Promises to Keep - Ann Tatlock [86]
chapter
36
Christmas came and went, followed by New Year’s Eve, which passed with little fanfare. One day simply slipped into the next, and suddenly it was 1968, the year my brother would go off to war and the year my daddy would come home.
The atmosphere in the house was sullen as we slid into January. I often found Mom staring absently out the frosty windows, as though she were waiting for something that was likely never to come. She resembled Tillie in one of her spells, but instead of looking backward in time like Tillie did, I supposed Mom’s mind was reluctantly reaching forward, wondering what would happen in the upcoming months, wondering whether Wally would die in the war the way his father had, his blood spilled out on foreign soil, in a place he was never meant to be. I imagined she saw all the barren days ahead – no son, no husband, her daughters grown and gone, leaving her to grow old and lonely in the house on McDowell Street.
Once, Tillie put her hand on Mom’s shoulder and said, “He’ll come home, dear. Try not to worry.”
“Wally?”
“Yes. I feel sure of it.”
“How can you be sure? We can’t be sure of anything, can we?”
“Oh yes,” Tillie countered, “there’s much we can be sure of. Not everything, of course. But some things, yes.”
What? I wanted to ask. What can we be sure of ? But I was an eavesdropper and not a participant in the conversation, so I didn’t ask.
Mom began to weep quietly. “It’s the waiting, Tillie. It’s the waiting to find out where he’s going to end up, and once he’s there, it’ll be the waiting to find out whether he’ll be coming back. It’s all the waiting that I can’t stand – the waiting and the not knowing.”
“I understand, Janis,” Tillie assured her. “I had three of my own go off to war, you know. Ross first, and later two of the boys. Different wars, of course. Only Lyle was spared, because he was too young.”
“How did you bear it?” Mom asked, the anguish in her voice as intense and bitter as the cold outside.
“I had to put them in the hands of the Lord, dear. I had to determine to accept his will, whether I liked it or not.”
Mom shook her head slowly. “I don’t have faith like that, Tillie. You know I don’t. I’m not even sure God is there. If he is, I don’t believe he has anything to do with what happens to us here.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Janis. He has everything to do with what happens to us here.”
“Then . . . then . . .” Mom dried her eyes with one hand, lifted her chin. “Then he must be very cruel.”
“Oh no, my dear,” Tillie said gently. “His is the only real kindness in a cruel world. Without him, we would have no hope at all.”
Mom turned from the window and looked at Tillie. “But, you see, I’m not sure I have any hope. If Wally dies . . . if Wally dies . . .”
Her voice trailed off, and she had no words for what she would do if Wally died. It was a threat she didn’t yet know how to carry out.
“I will pray for Wally to come home,” Tillie said, “just as I prayed for my own boys.”
Mom nodded, but her face said Tillie’s prayers were, to her, little more than idle words.
There must have been something to Tillie’s prayers, though, because not only did her husband and sons come home from war, but Lyle Monroe came home from Bolivia. She’d been praying he’d wrap up his missionary work there and come on back to Mills River, and sure enough, the second weekend in January, Johnny Monroe pulled up to our house in his Pontiac station wagon, his brother Lyle in the passenger seat beside him.
Tillie didn’t even bother to put on a coat but stepped out into the furious cold in her blue cotton housedress. She stood at the edge of the porch, her hefty arms flung open wide and tears of joy streaming down her face.
“Welcome home, Lyle,” she hollered as the car doors opened. Johnny exited the driver’s side while a tall man in a dark overcoat emerged from the other. The tall man moved swiftly up the walkway and into Tillie’s arms. With a joyful shout he lifted Tillie off her feet, her heavy shoes dangling several inches off the porch, her laughter ringing clear in the