Excerpt from the novel Fool, Anticipation

So, what did little Edna Rose know about preparing for a date? Absolutely zero. I didn’t own dressy clothes. I never did anything with my hair and didn’t know how to use makeup. I had to ask my sister Cila, who was more than happy to help since she felt the same way as Nikki did about my fashion choices. Cila was a slob and never took care of her clothes, but she had some nice things, so she loaned me some. She rumbled around in her closet and brought out a pair of shoes she had just bought. I was shocked when I saw them.

“These are brand new. I just got them at Famous Fain’s. Promise to take good care of them.”

She put them on me. I turned around and looked in the mirror, propped up on the floor.

“I can’t wear these, Cila.”

They were a lace-up oxford. Small holes perforated the vamp. Cuban heels.

“They’re so sexy. God, Rose. What is wrong with you?”

Cila didn’t know I was gay, either. But then, she was oblivious to lots of things.

“I’ve never worn anything like this.”

She was frustrated.

“Yeah, exactly. Maybe that’s your problem, Rose."

So, she talked me into wearing her shoes, and eventually, I got myself together, went out, and sat on the front porch, wondering why I got myself talked into this and why any guy wanted to date me. But there I was, tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and checking every car. Honestly, I had never been on a date. I was nervous and felt more like a girl waiting for the school bus than a woman going on a date. Soon, Tommy’s car stopped in front of my house, and he came around from the driver’s side to greet me.

“Hi, Rose. You look nice. Real nice.”

“Thank you."

Tommy was polite and charming in a boyish way. He had open blue eyes and a friendly smile, which relaxed me. He looked handsome in his uniform, and I wouldn’t have noticed his arm if he hadn’t told me about it.

“Come on. Get in.”

He held the passenger door open, waiting for me to get in. At first, getting in a strange man’s car seemed odd, trusting someone I barely knew, so I paused. But he seemed fine, so I put it out of my mind. Once inside, I went to close the door, but Tommy stopped me.

“Easy. Like this.”

Gently, he clicked the door closed. Tommy loved this car and in it he was much more relaxed and confident than when we talked in front of the Res. As we drove, I wanted to know more about him, but all he wanted to talk about was his bad arm. I was surprised to see how much this affected him.

“Both my little brothers wound up overseas. Karel in the Navy, Ben in the Army Air Corps. Not me. Because of the arm, I had to stay stateside. It was a pretty rotten thing. Look, I can use it.”

He bent it at the elbow and raised his left arm at a stoplight, but only shoulder high.

“I just can’t raise it very high. And I can’t lift much.”

His lips pursed, and he shook his head.

“I guess they thought that meant I couldn’t fight - I wasn’t a real man.”

“You think fighting a war makes you a real man, Tommy?”

“Nah, I get what you’re saying. But, you have no idea what it was like for me - what I went through.”

No, I didn’t get this at all. How could someone as thoughtful and intellectual as Tommy somehow feel emasculated - less of a man because he didn’t kill? I guess that’s what the toxic culture of war does to young men. We continued up Hudson Boulevard as he told me about his induction physical.

“At first, I didn’t want to take off my shirt, but I had to. Then, this doctor with a clipboard came down, looked at my arm, and sent me into another room. I waited there, I don’t know, three hours? Meanwhile, I’m listening to them swear in the other guys outside. Finally, this other doctor comes in. He wants to see how high I can raise my arm. I can’t get it above my shoulder. As hard as I try, The doctor stamps “Not Fit For Combat” in red on his form. A whole line of guys is marching past the door, looking at me. I knew what they all were thinking about me.”

Here’s what I never understood about men. Why do they place so much self-esteem on what other men think of them? I guess it kind of went with the territory at the time. For some men, war became an Olympic testosterone event.

Once I entered the Park City Club, I understood why I never went there. It was noisy, filled with smoke, and cluttered with drunk soldiers and sailors. They all had a service cap tipped back on their head, with a green bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other while trying to impress a bunch of swooning, floozy women with their war exploits.

So my first thought when I entered was, I got talked into going on a date I didn’t want to go on, and now I’m in a place I didn’t want to be. I should have told Tommy, then and there, that this place wasn’t for me and leave, but I didn’t. The night was not going to end well.

He found a quiet table in the back where we could talk. As soon as we sat down, he brought up the war. I must have felt safe with him, because this was one of the few times I opened up to anyone about my opinions.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was glad we won, but a lot of people suffered on the other side as well.”

“Come on, Rose. Auschwitz? The Bataan Death March? How can you feel sorry for them?"

“I agree, Tommy. They were horrible atrocities. So, our reaction to that was to drop two atomic bombs on civilians?”

We had dropped the atomic bombs over the summer, and Tommy, like most Americans grappling with this morality, bought onto the prevailing line from the administration.

“But, those bombs ended the war sooner."

But not me.

“Maybe. So, we dropped the atomic bomb because they committed atrocities. Those bombs also fell on women and children, who were no more responsible for those atrocities than I was for that atomic bomb, Tommy.”

“So, you think we shouldn’t have dropped the bomb?”

“Exactly. It was wrong.”

“Nobody thinks that but you, Rose.”

But, that wasn’t true. It was kept from the public for years afterward, but dozens of top politicians and generals sent a letter to Truman urging him not to use the bomb.

“We had to do that.”

Unsuccessfully.

“Even if that’s true. I just don’t think it’s any reason to celebrate, Tommy. Millions of innocent people got incinerated. And what do we do?"

I glanced over toward the raucous crowd of drunk soldiers.

“Have a party?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“God, I’ve never met anyone like you, Rose.”

It was obvious, Tommy wasn’t comfortable hearing opinions from a woman, so it was time to change the subject. I asked him about his family. He told me his brother Karel had just got on with the fire department and opened a garage to repair cars on the side. His brother Ben died in a plane crash in North Africa. I told him I lived with my mother, sister, and younger brother. When I mentioned my father died a few years ago, he asked the question I always had to be prepared to answer.

“What happened to him?”

I never told anyone the true circumstances of my father’s death. Instead, I had an outrageous story I made up.

“He got shot.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Somebody shot him in the streets.”

That worked because it was so outrageous, it shut most people up.

“I’m sorry. Sounds terrible.”

I had told that fabrication to people dozens of times with no compunction. But, for some reason, I felt guilty with Tommy, so I told him another part of the story that was true.

“We didn’t find out he had died for three days.”

“Where was he?”

“No one had any idea.”

My father did go missing for three days.

“So, how did you find out?”

“In the newspaper. There was a story about an unidentified man they found in the street.”

But, this conversation was getting way more personal than I liked. I’d already shared more than I’d ever told my friends, so changed the subject.

“So, tell me, what did you do?”

“When?"

“During the war. You said you couldn’t go overseas? What did you do?” Tommy looked the other way. You would think, after the fairy tale I told about my father, I would have been sensitive to the tell-tale signs of someone who didn’t want to answer a question. But I missed it, as I did many other things that night. Suddenly, we were interrupted by a loud group of drunk soldiers who came in and stood behind our table.

“So, I’m in Le Havre, and I come upon this little girl taking a swim by the river. She couldn’t have been more than, I don’t know, sixteen? Gorgeous!”

They were obnoxious and tittered over their beers.

“And French.”

I glanced up at them, standing behind Tommy. I was shocked at how worn down they looked.

“So, I pull her back behind some trees and pull her bathing suit off.”

Even with his arm, Tommy was much less damaged. I asked again. “Tommy? What did you do during the war?”

But he was listening to the chatter behind us.

“Was it hard, Jess?”

“What? Me or getting her bathing suit off?”

Lots of laughs.

“Oh, she squirmed a little bit on me, but she was small. So she didn’t put up much of a fight.”  

He wasn’t listening to me.

"Tommy?”

“Excuse me, what did you ask? Balloons. I blew up balloons.”

“What?”

Balloons? During the war? What did he mean?

“Didn’t she try to get away?”

“Of course, she did. But she was French. You know she wanted it.”

Everyone laughed.

“I’m sorry. I worked at a weather observation station in Los Angeles.”

“Oh. That sounds nice. Did you like it?”

“Los Angeles? It was great.”

“And what exactly did you do?”

“I launched weather balloons.”

I noticed one of the soldiers listening to our conversation.

“I used a device called a theodolite. Like the thing surveyors use? It was very technical. I had to go to school to learn how to use it.” “What were the balloons used for?”

Of which Tommy was not aware.

“You tracked them and got readings on winds. And temperature. So they could track the adiabatic lapse rate. It was important for weather forecasting.”

It impressed me he learned something useful in the war instead of how to kill. I wanted to know more, but Tommy’s voice had gotten lower and harder to hear once this group came in.

“So many guys were doing this, the French began complaining. Finally, somebody in the Army gets a brain, puts up a brothel, and fills it with little French girls. Talk about heaven!"

“Ohh, la la!”

They all laughed. I knew Tommy was listening to them, and I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore.

“Can you believe these jerks bragging about raping teenagers and the Army putting up brothels?”

“He’s just bragging, Rose. Probably not true.”

I cocked my head. Did he believe that?

“Tommy? Are you kidding? The Army put up the brothels in France because they didn’t want to prosecute US soldiers for rape.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read a story about it in the ‘Partisan’”

‘“The Partisan?’ What’s that?”

“An underground newspaper I get in Greenwich Village.”

Of course, the major papers would never print anything critical of the war effort.

“Ah, those left-wing papers. They’re all the same.”

But the “Partisan” did.

“What does that mean?”

“They always make a big deal about things.”

“About rape? Because it is a big deal.”

“I know, but Rose. I mean, that stuff happens during war.”

“Harming innocent women? It should be a war crime, Tommy. Our victorious US Army took local French teenagers and turned them into prostitutes.”

“Ah, they didn’t do that.”

“They didn’t? Where do you think the US Army suddenly found all these girls in the countryside of France to work in brothels? An employment agency? What they did was terrible.”

I tried to keep my voice down because I didn’t want the blowhard behind us to overhear me, but he did. “Terrible? What’s terrible about it, darlin’? How long do you expect a guy to go?”

He leaned over our table and looked at Tommy.  

“We all have our needs - especially in war. Right, soldier?”

My eyes were spitting flames. I wasn’t going to let that idiot get away with this.

“Your needs? Your needs? What about that little girl? I think all of you are disgusting.”

“We’re disgusting?”

“Raping little girls and laughing about it?”

This embarrassed Tommy.

“Rose, don’t do this.” But, I didn’t care.

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this, Tommy. These guys are a bunch of jerks.” The drunk blowhard put two hands on our table and loomed over Tommy, who hung his head with a palpable darkness over him.

“You need to teach your girlfriend a little respect here, soldier.” Then, he turned and leered at me.

“Sweetheart, we were the ones who won the war for you.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart. And you didn’t do it for me.”

“Rose, don’t!”

I ignored him.

“And you didn’t need to rape teenage girls to do it.”

This brought him down a notch.

“Maybe your boyfriend here can explain a little fact about war. Like Patton said, when morals go down, morale goes up. Ain’t that right, soldier?”

Well, that brought a big laugh from the others. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. Before I could get up, Tommy grabbed my forearm.

“Rose, don’t.”

He stopped me. But, once the blowhard saw he wasn’t getting anywhere with me, he turned to an easier target - Tommy.

“Hey, soldier, you look familiar. You with Old Blood and Guts Patton?”

“No."

“Where’d you serve? I see your chest is a little slick there. No medals?”

The other jerk interrupted.

“I heard him say he blew up balloons, Jess.”

“Balloons? Really? Where’d he do that?”

“In Los Angeles. I heard him say, Los Angeles, Jess.”

“Is that right, soldier? Los Angeles? Just why’d you blow these balloons up? Parties for little girls?” The soldiers all snickered at Tommy.

“So let me understand this, boys. Last winter, while we were all freezing our ass off in the Ardennes, old slick chest here was blowing up balloons on a beach in Los Angeles? So tell me, soldier, was it dangerous blowing up these balloons on the beach?”

“Of course it was, Jess. What if one of them broke?”

The evening had taken a nasty turn.

“No wonder you wound up with Miss goody two shoes here.”

The soldiers were all laughing at Tommy.

“Hey, she is kind of cute, Jess.”

“Yeah, she is at that.”

But this was too creepy for me.

“I think we better be getting out of here, Tommy. Let’s go.”

I got Tommy to pay the bill and hustled him out of there. As we left, those jerks were still laughing at Tommy, pretending to blow up balloons and have them break and fall on the floor.

Once outside, I was done. I asked Tommy to take me home. But he said no. Again, I should have read the tea leaves. There was a bus stop right in front of me. I could have said good night to Tommy, thanked him, and left, but I didn’t. Why? That was a question that would haunt me the rest of my life.

Anyway, when Tommy suggested we go to another bar, I reluctantly agreed. There, I sat and watched Tommy order a pitcher of beer, which he drank himself while he quietly imploded.

“I’m sorry about tonight, Rose. It’s this arm. It’s always this damn arm.”

“Don’t apologize. All this blowhard faux patriotism means nothing to me. Those guys disgusted me.”

“No, it’s me, this arm. I wish I could just cut it off.”

“Tommy. Stop. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“It does to me, Rose. How far would your Greenwich Village pacifism stuff go with those guys?”

“What do I care? They were a bunch of jerks.”

Nothing I said seemed to make him feel better.

“Women, you’ll never get it, will you?”

I had yet to pick up on the fact that it was more important what they thought of him than what I thought.

“Get what?” And it seemed the more I said, the angrier he got.

“You can have whatever theory you want about the atomic bomb or that rag you read in the Village, Rose. What do you know about the real world? Back there? That’s the world I live in. I go through something like that every day.”

Like what? Why? Why did Tommy care about those guys? I don’t know, but he did, and Tommy’s mood changed from the thoughtful intellectual to something much moodier and darker, and he was pretty drunk when he agreed to take me home. When we got back to the car, it had gotten a little chilly, and before he started, I noticed him reaching for a small ivory knob with ominous black letters. “Choke.” He pulled it out, and the car started a moment later.

We pulled out onto Hudson Boulevard. I didn’t like the atmosphere, and nervously, I tried to change the subject to the weather, his plans for tomorrow -anything. But he couldn’t let it go. He was completely into his problems as he rested his head on the steering wheel at a red light.

“Do you know how humiliated I was in that induction room? In front of all those other guys? I get taken out of line. Me. I get brought to a special room. I get a big red stamp on my form. ‘Not fit for combat.’ They all looked at me in that room as they marched past. Do you know what they were thinking of me? The same thing those guys at the bar were thinking tonight. He’s not a man.”

“So? Why do you care?”

“See, that’s it. Women just don’t get it. They don’t understand.”

That statement made me very uncomfortable. This was no longer a difference of opinion. I felt like I was the enemy.

“Do you want to talk about it, Tommy?’

“No.”

“I’ll listen to you.”

“You? It’s a waste of time talking to you.”

“Why?”

“With all those crazy opinions you got?”

“Were you mad I talked back to them?”

“You mean your left-wing bullshit?”

“You call rape ‘left-wing bullshit?”

I needed to shut up. My opinions were making things worse. I think the real problem was that Tommy couldn’t defend himself against a drunk soldier in a bar. A woman did that for him and that changed him from being a shy and polite intellectual to an angry drunk. I noticed he had turned off the Boulevard, from where I lived, and was heading downtown.

“Are you taking me home?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I knew this wasn’t the way home.

“Please. Take me home, Tommy.”

As we drove further away from my house, I had a few opportunities to hop out of the car and run, but I didn’t. I froze. Finally, we wound up down by the 14th Street viaduct, an industrial area near the Holland Tunnel. It was very dark when he parked and turned the car off. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anyone.

“Why are we stopping?”

I recognized the look in his eye. It was the same leer I used to see in my father. and I reacted the same way. My mind went somewhere else. I became perfectly innocent. A child. A perfectly innocent child. About to experience a miracle.

Tommy reached around the back of my neck, violently pulled me to him, and forced me down on the car’s front seat. His pants were already around his ankles, and he pushed his erect penis between my legs. I was terrified, and just like I did with my father, I went to a place of incomparable beauty and serenity.

It was a beautiful night! Oh, how the stars twinkled gloriously in the clear sky. Magnificent. As he entered me, the salt air wafted around me, and waves crashed in the distance. My body began floating in the air! Then, I felt him ejaculate in me. Then, something happened - it’s the miracle of human fertilization. In a single human ejaculation, as many as 150 million sperm travel up the female fallopian tube to meet a single egg. A short time later, there were only 1,000. Of those 1,000, only half have a chance to permeate an egg. Yet, sometimes, against incredible odds, one does. Miraculous! Glorious! Then, it got very quiet. Incredibly serene. My body felt glassine and flowing, wrapped in silk. I was on a beautiful, white sand beach. I heard a clock. Tick, tick, tick. Why is there a clock at the beach? I lifted my head and rose from the front seat. I wasn’t sure where I was. The sound was. His clock. The one on the dashboard. It said 11:42. It was 11:42. It all stopped at 11:42. I brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes and looked out the side window. I saw the Holland Tunnel sign in the mirror, but it was backward. What in the world was I doing by the Holland Tunnel? Tommy was behind the steering wheel. He was buckling up his uniform pants. What happened? Why was he doing that? Why were my clothes such a mess? Unfortunately, the circumstances under which human fertilization occurs are not always glorious. In yet another ironic twist of humanity, the same process occurs, whether this act is done with love, affection, indifference, or an act of violence, which was the case for me, Rose Doyle. Beautiful, lovely Edna Rose Doyle, the poet laureate of Jersey City, was raped by a damaged soldier on a side street. In damaged Jersey City.

I glimpsed half my face in the rearview mirror and didn’t understand how my hair got like that. Tommy said nothing. He started the car. I felt I was outside my body as he pulled away. There was someone serenely lounging on the hood of Tommy’s car. It was me. I wasn’t upset. I was lovely and calm, my hair gently wafting in the breeze. I was peaceful. Outside, I held my hands up against the windshield, and whispered one word. Over and over again. One word. But I couldn’t make out what it was. I leaned close to the windshield to hear what I was saying. I put my ear close to the window and heard myself whisper. I finally understood the person on the hood was saying the word rape very softly to me - rape. Once it sunk in, I disappeared from the hood and became terrified. I was trembling all over. I couldn’t stop. I had lost control of my body.

Tommy pulled up in front of my apartment, 129 Hopkins Avenue. I opened the door and jumped out before the car even stopped. Once outside, I realized I was barefoot. I turned around and saw Cila’s shoes, the ones with the Cuban heel, on the floor. They must have come off in the struggle. After everything that happened that night, all I was worried about was my sister’s shoes. She would kill me if I lost them. I lunged back to grab them, but when I tried to pull them out, one shoe caught on the door handle, and in my haste, I broke the strap off. I ran barefoot to my front porch. I heard the car pull away. My hands shook so much I couldn’t get my key in the front door. I watched as the car screeched around the corner and disappeared. Once he left, I got the key in the lock and stepped inside the dark hallway. I turned and pressed my back against the front door, but my legs gave way. Slowly, I slid down against the door and sat on the floor. I stared straight ahead, my body shaking uncontrollably from head to toe. I was sobbing and thinking, what happened? I blamed myself for everything that night. I couldn’t have done more things wrong.

So, what did little Edna Rose know about preparing for a date? Absolutely zero. I didn’t own dressy clothes. I never did anything with my hair and didn’t know how to use makeup. I had to ask my sister Cila, who was more than happy to help since she felt the same way as Nikki did about my fashion choices. Cila was a slob and never took care of her clothes, but she had some nice things, so she loaned me some. She rumbled around in her closet and brought out a pair of shoes she had just bought. I was shocked when I saw them.

“These are brand new. I just got them at Famous Fain’s. Promise to take good care of them.”

She put them on me. I turned around and looked in the mirror, propped up on the floor.

“I can’t wear these, Cila.”

They were a lace-up oxford. Small holes perforated the vamp. Cuban heels.

“They’re so sexy. God, Rose. What is wrong with you?”

Cila didn’t know I was gay, either. But then, she was oblivious to lots of things.

“I’ve never worn anything like this.”

She was frustrated.

“Yeah, exactly. Maybe that’s your problem, Rose."

So, she talked me into wearing her shoes, and eventually, I got myself together, went out, and sat on the front porch, wondering why I got myself talked into this and why any guy wanted to date me. But there I was, tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and checking every car. Honestly, I had never been on a date. I was nervous and felt more like a girl waiting for the school bus than a woman going on a date. Soon, Tommy’s car stopped in front of my house, and he came around from the driver’s side to greet me.

“Hi, Rose. You look nice. Real nice.”

“Thank you."

Tommy was polite and charming in a boyish way. He had open blue eyes and a friendly smile, which relaxed me. He looked handsome in his uniform, and I wouldn’t have noticed his arm if he hadn’t told me about it.

“Come on. Get in.”

He held the passenger door open, waiting for me to get in. At first, getting in a strange man’s car seemed odd, trusting someone I barely knew, so I paused. But he seemed fine, so I put it out of my mind. Once inside, I went to close the door, but Tommy stopped me.

“Easy. Like this.”

Gently, he clicked the door closed. Tommy loved this car and in it he was much more relaxed and confident than when we talked in front of the Res. As we drove, I wanted to know more about him, but all he wanted to talk about was his bad arm. I was surprised to see how much this affected him.

“Both my little brothers wound up overseas. Karel in the Navy, Ben in the Army Air Corps. Not me. Because of the arm, I had to stay stateside. It was a pretty rotten thing. Look, I can use it.”

He bent it at the elbow and raised his left arm at a stoplight, but only shoulder high.

“I just can’t raise it very high. And I can’t lift much.”

His lips pursed, and he shook his head.

“I guess they thought that meant I couldn’t fight - I wasn’t a real man.”

“You think fighting a war makes you a real man, Tommy?”

“Nah, I get what you’re saying. But, you have no idea what it was like for me - what I went through.”

No, I didn’t get this at all. How could someone as thoughtful and intellectual as Tommy somehow feel emasculated - less of a man because he didn’t kill? I guess that’s what the toxic culture of war does to young men. We continued up Hudson Boulevard as he told me about his induction physical.

“At first, I didn’t want to take off my shirt, but I had to. Then, this doctor with a clipboard came down, looked at my arm, and sent me into another room. I waited there, I don’t know, three hours? Meanwhile, I’m listening to them swear in the other guys outside. Finally, this other doctor comes in. He wants to see how high I can raise my arm. I can’t get it above my shoulder. As hard as I try, The doctor stamps “Not Fit For Combat” in red on his form. A whole line of guys is marching past the door, looking at me. I knew what they all were thinking about me.”

Here’s what I never understood about men. Why do they place so much self-esteem on what other men think of them? I guess it kind of went with the territory at the time. For some men, war became an Olympic testosterone event.

Once I entered the Park City Club, I understood why I never went there. It was noisy, filled with smoke, and cluttered with drunk soldiers and sailors. They all had a service cap tipped back on their head, with a green bottle of Rolling Rock Beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other while trying to impress a bunch of swooning, floozy women with their war exploits.

So my first thought when I entered was, I got talked into going on a date I didn’t want to go on, and now I’m in a place I didn’t want to be. I should have told Tommy, then and there, that this place wasn’t for me and leave, but I didn’t. The night was not going to end well.

He found a quiet table in the back where we could talk. As soon as we sat down, he brought up the war. I must have felt safe with him, because this was one of the few times I opened up to anyone about my opinions.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was glad we won, but a lot of people suffered on the other side as well.”

“Come on, Rose. Auschwitz? The Bataan Death March? How can you feel sorry for them?"

“I agree, Tommy. They were horrible atrocities. So, our reaction to that was to drop two atomic bombs on civilians?”

We had dropped the atomic bombs over the summer, and Tommy, like most Americans grappling with this morality, bought onto the prevailing line from the administration.

“But, those bombs ended the war sooner."

But not me.

“Maybe. So, we dropped the atomic bomb because they committed atrocities. Those bombs also fell on women and children, who were no more responsible for those atrocities than I was for that atomic bomb, Tommy.”

“So, you think we shouldn’t have dropped the bomb?”

“Exactly. It was wrong.”

“Nobody thinks that but you, Rose.”

But, that wasn’t true. It was kept from the public for years afterward, but dozens of top politicians and generals sent a letter to Truman urging him not to use the bomb.

“We had to do that.”

Unsuccessfully.

“Even if that’s true. I just don’t think it’s any reason to celebrate, Tommy. Millions of innocent people got incinerated. And what do we do?"

I glanced over toward the raucous crowd of drunk soldiers.

“Have a party?”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“God, I’ve never met anyone like you, Rose.”

It was obvious, Tommy wasn’t comfortable hearing opinions from a woman, so it was time to change the subject. I asked him about his family. He told me his brother Karel had just got on with the fire department and opened a garage to repair cars on the side. His brother Ben died in a plane crash in North Africa. I told him I lived with my mother, sister, and younger brother. When I mentioned my father died a few years ago, he asked the question I always had to be prepared to answer.

“What happened to him?”

I never told anyone the true circumstances of my father’s death. Instead, I had an outrageous story I made up.

“He got shot.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Somebody shot him in the streets.”

That worked because it was so outrageous, it shut most people up.

“I’m sorry. Sounds terrible.”

I had told that fabrication to people dozens of times with no compunction. But, for some reason, I felt guilty with Tommy, so I told him another part of the story that was true.

“We didn’t find out he had died for three days.”

“Where was he?”

“No one had any idea.”

My father did go missing for three days.

“So, how did you find out?”

“In the newspaper. There was a story about an unidentified man they found in the street.”

But, this conversation was getting way more personal than I liked. I’d already shared more than I’d ever told my friends, so changed the subject.

“So, tell me, what did you do?”

“When?"

“During the war. You said you couldn’t go overseas? What did you do?” Tommy looked the other way. You would think, after the fairy tale I told about my father, I would have been sensitive to the tell-tale signs of someone who didn’t want to answer a question. But I missed it, as I did many other things that night. Suddenly, we were interrupted by a loud group of drunk soldiers who came in and stood behind our table.

“So, I’m in Le Havre, and I come upon this little girl taking a swim by the river. She couldn’t have been more than, I don’t know, sixteen? Gorgeous!”

They were obnoxious and tittered over their beers.

“And French.”

I glanced up at them, standing behind Tommy. I was shocked at how worn down they looked.

“So, I pull her back behind some trees and pull her bathing suit off.”

Even with his arm, Tommy was much less damaged. I asked again. “Tommy? What did you do during the war?”

But he was listening to the chatter behind us.

“Was it hard, Jess?”

“What? Me or getting her bathing suit off?”

Lots of laughs.

“Oh, she squirmed a little bit on me, but she was small. So she didn’t put up much of a fight.”  

He wasn’t listening to me.

"Tommy?”

“Excuse me, what did you ask? Balloons. I blew up balloons.”

“What?”

Balloons? During the war? What did he mean?

“Didn’t she try to get away?”

“Of course, she did. But she was French. You know she wanted it.”

Everyone laughed.

“I’m sorry. I worked at a weather observation station in Los Angeles.”

“Oh. That sounds nice. Did you like it?”

“Los Angeles? It was great.”

“And what exactly did you do?”

“I launched weather balloons.”

I noticed one of the soldiers listening to our conversation.

“I used a device called a theodolite. Like the thing surveyors use? It was very technical. I had to go to school to learn how to use it.” “What were the balloons used for?”

Of which Tommy was not aware.

“You tracked them and got readings on winds. And temperature. So they could track the adiabatic lapse rate. It was important for weather forecasting.”

It impressed me he learned something useful in the war instead of how to kill. I wanted to know more, but Tommy’s voice had gotten lower and harder to hear once this group came in.

“So many guys were doing this, the French began complaining. Finally, somebody in the Army gets a brain, puts up a brothel, and fills it with little French girls. Talk about heaven!"

“Ohh, la la!”

They all laughed. I knew Tommy was listening to them, and I couldn’t hold my tongue anymore.

“Can you believe these jerks bragging about raping teenagers and the Army putting up brothels?”

“He’s just bragging, Rose. Probably not true.”

I cocked my head. Did he believe that?

“Tommy? Are you kidding? The Army put up the brothels in France because they didn’t want to prosecute US soldiers for rape.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read a story about it in the ‘Partisan’”

‘“The Partisan?’ What’s that?”

“An underground newspaper I get in Greenwich Village.”

Of course, the major papers would never print anything critical of the war effort.

“Ah, those left-wing papers. They’re all the same.”

But the “Partisan” did.

“What does that mean?”

“They always make a big deal about things.”

“About rape? Because it is a big deal.”

“I know, but Rose. I mean, that stuff happens during war.”

“Harming innocent women? It should be a war crime, Tommy. Our victorious US Army took local French teenagers and turned them into prostitutes.”

“Ah, they didn’t do that.”

“They didn’t? Where do you think the US Army suddenly found all these girls in the countryside of France to work in brothels? An employment agency? What they did was terrible.”

I tried to keep my voice down because I didn’t want the blowhard behind us to overhear me, but he did. “Terrible? What’s terrible about it, darlin’? How long do you expect a guy to go?”

He leaned over our table and looked at Tommy.  

“We all have our needs - especially in war. Right, soldier?”

My eyes were spitting flames. I wasn’t going to let that idiot get away with this.

“Your needs? Your needs? What about that little girl? I think all of you are disgusting.”

“We’re disgusting?”

“Raping little girls and laughing about it?”

This embarrassed Tommy.

“Rose, don’t do this.” But, I didn’t care.

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this, Tommy. These guys are a bunch of jerks.” The drunk blowhard put two hands on our table and loomed over Tommy, who hung his head with a palpable darkness over him.

“You need to teach your girlfriend a little respect here, soldier.” Then, he turned and leered at me.

“Sweetheart, we were the ones who won the war for you.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart. And you didn’t do it for me.”

“Rose, don’t!”

I ignored him.

“And you didn’t need to rape teenage girls to do it.”

This brought him down a notch.

“Maybe your boyfriend here can explain a little fact about war. Like Patton said, when morals go down, morale goes up. Ain’t that right, soldier?”

Well, that brought a big laugh from the others. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. Before I could get up, Tommy grabbed my forearm.

“Rose, don’t.”

He stopped me. But, once the blowhard saw he wasn’t getting anywhere with me, he turned to an easier target - Tommy.

“Hey, soldier, you look familiar. You with Old Blood and Guts Patton?”

“No."

“Where’d you serve? I see your chest is a little slick there. No medals?”

The other jerk interrupted.

“I heard him say he blew up balloons, Jess.”

“Balloons? Really? Where’d he do that?”

“In Los Angeles. I heard him say, Los Angeles, Jess.”

“Is that right, soldier? Los Angeles? Just why’d you blow these balloons up? Parties for little girls?” The soldiers all snickered at Tommy.

“So let me understand this, boys. Last winter, while we were all freezing our ass off in the Ardennes, old slick chest here was blowing up balloons on a beach in Los Angeles? So tell me, soldier, was it dangerous blowing up these balloons on the beach?”

“Of course it was, Jess. What if one of them broke?”

The evening had taken a nasty turn.

“No wonder you wound up with Miss goody two shoes here.”

The soldiers were all laughing at Tommy.

“Hey, she is kind of cute, Jess.”

“Yeah, she is at that.”

But this was too creepy for me.

“I think we better be getting out of here, Tommy. Let’s go.”

I got Tommy to pay the bill and hustled him out of there. As we left, those jerks were still laughing at Tommy, pretending to blow up balloons and have them break and fall on the floor.

Once outside, I was done. I asked Tommy to take me home. But he said no. Again, I should have read the tea leaves. There was a bus stop right in front of me. I could have said good night to Tommy, thanked him, and left, but I didn’t. Why? That was a question that would haunt me the rest of my life.

Anyway, when Tommy suggested we go to another bar, I reluctantly agreed. There, I sat and watched Tommy order a pitcher of beer, which he drank himself while he quietly imploded.

“I’m sorry about tonight, Rose. It’s this arm. It’s always this damn arm.”

“Don’t apologize. All this blowhard faux patriotism means nothing to me. Those guys disgusted me.”

“No, it’s me, this arm. I wish I could just cut it off.”

“Tommy. Stop. It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“It does to me, Rose. How far would your Greenwich Village pacifism stuff go with those guys?”

“What do I care? They were a bunch of jerks.”

Nothing I said seemed to make him feel better.

“Women, you’ll never get it, will you?”

I had yet to pick up on the fact that it was more important what they thought of him than what I thought.

“Get what?” And it seemed the more I said, the angrier he got.

“You can have whatever theory you want about the atomic bomb or that rag you read in the Village, Rose. What do you know about the real world? Back there? That’s the world I live in. I go through something like that every day.”

Like what? Why? Why did Tommy care about those guys? I don’t know, but he did, and Tommy’s mood changed from the thoughtful intellectual to something much moodier and darker, and he was pretty drunk when he agreed to take me home. When we got back to the car, it had gotten a little chilly, and before he started, I noticed him reaching for a small ivory knob with ominous black letters. “Choke.” He pulled it out, and the car started a moment later.

We pulled out onto Hudson Boulevard. I didn’t like the atmosphere, and nervously, I tried to change the subject to the weather, his plans for tomorrow -anything. But he couldn’t let it go. He was completely into his problems as he rested his head on the steering wheel at a red light.

“Do you know how humiliated I was in that induction room? In front of all those other guys? I get taken out of line. Me. I get brought to a special room. I get a big red stamp on my form. ‘Not fit for combat.’ They all looked at me in that room as they marched past. Do you know what they were thinking of me? The same thing those guys at the bar were thinking tonight. He’s not a man.”

“So? Why do you care?”

“See, that’s it. Women just don’t get it. They don’t understand.”

That statement made me very uncomfortable. This was no longer a difference of opinion. I felt like I was the enemy.

“Do you want to talk about it, Tommy?’

“No.”

“I’ll listen to you.”

“You? It’s a waste of time talking to you.”

“Why?”

“With all those crazy opinions you got?”

“Were you mad I talked back to them?”

“You mean your left-wing bullshit?”

“You call rape ‘left-wing bullshit?”

I needed to shut up. My opinions were making things worse. I think the real problem was that Tommy couldn’t defend himself against a drunk soldier in a bar. A woman did that for him and that changed him from being a shy and polite intellectual to an angry drunk. I noticed he had turned off the Boulevard, from where I lived, and was heading downtown.

“Are you taking me home?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t like the tone of his voice. I knew this wasn’t the way home.

“Please. Take me home, Tommy.”

As we drove further away from my house, I had a few opportunities to hop out of the car and run, but I didn’t. I froze. Finally, we wound up down by the 14th Street viaduct, an industrial area near the Holland Tunnel. It was very dark when he parked and turned the car off. I looked around, but I couldn’t see anyone.

“Why are we stopping?”

I recognized the look in his eye. It was the same leer I used to see in my father. and I reacted the same way. My mind went somewhere else. I became perfectly innocent. A child. A perfectly innocent child. About to experience a miracle.

Tommy reached around the back of my neck, violently pulled me to him, and forced me down on the car’s front seat. His pants were already around his ankles, and he pushed his erect penis between my legs. I was terrified, and just like I did with my father, I went to a place of incomparable beauty and serenity.

It was a beautiful night! Oh, how the stars twinkled gloriously in the clear sky. Magnificent. As he entered me, the salt air wafted around me, and waves crashed in the distance. My body began floating in the air! Then, I felt him ejaculate in me. Then, something happened - it’s the miracle of human fertilization. In a single human ejaculation, as many as 150 million sperm travel up the female fallopian tube to meet a single egg. A short time later, there were only 1,000. Of those 1,000, only half have a chance to permeate an egg. Yet, sometimes, against incredible odds, one does. Miraculous! Glorious! Then, it got very quiet. Incredibly serene. My body felt glassine and flowing, wrapped in silk. I was on a beautiful, white sand beach. I heard a clock. Tick, tick, tick. Why is there a clock at the beach? I lifted my head and rose from the front seat. I wasn’t sure where I was. The sound was. His clock. The one on the dashboard. It said 11:42. It was 11:42. It all stopped at 11:42. I brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes and looked out the side window. I saw the Holland Tunnel sign in the mirror, but it was backward. What in the world was I doing by the Holland Tunnel? Tommy was behind the steering wheel. He was buckling up his uniform pants. What happened? Why was he doing that? Why were my clothes such a mess? Unfortunately, the circumstances under which human fertilization occurs are not always glorious. In yet another ironic twist of humanity, the same process occurs, whether this act is done with love, affection, indifference, or an act of violence, which was the case for me, Rose Doyle. Beautiful, lovely Edna Rose Doyle, the poet laureate of Jersey City, was raped by a damaged soldier on a side street. In damaged Jersey City.

I glimpsed half my face in the rearview mirror and didn’t understand how my hair got like that. Tommy said nothing. He started the car. I felt I was outside my body as he pulled away. There was someone serenely lounging on the hood of Tommy’s car. It was me. I wasn’t upset. I was lovely and calm, my hair gently wafting in the breeze. I was peaceful. Outside, I held my hands up against the windshield, and whispered one word. Over and over again. One word. But I couldn’t make out what it was. I leaned close to the windshield to hear what I was saying. I put my ear close to the window and heard myself whisper. I finally understood the person on the hood was saying the word rape very softly to me - rape. Once it sunk in, I disappeared from the hood and became terrified. I was trembling all over. I couldn’t stop. I had lost control of my body.

Tommy pulled up in front of my apartment, 129 Hopkins Avenue. I opened the door and jumped out before the car even stopped. Once outside, I realized I was barefoot. I turned around and saw Cila’s shoes, the ones with the Cuban heel, on the floor. They must have come off in the struggle. After everything that happened that night, all I was worried about was my sister’s shoes. She would kill me if I lost them. I lunged back to grab them, but when I tried to pull them out, one shoe caught on the door handle, and in my haste, I broke the strap off. I ran barefoot to my front porch. I heard the car pull away. My hands shook so much I couldn’t get my key in the front door. I watched as the car screeched around the corner and disappeared. Once he left, I got the key in the lock and stepped inside the dark hallway. I turned and pressed my back against the front door, but my legs gave way. Slowly, I slid down against the door and sat on the floor. I stared straight ahead, my body shaking uncontrollably from head to toe. I was sobbing and thinking, what happened? I blamed myself for everything that night. I couldn’t have done more things wrong.