“Is something wrong? … The girls?”
“They're fine.” He looked at her searchingly as she turned on the light. She looked ravaged. “Are you all right, Liane?”
“I'm fine.” But she began to cry as she said it, and she turned away so he wouldn't see. “Really … I'm all right….”
“No, you're not. And it's nothing to be ashamed of. I didn't expect you to be. That's why I'm here.”
And then, like a little child, she flew into his arms. “Oh, Uncle George …”
“I know … I know … he'll be back …” But so would Armand. And all the way home on the train she had thought about both men. She was torn between the two now. And then her uncle poured her a glass of brandy. He had brought a bottle and two glasses to her room, and she smiled at him through her tears.
“What did I ever do to deserve a nice uncle like you?”
“You're a good woman, Liane.” He said it without a smile.
“And you deserve a good man. And God willing, you'll have one.”
She took a sip of the brandy and sat down with a nervous smile. “The trouble is, Uncle George, I have two of them.” But he didn't answer. He left her a little while after that, and she went to bed, and in the morning she felt a little better.
She had a letter from Armand that day and he sounded a little better too. He seemed cheered by “recent events,” as he told her, but he didn't say what they were. And the weather had warmed up and his legs weren't as painful.
In the next few days the news from London was cheering too. The British had received their first shipment of United States food, averting a drastic food shortage in London.
And on April 18, everyone read in the American press of the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, led by Lt. Colonel James H. Doolittle, the aeronautical scientist and pilot. He had modified sixteen B-25 bombers, and the team had headed for Japan, knowing full well that they couldn't return, with the intention of landing in unoccupied China, after they bombed Tokyo. And all but one of the planes made it, with the result of an enormous improvement in morale among the troops. Revenge had been served. Tokyo had been bombed. It was a thank-you for Pearl Harbor.
But the good cheer over the Doolittle raid was short-lived. By the night of May 4, everyone was talking of the battle of the Coral Sea, and Liane lay awake through the night, praying for Nick. The battle raged on for two days, under the direction of General MacArthur, who had wisely stayed behind in New Guinea, at Port Moresby. And by May 6 they knew the worst. The Lexington had sunk. Miraculously only 216 men had died. Another 2,735 had been saved and taken on board the Lady Lex's sister ship, the Yorktown. But what Liane did not know was whether Nick was among the 216, or the others. As she sat frozen in her room day after day, listening to the radio she'd brought upstairs, she remembered the ghastly scenes in the Atlantic when the Queen Victoria had sunk. And now she prayed that Nick would be among the survivors. She took her meals in her room on trays, and they returned to the kitchen, barely touched, as her uncle sat in the library, listening to the news there. But it would be weeks, if not longer, before they would have word of Nick. Unbeknownst to Liane, George had someone in his office call Brett Williams in New York, but he knew nothing either.
And also on May 6, the broadcaster told the nation that General Jonathan Wainwright had been forced to surrender Corregidor to the Japanese. General Wainwright and his men were taken prisoner. Things were not going well in the Pacific.
“Liane.” George stood in the doorway of her bedroom on the morning of May 8, two days after the Lexington had sunk. “I want you to come downstairs for breakfast.”
She stared at him lifelessly from her bed. “I'm not hungry-”
“I don't care. The girls are afraid you're sick.” She stared at him then for a long time, and silently nodded. And when she came down at last, she was weak from the days in bed, listening to the radio with the shades drawn. The girls watched her now as though they were frightened of her, and she made an effort to see them off to school, and then she went back to her room and turned the radio on again. But there was nothing more. The battle of the Coral Sea was over.
“Liane.” He had followed her to her room again and she turned to look at her uncle with empty eyes. “You can't do this to yourself.”
“I'll be all right.”
“I know you will. And what you're doing isn't helping him.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “They've had no news in New York. If he'd been killed, they would have got a telegram. I'm sure he lived through it.” She nodded, fighting back tears again. It was just too much worrying about both of them. And that day, she had had another letter from Armand. Thirty thousand Jews had been taken out of their homes in Paris. It was one of the letters Moulin had gotten out, and like many of the others, it crossed the Atlantic on the Gripsholm.
The Jews in Paris had been locked in a stadium for eight days without water or food or toilets. Many people, including women and children, had died. The world was going mad. From one end of the globe to the other, people were dying and killing each other. Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She pulled a dress from her closet and threw it on the bed. She looked better than she had in days.
“Where are you going?”
“To my office.” And she didn't tell him why. She bathed and dressed, and an hour later she had turned in her resignation, not from the Red Cross, but that chapter. And by that afternoon she had signed up at the naval hospital in Oakland. She was assigned to the care of men in a surgical ward. It was the most difficult work of all, but when she returned to the house on Broadway at eight o'clock that night, she felt better than she had in months. It was what she should have done long before, and always meant to do. She told her uncle that night after dinner.
“That's a terrible job, Liane. Are you sure that's what you want to do?”
“Absolutely.” There was no doubt in her voice and he could see from her face that she had pulled herself back together. They talked of the Jews in Paris and he shook his head. Nothing was the same anymore. Absolutely nothing. Nothing was safe. Nothing was sacred. U-boats cruised American coasts, Jews were driven from their homes all over Europe, the Japanese were killing Americans in the South Pacific. Even the beautiful Normandie had burned three months before in New York harbor as workmen raced against the clock to turn her into a troop ship. And in London, bombs fell day and night, killing women and children.
For the next month Liane worked like a fiend in the naval hospital in Oakland, three times a week. She left the house at eight o'clock in the morning and came home at five or six at night and sometimes even seven, exhausted, smelling of surgical solution and disinfectant, her uniforms often covered with dried blood, her face pale, but her eyes alive. She was doing the only thing she could to help and it was better than sitting in an office. And a month after the battle of the Coral Sea, she was rewarded with a letter from Nick. He was alive! She sat on the front steps and cried as she read it.