As it turned out, Alison was invited to the college-age party on Saturday. She was excited to go but as soon as she was there, she found her heart wasn't in it. She kept alternating between worrying about Jimmy—he hadn't send them a letter in quite some time—and feeling anxious and annoyed over having to meet with Steve Rogers the next day. So she feigned an upset stomach and went home alone. Her girlfriends didn't even care; they just kept on dancing with the few boys who were left in town, too young to enlist (not that that stopped most of them from trying repeatedly). Most of the girls left were college-aged while the boys were high school aged, so the boys were clearly in heaven.
She had a fight with her mother before she went to bed, as usual, and then spent the night tossing and turning, slipping between fretful nightmares of lost boys in the winter of the war and having to sit alone at lunch while everyone laughed at her. She wondered what Jimmy would say about her now. She'd become a much shallower creature in his absence. Would he be disappointed in her? That would have broken her heart. She was thoroughly devoted to her older brother. Unfortunately, she had the uncomfortable feeling he wouldn't like the sister he came home to.
If he comes home.
The result of her tossing and turning was that the next morning, she looked like an absolute fright—or so she thought, anyway. Her mother agreed, frowning at her and telling her to go fix her face before going out in public. "I won't have any daughter of mine going out with shadows under eyes," she remarked coldly, setting her teacup down on the table. Alison rolled her eyes but knew her mother was right. Appearances were everything. They were the reason she'd managed to trick people into assuming she was wealthy for this long. No one knew her family struggled as much as—if not more than—other families out there. The Depression and the Second War had certainly taken a toll on everyone in the nation.
She covered her dark shadows with cover-up, painted light pink rouge onto her cheeks and applied a light pink natural lipstick, and then spent a few minutes painstakingly darkening her eyelashes. Then she set her golden curls, thanking God that she'd had the good sense to go to bed with her naturally-pin-straight hair in curlers. Curls were all the rage these days. When she was done, she looked presentable.
"Angel!" her father sang from behind his newspaper as she entered the small kitchen and her heart rose. Where her mother constantly scolded her and told her the numerous ways she needed to improve her looks, walk, talk, and attitude…her father thought she was perfect the way she was. She knew it was horrible but she was glad the first war had damaged Daddy's left leg to the point where he had to walk with a limp and a cane. That had saved him from being drafted this time. She knew her father would never have survived another war, even if he came home in one piece. He still woke up shouting sometimes, frozen as if he were locked somewhere in some trench with men dying around him, and not in the comfort of his own home.
She was just glad her father couldn't go to war for a good reason. People understood why he couldn't go. He'd made the sacrifices for their country the last time. It was nothing like poor Ellen Craig's father. Alison shuddered when she remembered how everyone in the community had shunned Ellen and her mother after her father had ran for it. Deserters were despicable. What kind of man didn't fight for his own country? Ellen and her mother had had to move eventually because the shame was too much for them.
She kissed her father on the cheek—"Morning, Daddy!"—and ate a slice of toast with jam before heading out to church with her parents. She participated in the usual routine of greeting cheeks with all of the most important women in the area with her mother after services. No one in the area was anything as posh as the women on the Upper East Side…but they had their own hierarchies down here in Brooklyn as well and it was important to adhere to them. Afterwards they went out to lunch. They didn't have the money to spare, but it was important to be seen on Sunday afternoons in their Sunday best. They ordered the cheapest things at the local nice restaurant and chatted with more families who had also come over from their church. Alison pretended to care about the daughters of the women her mother was talking to but she didn't. Some of them weren't in her league and some of them were out of her league. Then they headed back home so her mother could take her routine Sunday afternoon nap before starting dinner and her father could…do whatever he did in his free time. Usually reading and doing crossword puzzles. The Lyndens weren't very creative people.
Alison checked the clock and saw it was 3:30 p.m. now. She put her shoes back on and headed out the door. When her mother asked to know where she was going, she called, "Library to do a school project," and knew her mother would be satisfied. Grades were important to show she was an educated, well-bred girl. A future husband wouldn't want a girl who couldn't even to basic sums to help balance checkbooks and do grocery shopping.
She was early to the library and figured she would browse the fashion magazines before Steve showed up but to her surprise and irritation, he was inside, leaning against one wall, waiting for her. Why had he arrived more than half an hour early? Didn't he have any sort of life?
"Hi," she said shortly, coming to a stop near him. She cut him off before he could speak. "Let's get started. What do you want to research for our project?"
"Do you care if I pick the topic?" he asked, surprise crossing his slightly beaky face. He coughed into the elbow of his shirt and Alison edged away slightly. He was always sick for some reason. She didn't want to get sick as well. Being sick was a surefire way to ruin your looks.
"I don't mind," she said truthfully, "as long as we get a good grade on it."
"Then I was thinking we could research some artist or art movement," he said.
"This is a history class, not an art class," she replied testily.
"I know, but we could connect it to history!" he said, seeming oddly excited now. "We could research some art movement of the past—how it changed history or affected something in history…"
Alison gave him a strange look. His blue eyes seemed to light up and his normally serious, rather blank face was excited now. Clearly he was passionate about art. That was…unexpected. "Fine," she relented, not having the willpower to argue with him. Besides, if he was this passionate about the topic, he would probably do a good job on the project. He might even actually do most of the work. Perhaps Alison could sit back and relax for once, instead of doing the whole project herself, which was usually the case.
They asked the reference desk to show them where books on art and artists in history were located and the woman behind the desk led them to the second floor of the library, a dusty corner in the back where it was clear hardly anyone had ventured there before. "I don't know anything about this," Alison said, "so you need to tell me what to look for."
"We could…talk about…" Steve scanned the shelves. "Impressionism. Look for books about Impressionism, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Alfred Sisley…"
"Wait, wait, stop!" Alison said. "I'll never remember any of those names. Write them down for me."
Steve shrugged and pulled a piece of paper and pencil out of the bag slung over his shoulder. He listed all the things to look for and handed it to Alison. He had terrible handwriting but it was legible, so she began to pull out books that were about the people and things he had listed, sighing at the thought of having to read through these. Or, at the very least, skim through them.
"They'll be ruining all these," Steve muttered to himself as they searched.
"What was that?" Alison asked.
His face colored pink and he busied himself with the shelves, skinny shoulders hunching together as if to hide his face. "Nothing."
"No, tell me," she said. "You said something was being ruined?"
He hesitated and then turned to look at her. "These works of art. Made by the people I wrote down. A lot of them—most of the pieces—are in France. And last I heard, the Nazi bast—" He stopped and turned even redder. "Sorry. I meant, the last I heard, the…Nazis have been looting and destroying art across Europe." His delicate hand clenched and it appeared he didn't notice. Clearly the thought of this art being lost or destroyed was very distressing to him.
He seemed embarrassed by his outburst and they both perused the shelves in silence for a few more minutes, letting out the occasional sneeze by all the dust flying around. Well, it was the occasional sneeze for Alison; Steve sneezed quite a lot. She asked, in an offhand voice, "So you like art?"
He was silent but she knew he'd heard her. She kept scanning the shelves for books but her mind had wandered too far for her to even be aware of what she was looking at now. Finally he replied, "Yes. I'm an artist. Well—I mean—I like art. And I draw."
"That's nice," Alison said simply and she meant it. She wished she could draw. She wished she had any talents at all, something to make her special. She wondered if Steve was good at drawing. If he was, she would loathe him even more. It wouldn't be fair, this scrawny, perpetually-sick boy having talents while she got nothing at all.
Finally they had enough books to do significant research with and they carried the teetering stack down to the reference desk. "I'll check them out on my father's card," Alison said, handing over her father's library card while Steve fumbled in his pockets for his card. He muttered his thanks and helped her carry the stack to a section full of tables near the back corner of the ground floor. It was reserved for students studying or people reading for leisure but no one was there. Alison couldn't imagine why any young person would want to hole themselves up in a dark and dusty library and ever read for fun and she remarked so.
"I've done that," Steve said blankly.
Of course he had. Even when she wasn't trying to insult him, she insulted him.
They decided to divide up the books between them and take notes on their respective books. Then they would regroup, try to combine their information into useful bits, and then create their project. They were to present some sort of historical topic to the class in a ten minute speech with some type of diagram or prop as an aide. Alison wasn't quite sure what they were going to use as their props.
"So why did you come here so early today?" she asked casually, carefully sliding her books into the large school bag she'd brought. "Didn't you go to church with your mother?"
"My mother's dead," he said. Alison looked up in shock, just in time to see his blue eyes dim slightly at the mention of his mother.
"I'm sorry," she said. "That was thoughtless of me."
"I didn't think you would care about that," he said.
"Beg pardon?" she asked, confused.
His face colored slightly and he looked down.
"No, tell me what you meant," she commanded.
"Only that…you've been thoughtless nonstop," he said, avoiding her gaze. "So I didn't think—"
"So you didn't think," Alison said tightly, her voice shaking with anger, "that I would be decent enough to feel bad that I asked you about your dead mother. And you can't even be a man and look me in the eyes when you say it." She slammed the last book into her bag, bending some pages in the process, and coldly said, "Well, that's fine. If that's how you want to think of me, I don't care. It's not like we're friends, of course, so it doesn't matter. Read your half of the material and have it done by next weekend. We're going to meet up then and get this damned—" She paused, wondering what her mother would say about her swearing—and then decided she didn't really care at the moment. "We're going to finish this project and get it over with," she finished, "so you don't have to suffer through another moment of seeing thoughtless me." She turned and flounced out of the library, her dramatic exit slightly ruined by the heavy bag which kept slamming into her legs.
She was in such a fury that she didn't even realize she was walking headlong into someone until she knocked right into them. The weight of her swinging bag yanked her backwards and she would have toppled over had they not grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back to standing, steadying her. She looked up in relief, ready to give her thanks—but her heart sank when she saw who it was: Bucky Barnes. Steve Rogers' pal. He'd apparently been lounging outside the library. Why, she had no idea. Most girls would have been thrilled to be saved from a fall by Bucky Barnes but not Alison. Something about him put her off.
Not that she thought he was cruel or some sort of lecher or anything of that sort—it was just that he was not the type of man Alison liked. She knew she openly stated that she liked tall and handsome and commanding men, but deep down inside, she wished she could find a sweet and sensitive man, someone gentlemanly and soft-spoken. Like the princes from old fashioned fairy tales. She never spoke this wish out loud because people would have laughed at her and told her she wanted a "softy" or a "girl" instead of a real man. She didn't understand why a real man couldn't be gentle and sensitive…but apparently he couldn't and that was that. And Bucky Barnes, as handsome as he was, was simply too cocky and arrogant and suave for Alison's tastes. She always felt like she'd never be able to keep pace with him.
And then there was the little fact where he always looked at her like she was beneath him—like she was a silly, shallow, spoiled, selfish little girl who was a bully and a coward. It made Alison furious—how dare he look down upon her?—but it also made her feel small inside because a part of her whispered, Well? Isn't that who you are? Isn't that who you've made yourself become? He's not wrong to look at you scornfully.
"Easy there," he said.
"Thank you," she said, quickly stepping away from him.
"How goes the research?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, a strange expression on his face. It looked a little condescending. Alison didn't like it. And of course Steve had told him all about the project and his partner. He'd probably told awful tales about her to Bucky.
"Fine," she said curtly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, my mother will be—" She stopped short, cursing herself. Why did she always make herself sound like an uptight priss around him? "I need to be on my way," she corrected, and then hurried past him, not daring to look back at him.
With the way this day had gone so far, Alison desperately hoped her mother wouldn't immediately get on her back when she arrived home. Her mother had a way of raising Alison's hackles right away—either by criticizing her clothes or face or behavior, or by demanding to know the intimate details about Alison's every move, or by sighing and giving Alison scornful looks while muttering about how her only daughter was a disappointment… Alison would never understand what she could do to measure up to her mother's impossibly high standards.
However, it seemed fate was not on Alison's side today. She arrived at their small brownstone home and immediately knew something was wrong because she didn't smell any dinner cooking, didn't hear the radio playing, didn't hear the faint sounds of her parents murmuring and talking…
Heart pounding, she dumped her bag of books in the foyer (promising to pick them up before her mother saw and scolded her) and hurried into the kitchen, calling, "Mother? Daddy? Where are—" and froze when she saw them sitting at the dining table, frozen wax figures, a letter sitting on the table between them. Her father's cigarette had almost burned itself out and he hadn't even noticed.
Her mouth went dry. "What—what is it?" she asked, hurrying forward but too afraid to pick up the letter and read it. "Is it Jimmy? Is he—did they say he's—?"
"Your brother," her mother said in a carefully controlled voice, "is missing in action." And with that, she got up and went upstairs to her bedroom to draw the shades and rest. Alison's father patted her hand sadly and then made his way to the family room to sit in silence, aimlessly twiddling with the radio and drinking glass after glass of liquor. Liquor they couldn't afford. And Alison was left to desperately try and pick up the pieces. Cook dinner for the family—dinner that sat left untouched and cold. Read her research books and do her homework, even when her mind was a million miles away. And cry into her pillow at night, praying that her brother would find his way back home alive and well.
Alison Lynden didn't lead half the charmed life most people thought she led.