Sloan Wilson - Ice Brothers

Unfortunately these moments of calm were often swept away by gusts of rage. Why did all this have to be happening to him? Why couldn’t he come home, a conquering hero, like he’d often imagined, and be met by his faithful admiring wife with sighs of love? Certainly that sort of thing must be happening often to men no more deserving than he. At least half the men in the forecastle were waiting for it to happen to them, and not all of them would be disappointed.

Well … if I’d picked a saner wife and had been saner myself I could expect better rewards, he lectured himself, but in some ways I’m a damn lucky man … For one thing I’m alive and unhurt. Hansen, Sparks, Seth, Blake, Cookie, the living pincushion — if he thought about them it was hard to feel sorry for himself.…

As they neared Boston a heavy blizzard enclosed them in the now familiar curtains of snow, but with the help of the radar Paul found his way into the harbor without difficulty. Just before dark he nosed the Arluk alongside a wharf in the same shipyard where they had first boarded her less than a year ago. It seemed a lifetime. There was no one ashore to catch their heaving lines, but Guns jumped from the forecastle head, and the ship was quickly moored.

“Finished with engines,” Paul said, and Nathan rang up the signal.

“Liberty party requests permission to go ashore!” Boats called from the well deck.

“Permission granted,” Paul said, and the men, who had been wearing their dress blues for hours, scrambled over the rail.

“I’ve given Mr. Williams the duty aboard tonight,” Nathan said. “I’ll be around tomorrow. There’s no reason why you can’t take off.”

“You got any plans?” Paul asked.

“I’m going to have a drink at the Ritz bar.”

“I’ll join you before I make my telephone calls.”

They both put on rumpled khaki uniforms because they had no clean blue ones, and they felt out of place at the Ritz bar with beautiful women and sleek-looking men laughing all around them. They said very little as they downed two drinks, and then Paul, with a rising sense of dread, walked to a telephone booth. He decided to call his parents first to see where Sylvia was. His mother answered.

“Paul! Where are you?”

“Home.”

“I’m so glad! I’ve been so worried about you. I’m so sorry everything happened the way it did. You’ve heard about it, haven’t you? Bill is just furious at Sylvia. He told me before he left that he hopes none of us ever have to see her again.”

“Where did he go?”

“Didn’t you get our letters? They sent him to England, and now I’m so worried about him. He volunteered to go even though he could have stayed as an instructor here.”

Well, Paul thought — at least I won’t have to see him … “Is Sylvia still in the hospital?”

“Yes … she’s really in very bad shape, I hear. Bill says she’s mental. She’s got more than broken bones. I’m so sorry. It’s such a terrible thing for you.”

“I’m all right,” Paul said, got the name of the hospital, promised to visit his parents as soon as possible, quickly hung up and walked slowly back to the bar.

“One more drink,” he said to Nathan. “I’ve got to visit a hospital.”

“Want to come back here afterward? We could have a late dinner.”

“That would be good,” Paul said. “I shouldn’t be long.”

He took a taxi to the Massachusetts General Hospital. A receptionist gave him the number of Sylvia’s room. He walked through endless corridors, all of which seemed to him to be full of the smells and sounds of sickness and death. As he approached the open door of Sylvia’s room he heard her laughing exactly as she used to do at parties. She was sitting in bed with one leg propped up in a plaster cast, and she was talking to two white-coated young interns who were drinking from paper cups. Vases of flowers filled every level surface in the room.

Aware that his sudden arrival might come as a shock to her, Paul hesitated by the door.

“You’re just saying that!” Sylvia said. “You’re just trying to cheer up a poor cripple.”

“No, I mean it,” the taller intern said.

Sylvia’s glossy dark blonde hair had been brushed over the shoulders of her pink bed jacket. She was wearing, as usual, a little too much makeup, but in her face there was that familiar vitality, the same old excitement, and her eyes sparkled as she laughed with the interns. Paul walked slowly toward her. From the doorway, he said, “Hello, Sylvia.”

She jerked her head to face him, and went so pale that her lipstick and rouge seemed to brighten.

“Paul! My God! You’re back! ”

She held out her arms and the interns hastily brushed by Paul on their way out. Leaning over the bed, he kissed her on the forehead and gave her a quick hug before stepping back.

“What kind of a greeting is that? Oh Paul! Are you mad at me?”

“No.”

“I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I could ask you to jump right into this bed with me.”

He smiled.

“Oh, Paul, sit here on the edge of the bed and hold my hand. I have so much to tell you about. I want to explain the whole thing, so you don’t have any reason to be mad at me at all …”

She talked very fast, often contradicting herself and her letter, making him almost embarrassed for her as she strained to explain why she was driving around the city at three o’clock on the morning after New Year’s Eve with an air force captain and why she had been charged with drunken driving, but she managed to give a certain plausibility to her protestations of innocence, except for the fact that she now had the air force captain a terrible man who had practically kidnapped her.

“It all must have been very hard on you,” he said.

“It wouldn’t really have been more than a stupid accident if it hadn’t been for Bill. I haven’t wanted to tell you this about your own brother but …”

According to her, Bill had been pursuing her for years and had almost raped her only a week after Paul had gone to Greenland. Paul was sure that she exaggerated this, but also suspected there was some substance to it. He was very glad that Bill was three thousand miles away.

“I’m sorry about all this too,” he said, “but there’s not much we can do about it now, is there?”

“No, but I just want to be sure you believe me. I haven’t done one single thing wrong.”

“I’m not judging you, Sylvia. I’m not in very good shape for judging anybody … but I can’t stay long. I have to go—”

“Where? Why? Chris said you’d get a thirty-day leave when you came home.”

He thought of confessing his sins and asking her honestly to confess hers, but the thought appalled him, and he was sure that after the whole messy scene was over he would still want to get away from her. There was no point in putting her or himself through all that.

“I have to go,” he repeated. “Sylvia, you and I need time to figure things out. Let’s just do as best we can until after the war is over. Then we’ll see where we stand.”

“You are mad at me then, aren’t you? You don’t believe me!”

“I think we both need time to see where we are and what we are.”

She looked scared. “You’re not going to cut off my allotment, are you? Bill said you would.”

“I won’t do anything like that. Get better and don’t worry. We both have to sort things out …”

He kissed her on the lips this time and quickly turned to go. She broke into tears, and, damn it, he was strongly tempted to go back. He was also pretty sure that that would turn out to be the worst decision in his life, and by now he was something of an expert in the mistake line. He went out of the room so fast that he jostled a cart full of trays in the hall, spilled one, and was shouted at by an angry nurse. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”