Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [49]
Hard times.
Nancy was an employee now, working at the office fulltime; typing up interviews, writing copy for support leaflets, answering telephones, providing information –
‘Nancy, Eleanor’s discovered infant malnutrition –’
And it emerged that Nancy had studied dietary health care at college.
‘Nancy, the local CCC wants a literacy programme for the men. Who do we know—’
Disingenuous: they knew she was a trained teacher. She began setting up local classes, but the city’s political leadership was not happy about FDR’s initiatives – ‘unadulterated communism! Socialist ruination!’
Nancy brought the news home: ‘The mayor’s rejected what he calls “federal handouts”. The city council says public housing will depress property values.’
‘There goes the neighbourhood,’ Louis commented drily.
‘What about the work-relief programme?’ Mary asked.
‘They don’t like it. Of course. But we’re battling on.’
She got home late, exhausted, and filled the kitchen with an account of her day as Mary reheated her supper and Louis made coffee. Excitement streamed from her; hope was an infection that she caught and passed to others.
‘The President’s finding work for men all over the country; they’re living free in camps, they get their food and a few dollars. It’s a miracle!’
‘Finish your supper,’ Mary said.
By day the men planted trees, cleaned up a slum, painted walls. At night, they took over schoolrooms, big men at little desks, painstakingly mastering the art of the written word, forcing their fists into a new discipline. These were the men – or men like them – Nancy had seen walking, without aim, without hope, as she watched from the porch while Ben was on his way to Washington.
‘They’re beginning to remember what it’s like to feel human –’
‘Your coffee’s getting cold,’ her father said, patting her shoulder.
Later, as he climbed into bed, Louis said, ‘She’s like a kid, she’s like she was at college – remember how she met that missionary and wanted to go out to a leper colony someplace?’
He wanted to say, remember how she was before she married Pinkerton.
Next morning, before breakfast, she was gone: so much to do, people to see, not enough hours in the day, she called out as she left. No time to sit brooding; they were all treading on shifting ground: chaotic but filled with hope; men learning to read and write producing a newspaper for camp inmates, asking for articles, stories, even poems –
‘They ran a headline last week: “Buddy Can you Spare a Rhyme?” Cute.’
‘Did you get any?’ Mary asked.
‘They poured in. Pretty bad, mostly, but that’s beside the point.’
Not all the desperate people were illiterate labourers; some had fallen from high places. Nancy heard stories of big-time bankruptcies, yachts repossessed; an entrepreneur husband abandoned: ‘She took her diamonds and the kid, and went to Canada.’ The servants and the pool man were long gone. He shrugged, managed a smile. ‘I had a chauffeur and two European cars.’
‘I had an electric kitchen,’ Nancy said.
23
The letter from Nagasaki was in excellent English, exquisitely handwritten, bringing Mary information, news. But it was not from her brother.
At the bottom of the page, after a formal farewell message, was a small, square printed seal. Then a signature.
It lay like an unexploded bomb on the table, carrying destruction within its innocuous exterior. Nancy reached out her hand and touched the pale, granular surface.
‘So who is it from?’ Mary asked, puzzled.
‘It’s from Joey’s mother,’ Nancy said, amazed that she could speak the words. ‘Her name is Cho-Cho.’
‘But she’s dead!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘She’s dead!’
Nancy thought back, to that first day in Nagasaki. The disastrous revelation: the not-really wife, the child. And hidden in the undergrowth of the past Nancy discerned a snake hovering between a man and a woman. Across the years she heard the hissing words offering an insidious solution, and the voice was hers. She stood alone, the guilty one.
‘But I thought she was dead!’ her mother said again,