Chapter Five

THE UNCERTAIN WIDOW

Because the train station could not accommodate the anticipated crowds, the town fathers moved the planned celebration to a lot fifty yards from the platform. A self-appointed committee of women decorated the area with streamers and bunting while city workers filled in the potholes, erected risers for the elderly and crippled, and set up a podium on a makeshift pallet for the mayor to deliver his speech on behalf of the town and the Rowowan empire. Some worried about the cold, but most assumed that the joyful feelings would warm everyone physically as well as emotionally. It was an important day. After ten years of war, the surviving Digby area soldiers were finally returning home to their loved ones.

The crowds started arriving long before the train was due. As the lot gradually filled with people, a feeling of anticipation and excitement told hold. Everyone overlooked the cold, the rambunctious children, and the slushy mud. They instead focused on exchanging news and keeping their eyes peeled for the locomotive’s smoke in the distance. Old men and wounded veterans huddled in circles of stomping feet, animated conversation, and cigarette smoke. The women, on the other hand, were nervous and expectant. In a war that generated shortages of almost everything but sadness and heartache, perhaps the biggest scarcity had been masculinity. Although everyone was aware that a good many of these men were returning physically and psychologically damaged, they were still men. Wives and sweethearts were eager to reclaim them. As for the unfortunate number of widows, only a minority dressed in mourning to honor the memory of their departed husbands. Most were more interested in advertising their availability than in burying their dead. If there was going to be a windfall of men, they wanted to be on hand to stake their claims.

Abbelina had hesitated to attend the celebration. She was a thin, pale brunette in her thirties whose vivaciousness was another of the war’s casualties. Sometimes she envied the widows because at least they knew their husbands’ fates. Abbelina’s husband, on the other hand, had been missing for more than two years, and no one in or out of the army could provide any more information than that. She often had nightmares of him dying alone and afraid in some Allerian ditch. She was equally haunted by the state of their relationship when he disappeared. Although her initial inclination was to stay home, the possibility that a returning soldier might have news about him convinced her to go. She drove her mother’s automobile down the road to Digby, parked in a muddy field, and found a place in the back of the crowd. As usual, most of the people she recognized studiously avoided her or said hello only in passing. Rather than generate discomfort through eye contact, she opened a book and pretended to read it.

The train’s predictable tardiness only increased the collective tension. When its whistle announced its imminent arrival, the crowd quickly sorted itself as parents and children found each other and moved to the ribbon separating them from the platform. It seemed to take forever, but the train eventually came into view and chugged into the station. As the returning soldiers disembarked, city officials herded them behind the podium to the platform from which the mayor planned to make a few appropriate remarks. However, minutes after the mayor started his speech, Piper Laudable’s three-year-old began pointing at her brother and yelling his name. Then Mary Sorinsky’s twelve-year-old daughter bolted under the ribbon and threw her arms around her father. Little Sally Boverton followed suit, ripping the ribbon in two on her way to embrace her uncle. With that, the crowd surged forward onto the platform. The mayor gave up and left the podium to join his wife in search of their one surviving son.

From her vantage point in the back, Abbelina closely scrutinized each soldier as he got off the train and walked behind the podium, but she did not see her husband. She did, however, notice Andrew Pickfield smoking a cigarette. She and Andrew had run in the same social circles before the war, and had even dated briefly. As she hurried over to see him, his wife suddenly pushed past her to threw her arms around him. At the same time, Emma Eichelberger grabbed Abbelina’s arm.

“Abbelina.”

Abbelina turned to face her and tried to yank her arm away, but Emma held on tight.

“Abbelina,” Emma said again, more forcefully. “This isn’t the time and place for you.”

“Let go!” Abbelina exclaimed as Andrew and his wife moved away, oblivious to the confrontation.

Emma pulled Abbelina in closer. “Don’t do this now.”

Abbelina suddenly felt all the energy and determination drain out of her. Emma sensed it too and released her grip. Abbelina started to talk, but instead walked away toward the back of the crowd. Emma was right: no one wanted to see her now. She was simply another unpleasant reminder of the poor decisions the war had spawned. Abbelina wandered the outskirts of the crowd, eavesdropping on joyful conversations and feeling more ghost than human. She remembered bitterly times before the war when she was the center of attention. Before the resentment overwhelmed her, she returned to her car and drove home. After dropping the vehicle off at her mother’s, Abbelina stopped at the playground across the street from her house to sit on the swing, a coping mechanism she acquired as a child. She refrained from crying until she plopped down at her kitchen table to drink tea and watch the snow flurries as the sun dipped below the horizon. It was Christmas eve.