Before they became The Greatest Generation, they were young men and women in love . . .
It’s June 1943. From New York to California, families gather to send their sons and husbands, friends and lovers off to war. The attack on Pearl Harbor seems a long time ago as America begins to understand that their boys won’t be home any time soon.
In Forest Hills, New York City, twenty-year-old Catherine Wilson knows all about waiting. She’s been in love with boy-next-door Doug Weaver since childhood, and if the war hadn’t started when it did, she would be married and maybe starting a family, not sitting at the window of her girlhood bedroom, waiting for her life to begin.
But then a telegram from the War Department arrives, shattering her dreams of a life like the one her mother treasures.
Weeks drift into months as she struggles to find her way. An exchange of letters with Johnny Danza, a young soldier in her father’s platoon, starts off as a patriotic gesture, but soon becomes a long-distance friendship that grows more important to her with every day that passes.
The last thing Catherine expects is to open her front door on Christmas Eve to find Johnny lying unconscious on the Wilsons’ welcome mat with a heart filled with new dreams that are hers for the taking.
“This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.”
–Franklin Delano Roosevelt
And the story continues with Stranger in Paradise (Home Front – Book 2)
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And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free romance excerpt:
SAYING GOODBYE
American women are learning how to put planes and tanks together, how to read blueprints, how to weld and rivet and make the great machinery of war production hum under skillful eyes and hands. But they’re also learning how to look smart in overalls and how to be glamorous after work. They are learning to fulfill both the useful and the beautiful ideal.
— Woman’s Home Companion, 1943
Chapter One
Catherine Anne Wilson was no different from a million other young women on that warm June evening in 1943. She was twenty-one years old, engaged to be married, and impatient to get on with the rest of her life. If the war hadn’t come along, she and Douglas Weaver would be married by now, snug and safe in their own little apartment with a baby in the cradle and one on the way.
Instead, there she was, still in her parents’ house in Forest Hills, curled up on the window seat in the pastel-pink room where she’d played with dolls and learned how to curl her hair and dreamed of how wonderful it would be to be grown-up and married.
Now, years later, she was still waiting to find out. She was a grown woman living the life of a dutiful daughter. Each morning she arose at seven, gulped down oatmeal and a cup of cocoa, then kissed her mother goodbye, in the same routine she’d followed for four years at Forest Hills High School when she was counting the days until she was grown-up. The only difference was she no longer headed for the classroom; she headed for work, where she spent nine hours a day posting numbers at her father’s manufacturing firm. She came home at night to her mom’s meat loaf and her sister’s Sinatra recordings and an abiding emptiness inside her heart that almost took her breath away.
Even the songs matched her mood. “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and the painfully beautiful “As Time Goes By” only served to point out how different this world was from the one she’d imagined when she was a foolish girl.
It wasn’t as if she wanted very much out of life. All she wanted was the same things women had wanted for hundreds and hundreds of years. Her own house and her own husband. Children to care for and a life that was her very own. Woman’s Home Companion said that these should be the happiest years of her life, a time when childbirth was easier and housework more satisfying. They even hinted that the love between a man and a woman could prove that sometimes heaven was found right there on earth. Instead, Catherine felt like a hungry child with her nose pressed against the window of a bakery, longing for something as simple and natural as a loaf of bread fresh from the oven. Something that was as impossible as flying to the moon.
When her mother was twenty-one, Dot had already given birth to Catherine and was pregnant again with Nancy. She’d had a husband and a home and the happiness Catherine dreamed about every single night.
“Don’t you worry,” everyone said, their tones jovial and reassuring. “Things will be back to normal before you know it.” The tide was about to turn any day. Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini were on the run, and any minute the Allies would strike the blow that would put an end to this insanity.
Like most other Americans, Catherine had been raised on happy Hollywood endings, firm in the belief that the good guys always won. Lately, however, she’d been finding it harder to hold on to the notion that everything would work out the way it did in Betty Grable movies. Instead of coming to an end, the war grew larger and more frightening with each day that passed. The headlines in the New York Daily News and the Herald Tribune talked of massive troop movements and losses that brought a chill to the blood.
Six million Americans were in the military, and each day the ranks swelled as eager men signed up to defend their country. The Allies had suffered badly in Corregidor and the Bataan death march was all too real. The Movietone News put a good face on the truth, but it wasn’t until Guadalcanal, just a few months ago, that the Allies had scored their first victory.
None of it, however, seemed to register with her sister, Nancy. The girl’s voice floated up to Catherine’s window from the front stoop, where the high-school senior sat chatting with her pals. Had it only been four years since Catherine herself had sat on the stoop with Douglas and made plans for the senior prom? She felt like an old woman sitting in her rocker watching the youngsters have all the fun.
Nancy’s voice was high and excited—after all, it wasn’t every day you got to go into Manhattan and see the real-life Stage Door Canteen. Their father had pulled a few strings and made special arrangements to take the family into the city to meet some of his squadron members. They would have a good old-fashioned celebration before he boarded a troop ship the next morning to Europe. “We’re not going to sit here watching the clock tick,” he had said to Dot and his daughters at the breakfast table that morning. “Let’s meet the fellows and make an evening of it.”
Nancy had been beside herself. It seemed to Catherine that her little sister had been baptized with stardust and blessed by Max Factor. Nancy pored over her stacks of Photoplay and Modern Screen as if they held the secret of life. Nancy believed in love at first sight, that Clark Gable was the most handsome man in the whole world, and that if she only had Betty Grable’s legs, Rita Hayworth’s hair and Lana Turner’s smile, her happiness would be assured.
“Do you know that little girl is positive she’ll meet Van Johnson and Tyrone Power tonight?”
Catherine turned away from the window at the sound of her mother’s voice in the doorway. “What’s worse,” she said, summoning up a smile, “is that she believes they’ll both fall in love with her.”
“The child is starstruck,” said Dot as she entered the room. Her slender figure was hidden inside the lavender housecoat Grandma Wilson had made for her birthday present, and her thick light brown hair was tightly wound into curls crisscrossed with bobby pins and dampened with Wave-Set.
Her mother’s familiar scent of Cashmere-Bouquet and Pacquin’s hand cream was a balm to Catherine’s troubled soul. She made room for her mom on the window seat. “I’m glad Nancy’s the way she is,” Catherine said. “One serious daughter is enough, don’t you think?”
Dot glanced at the alarm clock ticking away on Catherine’s nightstand, then leaned over and poked her head out the bedroom window. “You have one hour to get yourself ready, young lady. Daddy expects us dressed and on our way to the subway at six o’clock sharp.”
Dot and Catherine both laughed at Nancy’s shriek of “I don’t know what to wear!” followed by the sound of her black-and-white saddle shoes pounding up the front steps. Lucky Nancy, with nothing more to worry about than choosing between her red blouse and her white one.
“Are you going to wear your green dress?” Catherine asked her mother.
Dot’s cheeks colored prettily. “I wouldn’t dare wear anything else. It’s your father’s favorite.”
“If you like, I’ll help you pin your hair into an upsweep. Mary Clare, down the block, showed me how to roll the most adorable pompadour. With that gold mesh snood Aunt Mona gave you, you could—”
Dot gave her eldest daughter a long look that stopped Catherine cold. “What’s wrong?”
Catherine glanced out the window. “Nothing.”
Dot inclined her head toward the pale blue letter on her daughter’s lap. “Did something in Douglas’s letter upset you?”
“He’s fine.” A sigh escaped her lips. “At least, I think so.” She held up the heavily censored letter for her mother to see. “There wasn’t much left to read after Uncle Sam got through with it.”
Dot’s smile wavered. “I guess your dad and I will have to invent a secret code for our sweet nothings.”
Catherine wanted to say something reassuring, but the lump in her throat made speech impossible. Her cheerful, upbeat mother—the woman Catherine had leaned upon for twenty-one years—suddenly looked like a frightened child. The war seemed closer to Forest Hills than ever before.
Dot looked away for an instant, and when she met her daughter’s eyes again she was once more her ebullient self. “You get yourself ready now, honey. You know how Daddy hates to be kept waiting.”
Catherine blinked away sudden, embarrassing tears as Dot headed toward the door. “Mom?”
Dot paused in the doorway and looked back. “Yes?”
The moment passed. “Nothing. I… better get ready.” Catherine longed to throw herself into her arms and cry her heart out, but Dot had her husband to worry about now. It wouldn’t be fair to add her daughter’s fears to her burden.
“You know you can tell me anything, don’t you, Cathy?”
Catherine nodded and her mother turned, then disappeared down the long hallway to her bedroom.
You know exactly what I’m thinking, don’t you, Mom? I’ve never been able to fool you about anything. You can see that I’m scared to death that something terrible is going to happen to Douglas, that this dark cloud I’ve felt hovering over me for days means something.
Catherine shivered despite the balmy June weather, and wrapped her arms around her knees as she looked out the window at the street she knew so well. Hansen Street, a narrow road lined with powerful oaks and graceful maples, was her whole world. She’d been conceived right there in the Tudor-style house three months after her parents’ marriage. She’d taken her first steps in the front yard while Mrs. Bellamy and old Mr. Conlan called out encouragement.
And at twelve she’d fallen in love with Douglas Weaver, her very best friend, as they’d sat beneath his father’s crabapple tree under the star-spangled sky.
Fifteen months ago she had kissed Douglas goodbye at Grand Central Station. He had looked so handsome in his uniform, so tall and strong and painfully young, that her heart had ached with love for him.
“I’ll wait for you forever,” she’d said, her tears staining the shoulder of his khaki jacket. “I’ll never love anyone but you.”
“I’m coming back, Cathy,” he’d said. “I’ll be back before you have time to miss me.”
A thousand other soldiers whispered the same words into the ears of a thousand other sweethearts, who also stood on the dock that snowy morning. The boys’ promises were heartfelt. The girls knew the war would be over before they could dry their tears.
How wrong they all had been. The days turned into weeks, then the weeks passed into months, and finally Catherine realized the war wasn’t going to end simply because she and Douglas Weaver wanted a chance at happiness.
Across the street Edna Weaver waved to Catherine’s father, Tom, who strolled toward home with his Daily News neatly rolled under his arm.
“You shake Bing Crosby’s hand for me tonight, Tommy!” Edna called out, waving her pruning shears in greeting.
Tom tipped his cap. “Come with us, Edna, and shake his hand yourself, why don’t you?”
Edna laughed and pointed to her gardening costume, which consisted of her husband’s cast-off trousers and her long-sleeved smock. “Movie stars will just have to wait until my rosebushes are in shape, but you and Dot dance a waltz for me.”
Catherine’s father promised he would do exactly that, then turned up the path to the Wilson house.
Edna resumed her gardening chores, maintaining the dazzling display of scarlet, cream and blush-pink roses, which were her pride and joy and the talk of the neighborhood. Douglas had always teased his mother that she cared for her rosebushes more than she cared for her husband and sons, but everyone knew Edna Weaver’s big heart knew no bounds.
“Just you wait until Douglas comes home, Cathy,” her future mother-in-law liked to say over a cup of cocoa in the front room of her red-brick house. “We’ll take your wedding picture right here in front of the roses and everyone will say you’re the real American beauty.”
Edna Weaver tended toward exaggeration in everything she said and did. Her roses were the most beautiful; her sons and her husband, the most brilliant of men; and her almost daughter-in-law, the most perfect girl in the world. Edna Weaver also believed in happy endings, and these days that kind of cockeyed optimism was what Catherine sorely needed.
This sense of foreboding unnerved Catherine greatly. Although she had a serious nature, she invariably saw the best in others and believed that good things happened to good people. But ever since her dad had enlisted last December, she’d had the terrible sensation that nothing would ever be the same again. She did her best to push such dark thoughts aside, but they refused to be ignored, overtaking her late at night when her guard was down and her heart most vulnerable. It wasn’t right that the man she loved was so far away, that the plans they’d made for the future had to be stored away for the time being like winter blankets come springtime. Douglas was her love and her friend, and she missed him more than she’d ever imagined possible.
She wrote to him every night, long letters on her pastel stationery, letters filled with her hopes and dreams for the future still ahead of them. Dreams she shared with no one but him. Even the everyday happenings took on new importance. She told him that Count Fleet won the Kentucky Derby and that she went to see White Christmas for the third time and loved it more than she had the first. She memorized every word of his government-censored letters and spent endless hours trying to reconstruct the missing phrases. She drew funny pictures of their neighbors and wrote out the words to “As Time Goes By” in her most elegant hand.
And she promised him a life of sunshine and beer and little Weavers if he would just win the war and come back to her.
Late at night in the darkness of her room she tried to imagine their future. She could see their children, as blue eyed as she; as blond as the man she loved. A little girl with rosy cheeks and a lopsided smile sat on her big brother’s lap as he peered out from beneath the bill of his Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap. She could picture the tiny white house with crisp black shutters they would live in, and the smart striped wallpaper and even the Philco radio that would stand majestic and proud in the corner, but she couldn’t picture Douglas. Heart pounding, she would squeeze her eyes shut, trying to conjure him up in the darkness. A thick wheat-colored brow… a flash of sparkling eyes… but no more. He faded away each time like a dream come morning, leaving her alone and terrified.
She remembered his words, but the sound of his voice eluded her, also. The man she loved, the boy she’d grown up with, the one person she thought would be with her always, and she couldn’t recall the timbre of his voice or the way his hair looked in the sunshine.
Would that happen to her mother? Six months from now would Dot cry into her pillow as Tom Wilson’s face stubbornly refused to appear before her eyes? It seemed to Catherine that all across the country it was happening to women who waited. Somewhere in Kansas a farmer’s wife sat on her front porch and listened for her husband’s voice in the summer wind, then shivered as she heard nothing but the beating of her solitary heart.
The men were disappearing, all of them. The Robertson twins, Arnie from around the block, and the man who ran the hardware store on Continental Avenue had all left for boot camp in the past week. Douglas’s big brother, Mac, had gone to Europe as a correspondent, but it looked like he’d be enlisting any day, too.
And now tomorrow her own father was off to war, leaving her mother alone with Wilson Manufacturing and the house and two daughters to care for. Not that either Catherine or Nancy needed full-time mothering any longer, but there was something scary about being a family of women without a man’s strength to lean upon.
Their lives were changing and there wasn’t anything Catherine or Dot or Nancy could do to stop it, and that fact scared Catherine more than anything else. She could write a thousand letters, knit sweaters and gloves for the soldiers, collect tin cans and rubber tires, buy war stamps and save up for bonds. She could become a Rosie the Riveter and take a man’s job for the duration, but there was nothing she could do that would erase the past fifteen months of loneliness.
Men went to war.
Women waited.
That was the way things were and, as far as Catherine could tell, it was the way things would always be.
* * *
Teddy bears marched across the faded quilt tossed haphazardly across the bed in Nancy Wilson’s room, their plump brown legs resting atop an array of bright cotton sundresses. Saddle oxfords sat on the rag rug next to her best dress shoes, with the one-inch heels that made her sturdy legs look almost elegant. Her schoolbooks, carefully covered with brown paper so they could be resold as soon as the school year was over, were buried beneath a stack of Photoplays and Modern Screens that were her prized possessions.
At seventeen Nancy was both little girl and woman, and it seemed she spent half her life wanting to grow up and the other half wishing she could stay a child. She liked having an older sister like Catherine to look up to, and parents who made her feel safe and secure, but in her dreams she longed to fly away from the house on Hansen Street and try her wings.
She glanced at her reflection in the dressing table mirror, then looked across the room at the big color picture of Lana Turner that smiled at her from its place of honor next to Clark Gable on her bulletin board. Yesterday she had tried to muster the courage to ask for a bottle of peroxide from Mr. Kravitz at the pharmacy, but the memory of how everyone had laughed at poor Marie Finestra when she’d bleached her black hair blond still lingered in Nancy’s ears. “Nice girls” accepted the hair color God gave them and did nothing more than keep their tresses clean and curled.
Nancy sighed and looked back at her own round and fresh-scrubbed face. That was definitely the face of a nice girl. Her cheeks were full and rosy. Her nose was just the slightest bit pug and dusted with a sprinkling of cinnamon-colored freckles that not even Lady Esther face powder could hide. Unfortunately God had chosen to give her hair the color of a rusty drainpipe, and it was curly and unruly and thick as a pony’s tail in the bargain!
Life just wasn’t fair.
And that was exactly what she told Catherine as she marched boldly into her older sister’s bedroom across the hall and flopped onto the pristine white bedspread with the embroidered sweetheart roses.
“What did I do to deserve a fate like this?” she moaned, burying her face against a pink satin toss pillow as the scent of lavender sachet tickled her nostrils. “I look like one of those terrible monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. All I need is a knitted cap.”
Catherine, who was combing her hair near the window, laughed out loud. “If you’re looking for sympathy, Nance, you’re not going to find any here. You’re cute as a bug and you know it.”
“I don’t want to be cute,” Nancy said, peering up at her beautiful sister. “I want to look like you.”
“I thought you wanted to look like Lana Turner.”
“I’d settle for looking like you.”
“Gee, thanks.” Her sister’s honey-colored hair drifted down in a graceful curve that brushed her shoulders and stopped just short of her collarbone. “Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?” Catherine looked at the Hamilton watch their parents had given her when she’d graduated from high school. Nancy was due to get her own watch in a few short weeks. “Daddy wants us ready at six on the dot.”
Nancy’s spirits plummeted even lower as Catherine touched her already thick eyelashes with a dab of Maybelline from a tiny red matchbox container, then rouged her mouth with a tube of Tangee. Who would ever even notice she was alive with Catherine around?
Catherine was better than pretty; she was beautiful. Not flashy like Rita Hayworth or cheap like Betty Hutton, but possessing something more like Carole Lombard’s smart good looks mixed with Linda Darnell’s cameo perfection.
Nancy raised herself on her elbows and watched as her sister slipped into a plain blue short-sleeved dress with white collar and buttons and a narrow fabric belt at the waist. “You’re not wearing that, are you?” she asked, unable to mask her horror.
“This is a perfectly fine dress,” said Catherine, buttoning up the front, then adjusting the belt. “This isn’t a high-school dance we’re going to, Nance.”
“Of course it’s not! This is the Stage Door Canteen, Cathy! Every famous star in New York City will be there. Don’t you want to look your best?”
“I look just fine,” said her cool and calm sister. “Believe it or not, not everyone wants to look like a movie star.”
“I liked you better before you and Doug got engaged.” Nancy swung her legs off the bed and stood up. “You’re an old stick-in-the-mud now. I remember when you thought Errol Flynn was dreamy.”
A patch of color appeared on Catherine’s high cheekbones, and her blue eyes twinkled with mischief. “I still think he’s dreamy, and if you tell anybody I said that I’ll write to Gerry Sturdevant and send him your yearbook photo.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Oh, yes, I would.” She waggled her left hand in Nancy’s direction so that the tiny diamond sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. “I’m spoken for. Douglas would be so jealous if he knew I’d seen The Adventures of Robin Hood six times.”
Nancy completely ignored that juicy piece of information. All she could think of was Gerry Sturdevant’s face if he ever saw that absolutely horrid photograph taken last year when she was just a dumb kid of sixteen. “You wouldn’t send Gerry my yearbook photo, would you?” Nancy hated it when her voice went all small and childlike, but there was nothing she could do about it. This was too important.
Catherine ruffled her curls with a slender, graceful hand. “And ruin our servicemen’s morale? Not on your life. Your secret’s safe with me.” Catherine disappeared into the hallway and Nancy heard the bathroom door swing shut.
Nancy was tempted to read the stack of blue letters from Douglas that rested atop the window seat, but decided against it. A few years ago, when she was young and didn’t know any better, she would have dived right into the stack, giggling over the mushy parts and laughing at their silly romantic daydreams. Not anymore. To her surprise, she had her own romantic daydreams these days, and the thought of someone violating her privacy was enough to make her bury her head in the sand and never come out.
She went back into her room across the hall and sat down on the edge of her bed, bare feet dangling. She’d rather work in Macy’s Basement than ever let Gerry see that embarrassing photo.
Nancy’s high-school graduating class had been writing to servicemen for the past year. Doug’s brother, Mac, a foreign correspondent, had set up the morale-boosting program after his first trip to the Pacific theater the previous year when he realized the effect loneliness had on the boys. Mac was one of Nancy’s absolutely favorite people. A few years older than Catherine, he’d been the idol of all the kids on Hansen Street. Strong, opinionated and funny, everyone knew Mac was destined for bigger and better things. Mrs. Weaver had said he was in Europe now and getting itchy to join the fighting. Nancy wouldn’t be surprised if one day he gave Ernie Pyle a run for his money.
But the most important thing Mac had ever done, in Nancy’s considered opinion, was bring Seaman Gerald Francis Sturdevant into her life. Her freckles and pug nose didn’t matter a bit to Gerry. All that mattered was that her letters kept him in touch with home and all the reasons why winning the war was so very important to Americans. And, as if that wasn’t enough, he thought she was funny and friendly and much more sophisticated than she really was. Why was it that the easy humor and lighthearted conversation that came so easily for her on paper never seemed to materialize when she was face-to-face with a boy? Oh sure, she had plenty of boys as friends, but that special boy-girl kind of magic always seemed just out of reach.
Except with Gerry. With him she’d shared some of her biggest secrets, secrets she’d never even told her mother or Catherine.
Maybe she was just a silly kid, as foolish now at seventeen as she’d been at seven. Living in a dreamworld filled with movie stars and crooners and thick onionskin letters from a sailor she’d never meet.
She started at the touch of Catherine’s hand on her shoulder. “You’d better get dressed, kiddo. Daddy expects us downstairs in twenty minutes.”
Nancy jumped off the bed with a shriek. How on earth could she have forgotten to get dressed? “I’ll never be ready in time!”
“Sure you will.” Catherine scooped up the white peasant blouse with the embroidered trim that rested on the dressing table chair, then pulled a wide black cinch belt from the top drawer. “This would look adorable on you.”
Nancy, clad only in her white cotton panties and bra, giggled. “I’d look pretty funny, Cathy. I don’t have a skirt to go with it. My green pique would look silly.”
“I’ve already thought of that,” said her older sister. “My black taffeta.”
Nancy’s eyes widened. “The full one with the crinolines?” Since the war had started, skirts had become shorter and tighter; a luxurious full skirt complete with crinolines was almost as exciting as meeting Tyrone Power.
Catherine eyed Nancy critically. “I think it’ll fit you. You’re a few years away from needing a panty girdle.”
“You mean…?”
“Of course I do. You’ll be the belle of the Stage Door Canteen tonight.”
Fifteen minutes later Nancy did a pirouette in front of the mirror, then faced her sister. “What do you think?”
“I was right,” said Catherine with a big smile. “You’ll break their hearts tonight.”
Oh, Gerry, she thought as Catherine performed some last-minute magic on her unruly red curls, I wish you could see me now…
* * *
In the big bedroom at the end of the hall, Dot Wilson sat at her dressing table and watched her husband get ready for their night on the town.
“Did you get my shirts from the Chinese laundry?” he asked as he stepped into a pair of boxer shorts.
Dot nodded and tried to swallow around the painful lump in her throat. “Of course,” she said, forcing her voice to sound airy and cheerful. “Twenty-two years and I’ve never once forgotten.” Twenty-two years of cooking and cleaning and caring for him. Twenty-two years of raising both his children and his spirits, of lying down beside him each night and awakening each morning in his arms. The only life she’d ever known.
The only man she’d ever wanted.
“Oh, Tom.” Her voice broke on his name. “What am I going to do without you?”
He was next to her in an instant. His chest was bare and the unfamiliar dog tags were cold and hard against her breast as he pulled her to him. “You’re going to wait for me, Doro. You’re going to keep the bed warm for me.”
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry, that she’d do nothing to make him any more unhappy than he already was, but her tears spilled hot and fast onto his naked shoulder. “I’m scared, Tommy,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I can do it alone.”
“You’re not alone, baby. You’ve got the girls with you.”
She smiled despite her terror. Catherine and Nancy were her crowning achievements. Raising them was the most important thing in her life—second only to her devotion to Tom.
“I know,” she said, “but I never imagined a time when you wouldn’t be here with me.” Even though it seemed as if every man in the country wanted to go head-to-head with the Nazis and the Japanese, it had never occurred to her that her very own husband would feel the same way.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” He gave her a playful swat on the bottom. “I’m coming home, Doro, as fast as I possibly can. Before you know it, you’ll be so busy taking care of me again that you’ll wonder why you wanted me back.”
“Never.” She covered his neck and chin with swift sweet kisses born of love and fear. She closed her eyes and tried to memorize the feel and smell of his skin as if to fortify herself for the long months when he would no longer be there with her.
Tom hadn’t been drafted. As a forty-year-old married man and the father of two daughters, he was an unlikely candidate for military service. But Tom Wilson was not just a married man with children; he was also a patriotic American who could no more stay there in New York City while his countrymen fought for freedom than he could turn away from the scene of an accident.
She’d shamed herself the day he’d come home with the news of his enlistment.
“How could you!” she’d cried, thinking only of her own fears and the safety of their family. “We need you here, Tom Wilson. The company needs you.” In over two decades of marriage, Dot Wilson had never opposed her husband in anything, but that day she had asked him to choose between his country and his family.
His words still echoed in her memory. “There’s no choice, Doro,” he’d said. “If we don’t win the war, we’ll lose the freedom that makes our family possible.”
And so there they were in the bedroom they’d shared for the first time on their wedding night and every night since. She could still see herself standing there, so young and scared in her white peignoir set, staring at the handsome boy who was now her husband.
The terrible thought that this might be the very last time she felt his arms around her as they dressed for a Saturday night outing made her feel as if her heart would break.
His caresses grew more ardent, and she laughed softly and placed a hand on his chest. “We’ll be late, Tommy.”
He cupped her breast and she swayed toward him. “The Canteen will still be there.”
“And after you told the girls to be ready at six o’clock sharp or you’d have them court-martialed! How on earth would we explain this?”
“Do them good to know their old folks still love each other.”
She longed to stay right there in his embrace, but making love in broad daylight with the girls waiting for them downstairs was too scandalous to consider.
“Get dressed, Tommy.” She kissed him soundly.
The look he gave her was so thrilling that her breath caught for an instant. “Tonight, Doro,” he said as he reached for his army-issue shirt. When we close the door behind us tonight, I don’t intend to let you go.”
Chapter Two
Although she had grown up right there in New York City, smack in Forest Hills in the borough of Queens, Catherine still felt a thrill each time she boarded the IND subway bound for Manhattan. Manhattan was another world, a fairytale land straight from the dreams of a Hollywood director.
Only who needed Hollywood when you had Manhattan right there on your doorstep! From the splendor of Central Park to the broad expanse of Park Avenue, to the electric excitement of Broadway with its neon signs and palatial theaters that housed everything from Shakespeare to Shaw to Rodgers and Hammerstein, all of it was real and only twenty minutes—and one five-cent subway fare—away.
Where else could you see the Camel cigarette man, who presided over a billboard poster that blew giant smoke rings over Times Square, or the mighty Prometheus of Rockefeller Center with the weight of the earth on his shoulders? They said that Henry Ford had worried that the excavating necessary for the Empire State Building would affect the earth’s rotation on its axis, but the spectacular 101-story structure had only added to the city’s grandeur. And who hadn’t met a friend or loved one beneath the golden clock that hung over the information desk at Grand Central Station?
How glad Catherine was to escape her bedroom and get out!
It had been a long time since she had fussed with her hair and her lipstick or worn a dress as pretty as the tight-waisted cornflower blue that just skimmed her knees. War restrictions on clothing had taken much of the fun out of dressing up. No more full skirts. Pleats were outlawed, as were cuffs on men’s pants. Even double-breasted coats were gone for the duration. Nancy had appealed to her sense of family loyalty. “All of Daddy’s friends from the squadron are going to be there, Cathy. Don’t you want him to be proud of you?” her little sister had asked, sending Catherine back into her closet in search of something more special than her sober workaday dress.
The rediscovery of her femininity came as a powerful surprise. She’d forgotten how wonderful it felt to primp before the mirror and actually smile at the reflection she saw there. The sweetheart neckline bared her collarbone and each time she turned her head, her hair brushed against her skin. She remembered the time that Douglas daringly pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat and—
“Will you look at them?” Nancy asked over the rumble of the subway train. “Acting like newlyweds!”
Catherine looked at her parents who were sitting together on a bench a few feet from where she and Nancy stood clutching the leather straps overhead. Her father looked handsome in his army uniform and the strange new haircut; her mother, lovely in a filmy dress of sea green, looked as proud of him as if he were a four-star general.
Suddenly she didn’t want to think of goodbyes, of the war and the dangers lurking everywhere. She definitely didn’t want to think about the jittery feeling that had been haunting her the past few days. She wanted to think of music and dancing, of spending an evening with the family she loved. Impulsively she gave her little sister a quick hug, almost losing her balance as the train careened around a curve, then slowed as it neared the station.
“You look so glamorous tonight, Nance.” She smiled at the cloud of Evening in Paris that fairly surrounded the girl. “Gerry Sturdevant should only see you now.”
Nancy blushed as red as the roots of her hair. “Don’t tease me, Cath.”
“I’m not. You look grand.” She glanced down. Nancy’s very best shoes, a pair of white pumps, glistened with Shinola polish. “How are your stockings holding up?”
Nancy laughed out loud. “It better not rain. I’d die of embarrassment if my makeup runs.”
Stockings were currently in short supply, for the government was using nylon to make powder bags for explosives. These days American women wore bobby sox and anklets and knee socks, or they went bare-legged. On special occasions like tonight, enterprising females applied Dorothy Grey’s Leg Show in sheer or suntan to their legs to simulate stockings. Catherine had painstakingly sponged the thick foundation onto her sister’s ankles and calves and knees, getting into the same spirit of excitement that held the teenager in thrall.
Fortunately the weather was splendid. They climbed up the concrete subway steps, laughing at the Hold Your Hats! sign in the stairwell, to find the evening sky a beautiful mixture of pink and blue and flame orange. Women in snugly fitted suits and feathered hats walked arm in arm with gentlemen whose temples were as gray as their own summer suits. Sailors lingered at the corner of Forty-second Street, whistling and calling out “Hubba, hubba!” as a trio of pretty nurses walked by. “Mairzy Doats,” the nonsense song that had taken the country by storm, floated out from a radio blaring inside Tad’s Steak House, while moviegoers queued up at Radio City Music Hall to see Jean Arthur in The More The Merrier.
“Actor dies in airborne attack!” cried the headlines on the papers being hawked on every corner. Leslie Howard, Ashley Wilkes from Gone with the Wind, had been en route from Lisbon to England when his airliner was attacked by an enemy plane and brought down.
No one was safe: Absolutely no one.
Catherine forced the notion from her mind. There would be plenty of time in her darkened bedroom to think about it later.
Oklahoma reigned supreme on the Great White Way, and she had to tug at Nancy’s arm as the girl stopped to stare at the color posters flanking the entrance to the theater.
“Hurry up!” Catherine urged as their parents crossed to the other side of the street. “We can’t get into the Canteen without Dad.”
That was all Nancy had to hear, and they scurried to catch up.
“I’m so nervous,” Nancy said. “If I meet a movie star I’m afraid I’ll die!”
“You won’t die. If you meet a movie star, you’ll smile and say hello, same as you would if you met a plumber.”
“My stomach hurts,” moaned Nancy. “I wish I had some Bisodol.”
Catherine looked at her little sister and for an instant she couldn’t remember how it had felt to be seventeen and in love with life. Had she ever felt all giddy with excitement, trembling on the threshold of new experiences, new adventures? It seemed so long ago since she’d approached each new day with pure joy that she felt older than her grandmother.
Her dad kissed her mother on the cheek as he opened the door to the Stage Door Canteen. “This way, ladies.”
Well, if nothing else, at least she’d have something new to write Douglas about tonight.
She sighed and followed Nancy downstairs.
* * *
Movie stars! Soldiers! Sailors! All the glamour and wonder that Nancy had dreamed about was right there in that noisy smoky room. Big band music, so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think, surrounded her—and so did men in uniform, a dazzling assortment of army privates, youthful marines, sailors in their jaunty outfits, and fly-boys with silver wings sparkling on their chests. The room smelled of Brylcreem and Vitalist of Old Spice and Ivory soap. Laughter rang out from every direction, and a big smile spread across her face as she realized she was right there in the middle of things in the most exciting place on earth.
“Take a look over there, honey.” Her mom directed her attention toward the stage up front. “Isn’t that Bob Hope?”
“Oh, golly!” Nancy’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “And that’s Mary Martin with him!”
Old Ski Nose and the beautiful blond star of Broadway’s musical fantasy One Touch of Venus took the stage to a round of enthusiastic applause. They launched into a skit that Bob Hope must have done a hundred times at bases and camps around the world, yet his enthusiasm was electric, as he and Mary Martin took an imaginary stroll, arm in arm, through Central Park.
“Nice night,” said Bob.
“Nice night,” said Mary.
“Nice party.”
“Nice party.”
“Nice moon.”
“Nice moon.”
“Nice bench,” said Bob, waggling his eyebrows in a mock leer.
“Nice bench,” said Mary, all-innocence.
“Some do.”
“I don’t!”
The crowd loved it, but no one loved it more than Nancy. Everything was as she’d imagined it would be—and even better. Bob Hope put on an apron and magically transformed himself into the world’s most famous busboy, while Mary Martin perched on a high stool and sang along with Harry James and his Music Makers.
“’Scuse me,” said a male voice behind Nancy. “Care to dance?”
She turned and saw a cute jug-eared sailor with even more freckles than she had. “I’m Nancy,” she said, smiling at him.
“Bobby Dunn. I’m not much good at jitterbugging, but if you’re game…”
“Sure,” said Nancy, ignoring her father’s knowing grin from across the room. “Why not?”
Bobby Dunn didn’t lie. When it came to jitterbugging he was about as graceful as a cocker spaniel, but somehow it didn’t matter. He made her laugh as he told her all about life in a small town in Illinois, and she had him guffawing with stories of her one and only attempt at milking a cow on her grandma’s farm in central Pennsylvania.
Bobby Dunn gave way to Charlie, a marine from San Diego who obviously believed girls swooned over men in uniform. He was right about that, of course, but Nancy wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. She did the fox-trot with an officer from Cheyenne who said she looked like his youngest daughter, and waltzed with an elegant young lieutenant from Maine with aspirations of giving General Eisenhower some real competition.
The Andrews Sisters, Patty and Maxine and Laverne, took center stage and launched into a rousing rendition of “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” that had everyone dancing in the aisles.
If only the night would never end….
* * *
Back in Forest Hills, in a storefront on Continental Avenue, Catherine’s future was being decided.
Stuart Froelich, Western Union supervisor, took off his wire glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose
We regret to inform you that your son, Private Douglas Weaver, died in battle 29 May 1943 in the Aleutian Islands.
Being the bearer of bad news was rotten enough; bringing bad news to friends was more than he thought he could stand. His own daughter, Susan, had gone through school with Doug and his girlfriend Cathy Wilson. His photo albums were filled with snapshots of the three of them in school plays, at the junior prom, on graduation night.
Dear God, he thought as he folded the telegram into an envelope. Give Edna and Les the strength they need to accept this.
And help Cathy to get on with her life.
* * *
Tom’s friends were really a swell group. Dot thoroughly enjoyed listening to their stories about boot camp and how her husband had withstood their merciless teasing with remarkable good grace. It helped, this putting faces to the names of the men who would go into battle with the man she loved.
“Gotta hand it to Tom,” said Johnny Danza as he waltzed her around the crowded dance floor. “We razzed him pretty bad about being the oldest recruit around, but he laughed along with the rest of us.”
“That’s my Tom,” she said, tears welling up despite het easy laughter—He can take it as well as dish it out.”
“A real nice guy,” said Johnny, shaking his head. “Don’t meet too many guys as nice as him these days.”
I won’t cry! There will be plenty of time for tears once Tom leaves tomorrow. She swallowed hard and gently steered the conversation in a less emotionally dangerous direction. “I’m glad you and Tom will be together….” She hesitated. “Well, wherever it is you’ll be out there.”
He nodded but said nothing, simply swept her into a more intricate pattern of dance on the floor. She could see the raw emotion on his strong-boned face, and she averted her gaze to afford him a private moment to recover himself. For all his toughness, Johnny Danza had a soft quality. It pleased her to see that, to know that her husband would be there with this young man, who perhaps would ease his way along the rough road ahead.
“We will be seeing you at breakfast tomorrow morning, won’t we?” she asked as he twirled her around the crowded floor.
He had a wonderful, boyish smile that made her maternal instincts leap to life. “I, uh, Tom told me about it but I, uh, I wasn’t sure you’d want a stranger there….” His words drifted off with an embarrassed shrug.
“You listen to me, Johnny Danza! I make the best pancakes in New York City and you’re expected to be at the table at 8 a.m. sharp. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am!” He gave a quick salute. “You’re tougher than our drill instructor.”
“And don’t you forget it!”
The waltz came to an end, and Harry James announced a fifteen-minute break to a chorus of good-natured boos from the crowd.
Johnny saw Dot back to the table where her husband sat, still talking with a group of soldiers, each of whom had the wide-eyed look of a visitor on his first trip to New York. For a moment she considered asking each and every one of them over for a pancake breakfast, but because of shortages due to the War effort, she knew neither her pantry nor icebox held enough food to accommodate them all. She would, however, give Private John Danza a breakfast to remember.
* * *
The ten steps to the Weavers’ front door seemed like a hundred to Stuart Froelich as he trudged up to ring the bell.
His right arm hung limply at his side, the telegram dangling from his fingers like a lowered flag of surrender.
Laughter floated out through the open window, laughter and the sweet sound of Dorothy Collins’s voice as she sang “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”
“Let’s have a hand for the little lady,” said Snooky Lanson. The audience applauded.
Stuart rang the doorbell.
