Yours, Francis

A cool breeze plays across my face through the open window, but it’s still warmer than it should be in November. The scene before me is black as the clock on my mantle ticks away the early hours of the morning. Yet another night where I am unable to find respite from my waking nightmares.

Ever since Francis was drafted, my nights have been spent restlessly with only the stars and cicadas for company. I wish for peace every night, that I might sleep or that someone—finally—would come knock on my door, though just the thought of that knock makes my heart drop to the soles of my feet. In my hands I fold and unfold the last letter Francis wrote me nearly three months ago. It’s the not knowing where he is and if he’s alive that keeps me up at night. How could I close my eyes for an escape when my husband might be hiding in a trench somewhere fearing for his life?

I cradle my belly with one hand, lost in thought. This is the other reason I am desperate for Francis to come home. If not for the baby, I might be able to bear the lack of sleep, if not the endless wondering.

The child certainly wasn’t planned. At first, we wanted to wait until after Francis had graduated from college to provide a more stable home, but during his senior year, Francis was drafted. He came home on leave six months ago. Before that, it had been nearly a year since I last saw him, since he was drafted.

I hadn’t known that he was going to get leave. Things are so unpredictable at the front, who ever knows when they might be spared from the fight? One moment I received a telegram that Francis was on his way and the next he was in my arms. I could still feel his fingers brushing my hair over my ear, his thumb stroking the back of my hand.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I know,” I whispered back with a smile.

I clench my fists, crumpling the letter slightly. What I wouldn’t give to have that exchange again, or even just to hear him say my name in that soft and lilting way of his.

The son of French immigrants, Francis grew up learning English alongside his parents in a French-speaking household. School helped him with most of his accent, but occasionally it peeked through, like when he said my name, “Catherine”.

Tears brimming in my eyes at the thought of never hearing him speak to me again, I flatten the letter on my lap. I have read it every day for the last three months. I have written countless responses but never received another letter. I wrote to the war office and to his commanding officer, but they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—tell me anything. I fear the worst. I promised myself earlier in the night that I wouldn’t read his letter again, but at this moment, imagining the sound of his voice is the only thing that might bring me comfort.

Dear Catherine, it starts. He never called me by my nickname, Cat. Always Catherine.

You know how very dearly I miss you. I can hardly believe it’s been three months since I saw you last, and nearly five years since I first mustered up the courage to speak to you. I wish I could be home for our anniversary.

I sigh, my heart throbbing as I remembered the first day he spoke to me, the first time I dared break the rules.

One day in our last year of secondary school, we were both waiting to walk our younger siblings home, and he cornered me. I had seen him around a few times and thought him handsome, but French boys like him didn’t talk to Irish girls like me, so when he asked if I liked films, I had to do a doubletake.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you like films?”

“I… suppose so?” Not that I had seen very many of them. But I wasn’t going to admit that in front of Francis. Maybe he was trying to make fun of me. It was clear just from our clothes that his family was better off than mine, never mind my three younger siblings to his one.

“Would you like to see one with me this weekend? Saturday afternoon?”

I scrutinized his face. He seemed deadly serious, and there was color high on his cheekbones. “You mean it?” I asked cautiously. The last thing I needed was to agree and be stood up.

“’Course I do. I’ll pick you up at two?”

The school bell rang and the doors opened with a flood of children. I hesitated a moment, knowing I had only seconds to decide before Jamie, Patrick, and Nora found me. My parents certainly wouldn’t approve of my going on this date unchaperoned—they were old fashioned and fiercely protective of our family’s reputation—and they would most definitely not approve of the boy. Come on Cat, I told myself. Live a little.

“I’ll meet you there,” I told him, just as Nora came flying into my skirts. “Two-thirty.”

His eyes lit up as he nodded, and I could feel my blush in response. “Two-thirty,” he said, his sister dragging him away.

The afternoon of the movie, it took all of my powers of secrecy to meet him. He joked about my disheveled hair and uneven socks, which earned him a smack on the arm. I told him my parents thought I was unwell and resting for the afternoon and that I had gone out the window to meet him. “And what did you have to do to get out of the house?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Well, nothing. I just said I was going to a film.”

“That’s what I thought,” I said smugly, but my stomach filled with dread. We might both be children of immigrant families, but we came from different worlds.

The movie passed far too quickly, and we were back out in the evening air before I knew it. We hadn’t spoken much, and I could feel our conversation from the beginning of the afternoon weighing heavily between us. As we walked aimlessly, though I didn’t want to leave, I worked up the nerve to say I had to go. “Francis-”

“Catherine-”

We both stopped. I took a deep breath. “You first.”

He took a small step closer to me and lifted my hand in his. My eyes went wide. Maybe I should have gone first, I thought.

“Catherine, I know you don’t know me well, and I know it feels like we come from two lives that don’t fit together. But I have noticed you every day since the tenth grade, and I would like to—intend to—court you, no matter what our families think. I have been in love with you since the first day I saw you.”

I knew what I ought to say, that I could not be with him, that I could not disobey my family in this way or risk hurting the only people who mattered to me. But the words wouldn’t come. It wasn’t like they were caught in my throat; they simply weren’t there. Instead, the words I found waiting were: “I would like that. I would like to… to see you again.”

We parted ways soon after with promises of another meeting. I could hardly wait. School passed the same as ever, with little interaction between us, except for the nervous energy that kept me on the edge of my seat each week I saw him. My friends and family all attributed it to my upcoming graduation, but, though I wanted to deny it, I knew the actual cause. Francis.

I hope you’re getting on all right and that my parents haven’t been too overbearing. If they have, well, I suppose that’s better than the alternative.

I nearly laugh at this line, despite having read it before and the tears now rolling down my face; his parents hadn’t been exactly thrilled when he brought me home, and the fact that they might be overbearing now, while true, was rather comical to a sleep-deprived mind.

My parents were second-generation Irish Americans. Both sets of my grandparents had immigrated in the 1860s. Though my family and the Irish community had been on their way up, I still grew up in the ghetto, and Francis’s parents believed I wasn’t good enough for their son, which they made clear to me the first time he brought me home.

When we met up several Saturdays after our first meeting, he coaxed me to his house. “I intend to marry you, so I want you to meet my family,” he said.

Though the weeks had given me the chance to grow more confident in these forbidden actions and his words left me slightly giddy, this felt like the riskiest part of everything. The neighborhood he lived in, while not upscale, was considerably nicer than the ghetto where my family lived.

I hesitated at the doorway.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked, a half-smile on his face.

“What if they don’t approve of me?” The words bubbled up with no care for my dignity.

Francis’s face went stern. “Then they can all rot.”

“Francis!” I said, aghast. “You can’t mean that.”

“Catherine, I want you to be my wife. Their opinions have no bearing on that. If they don’t like it, then we don’t need them.”

We. I shuddered. “Okay,” I told him. “Then let’s go in.” I held my hand out to him, which he took.

The smile reappeared as he pushed inside the house. “Maman! Papa!” he called as we moved into the entryway. I was hidden partially behind him, so I could see when his mother came in, holding a dish towel and wearing an apron, and froze when she caught sight of me and my red hair.

“Francis, qu'est-ce que c'est?” She kept her voice light, a smile on her face, but I could tell she already didn’t approve.

“Maman, this is Catherine.” Francis pulled me out from behind him. “She is the girl from school I told you about—the one I’m seeing.” I noticed how he omitted his plans to marry me.

“Mais elle est irlandaise. Et il y a tellement de belles filles françaises.”

“English, please, Maman. Catherine doesn’t speak French.”

His mother looked furious. Before she could say anything, Francis’s father came in the room. “Francis! Et qui as-tu là-bas?” The smile fell off his face when he, too, noticed my red hair.

“Papa, meet Catherine.”

“Une Irlandaise?”

Francis looked irritated. “Yes, an Irish girl. Please speak English.”

“Non, je ne parlerai pas anglais. Je n'aurai pas ça. Vous renvoyez cette fille chez elle. Vous ne devez plus la revoir,” his father thundered. I didn’t understand the French, but the translation was clear: I was not welcome here.

Francis looked ready to boil over, but I tugged him backward to the door. “Please don’t start this. Not over me,” I whispered. Louder, I added, “Monsieur and Madame Bernard, you have a lovely home, thank you for having me.” With one last pull, I managed to get Francis out onto the porch where he slammed the front door and stormed down to the dusty road.

“I can’t believe them,” he fumed. “That they could be so prejudiced—”

“Francis,” I said, catching his arm. “It’s all right. Not a lot of people like the Irish”—a wry smile—“but at least I know my family will like you.”

He took my hand in his. “I know I’ll like them, too, if they’re anything like you.”

I laughed. “They’re so much like me, you might think you’ve had enough of the whole affair after you’ve met them.”

“Never,” he said fervently, looking into my eyes. That was the moment I knew he meant every word and that he really did have plans to marry me.

The following week he found his own place and a job to keep up the rent, promising that the small apartment would be mine, too, when we married. He met my family not long after, and despite my fears that they wouldn’t have anything in common, Francis, Da, and my eldest brother Sean all got on like gangbusters. Francis and I married shortly before he started at university.

I chuckle now at how his parents are up at our house every other day. Since they found out about the baby, Marie has been doting on me like she is my own mother. Before I can feel sadness over the loss of my parents, I return to Francis’s letter.

I am already counting down to when I might see you next. I told my captain about the baby, and he says I might be able to get early leave. We should start thinking about names, don’t you think? How’s Sean for a boy or Anna for a girl?

Another wave of sadness hits me. Of course, I have no objection to Sean being the child’s name. Sean and Francis were drafted together, but in September of last year, the fateful telegram arrived at my parents’ house. They hadn’t been in the same unit, but Francis had heard the news and written to me separately. Another letter I still have for a memory I will never forget.

Anna is Francis’s sister’s name, another selection I have no objection to. She was ultimately the one who healed the rift between Francis and his parents, though I would love to be able to take the credit. After school most days, rather than go home, Anna would appear at the door of our shabby home under the pretense of visiting her brother. While he was either at school or working, she would sit and talk to me while I did neighborhood laundry to help support us. At night, Anna would go home and talk to her parents about her brother, weaving tales from what I told her and selectively inserting me in the story. I knew they missed their son and I felt guilty for being the cause of everything, so though I disapproved of the lying, I let it go.

Nearly a year after we had been married, Francis’s mother showed up on our doorstep. I invited her in for tea. She came in and spared me only the barest of pleasantries, spending most of her time focused on Francis. I didn’t mind. This healing was what I had longed for. Over the years before Francis was drafted, these teas became a regular thing and slowly I became part of the conversations, too. None of which would have been possible if not for Anna.

I do hope you’ll write to me soon.

I did write to you, Francis. Where are you, Francis?

I miss the sound of your voice.

Come home, Francis, and be sick of hearing me talk.

I love you always.

Always and forever, Francis.

Yours, Francis

Will these be the last words he ever says to me?

I could read this letter a thousand times and it will still end the same way. But I promised myself. No more.

I close my eyes to try to sleep. Dear Catherine. Dear Catherine. Dear Catherine. The words ring in my head. I love you always. Yours, Francis. Yours, Francis. Yours, Francis.

Suddenly, I can’t take it anymore. The breath is caught in my chest. I need to get out; I can’t stay in this tiny apartment all alone. I decide to go see his parents.

My eyes snap open, and I face a bright room. Daylight is streaming through the window. I pull myself upright; I’ve managed to sleep for a few hours at least, somehow. But now the day is ahead of me—a Saturday, so there isn’t even work to distract me—and already I dread the sleepless night I know will follow this never-ending day.

Beginning to feel the panic creep in more quickly, I shift my focus to the window. A warmer breeze than last night blows through the crack I’ve left open. A lone figure is walking down the dirt road in front of the building. He wears dark clothes, the color too difficult to distinguish from this distance. But he continues closer and closer still, rounding the corner of the building toward the side entrance that will allow him to bypass the first-floor storefront. He is out of sight of my window.

My breath catches again. Unless I imagined it or it was a trick of the light as he rounded the corner, the man is wearing an olive drab coat and hat, standard army issue.

Shifting quickly but carefully—I am unused to the new center of gravity this baby gives me—I extricate myself from the bed and pad toward the front door. I could be wrong, I tell myself. He might not be here for me. Other soldiers’ wives live in this building. And even if he is here for me, he is not Francis. Francis is taller and not nearly as gaunt as the man I saw.

Before I make it to the door, there is a knock.

Thump thump. All I can hear is my heartbeat in my ears.

Thump thump. This can’t be happening.

Thump thump. He can’t be dead.

Thump thump.

Thump thump.

Open the door, Cat. At least you’ll know.

I slide back the deadbolt and turn the knob, throwing the door back wide. Standing before me on the doorstep is Francis. He looks malnourished and stooped, but it’s him.

With a cry, I throw myself into his arms, tears pouring down my face.

“I love you, Catherine,” he says, the familiar lilt in his voice. It makes me cry even harder.

“I know,” I sob back. “I love you, too.”