The well-wishers thronged him immediately: Heavy-hearted aunts and uncles. Former classmates. Neighbors who awaited their own boys. Even the priests from St. Elizabeth and the shopkeepers over on the Avenue.

All of them took their turn to cling to the good arm of this young man who had made it back.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” they told Clem.

They brought bottles of whiskey, cakes and bread, quilts they had sewn, blankets they had knitted. But Uncle Ernie outdid them all. He brought a steak – a steak! – which no one could believe because there were still rations. Clem’s mother cooked it up on the stove and they all crowded around him in the dining room elbow to elbow in front of the sideboard. The smell filled the rowhouse and Clem’s mouth salivated at the foreign familiarity of meat.

Meat!

This was the meal he and the other boys had dreamt about in the forests of Germany.

Slab on plate, the steak was placed in front of him. His eyes tasted it already and his mother made a little clap of delight for her boy was back, back in their home, back at her table. She was so happy – they were all so happy to see him – and the steak was so beautiful.

“How’s he gonna …?” One of the cousins started.

“Oh, let me,” His mother reached for the knife.

“No, I’ll do it.” His father pulled the utensil from her hand.

“Let me help you, Clem,” Uncle Ernie piped up. He was the one who had brought the steak after all.

“Ernie!” Aunt Minnie whispered.

Clem’s mother suddenly dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron.

His father cleared his throat. “It’s all right,” Howard Kunkel took the knife in his hand and sliced his son’s food.

Little by little, blood draining from a wound, the guests trickled into the living room or home to their own rowhouses.

“Must get back!”

“Your parents must want you all to themselves.”

“If I don’t go now, I’ll never want to let you out of my sight.” (This last, of course, from Aunt Minnie.)

Soon only Clem and his father were left.

“It’s all right,” Howard Kunkel said again, and he put his son’s food – all cut up in pieces no bigger than shrapnel – in front of Clem. “It’s a good steak, son,” he said and gave his boy a pat on the back. “Eat up.”

*    *   *

From the window of his childhood bedroom, Clem could look out on the backyard of his parents’ home and the neighbors’ yards, stretched out like the blocks in a set placed flush, his mother’s geraniums as red and round as bouncy balls, and a bit of hedge trimmed into a tidy rectangle. Theirs was in the middle of the block, which had ten rowhomes in all, each one the replica of the one next to it. In the early morning hours of the milkman, Clem walked the back alley behind Linwood, looking in the yards. He felt hidden and protected back there and he liked the regularity and predictability of his neighborhood, one home after another, each one not looking terribly different than the one before it. Patterson, he avoided for the opposite reason – a city park though it was, it stood in front of him like unmapped terrain, territory that would surely hide the enemy.

He didn’t think about the war when he was walking. He thought about a job. He couldn’t go back to the canning factory, even though his boss had told him to call him up as soon as he put two feet back on good old American soil. No matter what. Sure as could be, Clem could just picture old Hamby’s face if he showed up one day and said, “Hey there, fellow, how about giving a one-armed soldier some work?” Old Hamby probably wouldn’t even be able to look him in the eye. He was an all right fellow in most ways, but Clem just knew how it’d be, and it wasn’t right to put the guy in a spot like that.

But there it was, a spit of luck, the Army needed their veterans. They had a job for him testing prosthetics down at Walter Reed. First day, he pulled out the one good suit he had before he joined up – a jacket and trousers made of brown wool – but it took him ten minutes of soldier-style cursing to button up the trouser fly with his left hand. Damn tricky button kept sliding between his big fingers. He was eighteen, a big, athletic man who stood over six feet tall, and it took ten minutes to button up his fly. He wasn’t about to ask his mother for help, though. Christ, it was bad enough she tied his shoes for him, and his father helped him with his tie. He wasn’t about to ask them to button his pants.

Before he went overseas, there was a girl who would un-button his pants for him, slide her smooth hands down. Trini Magruder, the sister of one of the guys at work. She was good, unexpected, too, because she wasn’t real pretty in the way that he thought girls like that should be. After he’d come home, she’d written to tell him she was so sorry to hear about his injury, but that she was so glad he was alive. Trini Magruder was happy he was alive, but she had married another man from the canning plant.

Sure enough, he thought.

*    *    *

Clem had no idea what a prosthetic looked like. Never in his life had he seen one, nor did he really know anyone but other soldiers who had lost their arms, and they had gone home to different towns across the country. The arm they gave him at Walter Reed was a laminated plastic sleeve with a split hook at the end. It fit onto his body with a strap that wrapped around his left shoulder. By moving his shoulder, he could make the hook open and close. A doctor about the age of Clem’s father helped him unbutton his shirt and put on the device. The man’s gray eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he looked at him – the patient not the person – but then this was the way that Clem preferred it.

They worked in an examining room that was a bit larger than most, although it had the requisite charts and stethoscopes, the jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors. It also had a rectangular table, like a small mess hall table, Clem thought, and then corrected himself, a small cafeteria table. On the table was an array of objects, a book, a hairbrush, and even a glass of water. The doctor, his name was Klassen, invited Clem to practice lifting each object with the hook, working up to the glass of water, which Clem was to lift to his lips and sip. It was surprisingly easy to pick up the book, the hairbrush and the other items, pinching each one between the prongs of the hook as though there was a large pair of tweezers at the end of his wrists. But the cup proved much more difficult. The prongs of the hook didn’t fit snugly around the glass, so he couldn’t lift it from the table. He tried again and again, pressing his shoulder against the strap to make the hook open and close. Each time he moved the glass a little forward or backward, but he could never quite lift it from the table.

Dr. Klassen took notes, not saying much until at last he looked at Clem and said, “I think we’ve discovered a problem with the prosthetic. This is good progress.” Pleased and suddenly more talkative, he helped Clem out of the device, asking him questions about where he lived and inquiring about his family.

“Will you come back next week? We have much more to test.”

Clem nodded yes. Dr. Klassen held up his shirt and Clem turned around and slid into it. The doctor buttoned each button for him.

“This is important work,” he told Clem. “You are a great help.” Without thought, he offered his left hand for Clem to shake, and Clem gripped it and shook it heartily. Nothing more needed to be said.

*    *    *

June Malinowski was in the dining room, hemming a dress for another neighbor when Clem went to see her. It was a Thursday afternoon and he’d just finished weeding for his mother. He had changed into a clean work shirt, both sleeves rolled up, and a pair of dungarees the same blue color – a workman’s uniform. He looked tidy enough, but he suddenly wished he had put on something else.

June was prettier than he had remembered. Bobby pins secured her coppery hair away from her face and her legs were slender and long. She was taller than most girls, although still short to Clem.

“Come in, come in,” she beckoned and he followed her into the dining room where a rack of dresses, jackets and other clothes waiting to be repaired stood in the bay window.

“My mother said you have fine hand and you can stitch up just about any tear.”

(Actually what his mother had said the night before was that she didn’t think that bum Ned Malinowski was ever going to come home and who knew what would happen to June, a good girl left behind by a man like that.

“She’s lucky her parents could take her back in. She isn’t more than a girl herself,” Eleanor Kunkel had said. “She’s a pretty thing, too.”)

“Your mother’s very kind,” June said now.

“She is.”

“Do you have something that needs to be mended?”

“No, I need some shirts fixed.” Now it was his turn to redden, for by now Clem was getting paid to wear a prosthetic all the time, a plastic arm not much different than the first one he had practiced with at Walter Reed, except this one had a smaller hook with which he carried his laundry sack. He opened the sack and laid out two work shirts like the one he was wearing, and a white dress shirt.

“I need a new cuff on each of these, just for the right arm.”

“A new cuff?”

“Yes. The prosthetic’s good and all, but I can’t button a button very good with it. If I had a cuff that didn’t need to be buttoned on my good arm, I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

“I see.” She studied the shirt.

“All right, I’m going to need some fabric. And I’ll do the best I can to match them up nice.”

He didn’t know what fabric cost, so handed her a five-dollar bill. “If you need more money, let me know.” Then his face reddened again; he didn’t want to insult her. “See, I’m getting paid regular now for the work I’m doing at Walter Reed.”

She nodded. “When do you need the shirts?”

“Next week or so.” He shrugged. He didn’t know if that was enough time or too long. How long did it take to fix a shirt? “I mean … it’s hot enough now that I’m just rolling up my sleeves and I don’t need them buttoned anyhow.”

“I suppose I can have the shirts for you next week,” she said.

“Thank you. That’s a big help.”

Clem found himself looking forward to seeing June again. It was the shirts, he thought. It would be nice to have shirts that he wouldn’t have to fiddle with, he told himself as he knocked on her door. He wasn’t a fussy man and he wanted to go about life like a regular person, not thinking about cuffs and water glasses and cutting steak.

“Well hiya Clem.” A tape measure hung around her neck and on her wrist was a pin cushion. She looked prettier than the last time.

“Hi.”

“Come on in. I think your shirts turned out nicely.”

She led him to the dining room where they hung on the rack in the bay window.

“See what I mean?” She stepped closer to him so he could see the work she did on the sleeve. He thought he could smell the perspiration at her temples.

“Go on upstairs and try it on. That way I can make sure the fit is good.”

When he came back down, June took his good arm and looked over the fit. Her fingers on him were firm, purposeful. The bare skin of her soft wrist was against the back of his hand, and he caught his breath.

In the alley, a bell jingled. From somewhere in the house, June’s little sisters whooped and hollered. “The ice cream man! The ice cream man!”

Clem had forgotten there were other people in the house.

Two girls rushed into the hot dining room and Clem, eager for an excuse to turn away from June, fished a nickel from his pocket for each of them.

“That was kind of you,” June said.

“They’re nice girls.”

She smiled at him. “They’re gonna be your new best friends now.”

“Hope so,” was all he could manage.

*    *    *

A few days later, Clem went to the store and bought himself two new shirts, white with thin blue stripes, a nice shirt to wear to the hospital. He didn’t really need anything new. Often he worked shirtless so that Dr. Klassen could see the whole prosthetic. Still, Clem went right from the store to June’s house, showing her the two shirts, one to wear and one to cut apart to make the new cuff.

“Work’s slow,” she said. “I could have it for you tomorrow.”

Next day, he returned when June’s mother happened to be out. Nervously, he undid the buttons to the shirt he had on. June didn’t look him in the eye, but she helped him fit his arms into the shirt and then did each button. When her hands were almost to his collar, he leaned forward and kissed her just as he had imagined doing. She didn’t pull away, so he kissed her again and again, taking in the scent and the taste of her right there in the dining room, until finally June pulled away from him.

 “Clem, you gotta go.”

*    *    *

Every few days, Clem found an excuse to go to June’s, to bring the little girls candy, or to say hello to June’s mother. Once when there was no reason at all, he stayed away for five days. But he found he couldn’t bear it and he ripped each of the buttons from a shirt so he had a purpose for standing on her porch at seven o’clock at night.

She was the only one he told about his work at Walter Reed. Watching her thread a needle, he told her how he finally lifted the glass of water to his lips and took a drink. Dr. Klassen clapped his hands with unscientific joy, but immediately gave Clem a new task.

“Now I have to throw the ball with the hook and catch it with my left hand,” he told June.

“Good for you,” she said, feeling as light as the needle in her hands. “Good for you.”

*    *    *

A lone cat found its way to their alley. Lean and tabby, he was even tempered and used to people. June was happy it picked their house, of all the houses, at which to beg. And though she knew she shouldn’t – and didn’t dare tell her parents – she still set out a little bowl of milk on the back porch.

As she turned back toward the house, she spotted a young man on the corner. Tall and dark haired he looked familiar standing there in the way that he was.  She had to look at him twice before she realized he wasn’t her husband.

He’s never coming back, she thought again, for the idea that had occurred to her as many times as Clem had wondered if he was going to be killed. The two of them, teenagers still, had experienced the heart ache of people twice their age.

“He’s never coming back,” she said aloud and looked across the alley at the Kunkels’ house.

And it was then, at that moment that her heart, like Clem’s, dared to stray from its ache.

 

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