The following is an edited excerpt from my bestselling short story collection, Life Between Moments: New York Stories.
Penny felt sad and relieved when she sent the letter telling the boy she was engaged to that their love was a childish love. She no longer wanted to be married. Their romance was a youthful romance, she explained, and it had no chance of lasting. Military marriages can’t always work, Penny told him.
The boy was set to return the following year to New York City from his military service abroad. His merits included a high school diploma, a strong jawline, and medals he did not care for won from fighting a war he didn’t understand. They had wanted to be married before his overseas deployment but Penny wanted to wait, in case anything happened. She hesitated only because the war would take the boy far away, and she would be home and close and local.
Those who knew the boy found him a touch naive, but all was forgiven thanks to his courage, agreeableness and love for Penny. He loved her with every ounce of his being, and she had returned the same love for a time — up until the moment she did not.
Penny worked in a hospital as a nurse. It’s where Penny first met the boy. Everyone Penny worked with liked working with her, and many thought her friendly and charming. Her smile beguiled strangers and the warmth of her disposition kept them around. Penny wore her hair curly and at shoulder length, and always kept colored pens in her scrubs pocket. Colors make paperwork more interesting, she liked to tell patients.
When Penny and the boy had said their last goodbye at the train station, they kissed and cried together. Together they spoke about how impossible nighttimes were without one another, and how dearly they would miss each other.
The boy returned to war and the girl returned to the hospital. She was lonely at home though still busy with work, as all nurses are.
Everything changed when Penny met Lance — a tall and handsome and well-to-do gentleman who wore expensive coats and silver watches. He was not a military man, and his father ran a successful export business.
She had met the tall and handsome gentleman one evening at the hospital, the week after her engagement. The boy had already returned to his deployment, and Lance had come in to visit his bedridden mother. Penny had been assigned as the dying woman’s caretaker.
Penny was gentle and maternal by nature, and Lance admired the attention she gave to his mother. Any man is easily disarmed at the sight of someone treating his mother well. Penny spoke softly to the old lady when she wasn’t awake, and took pride in keeping her clean and comfortable and well-fed. It took but two visits before Lance asked Penny to lunch, unbothered by her modest but conspicuous engagement ring.
Soon, Lance brought Penny flowers, and Penny felt girlish and shy around him. The other boy, the one who loved Penny from so far away, received less attention but he felt secure knowing she had already agreed to marry him. Her letters became more infrequent, but the boy continued to send his, twice a week. The boy planned to come home and get a good job in business — it didn’t matter what — and be with Penny. It was understood upon returning he would no longer drink or smoke, and he did not care where they settled so long as they were together. Marriage with Penny was the only thing he wanted; all else he relegated to background noise.
Lance made love to Penny and that was that. Over and over again, yet Penny’s other boy did not know. Penny soon realized that it was Lance, not her lover at war, who she wanted to marry now.
In her letter to the boy, she said she was sorry, and described their love as childish three times. She didn’t expect the boy to understand, because how could he from so far away, but she was lonely and now had plans to marry someone else who was here rather than there, because that made all the difference. Penny told the boy that she was set to marry another man the following year.
She wished the boy the very best, and said she still loved him forever, and to look her up for lunch and coffee when he returned to New York. It was for the best, she told him, because that’s just how these things work.
When Penny dropped the letter off for the post, she felt good and relieved and in love. Everything was new again and her neck and shoulders felt light. She found a new love, and had enjoyed the romance of another until it was spent and done. Penny felt satisfied and secure with her choice. She had told the boy it was for the best, and she believed it to be true.
The following year Lance did not marry Penny, nor did he do so the year after that.
Lance left shortly after his mother died in the hospital. I was grieving and alone and you were cheerful and pretty, Lance told Penny. Nothing personal. Have a good afternoon. And then Lance walked away.
Penny kept working at the hospital as she planned, though now she no longer sat waiting for a boy at war to come home. She wondered if the boy had anything left to say to her. She never received an answer to her letter. At night Penny cried quietly to herself, wondering what went wrong. Wet and choking sobs in an empty apartment. She would think about why she sent that last letter to the boy, and it no longer made sense to her. He was there and she was here, and Penny’s last letter would keep it that way.
I wrote a bestselling book in a year while working full-time as a journalist. Learn more on Amazon.
Be First to Comment