A Bridge Across the Ocean Page 5

  “We have to ask every one of you this question. Do you have a criminal record?”

  Annaliese shook her head and her eyes immediately filled with unwanted tears. “No.”

  “Ever been arrested for prostitution?”

  “No!” she’d gasped.

  “Are you pregnant?”

  She shook her head.

  He stamped her documents and then handed them back to her.

  Relief coursed through her, at least for the moment. She had gotten past the registration tables. She found herself in a dazedly euphoric state while being escorted to the base theater with the same group of women she had waited with in line. Once inside the theater, they were told to remove their clothes and proceed onto the stage, where army doctors in white coats waited.

  Angry cries of protest had erupted from the group of women, setting off wails among many of the babies and toddlers. But there was no getting past the medical exam, the Red Cross nurses told them. They were required to take off their clothes. The nurses held the children while the shaken women stepped out of their dresses and undergarments and lined up at the stage stairs, with their arms over their breasts.

  Annaliese watched in shock as the first three brides were called up and then instructed to stand with their legs apart so that the doctors could use flashlights to inspect them for genital diseases.

  Not one of the three could have been older than twenty, from what Annaliese could tell, and each of them burst into tears.

  “I can’t do that!” cried one.

  “If you want to go to America, then you’ll have to. It’s as simple as that,” said one of the doctors.

  Additional cries of protest had risen up from the other women.

  “Can they really make us do that?” Phoebe had whispered to Annaliese as they stood next to each other, nude, in the queue.

  But Annaliese scarcely heard her.

  Her mind had slammed her back to her wedding night, when Rolf had demanded the same thing of her. She had stood naked before him while he, too, fully clothed, had inspected her. He had done the exact same thing these doctors wanted to do. He had done other things. Worse things.

  “This is immoral,” said the woman who had earlier been wearing the peacoat.

  “It’s indecent!” the tall woman said.

  “If you all want to get on a ship bound for America, this is how it is!” insisted one of the doctors.

  “You’re only doing this because you’re just cheesed off that we married Americans!” the tall woman yelled.

  More shouting had ensued. More children had begun to cry.

  “What are we going to do?” Phoebe said, as she’d looked from Annaliese to the doctors to the shouting women all around them.

  Then from the young, golden-haired French woman came a louder cry of “Enough!” She was standing fourth in line, at the top of the little stairs.

  The theater went silent.

  “After all we have survived, what is one more cruelty?” she’d said to the women who gazed up at her. “What is one more?” Then she turned toward the stage, strode forward, and stood in front of the crying girl who was to have been the first inspected.

  The French woman dropped her arms and stood resolute with her legs apart. Her body was petite but beautifully formed. A tiny mound rounded her abdomen; she was pregnant, but only by a few months. The rest of her curves were shapely, and her skin was smooth.

  “Is this good enough for you, Doctor?” she said, sarcasm subtly threading together every word. “Is this what you require of us?”

  The doctor said nothing but went about his task, shining his little flashlight on the most private parts of her body and asking her calmly how far along she was.

  Afterward, she walked confidently down the other set of stairs and began to put her clothes back on.

  One by one the women followed suit.

  Annaliese kept her eyes screwed shut when it was her turn. It is a dream, she told herself, over and over. Soon I will wake up.

  Rolf. The war. Malmédy. Katrine.

  I am dreaming and soon I’ll wake up.

  I am dreaming and soon I’ll wake up.

  Even now, as she lay shivering on the bunk, she whispered it again.

  “What was that, Katrine?” Phoebe said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you all right?”

  Phoebe had asked this question several times in the past hour, and Annaliese had said yes. But not this time.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Are you still thinking about that awful medical inspection? Because I think we should just pretend it didn’t happen. I’m just going to forget what they made us do. It’s done now. Just pretend it didn’t happen.”

  “Pretend it didn’t happen,” Annaliese echoed.

  “All right, yes, it sounds silly. But those people will never be able to make us feel that way again. We’ll be in America soon and they can just kiss our little bare bums then, can’t they?”

  They shared a quiet laugh and then were quiet.

  “Are you afraid of getting on the ship, Katrine?” Phoebe said a few moments later.

  Getting on that ship is all I can think about.

  “No.”

  “I’m afraid of all that water. There’s so much of it. And you can’t see where it ends. What if we sink? What if we hit an iceberg?”

  “That doesn’t happen anymore, Phoebe.”

  “Do you want to see if we can share a cabin on the ship? I’d feel better about it if you did. Please?”

  It hadn’t been in the plan to make friends. To become known to someone else. The plan had been to blend in quietly and unnoticed, get on a ship, out of England, and as far from Europe as possible.

  And yet Phoebe reminded Annaliese of Katrine in so many little ways. Her quick smile, talkative nature, compassionate leanings. She could be Phoebe’s friend for a handful of days, for that was all she could give her. When their ship docked in New York, Annaliese would need to disappear into the crowd as the rest of the war brides ran to be reunited with their husbands. And, Annaliese reasoned, Phoebe would actually be of some help to her in that regard. She could leave a letter with Phoebe, hide it in her coat pocket or something. Inside the letter could be a note to be given to Katrine’s husband that would explain why she had done what she’d done.

  Annaliese couldn’t bear to have him hate her.

  And maybe if she explained it, he wouldn’t.

  “Katrine?”

  “All right,” Annaliese replied.

  “Oh, good!” Phoebe exhaled heavily. “I’m so glad. We need to talk about something else now or I will dream about sinking ships. Tell me about your husband. What he’s like?”

  Phoebe wasn’t asking about Rolf, of course. She meant Katrine’s husband, John. And it was easy to tell Phoebe what John was like. He was a kind, gentle, nice-looking man. Had things been different, Annaliese might have wanted John to have fallen in love with her instead of with Katrine.

  But for a sliver of a moment Annaliese wanted to tell Phoebe what her real husband was like. She wanted her new friend—her only friend—to know why she’d left her beloved Katrine dead in her car and stolen her identity to get away from him.

  RMS QUEEN MARY

  BOSTON HARBOR

  FEBRUARY 1942

  There are no more serene sunsets over the water or champagne toasts or silk ties or velvet gowns. No children in the nursery, no shows in the cinema, no gala dinners. The beautiful paintings and woodwork have been covered with leather, and the twinkling chandeliers, the miles of carpet, the tapestries and silver have been stored away, not to be returned until the war is over, so said one crew member to another.

  A gun, massive and strange, sits on the bow with its barrel pointed toward the skyline. The men who stand around the weapon
speak about it as if it were a girl they are anxious to impress. The hull of the ship and the stacks—everything—are gray now, just like the gun.

  The decks teem with passengers, but they are dressed for battle, not shuffleboard and afternoon tea. We are being readied for departure. The passengers are soldiers going to war.

  I swirl about the captain, a man I do not know, as he speaks to the others on the bridge. He announces that we are headed for South Africa, a place I have never been.

  When the tugs pull us out, the passengers stand at the railing, watching the safe confines of land slip away.

  “There’ll be U-boats,” one soldier says to another.

  I wonder what a U-boat is, as the two soldiers shake their heads and flick cigarette ash over the railing. They watch the receding coastline as though it will be the last time they see it.

  They do not respond to my touch.

  Their gazes are fixed on the disappearing ribbon of land that is falling away.

  Seven

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  PRESENT DAY

  There were few people Brette trusted with the knowledge that she could see into that strange bit of ethereal property that lingering souls defiantly occupied. She’d discovered that either people didn’t believe that ghosts existed—and therefore she was delusional—or they were terrified by the possibility that they did exist—and therefore she was somehow an accomplice to that terror. The circle of people who knew was small, just as it had been when she was very young, when Aunt Ellen had offered one bit of advice to her parents that they’d been happy to follow.

  Tell only who you need to.

  After her great-aunt deposited six-year-old Brette in her room upon their return from the attic, Ellen told her to stay put until she or her mother came for her.

  “Wait here on the bed and look at books,” Ellen had said. “And don’t listen to what I am going to tell your mommy and daddy.” Ellen had closed the door behind her, but then she’d opened it slightly so that a thin line of space peeked at Brette as she sat on the bed. From the slim opening Ellen looked at her and then laid a finger to her lips.

  Brette had waited only a second before scampering over to the door to eavesdrop on the hushed conversation taking place in the next room.

  At Ellen’s request, Nadine asked Cliff to come inside from trimming the hedges. She had something she needed to say to the both of them and it needed to be said while the other guests were out of the house.

  “Brette has it,” Aunt Ellen announced quietly a moment later, as though Brette had been handed something important and now held it in her grasp. She had looked down at her empty hands. What was it that she had? she wondered.

  “Has what?” her mother had asked, and she sounded fearful. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Good God, Ellen!” Cliff said angrily. “What have you been telling her? She’s just a kid.”

  “So was I when I saw my first ghost. Believe me, I wouldn’t have wished this on her for a million dollars. I told her nothing, Cliff. Not a thing. But you and Nadine need to know. And so does Brette. She needs to know she has the Sight.”

  Brette’s father had cursed then, voicing a string of words Brette knew she was not supposed to say. But she barely heard them. The word ghost was swirling about in her head. Ghosts were white-sheeted, floating wisps that moaned and groaned on Halloween. Aunt Ellen wasn’t making any sense.

  As Ellen recounted to Brette’s parents what had just happened in the attic, she began to understand. The child on the windowsill, the boy who looked like mist and whose feet made no noise and who vanished in a blink, was a ghost.

  And while Brette contemplated that revelation, her parents shouted at each other. You should have listened to me, her mother said to her father. Aunt Ellen should never have come to visit, he replied.

  “Wishing isn’t going to make this go away,” Aunt Ellen said. “You need to let me talk to Brette so that I can explain some things.”

  “Not a chance,” Cliff said angrily.

  Aunt Ellen’s voice rose then, and Brette could hear her as if she were right in the room with them.

  “The cruelest thing you can do,” she said, her voice steely, “is to send me away without letting me talk to Brette. Do you want your daughter to be terrified of what she can see? Do you want her to grow up ostracized, or worse, institutionalized?”

  Brette heard her mother admonish them to keep their voices down.

  “We should never have allowed you to come,” her father said again.

  “You should thank God in heaven that I did!” Aunt Ellen said, just as loud as before. “Do you really want to imagine what it would have been like for Brette if this had happened when I wasn’t here? Does Cliff know what became of Cousin Lucille? Does he know why your mother didn’t want treatment for her cancer?”

  Aunt Ellen must have said this part to Nadine because her mother said, “No.”

  “You have got to let me tell her the barest minimum, Cliff,” Aunt Ellen said. “Just enough to keep her in the know until she’s older. And then I need to tell her the rest.”

  Her mother started crying.

  “The rest?” her father asked. But he didn’t sound quite as angry as before. He sounded frustrated.

  “She doesn’t need to know everything right now.” Aunt Ellen said this in a louder voice, almost as if she wanted Brette to plainly hear that there was more she needed to know just in case her parents tossed Aunt Ellen out of the house that very minute and she never saw her again.

  “I don’t even know if I believe any of this,” her father said.

  “It doesn’t matter what you believe, Cliff. This isn’t about you. Nadine, I have to speak to her. You know I do. You’ve seen what this can do to the women in our family.”

  “So you’re telling us this house is haunted?” her father challenged.

  “Maybe we should sell it. Move. Find another B and B somewhere else,” Nadine offered in a trembling voice.

  “Your house isn’t haunted,” Ellen answered. “There is just a thin place in this house where spirits can slide in. And you know as well as I do that moving won’t change anything, Nadine. There are thin places everywhere.”

  In the end her parents had relented.

  The four of them sat down in the living room. Cliff and Nadine were quiet while Aunt Ellen tried to explain that Brette might see someone like the boy in the attic in another place, another time. Or maybe even inside the house again. Someone who didn’t seem quite all there, and whom other people could not see.

  “You don’t need to be afraid of them, Brette,” Aunt Ellen said. “None of you need to be afraid.” And then she looked at Cliff and Nadine. “They won’t hurt anyone.”

  “Are they ghosts?” Brette asked, and she remembered feeling no fear.

  “That is what some people call them. I call them Drifters because they kind of float in and out. Like birthday balloons. You don’t need to call them anything, Brette. You don’t need to do anything with them. Or for them. Do you hear me?”

  Brette had nodded.

  Aunt Ellen leaned forward then and took Brette’s small hands in her wrinkled ones.

  “I want you to listen carefully to me. It is very important that you remember what I tell you now. Are you listening?”

  “Yes,” Brette had said.

  “You can see them, and I can see them. Your grandma could see them. There are very few people who can. It’s something that some of the girls in our family can do, but not all. Your mommy can’t.”

  Brette cast a glance at her mother. A tear had run down one of Nadine’s cheeks, leaving a shiny trail. She smiled at Brette reassuringly.

  “Brette, since most people can’t see what you and I can see, this has to be our little secret,” Ellen continued. “Yours, and mine, and your
mommy’s and daddy’s. Okay? You can’t tell anyone because they won’t understand. This is our secret for the four of us. Just us four. Will you promise me that? Can you keep a secret?”

  Even then, Brette didn’t quite understand what the big deal was, but her parents were nodding encouragingly. “I can keep a secret,” she’d said.

  “That’s my good girl. Now, one more thing. And this is the most important thing. Are you ready to hear it?”

  She nodded.

  “I want you to promise me you won’t talk to them, Brette. I know you might want to. I did when I was your age. But it’s not a good idea.”

  This seemed a silly request to Brette. “Why isn’t it a good idea?” she’d asked.

  “Because if you talk to them, they will come around more often. And you won’t want that. You’re going to have to trust me on this, Brette. If you were to talk to the little boy in the attic, he might want to stay here. But this is not his house. It’s your house. Yours and Mommy’s and Daddy’s. If you start talking to him, he may never want to leave. And he needs to leave. He doesn’t belong here. None of them belong here.”

  “Because they’re dead,” Brette said, and her mother shuddered. Her father had closed his eyes.

  “Yes,” Aunt Ellen replied.

  “Why aren’t they in heaven?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why they didn’t go on to where they were supposed to when they died, but that’s not your problem, sweetie.”

  “Whose problem is it?”

  “It’s their problem. I think they know what they need to do. But they are afraid.”

  This concept fascinated Brette. “Ghosts are afraid?”

  “Yes,” Aunt Ellen answered. “They are afraid of what they can’t see, just like us. It’s as if there’s a bridge they need to cross. And it’s like crossing over the ocean, Brette. They can’t see the other side. So they are afraid to cross it.”

  While Brette contemplated this, Aunt Ellen squeezed her hands again. “Can you remember the two things you need to do?”

  Brette nodded. “Keep the secret. And . . .” The other request had floated away on her thoughts.