“I’m going to be incredibly offended if you fall asleep inside of me, and there’s a not-insignificant chance of that happening if we keep going. Sleep, Hollis.”
As he drowsily navigates to the pillow, he mumbles a reminder about the laundry and something about how he’s cursed to never make it past second base in this room. He’s out before I can even ask him for the Wi-Fi password.
Chicago, Illinois
September 1950
Rose picked up the telephone on the second ring. The operator requested she please hold for a long-distance call from Miss Elsie Brown in Los Angeles. Her heart knocked against her ribs in a way that made her breathless as she waited for Elsie’s voice—so familiar, yet rarely heard since the war—to come over the line.
In that first letter in 1946, Rose had confessed that she regretted the way things had ended between them. Elsie had responded, “Then let’s not allow that to be the end.” They had since carried on a steady correspondence. With Rose married and over a thousand miles separating them, their relationship transformed into something more akin to friendship than passion. Still, the words that they could not put on paper outright were ghosts haunting the spaces between each line; their love for each other lingered even as it was forced to take new forms.
“Who is it?” Dick asked from the sofa, his face buried in a book for one of his graduate classes.
“My friend Elsie Brown. From the Navy. She’s calling from Los Angeles.”
“Los Angeles? I thought Elsie still lived in Florida.”
Elsie, joking that she could never again live in a landlocked state, had rented an apartment in Miami after her discharge instead of returning home to Oklahoma. Rose frowned as she adjusted the telephone’s receiver in her palm. “So did I. I’ve no idea what she’s doing in California.”
“Well, give her my regards,” Dick muttered around his pipe stem as he noticed an ink stain on his pant leg. He looked every bit the librarian he was studying to become.
“I will,” she said. Of course, Rose had never told Dick that Elsie was so much more than a friend. Sometimes Rose wondered if her husband would be jealous if he knew. She wondered if he would understand the magnitude of her love for Elsie, and if it would make him feel fury, or maybe pity, or—perhaps worst of all—if he would write it off as a silly little wartime peccadillo that warranted no strong feeling from him at all.
Though letters arrived with regularity, she and Elsie had only spoken on the phone a handful of times: once in 1947 a few days after a terrible hurricane hit Florida and Rose couldn’t bear waiting around to receive a letter reporting on how Elsie had fared, and last New Year’s Eve, when Elsie called after a few glasses of whiskey and slurred whispered memories of making love on the beach, while the din of boisterous conversation, clink of champagne glasses, and Mel Tormé’s “Careless Hands” in her living room competed for Rose’s attention.
“Rosie.” Now Elsie’s voice came through the receiver like an exhale, and Rose knew today’s call wasn’t courtesy of some alcohol-fueled bout of nostalgia.
“Els. Is anything the matter?”
“I’ve been recalled from the Reserves. The Navy’s been caught with their pants down in Korea. They need all the medical personnel they can get.”
Rose’s words caught in her throat, which was perhaps for the best because all she could think of was how Korea was so far away—even farther than Elsie already was from her.
“Rosie, darlin’? Are you there?”
“Yes, yes. Sorry. The Navy is sending you to Korea then?”
“Thereabouts. A hospital ship. The USSHaven. We sail next week.”
Rose fought through her rising panic—Elsie, across the world, close to the front—and searched for some concrete action she could take to alleviate the worry that squeezed at her throat. “Shall I... shall I fly out there to see you off?”
Dick peered over his book with sudden interest.
Elsie’s musical laugh traveled through the telephone wires and tickled Rose’s ear as if she were just beside her. “No, Rosie. No, it would be terribly expensive, and you’ve got your family to care for. How are Dick and the boys?”
“They’re fine, but Els—”
“Besides, if you show up here and I hold you again, I don’t know if I can make myself get on that ship.” Her voice sounded thick with emotion. Rose’s own tears threatened to spill from her eyes. Not right now, she thought, not in front of Dick.
“Speaking of things that are terribly expensive,” Elsie continued, her tone light again in an artificial way that only made everything worse, “this call is long-distance, and I’m back to being a meager Navy surgical nurse. Even with the nighttime discount, the minutes are adding up.” She paused. “Listen, I knowyou probably can’t say it back—I’m sure you aren’t alone—but... I called because I needed you to know before I leave that I love you, Rosie. You are the love of my life. No matter what happens, or where I am, or who I am with, it will always be you. And just in case—”
“No, please don’t—”
“Just in case,” she repeated more slowly, “something should happen to me, I need you to know that my final moments—whether they come tomorrow or a hundred years from now—will be spent thinking of you. Of your smile, and your laugh, and holding you close in the warm sand.”
Rose glanced at her husband. Dick’s full attention was now upon her.
“Elsie, please be careful over there.” She hoped everything else she wanted to say would somehow make it into Elsie’s heart through those words alone.
