last day of the last furlough

"He doesn’t know, thought Babe, lying in the dark. He doesn’t know what Frances does to me, what she’s always done to me. I tell strangers about her. Coming home on the train, I told a strange G.I. about her. I’ve always done that. The more unrequited my love for her becomes, the longer I love her, the oftener I whip out my dumb heart like crazy X-ray pictures, the greater urge I have to trace the bruises: “Look, stranger, here is where I was seventeen and borrowed Joe Mackay’s Ford and drove her up to Lake Womo for the day....Here, right here, is where she said what she said about big elephants and little elephants....Here, over here, is where I let her cheat Bunny Haggerty at gin rummy at Rye Beach; there was a heart in her diamond run, and she knew it....Here, ah, here, is where she yelled ‘Babe!’ when she saw me serve an ace at match point against Bobby Teemers. I had to serve an ace to hear it, but when I heard it my heart—you can see it right here—flopped over, and it’s never been the same since….And here—I hate it here—here is where I was twenty-one and I saw her in one of the booths at the drugstore with Waddell, and she was sliding her fingers back and forth through the knuckle grooves of his hand.” He doesn’t know what Frances does to me, Babe thought. She makes me miserable, she makes me feel rotten, she doesn’t understand me—nearly all of the time. But some of the time, some of the time, she’s the most wonderful girl in the world, and that’s something nobody else is. Jackie never makes me miserable, but Jackie never really makes me anything. Jackie answers my letters the day she gets them. Frances takes anywhere from two weeks to two months, and sometimes never, and when she does, she never writes what I want to read. But I read her letters a hundred times and I only read Jackie’s once. When I just see the handwriting on the envelope of Frances’ letters—the silly, affected handwriting—I’m the happiest guy in the world."

adrina.