Louisville, Kentucky

JULY 31, 1951

Lola Leavitt

he sits by the open window, looking out. It’s the same third-floor room she shared with Bobby, first night to last. Nearly empty now. She’d taken the furniture when she moved to Coral Gables with the baby. There’s only the chair she sits in, their valise, a double mattress on the floor, like those last weeks when Bobby moved her mattress off the bed frame so the only sounds were theirs. Lola hears the club downstairs, prep and start-up for On-slow’s Sunday night crowd. Sunday nights were slow except at Onslow’s and a few other bars. Soldiers from the base poured in. Onslow would introduce her, especially those months she was obviously pregnant, as a religious experience. The church service they’d missed earlier that morning. She hears him at the piano now, through the open windows. Lola’s the cat, he told soldiers, she can purr, she can scratch. You boys behave and she’ll arch her back when she sings to you. Onslow is playing her songs, her repertoire, as though it makes a difference.

Now that she’s here, she’s calm, settled. It’s the right thing. The baby’s breathing is good, clear. He’s strong in his way. He doesn’t move much but still she’s got him propped with rolled blankets, every side, so he’s safe and doesn’t stir. She’s nursed him just now in this chair, whispering songs, and now he’ll sleep the night. He sleeps more than most babies, and he’s quiet, doesn’t cry. In those ways, he’s easy. He can hold his head up now, and his arms. He moves his fingers. He moves them fast when he’s agitated, and his skin flushes. He goes rigid if he’s scared. He’s silent then, but anyone caring for him knows what’s wrong, begins to know. She’s left a list. He takes formula and she’s brought plenty, but her milk calms him most. It’s the only thing she regrets taking from him.

She’s been here a week, long enough that the girls have learned how to care for him. In case Noreen won’t take him, or not right away. But she will. The letter, the instructions, are in the big valise. It will all seem backward to Noreen. She’ll be angry. Don’t I have enough to do, she’ll rage at Charlie, but not when Lark can hear. They’ll care about him, protect him, even if they don’t understand. She can’t take him, though she’s decided to stop. She thinks Bobby would forgive her. She went on as long as she could, until she knew what to do.

She reaches for a cigarette to steady her hands. Lights up and leans toward the open window so the air will take the smoke.

She’s careful what he breathes, careful about noise. He loves music, or he’ll focus on a sound so small she barely hears it. Drip of a faucet, night cries of those penny-sized frogs in the grass in Coral Gables, the hush of the surf across the little road. Confusion scares him. Doctor’s visits. Strangers. So it was just her, the days filled with taking care of him. Onslow sent them money. Charlie wrote every month. Then the soldier came with his Korean wife and gave her the picture Bobby prized and carried with him. The cigarette pack, the little photo slipped inside the cellophane, still seemed curved to the contour of Bobby’s chest or the shape of his hand. The Korean girl only nodded, smiled. Not much English, Tompkins said. Her parents were dead, so he’d married her, and the government let her leave. She’d worked on gaining weight here, to look older. Still, now that he had the limp and the cane, people thought she was his nursemaid or his daughter. Watching them, she realized she’d been waiting, but Bobby would never be here, on a cane, in a wheelchair, missing whatever parts of him the war took. She had the house in the quiet town. They could have lived simply, on disability like half the retirees in Coral Gables. Instead she had the widow’s pension, and a survivor’s benefit, for the baby. She’d make sure Nonie got it. The thought came to her then, sitting in Coral Gables with the Korean girl and Tompkins. She’d wait a month, more, so Tompkins wouldn’t feel responsible. She’d make plans. She could plan now. She could look at the picture and see all that might have happened if the war hadn’t. And read Bobby’s letter, the one Tompkins brought her.

She smokes, closing her eyes, upright and tense in the chair. She senses the trail of the smoke, doesn’t watch it. She knows it curls and weaves, blue in the late-afternoon light, moving away from her.

She left the house as it was, only paid the man who mowed the grass to pack up the carriage and high chair, send them to Win-field slow freight. They’d arrive in a week or so, about as long as it would take Onslow to contact Tompkins and his wife, fly them up to drive the car, arrange for a nurse. And take the baby to Noreen. With the valise, his clothes, blankets he was used to, her perfume bottle with the moon face he liked to hold. The girls smiled when they saw it: it was part of that novelty perfume set they’d bought for her trousseau.

She pulls her upright chair soundlessly closer to the window. She knows these rooftops, this skyline, and she leans out to look. They’d lie in bed with these windows open, the smoke of their cigarettes curling over them. Breath of their bodies, moving in the air, drawn to the open.

She smokes her cigarette. It’s dark enough that fire glows in the ash. She looks now, and follows the smoke with her eyes. Air pulls the thin blue trail out the window, into the evening.

Lola’s the cat.

They brought the yellow telegram to her hospital bed, days after the birth. She knew before she read it. Bobby was missing, presumed dead. She was too weak to hold the baby but she wouldn’t let them bind her breasts. She made them help her feed him, prop him on pillows. She coaxed him to nurse until he did. He began to move his hands. Never his legs. His head was too big for his small, thin body. The baby has problems, they told her. You have problems, she said. She needed rest, they said, she’d lost a lot of blood. They kept trying to take him from her but she wouldn’t let them. He was going to live, she told them. No one should presume, she said. Rest, they said. No one is trying to take your baby. Is there someone we can call? No one who can hear you, she told them.

Now she knows how to sense him. Tompkins brought her the letter, but she waited until they left to read the words. If you’re reading this, it means I’m not coming back. Just like that, it was true. It was his voice and she believed him, when before all she’d had was the folded flag. She read the words and read them until she could feel him near her. It’s as though he’s released now into his son’s breath and smell, into the baby’s eyes and hands. The baby moves his fingers every moment he’s awake, slowly, carefully. The birth certificate she brought from Florida says his name, but she’s never called him by a name. She sings to him while she feeds, bathes, rocks, carries him. He answers in sounds, singsong tones.

At night, on this mattress on the floor, like their bed before Bobby left, she falls asleep holding the baby. She says Bobby’s name into his skin, against the cloudy pale hair, the broad forehead. Delicate blue veins are visible at his temples, just beneath the flesh. In the first weeks, she was sure he would stop breathing. Now he’s a year old, almost exactly. She can see some blended distortion of them, a resemblance transformed and shattered into what he is. He’s not like her or Bobby. He’s what happened to Bobby. He’s where Bobby went, where Bobby is. How can she reach Bobby. Maybe not touch him, but find him. Know where he is. She thinks it’s all still happening, existing where she can’t see. It doesn’t end until she ends it.

Lola’s the cat. She takes a last drag on the cigarette and stands, watches the smoke unfurl. The little derringer Bobby gave her is in her purse, with the folded flag, the telegram tucked into the front. We regret to inform you. She’ll walk to the police station down the street. They’ll take care of everything. She knows the baby is safe and she’ll think about Bobby. She’ll be on her way.