"Shut up," Bradley said. "Don"t talk that way. Jesus, Joan. Oh, my
G.o.d!"
"Hey, there, don"t be "
But her final words didn"t make it; only blood escaped from her
lips. Then she coughed and spluttered, choking on that blood, sighed,
as if too weary to be bothered, and closed her eyes for the final time. Bradley was stupefied. He couldn"t believe that she was gone. He
kept glancing around him, as if time would move backward, and when
it didn"t, he just clung to her, holding her tightly, refusing to let go,
and shedding all the tears he had held in since the days of his
childhood.
The j.a.panese planes left and returned, then left for the final time.
Bradley accompanied Joan"s body to the morgue and held her hand in
the silence.
The only sound was his sobbing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Joan was flown home and buried back in Connecticut, near the house where she and Bradley had shared so much together. Mark and Miriam attended the funeral, bringing their children with them, and even though that made Bradley feel older, it also encouraged him.
Life went on and Joan still lived through her children and grandchildren, all of whom had loved her as much in life as they missed her in death.
Yet it wasn"t enough.
He felt broken up inside. He had Christmas with his children and grandchildren and some friends, but the love that they showered upon him only made him hurt more. He saw the New Year in alone, in a house that now seemed too large, and shortly after, feeling lost in the house, he decided to sell it.
Mark and Miriam didn"t need it: they now had their own homes and families. The house was only a morgue for his recollections of things won and lost, a graveyard for his past. Not a home any longer.
"I"m putting the house on the market," he told Mark.
"Gee, Dad..."
"It"s unbearable with your mother gone, Miriam."
"Yes, Dad," Miriam said. "I can understand that."
He sold it quickly enough, but the contents were a problem, because so much of what had seemed so necessary was now useless debris. He gave his children what they wanted, offered the rest to his friends, gave what was left to various charities, and took only his personal things.
On the last day, when he was sorting through the papers in his desk drawers, he came across the letters from Gladys Kinder in Europe, tied together in chronological order and looking well thumbed.
He sat down, feeling breathless, filled with love and guilt and heartbreak: his love for both women; his guilt over a betrayal that had taken place only in his thoughts; his heartbreak over the loss of both women, one living, the other dead. Feeling confused, he decided to burn the letters. But he couldn"t bring himself to do it, so he packed them away with his other things and left his home for the final time.
Needing the bright lights of Manhattan, he took an apartment near his office, started working himself to exhaustion, drank too much, and stayed in at nights, wanting only the silence.
That silence was broken by General Taylor, who dropped in, uninvited.
"You look terrible," he said.
"I guess I do," Bradley replied.
"What you need is a real distraction," Taylor said, "and that"s why I"m here. Do I at least get a drink?"
Bradley poured him a bourbon. Taylor carried it across the office, taking a seat under the window, in striations of pearly-gray light.
"I"m really sorry about Joan," he said. "I don"t know what else to say."
"Don"t say anything, General."