John panicked: the ethereal tone of her voice. Had he lost her again? “Of course it does!”

“It’s just God’s way of showing us,” she said. “That we haven’t any control.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Wilma.” John set his part of the broken jar in the sink, started pulling out drawers, slamming them shut. He couldn’t remember where the towels were. “It was just an accident. Now let me get something to wrap your hand with.” As he turned toward her again, he saw another drop of her blood fall from within her fist into the pickle juice on the floor. The smell of the pickles was wafting upward, their sweet-sourness burning his throat.

“It doesn’t even bother you,” she said. “Does it? That they’re gone?”

He looked at her; had finally had enough. “I’m proud of them, for God’s sake! And so they’re gone. They’ll be back!”

“People are dying over there, John. Thousands of people are dying.”

“Not Americans.”

“You can’t honestly believe we’ll get through this whole war without any Americans—”

“Not my boys.”

“How do you know, John? Did God tell you?”

“Well, apparently, He’s been talking to you.”

“I’ve tried. I’ve made bargains with Him. If I sew this many kits, the boys will be all right. If I give up my piano, if I stop being so selfish, plant a garden, be good to Harry and Jinny, then the boys will be all right.”

“Good Lord, Wilma,” he said. So this was the explanation for her change.

“I never should have been a mother, John,” she said. “I was never meant to be a mother, and here I am, four times over. Do you know what it’s like? Knowing they came out of me? Everything they do, it’s like they’re plucking these little pieces right out of my body. Carrying me away with them. Those boys!—not realizing that when they go off to the war it’s like they grabbed my stomach and are hauling it along with them, trailing my intestines across the ocean! I swear to you, John, if something happened to them—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to them.”