Orphan Train

green, the color of overcooked peas.” I picture him standing on that floating
     runway, his lovely blond hair hidden under a drab helmet.
    Over the next three months I receive several dozen letters, weeks after he writes
     them, sometimes two in the same day, depending on where they were mailed from. Dutchy
     tells me about the tedium of life on board—how his best friend from their basic training
     days, another Minnesotan named Jim Daly, has taught him to play poker, and they spend
     long hours belowdecks with a revolving cast of servicemen in an endless ongoing game.
     He talks about his work, how important it is to follow protocol and how heavy and
     uncomfortable his helmet is, how he’s beginning to get used to the roar of the plane
     engines as they take off and land. He talks about being seasick, and the heat. He
     doesn’t mention combat or planes being shot down. I don’t know if he isn’t allowed
     to or if he doesn’t want to frighten me.
    “I love you,” he writes again and again. “I can’t bear to live without you. I’m counting
     the minutes until I see you.”
    The words he uses are the idioms of popular songs and poems in the newspaper. And
     mine to him are no less clichéd. I puzzle over the onionskin, trying to spill my heart
     onto the page. But I can only come up with the same words, in the same order, and
     hope the depth of feeling beneath them gives them weight and substance. I love you. I miss you. Be careful. Be safe.

Hemingford, Minnesota, 1943
    It is ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning and I’ve been in the store for an hour, first going over accounts in the back room and now walking down each aisle,
     as I do every day, to make sure that the shelves are tidy and the sale displays are
     set up correctly. I’m in the back aisle, rebuilding a small pyramid of Jergens face
     cream that has toppled into a stack of Ivory soap, when I hear Mr. Nielsen say, “Can
     I help you?” in a strange stiff voice.
    Then he says, sharply, “Viola.”
    I don’t stop what I’m doing, though my heart races in my chest. Mr. Nielsen rarely
     calls his wife by her name. I continue building the pyramid of Jergens jars, five
     on the bottom, then four, three, two, one on top. I stack the leftover jars on the
     shelf behind the display. I replace the Ivory soap that was knocked off the pile.
     When I’m done, I stand in the aisle, waiting. I hear whispering. After a moment, Mrs.
     Nielsen calls, “Vivian? Are you here?”
    A Western Union man is standing at the cash register in his blue uniform and black-brimmed
     cap. The telegram is short. “The Secretary of War regrets to inform you that Luke
     Maynard was killed in action on February 16, 1943. Further details will be forwarded
     to you as they become available.”
    I don’t hear what the Western Union man says. Mrs. Nielsen has started to cry. I touch
     my stomach—the baby. Our baby.
    In the coming months, I will get more information. Dutchy and three others were killed
     when a plane crashed onto the fleet carrier. There was nothing anyone could do; the
     plane came apart on top of him. “I hope you will find comfort in the fact that Luke
     died instantly. He never felt a thing,” his shipmate Jim Daly writes. Later I receive
     a box of his personal effects—his wristwatch, letters I wrote to him, some clothes.
     The claddagh cross. I open the box and touch each item, then close it and put it away.
     It will be years before I wear the necklace again.
    Dutchy hadn’t wanted to tell anyone on base that his wife was pregnant. He was superstitious,
     he said; he didn’t want to jinx it. I’m glad of that, glad that Jim Daly’s letter
     of condolence is one to a wife, not a mother.
    The next few weeks I get up early in the morning, before it’s light, and go to work.
     I reorganize entire sections of merchandise. I have a big new sign made for the entrance
     and hire a design student to work on our windows. Despite my size, I drive to Minneapolis
     and walk around the large department stores, taking notes about how they create their
     window displays, trends in colors and styles that haven’t filtered up to us yet. I
     order inner tubes, sunglasses, and beach towels for summer.
    Lil and Em take me to the cinema, to a play, out to dinner. Mrs. Murphy invites me
     regularly for tea. And one night I am woken by a searing pain and know it’s time to
     go to the hospital. I call Mrs. Nielsen, as we’ve planned, and pack my small