T

he waiters were clearing the table in the dining room, and Mother and Father were relaxing on the sofa. Marjorie joined them, now wearing her usual home outfit, slacks and a T-shirt. She sat down near them on a plush, leather-upholstered chair.

“What a party, hey, Margie?”

“Yes, Father.” Be nice, Marge. “Thank you so much, Mother, for all your work.” She looked at her father meaningfully. “And now, it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“Remember? When I first started college, and I was having so much trouble with the classes? Almost flunking out? You promised me that if I graduated, you’d help me rent my own place in the City, and you’d give me my own car as a graduation present. And now — I did it! So….”

“Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do remember something like that,” her father said slowly. He exchanged a glance with his wife. “Let Mother and I discuss it, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Marjorie’s cheeks grew flushed. “What’s to talk about? You promised!”

“Yes, I know, but it’s a big decision, and we have to examine it from all sides.” Mr. Burton’s voice grew stern. “We will discuss it tomorrow.”

The smile she’d pasted on her face throughout the endless evening disappeared. She’d tried. She’d really tried. Four years of boredom, climaxing in this stupid dinner party. And now, on the edge of freedom….

She forced her voice to stay calm.

“So… you’re breaking your word. After all this time. Your promise wasn’t worth much.”

Her father tried for a smile. “Well, it got you that piece of paper. That’s worth it, even without the wheels.”

Marjorie stood up. “In my book, keeping your word is worth more than a car, and certainly more than some dumb piece of paper.”

She stalked out of the living room. Her bedroom door banged behind her, the sound echoing endlessly through the Burton house.

The nights were hard.

Just as Dr. Samuels had promised, the morning sickness had mostly passed. No more nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and fatigue: Annie could wake up, looking forward to a new and productive day.

But now that Mutty was gone, her nights had become edged with anxiety, sleeplessness, troubling dreams. Not nightmares, exactly, not horrific scenes of war and death. Just strange dreams she could hardly remember in the morning, but which left her feeling uneasy, restless.

Mutty had said goodbye a few days before. They’d had a telegram from him, short but cheerful: Arrived safely. Things look good. Chaplain understanding about Shabbos and kashrus. Letter follows. She kept it on the kitchen counter, read it again and again. It was a talisman of hope, its thin yellowish paper a thick and protective wall keeping the demons of fear and despair at bay, at least during the day.

Tonight she’d had one of those dreams, and Annie shuddered slightly as she sat up in bed. But this was strange: What was that tiny ray of light in the corner of the room?

Strange and stranger: As she blinked away fatigue, she saw Abe sitting almost motionless in the rocking chair, peering into the pages of a book, a small flashlight in his hand. What in the world was he reading in the middle of the night? It didn’t look like one of the biographies that he enjoyed, nor a medical journal that he occasionally would skim when he didn’t have time to catch up on his reading during the day. As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she could make it out more clearly: a small, spiral-bound book with a faded brown cover.

Why is Abie reading his war journal in the middle of the night?

She switched on her bedside lamp. “Abe, what’s going on?”

He lifted his eyes from the book, and as she looked at him, this husband of more than two decades, it was like looking at the face of a stranger.

In the dim rays of the flashlight his face was pale and ghostlike, but it was his eyes that seemed to belong to someone else. Not laughing and mischievous, like her Abie’s eyes, which looked out onto a welcoming world that held challenge and adventure and the promise of great happiness. And not even the eyes of Dr. Abraham Levine, deeply focused on diagnosing and treating his young patients. No, these eyes were… haunted.

“Abie,” she said quietly, pulling her robe tightly around her, “are you all right?”

He shifted, took a deep breath, gave the shadow of a smile. “Just a touch of insomnia, sweetheart. Go back to bed.”

Some instinct born of years of caring for this man told her there was more to this than just mere wakefulness, more, even, than a father’s natural anxiety for a son.

“I’m also awake,” she said, keeping her voice determinedly light. “Come on, let’s get a cup of coffee. And we’ll talk.”

Perk the coffee, add the milk and sugar, cut a piece of pie: homey, pleasant, normal. Except it was two thirty in the morning and something was very wrong.

Wordlessly, Abe had followed her down the stairs. Now, as Annie prepared a snack, she took a surreptitious glance at him. He was sitting quietly at the kitchen table. His eyes, the expression on his face: She’d seen this before.

When?

With a start that almost made her spill the coffee she was pouring, remembrance came. She’d seen that face decades ago. When Major Abraham Levine, the decorated soldier who’d fought off an entire platoon of Nazis, who’d been left for dead and rescued by Belgian partisans — when her Abie had finally come back home.

He’d returned to his family wounded in both body and spirit. There were doctors’ visits, trips to the VA hospital, and in a shorter time than expected his body had been healed.

And his spirit? After the first rapturous days of reunion, Annie noticed something about him that she’d never, ever seen before: Abe Levine was afraid. The man she’d married had always jumped gaily into life, into new experiences, heedless of danger and reveling in adventure; this combat veteran who’d come back to her seemed too frightened to even leave the house.

But with Hashem’s help, with time and faith and prayer, surrounded by a loving family, her Abie had come back to her in spirit as well. The years that followed were hectic, crowded, meaningful for both of them: medical training, starting a pediatric practice, raising a growing family. Hashem’s blessings had rained down upon the Levine household. Those terrible years of war, those difficult weeks of rehabilitation, were over and done with.

Or were they?

“Abe, you couldn’t sleep. That’s not like you. Is it about the war?”

The steaming, fresh-perked coffee seemed to have helped Abe. When he spoke it was in his usual even, easygoing tones.

“I told you, sweetheart, we’re not yet at war in Vietnam. The army is just sending advisers to train the South Vietnamese army.”

“I’m not talking about Mutty. Or Vietnam. I’m talking about you. Abe,” she chose her words carefully, “why were you reading your war journal?”

He put his cup down, spilling the brown liquid into the saucer. The easygoing voice was replaced by a whisper. “I… I don’t know.”

A stab of guilt. “Abe, was it because I yelled at you about filling Mutty’s head with war heroics? I shouldn’t have. I was just so… shocked and scared. I didn’t really mean it.”

“You were right.”

“No. Mutty’s a big boy, an adult, and a smart one. He made his own decision. It’s not your fault.”

“You don’t understand, Annie. I—” he closed his eyes, opened them again. “I never told you. But in the first years after the war, sometimes—” He broke off. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Please, Abie. Tell me.”

He took a deep breath, clearly making a decision. A tough decision.

He picked up his teaspoon, tapped it on the table, up and down, up and down. Finally, he spoke. “Sometimes, there were these memories. Of a 19-year-old boy with a bullet hole in his face. Of waking up paralyzed in Belgium. Of sniper fire and tracers and airplanes going down in flames, with your buddies inside.” The tapping grew faster, almost frantic. “They’d come to me, these visions, and it was like I was there again. Only it was crazy, because I was more afraid in my house than when I was fighting on the battlefield. And then….”

“And then?”

“I’d talk to my little boy, with his beautiful blue eyes. His Mama’s eyes. I’d tell him stories. Not the horrible, terrifying ones. Stories about brave soldiers and all the funny things that happened while I was in the service. And somehow that would ease the pain, make it disappear, and we’d be laughing together.”

“You never told me.”

“You were so busy, sweetheart, raising the kids, making a beautiful home for us. I didn’t want you to have to share this burden. And anyway, once I was in med school, mostly it stopped, those visions and thoughts.” He laughed softly. “Who had time for memories, when I was a resident doing those 28-hour shifts in the hospital? The war stories just became a nice way to put Mutty to sleep, for us to enjoy each other’s company.”

“And tonight….”

“I guess Mutty leaving… just kind of brought it back, those,” he shivered slightly, “memories. And I figured, if I can’t talk to my son, I could read the journal instead.”

“Did it help?”

“Not really. But talking to you, Annie…” He put down the teaspoon and smiled — and in that smile she saw her Abie come back to her — “that’s helped.”

All these years, and he never told me.

“Abe, I understand and appreciate that you wanted to protect me. But I want you to promise — no more secrets.”

“Promise.”

“You, me, Mutty, all of us. We’ll get through this year. And we’ll do it together.”

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 872)