House of Rougeaux(27)

He says Miss Carey can show her how they run things and she can start tomorrow morning. “I know you are anxious to see your mother,” he says, smiling at Miss Carey. Rosalie is elated. She has landed her first job.



* * *



By early July, Rosalie has been on the job three weeks, Thursdays and Fridays. The other days she babysits, helps her mother, sees friends, and shuttles large bags of books to and from the library. One afternoon she comes up the street to her door just as the postman is hopping down off the stoop. She lets herself in and bends to pick up the letters and circulars, calling out to her mother in the kitchen. Virginia is sorting the laundry she has just pulled in off the line. Rosalie sees there’s a letter from her mother’s cousin Martine on top of the stack. Momma will be happy about that.

Martine is Virginia’s older cousin, on her father’s side, who lives up in Montreal. In Canada. Martine and Virginia struck up a correspondence some years before Rosalie was born, after Papa Dax passed on and Virginia wrote to notify the family. Martine’s reply, expressing condolences and describing her childhood memories of Dax as a young man, touched Virginia with its tenderness and eloquence. Much later, when Virginia’s letter carried the awful news about Azalea, Martine wrote back entreating her to “write her heart” any time she was able, because Martine herself had lost a child, her boy Gus when he was only seven, and she knew. It helped Virginia to have someone outside the immediate family to confide in, still does. Some worries or pains are just too close.

Rosalie leaves the mail and her bag on the table and takes the milk bottle from the Frigidaire. She’s getting a glass from the cupboard when she hears her mother say, “Oh, Lord.” Virginia is standing at the table looking at an envelope with her reading glasses on. She wears them on a chain like a librarian so they are always handy. Her hands are shaking. It’s from the Draft Board, addressed to Lionel Hubbard, Junior. Rosalie feels the blood drain from her head.

“What’s it say?”

They sit down at the table. Virginia tears open the envelope and reads the letter over. There’s not much to it. Junior is to report to the Draft Board office for a medical examination on August first. Failing to do so is punishable by law. Rosalie’s mind races. Hasn’t she heard that sometimes boys are found unfit for the army because they limp, or because they have a bad ear or something? What about Junior’s eyes? He can see things just fine up close, but without his glasses anything past an arm’s length is a complete blur. Surely a pair of glasses would be the easiest thing to lose in a jungle war zone; they can’t have soldiers running around blind as bats. This is the topic of the evening, of course, once the men return home from work. Junior tries to make light of it. “They can’t take me,” he says, giving Momma a squeeze. “I’m Mr. Magoo!” But late in the night, stumbling to the bathroom after a few fitful hours of sleep, Rosalie passes by Junior’s room and sees the glow under the door that means his reading lamp is still on. She thinks about knocking, but doesn’t.



* * *



“How are you this morning, Rosalie?” asks Dr. Leventhal, looking over the roster of today’s patients.

“My brother is being drafted,” says Rosalie, without preamble. She can’t help it.

The doctor looks up from the roster and stares at her a long moment.

“Has he been for the physical yet?”

“No sir, not yet.”

“Doesn’t he wear glasses?”

“Yes sir, he does,” she says, a spark of hope rising in her chest. “We’re thinking maybe they won’t take him on account of that.”

“Why don’t you bring him in, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Junior comes in at the end of that same day. After the examination the doctor has Rosalie take a letter, which she then types up on the office stationery that the doctor signs with his gold-tipped fountain pen.

It would not behoove the Armed Forces to induct this young man… the letter reads.

Behoove, thinks Rosalie on the bus home with Junior. She has a habit of collecting words and this one’s a keeper.

But the letter from Dr. Leventhal doesn’t work. Junior tells it all later on.

The white officer in charge scoffs at Dr. Leventhal’s letter, when Junior hands it to him.

“This isn’t grammar school,” he says, “this is the United States Army.” He looks down at the form Junior has filled out, and the line where it states his occupation.

“Delivery boy,” says the officer. “Drive a truck, do you?” Junior says yes. “Then you can see just fine.”

He checks the final box on the physical record where it says “Fit for Service” and stamps it with an induction date. September 19th. Less than two months away.

Virginia’s next letter to her cousin Martine has a desperate tone. She’s praying to God every day and doesn’t know what to do. Two weeks later on a Tuesday night the telephone rings, an international call from Montreal. This is the first time Virginia has heard her cousin’s voice, unfamiliar over the crackling line, in nearly forty years.

It says, “Bring him here.”



* * *



The next Sunday, after dinner, a family discussion ensues.

Lionel Senior still respects the late President Kennedy and remembers his famous “Ask Not” speech. He has questions about loyalty and duty, service and sacrifice, though not for a second does he take lightly the fate of his own son. Uncle Edwin, Aunt Violet’s husband, weighs in, citing the Second World War, and the Black battalions that served with honor against Hitler.