A Parting Glass - a novel

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Cigarette smoke danced out of a car window and lifted into the air. A dark-haired man with brooding eyes smoked and slouched in the front seat of an old Hudson, a car known to have the biggest back seat on record, one that could hold five children. Junior waited with hope and longing. He resolved to do better; he always tried. The train’s whistle startled him, and he quickly sat up, flipped his cigarette out the window and reached over to touch a small box on the seat next to him. He smiled, “They’re home.”

The train station, a brick building with dark awnings, stretched along the tracks. Ancient lights hung from poles filtered by an early morning fog. Large wooden baggage carts were parked along the worn brick platform. The imposing train idled, waiting for the next travelers to start their journeys and the conductor to sing out, “All aboard.” Sleepy passengers emerged through the fog while Junior searched for his family. Susanne appeared first with John in her arms, followed by James and Patrick each carrying a large suitcase. Katherine, with a book, guided a yawning Elizabeth.

The drive home was quiet, almost too quiet for Junior. Susanne must have some news of his mom and dad, his brothers and sisters, especially his little sister Marilyn. Susanne’s stay with his family after the accident was surely long enough to evoke extended conversations. But the car was silent.

Susanne had little to say; her thoughts were her own and he could not pry them out - not with sweet talk or jokes, or even the gift box that he slid across the seat, or the hand that gently touched hers. Besides, her voice was barely back. There were few weapons at her disposal and silence was one of them.

Susanne cuddled John who was nestled in her lap and peered out into the darkness. She glanced over her shoulder at the sleeping children in the back seat. All breathed deeply. Except for Katherine, sleep was only an opportunity to pretend. She was ever vigilant, ever watchful, and her sleep was never her own. Her eyes closed, but her thoughts raced.

Once home, the quiet of their small house didn’t stop Junior from finding Susanne in the dark of night. She wondered how something so intimate could be so available when there were so few feelings. Unlike Susanne, Junior didn’t mind the emotional distance, but normally he would never wake her up in the middle of the night, “like some men at the railroad,” he often said. But they were both awake and she had been gone for a week and that was a long time.

“A married man should never have to be without.” That’s what he told her soon after they were married in 1943. He never intended to eat a meal out, or go without from that day forward. The honeymoon was over and Junior had changed. During the war before they were married, they ate out plenty and there was no s*x - not real s*x anyway, just heavy petting.

Junior didn’t go to war. There wasn’t room for a diabetic. He resented his disease the most when it limited him. He would have loved to kill a few j**s and Krauts. He stayed put and met Susanne who came to replace a man who did get called up. Although she and Junior lived in railroad towns just a stone’s throw away from each other, they had never before met.

Susanne was as pretty as spring, soft and lovely. That’s what Junior thought when he saw her for the first time, but it was the color of her hair that gave him the opportunity to flirt. “Hey, copper penny,” Junior said.

She glanced up from her work on the telegraph machine; her blue eyes pulled him in. Susanne took his breath away, but she thought him bold. Who was this man and why did he think he could be so familiar? She didn’t know him and she thought she probably didn’t want to.

Although attractive, Susanne didn’t have a boyfriend. There was a sweet guy who followed her with his eyes, but he had never made a move. He was far too shy. He left for the war and she was sure he would be killed. How could he not? He was too kind to last in the war. But, he did. He came home, and found that Susanne was already taken.

Even though Susanne fought her feelings, Junior was the handsomest man she had ever seen with his brooding black eyes, thick hair, and mischievous smile. It took only a few months and Junior had worked his magic. He got a “yes” when he proposed. After two failed attempts to find a best man - perhaps that was an omen - Susanne and Junior were married.

Men were tough to find in those days. On the railroad, you were called in and sent out because the nation was at war, and goods and services needed to get through; railroads ran on time. In the end, they found a guy in a bar who seemed to be sober, and he stood up with them at their wedding. Her engagement ring was small and the wedding band smaller yet, but it bound them together. Years later she pawned the ring to pay a bill; it was not a very big bill.

In the small double bed, Junior and Susanne again went through the motions as the moon poured into the sparsely furnished room. Junior panted, groaned and reached climax. Susanne stared at the ceiling while a small tear ran down her cheek. She lay still and then gently pushed Junior off. Almost asleep, he didn’t object. She slipped out of the bed and slowly crossed the room. Against an open window, the moon’s light shone through her sheer gown outlining her body as a gentle breeze lifted her hair. She looked good for a woman with five living children.

Their first child, a beautiful little girl with dark hair like Junior’s, died at birth. The labor had been hard but the baby, when presented to the grieving parents, looked perfect. They named her Bonnie Sue, a pretty name but not a good Catholic name. That was before they converted.

It was said that Junior’s great affection for his riding-the-rails buddy, Gerald, a good Catholic who never missed mass, prompted Junior to announce to Susanne, “I am going to become a Catholic. You can be anything you want.”

The conversion came soon after the death of their first child and left many to wonder if the two events were tied together but they were not. Gerald saw in Junior pieces and remnants of a young boy with so much personality, so much charm, and who liked people and knew that people liked him. Junior loved his friend Gerald for seeing that part of him and, in his own way, loved his son Patrick Gerald, the most.

Susanne wiped away a tear and reached over to pick up the gift wrapped in blue tissue paper with white ribbon and a small bow on top. She gingerly removed the ribbon and bow, setting them on the windowsill. Reaching in, she pulled out a music box adorned with a ballerina figurine straight out of Swan Lake. She wound the music box slowly, convinced Junior would never wake from his sleep. He didn’t. The tiny ballerina was dressed in a stiff white tutu, her feet wrapped in slippers, and her hair pulled up into a knot. She moved in a circle, swirling in sync to the music. Susanne’s fingers lightly touched the surface as she studied the object, remembering the story of a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer. The irony of her own situation caused her to reflect.

Susanne’s father was as different from the man she chose to marry as the sun was to the moon. He was quiet and unassuming, much like his ancestors who had come from Sweden. Her mother’s family immigrated from Scotland. They boarded ships along the North Sea and English Isles coasts, leaving tundra and hard lives behind. Both of Susanne’s parents were the youngest in their large families of twelve and thirteen. The Swedes produced one more child than the Scots, or maybe one more that lived than died. Their descendants, her parents Henry and Isabella, were the only ones born in their adopted homeland.

Isabella Leishman made clothes for farm families while Henry Peterson was a farm hand. Both were considered ancient when they married - Isabella in her late 30s and Henry already in his fourth decade. They bore only one child, Susanne.

Susanne’s childhood memories were captured on celluloid, but left behind in a dresser during a hasty retreat. The getaway was another chapter of lost memories, another moment of impulse that Junior inflicted on his wife. It tore at Susanne that all her sweet memories of the Leishmans and Petersons, aunts and uncles, with great names like Augusta and Adolph, were gone. Only fragments and glimpses of people and places remained. Susanne often thought of her family and the photos left behind in the dresser Junior forgot. She learned to keep a box of letters and cards hidden away, but easily found if needed.

It was during one of those hasty retreats when the tuberculosis in Susanne’s lungs erupted and caused her to be sent away to a place called Norton. Susanne was sent away twice - once when James was a baby, and again after the family had grown to include Patrick, Katherine and Elizabeth. Junior couldn’t care for the children and keep his job on the railroad so the family was broken apart.

Each child was sent to a relative who particularly favored them, all except Elizabeth who hadn’t had time to become a favorite. Katherine lamented from time to time, “The foster family wanted to adopt you, but Dad said no. You were the reason we left and Dad took mom out of the hospital.” It seemed reasonable to Elizabeth. She had seen the photos of herself as a baby, being held by some unknown woman, and she recognized she was indeed a beautiful baby. The report of the Service League noted that the baby first came to foster care malnourished with a small hernia, unable to do what other babies her age could do, but Elizabeth never saw the report and would not have believed the observations.

Katherine and James, the oldest son and oldest daughter, went to the 0‘Sullivans, and Patrick went to Oklahoma to live with Junior’s favorite uncle (married to Vena’s sister) - a person not held in high esteem by the O’Sullivan clan. Junior, who enjoyed making his father unhappy, relished the idea that his son would live with a man his father disliked. It was as if Junior wanted to poke his father whenever he had a chance.

Junior developed diabetes early in life. His father accepted that his oldest son was doomed from the beginning, caught in a cycle of illness and near-death experiences. He was sure his son would not accomplish much, but he believed there would be other children he could place his dreams on. The feeling of disappointment displayed by the father, in a look or a small comment, was always noted and never forgotten by the son.

Junior never felt his father’s hand in anger. His mother saw to that. Junior was her son, and he was perfect. He knew how to make her laugh and how to gain forgiveness. This was a son who would later buy a music box with a ballerina swirling on the top for his wife in the hopes of finding forgiveness. Such actions had worked before to show his regret, and he was sorry. He was always sorry.

Susanne slid the ballerina into the box as she thought back in time to the quiet and austere home of her youth. Her father’s smile brightened her day just like her voice lifted his spirits. Her speech came at age two after infantile paralysis in 1923 raged in her body. She survived, but there was evidence of the disease - her left leg was smaller than the right leg.

An experimental operation during the early 1930s had slowed the growth in her good right leg to allow the left leg to grow and catch up to the other, so now there was nothing visually to set Susanne apart from being normal. Elizabeth often asked to see the scars that looked like railroad tracks. She ran her fingers over the scar, thrilled but equally repelled. This was her mother’s leg, but it made her seem something other than a mother, like she had a history that Elizabeth didn’t understand. The scars made the leg look tortured.

Susanne moved toward the bed. It would be morning soon and she would have to ready the clan for church.