Louise's War Read Free Page A

Rachel.
    Waves of heat washed over me; darkness, pierced by flashes of light, dropped like a curtain over my vision. I just barely made it into the bathroom before I slid to the floor.
    I revived to find myself stretched out full length on the cool tiles. For the first time in my life I’d fainted. I grasped the edge of the toilet bowl and pulled myself to a seating position leaning against the wall. After the room stopped tilting I was able to stand and brace myself on the sink. I soaked a handful of towels and sponged my neck, and opened my blouse and cooled myself under my arms and neck.
    I waited for my panic to wane before I returned to my desk and let the hot breeze from the office floor fan dry what was left of the dampness I’d sponged over my face and neck.
    Thank goodness I’d been alone in the office when I’d recognized Rachel in the newspaper photograph. Otherwise my girls would have made a scene and the whole office would hear I’d fainted. I detested attracting attention to myself. And fainting, like crying, was one of those behaviors that men thought confirmed women’s weakness, their unsuitability for important work. I didn’t want anyone to think for a second that I couldn’t do my job.
    I’d calmed myself down a bit before I looked at the photograph again. Rachel’s dark hair was longer than when I knew her, pulled up in a matronly bun, exposing her long elegant neck. The picture was grainy and distant, like the memory of the last hours we spent together, on our graduation day, almost ten years ago . . .
    ‘Oh, zut !’ Rachel had said, in her excellent, but accented, English. ‘Help me! Sit on this thing!’
    I had perched on one of the bulging cases, squashing its contents, while Rachel fastened the latches.
    ‘You’d better tie this case up with rope,’ I said. ‘If it bursts open in the hold of your ship, what a mess.’
    ‘It’s so mean of Papa, making me leave so much behind.’
    ‘The other passengers on the Majestic need room for their luggage, too, you know,’ I said.
    My eyes filled with tears, and Rachel dabbed at hers with the edge of a lace cuff.
    ‘I can’t believe you’re leaving,’ I said, ‘that I might never see you again.’
    ‘Don’t say that,’ Rachel said. ‘You’ll come and visit me in Marseille, and Papa might be transferred back to the States again someday.’
    I didn’t answer her. I’d never have the money to go to Europe. Besides, I was getting married in three weeks.
    ‘Remember our pledge,’ Rachel said. ‘We’re going to name our daughters after each other. You’ll have a baby before I do, though.’
    I didn’t respond to that either. Bill and I had already decided not to have children until the Depression was over. We simply couldn’t afford it.
    ‘You’ll marry soon, too, I’m sure,’ I said.
    ‘Of course,’ she said, smoothing the skirt of her new traveling suit.
    ‘Rachel . . .’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Someday I’ll repay you . . .’
    Rachel interrupted me by placing her hand over my mouth. ‘You promised not to speak of that again, ever. Besides, how would I have gotten through this year without you?’
    After we finished packing we sat on my bare mattress and held hands, silent, afraid to speak for fear we’d burst into tears. At last the porter came to pick up Rachel and her luggage and take her to the train station.
    ‘Goodbye,’ I whispered to her.
    ‘ Non ,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘In France we don’t say that. It’s au revoir . Until we see each other again.’
    After Rachel returned to France we wrote each other every week. We shared the details of our marriages, her baby son, our lives. Hers was infinitely more colorful than mine, and I longed to visit her, but my family didn’t have that kind of money. As the thirties came to a close Rachel’s letters described France’s growing fear of Nazism. For months after I stopped hearing from her I wrote her every week, I begged the French embassy