope, like the first, is a single page, written once again in block letters. It reads: After the war, I sent you a letter telling you that Nicholas did not die in combat. I am just now coming to terms with some of the things I did during that time, and I wanted to say I am sorry for sending that letter. I am sure that it caused you pain. I hope you forgive me.
I read the letter twice. Thea has been watching me. So. Who wrote this? What does it mean? And what is the first letter he’s talking about?
I briefly consider lying, telling Thea I know nothing about any of this. But I quickly realize where this would lead. Instead, I tell her about the first letter, which arrived at the house shortly after the war. I tell her that I do not know who wrote the letter, or why, and that I did not share it with my parents. And after a while, I say, not entirely truthfully, I pretty much put it out of my head. There was no way to know who wrote the letter and if it was even true.
I pick up the envelope. I am looking for a return address, which I know will not be there, but what I see is the postmark. Los Angeles, California. Americans have become famous for their restlessness, for not staying long in the same place, so it is no great surprise that our anonymous St. Louis author no longer lives in St. Louis. If there was ever any chance of determining who he was, it seems that is pretty much gone now. And, returning to the letter itself, I also note that the author apologized for but did not recant the accusation, if that is what it was, in his original letter: that Nicholas did not die in combat and was not killed by Japanese fire.
You never told me, Thea says. The letter, and my explanation, have left her unmoored. I think she is trying to carefully straddle the line between being angry at me and feeling that she needs to comfort me.
I’m sorry. That is all I can think to say.
A baby girl arrives on July 28, 1951. We had decided to name the baby Nicholas in the event of a boy, Elizabeth in the event of a girl – honoring my father’s mother, whom I never met. So the world welcomes Elizabeth – or Maggie, as Thea chooses to call her.
Later that night, when Thea and I are alone in her room at the hospital, I think about the absurdity of describing childbirth as an arrival – as if someone rang a doorbell and delivered a package. I was not in the room for the actual delivery, but nothing in my life remotely prepared me for the hours leading up to that moment. Thea is asleep now, and Maggie is in the hospital nursery. You are a father, I tell myself.
The Atheneum closes for the week, so Mama and Papa and I, along with Mrs. Apostolos, can spend time with Thea and the baby. The nurses bring Maggie into the room every couple of hours so Thea can breastfeed her. I can see that this routine is exhausting Thea, but she does not complain. When Maggie is in the nursery, she sleeps pretty much all the time. When she is in Thea’s room she feeds and fusses and fidgets a lot. The nurses tell us that all this is normal, and I suppose they should know. For the first three days, I spend most of my time at the hospital, returning home to shower and to fix myself something to eat. On the fourth day, Thea dismisses me – tells me that I will sleep better in our own bed, and that I should enjoy the peace and quiet while I can.
I make a point to drive by our old house along the route to and from the hospital. The place appears vacant – until the day before Thea and Maggie are due to be discharged, when I see a large truck parked on the curb with two young men sitting in the cab. The one behind the wheel is smoking a cigarette. I pull alongside the truck, roll down my window.
Someone moving in? I ask.
The man studies me and takes the cigarette out of his mouth. Yup. Moving here from Toronto. They’ll be down in a couple of days.
Toronto, I repeat, as if there is something especially meaningful about the city.
You a neighbor? the man asks.
Used to be. We just moved. My wife and me. I’m just checking on the old neighborhood.
I did not expect the house to sit vacant forever, but I am unaccountably sad to see that it is already changing hands. After the business with the letter, I promised Thea total honesty. But she has no idea that I am making regular trips past our old house, and I decide for now not to say anything to her. I wave to the two men in the truck and make my way down the block.
On the morning of Saturday, August 4, I make one last trip to the hospital to retrieve my wife and daughter. When we return, Mama and Papa have taped a sign to the front door reading Welcome Home Mother and Daughter! A bouquet of pink balloons is tied to the porch light.
The Atheneum reopens Monday. I suggest that I stay home with Thea and Maggie for at least another day or two. But Thea says that she does not need people hovering and waiting on her, and that she needs to get into a routine with her daughter. So I am, once again, dismissed.
It is a warm, cloudless morning. The temperature reached 85 over the weekend, and today promises more of the same. The air is perfectly still. I had told myself that I would not drive past our old house, but on my way to work, something compels me. I drive slowly down the block, my window down. From a distance, I can see a white car parked on the street in front of the house. I check my rear-view mirror and slow the car further. A young couple is sitting on lawn chairs on the front stoop. They wave at me and I wave back. The young man begins rising from his chair as if he wants to introduce himself, but I wave again and continue on. I make a solemn vow to avoid driving past the house. This time, I will hold to my promise.
I had told Mama and Papa that Thea and Maggie and I would not impose on them any longer than necessary – that when we had saved enough money we would ask Max Farley’s help in finding another place of our own, one we could afford. The Atheneum’s customers made generous gifts to celebrate Maggie’s birth, and with my earnings at the restaurant we did start to slowly replenish our bank account. But then the medical bills began arriving, and we were more or less back to where we started.
Mama and Papa have not been impatient with us. We’re family. You stay as long as you want, Mama tells us frequently.
Papa nods his agreement. Back in Greece, he says, it was common for three generations to live together in the same house. For years and years.
But this is not Greece, I think. I know that Thea feels as guilty as I do about imposing on my parents. But for now, we have few choices. We are making the best of it, the five of us. Even Maggie seems obliging. It took her only a few days to adjust to life outside her mother’s womb and then outside the hospital. Her sleep routine is still irregular, but she cries infrequently, and when she is in a particularly fussy state Thea and I put her in the car and go for long drives, north or south along the lake, until she falls asleep. I have not yet driven Thea and Maggie past the old house.
A year later, we are still living with Mama and Papa when Thea tells me that she is pregnant again. And she is certain of it this time, Thea says. I know better than to question her.
Maggie is thirteen months old, and she is still sleeping in a crib in a very crowded bedroom, so I am having trouble imagining how we will accommodate another infant in the room. Of course, Thea and I are still holding out hope that we can move into a place of our own before our second child arrives, but our financial situation has not improved at all, so there is no real reason to be optimistic.
After Christmas, Papa sets to work fixing up what we have always called the Utility Room in the back of the house. It is the only room that does not serve a purpose other than storage, and it is far and away the smallest room in the house. But Papa says that it can serve adequately as a bedroom for Maggie and, when the baby is old enough, as a nursery for our second child. A month before Thea’s due date, we buy a small bed and, after explaining to Maggie what a landmark occasion this is, we ceremoniously move her out of our bedroom and into the old Utility Room.
I live in happy anticipation, most of the time. Although I have not been able to entirely banish from my mind thoughts about the writer from St. Louis, and how Nicholas might have died. I still think of him as The Writer from St. Louis, even if he lives presently in Los Angeles – or perhaps now somewhere else. In the absence of facts, the mind wanders and invents all sorts of scenes. I have imagined Nicholas on night patrol surprising another soldier and being shot accidentally. I have imagined Nicholas winning another man’s money in a card game and being killed in the ensuing argument. I have imagined far more unlikely scenarios, like Nicholas becoming involved with another man’s Japanese girlfriend, and Nicholas killing himself after receiving a letter from Lynette Markey telling him that she has moved on with her life. Neither of these are even marginally in character with my brother, but this is what the idle mind does.
If our second child is a boy, I am determined that we will name him Nicholas. I am no longer certain how Thea feels about this. Since my confession after the second letter arrived, we have not talked at all about Nicholas’ service, or his death, and I wonder if bestowing his name on our child would be, for my wife, a nagging reminder of an unclosed chapter in our lives.
But our second child is a second girl: Tessa Pappas, six pounds and three ounces, born April 16, 1953. Tessa is named for Thea’s grandmother Theresa, who lived and died in Athens without ever venturing beyond. Thea never met her grandmother, having never been to Greece, but Mrs. Apostolos has entertained her daughter with endless stories about how quick and competent her mother was with a needle and thread, how she built a business out of her home after her husband died and won so many customers that she had to hire two seamstresses to help. Thea and I had considered naming either Maggie or Tessa after one of our own mothers, but we decided it would be wise, and avoid hard feelings, to reach further back into our family histories.
Maggie is not quite two years old when we bring Tessa home. One of the nurses at the hospital has coached Thea and me in what to expect and how to deal with sibling rivalry. Thea had laughed and recounted the story, which I had forgotten, about how her brother Christopher would throw beads into the crib when Thea was a baby, telling her what an ugly little thing she was. But Maggie dotes over her baby sister. And she seems to have an unusual aptitude for calming Tessa when she is fussy, which is a welcome thing in a small house with a small bedroom for Thea and Tessa and me, and a very small converted utility room for Maggie.
We all adjust as well as possible to this chaotic and crowded new life. The house was not built for six people of three different generations. But I tell myself that Thea and I and the girls will have our own place soon, and my parents can have their house back. Papa is 55, and Mama will turn 55 in a month. In the abstract, this does not seem old, and they are both working as hard at the Atheneum as they did when Nicholas and I were kids. But I can see that life is slowly wearing them down, and having the four of us occupying the house with them has no doubt contributed to this decline.
We have just celebrated Tessa’s first birthday when Thea informs me, early on a Sunday morning, that she and her mother will be taking the train to Milwaukee, and that Mama has offered to spend the day at the lakefront with the girls. So you and your father can do something together, Thea says.
Papa has slowed down quite a bit over the past year, and Thea has been encouraging me to spend more time with him. But having an empty house on a Sunday is, I think, exactly what Papa needs. So, after mass, I drive Thea and Mrs. Apostolos to the train station, return home and kiss Mama and my daughters goodbye, and retreat to the bedroom to think, while Papa drinks coffee and reads the newspaper in the living room. I have told Thea that I would find something to do with my father, but for some time now I have been pondering something else altogether.
I tell Papa that I have promised to visit a friend in Madison, so I will be gone all day. He should not expect me back for dinner, I say, so Mama should go ahead and feed the girls. Papa looks as if he wants to ask questions, but then he nods, rearranges himself on the sofa, and tells me to have a good time. It is a long drive to Fort McCoy. But I am leaving the house before eleven, so I will be back in time to pick up Thea and her mother at seven, when their train arrives.
I had called Fort McCoy a month ago to see if Sergeant Hawkins was still assigned to the place. Of course, I have no guarantees that he will be there today. But Hawk made it clear that the United States Army was his life, and I had not known him to take a day off when Nicholas and I were in basic training, so I will take my chances.
The place is not the hive of activity that I remember. The war for which I enlisted has been over for nine years, and the war in Korea has now been over for almost a year, so maybe the country is training young men for things other than killing one another. I report to the front office and ask if Sergeant Hawkins is available. I trained under him, I say, explaining myself without explaining exactly why I am here. A short time later, Hawk appears.
He looks at me for a few long seconds without a sign of recognition before I think to introduce myself.
Your brother, he recalls. I visited your family after your brother died. Hawk is expressionless when he speaks. He seems somehow ageless – physically unchanged from the man who once had us crawling through open fields of mud and running laps around the camp with heavy packs on our back. I am surprised that he remembers visiting the family of a particular fallen soldier nine years ago, considering that he must have trained dozens, maybe hundreds of young men who later went on to be killed in battle. Hawk stands there, waiting for me to say something.
I need to ask you something, I finally manage to say.
Hawk nods as if he knows why I am there.
My brother was Nicholas Pappas. We were here together but I…didn’t make it through. After Nicholas died, after you visited our family, we got a letter from someone who was with him in Okinawa. At least that’s what it sounded like. The letter wasn’t signed, and there was no return address. It said that Nicholas didn’t die in combat, and he wasn’t killed by the Japanese. That was all. And then a few years later we got another letter apologizing…saying that the first one shouldn’t have been sent but not saying that it still wasn’t true.
Hawk stiffens and takes a deep breath. And… You’re here because…
Is there a way to find out who might have sent the letter? The letter in 1945 came from St. Louis, and the letter in 1951 came from Los Angeles. So it was someone who served with Nicholas in Okinawa and was there in 1945 at the end of May, and then he was living in St. Louis in October, and then in 1951 he was living in Los Angeles.
Hawk shakes his head. He is going to tell me, I am sure, that I wasted my time driving from Sheboygan to Fort McCoy, that even if the Army does keep such records it would take a person forever to sift through them, and that a civilian would not be able to access the records in any case. I considered all this on the drive, but I thought that if I could look Hawk in the eye again, if I could plead my case, I might learn something.
He does tell me that there is probably no way to access the information, but Hawk says something more, something curious. You shouldn’t take a lot of stock in what someone says in an anonymous letter, he says, even if the man was there. I didn’t get to know your brother well. You boys were only here for a few weeks and then you were gone. But I heard later from men who served with your brother in Asia, and they told me, to a man, that he was a fine soldier and a good man.
You heard from guys who served with Nicholas? They wrote to you?
The relationships that young men make in boot camp can be among the most important in their lives. They develop skills here that can literally mean life or death. So yes, I hear from some of these young men long after they’ve left Fort McCoy. They call, they write. They visit.
I am not sure if Hawk is intentionally throwing me a lifeline, or if telling me about these letters that mentioned Nicholas was inadvertent. Something tells me that there is nothing inadvertent about Sergeant Hawkins. He continues to stand there, erect, regarding me. I am certain that he knows what my next question will be.
Do you keep all the letters? Do you still have the letters that talked about Nicholas?
He nods his head almost imperceptibly.
Can I see them?
He seems to be considering the question.
I would really appreciate your sharing the letters with me. And my parents, I say. Hawk presumes, of course, that Mama and Papa know all about the anonymous letters, that I am here on a family mission and that obliging me would be a favor to my parents.
It would take me a while to find them, Hawk says. And we might need to redact the name of the young men who wrote them, since they were intended as private correspondence. But if it would offer some comfort to you and your parents, knowing how highly your brother was regarded by the men who served with him… I’ll see what I can do.
After getting my hopes up, I feel a little deflated. Knowing the names of the men who were with Nicholas when he was killed seems like the only way to get at the truth of how he died. But Hawk is agreeing to be helpful, and I am grateful for that. At least it feels like the trip has not been altogether wasted.
I have read that the Army can move rapidly when it wants to. But it moves very slowly when it has little incentive. Hawk calls a few days later to tell me that he has located several letters mentioning Nicholas in his personal files, but each letter needs to be reviewed and there needs to be an attempt to contact the writer, and if the writer cannot be reached or does not give his consent, the letter will have to be reviewed and censored to eliminate any clues to the identity of its author – as well as any information that might jeopardize national security, which seems a bit ridiculous, considering that the war ended nine years ago. I had expected Hawk to follow procedures, but of course I had hoped for a little less bureaucracy.
Be patient, says Hawk, as if reading my thoughts. This is the Army. I’ll keep on it, but nothing happens overnight.
So I wait.
I am still waiting three months later when Thea informs me, on a warm summer morning, that she is once again pregnant. We did not wish to bring another child into this crowded house, and we were not trying for a third baby, but it seems that we were careless one night. Maggie and Tessa are delighted at the news. Maggie is making plans for another baby sister, although Thea and I carefully explain that the baby might not be a girl. For some reason, the idea of a baby that is anything other than a girl strikes both of our daughters as incomprehensible. Mama is trying to act as thrilled at the news as she was when she learned that she would be a first-time and second-time grandmother. But I can tell that she is worried about Papa, who is worried about the restaurant and about a house that is straining its walls and in need of repair. I feel as if I am doing nothing but contributing to Papa’s stress. But we are about to become an extended family of seven, and I am helpless to change that.