Read Online Soldier Doll by Jennifer Gold - Free Book Online Page B

her legs. She let out a loud moan, hugging her legs together, as if willing the blood to stop.
    â€œNo. No, please,” she whispered. “Please, not this. Not now.”
    She sank to the floor, dizzy. She watched the blood as it seeped slowly through her skirts, a red tide of despair.
    â€œI won’t even have my son now.” The words were a whisper. She thought of her initial worry over the shame of the pregnancy and felt as if she might suffocate, overwhelmed with bitterness and grief. She gasped again. “So much blood spilled,” she whispered. “Ned’s, mine, the child’s. Our child.” She pictured Ned, dead in the trenches, and then a baby with Ned’s gray eyes, still and silent. “Never even had the chance to wake and see the world. Never felt the sun, never felt love.” Meg talked to herself quietly, her shoulders bent as if in prayer. Still, her eyes were dry as she stared down at her ruined skirts. She thought of the dreams she’d had for herself and Ned and the baby, silly childish fantasies that would remain that way forever, now.
    When the tears finally came, Meg began to write.
    Little soldier, just a boy
    Wide-eyed wooden children’s toy.
    Innocent of ruin and war
    Lost and gone, forevermore…

Chapter 4
    Toronto, Canada
    2007
    â€œI thought so—I knew it, actually,” says her mother as she reaches for the pizza box.
    Elizabeth watches her mother take another slice, her silver bracelet clinking against the watch her dad had bought her for her last birthday. She looks smug, the way someone does when they know something you don’t, and they decide that rather than tell you what it is, they’d prefer to draw it out a bit, torture you. Her mother makes a habit of acting superior. Elizabeth wonders if she takes the same tactic with her patients: “You know, Mrs. Smith, you really should have listened to me about the foot cream, because now you—pause, smug look—have a fatal toenail fungus! I’m so sorry.” Elizabeth stares at the mix of sauce and grease forming a mustache on her mother’s upper lip as she bites into her slice.
    â€œI told you I thought the soldier doll might be important.” Her mom spins the box toward her. “More pizza?”
    Elizabeth peers into the cardboard box. The grease has soaked through the bottom, leaving a fine slick of oil on the kitchen table. She looks away. “No, thanks.”
    She’s tired of take-out food, of cardboard boxes and foil-lined containers. Admitting this surprises her; she is sure that if two weeks ago someone had offered her the opportunity to eat fast food for an indefinite period, she’d have agreed readily to a happy future of pre-made sandwiches and stapled paper bags. But now, she’s sick of prepared food. More than that, it’s starting to disgust her. Right now, the stringy pizza cheese is about as appealing to her as a plateful of squirming eels.
    â€œYou did not.” Her father looks up in protest. He wipes his face with a paper napkin that says Subway, a souvenir from a previous meal. “All you said was that the doll reminded you of something, but you couldn’t remember what.”
    â€œI didn’t. I said I thought the doll was important. Liz?”
    â€œI’m on Dad’s side here, Mom.” Elizabeth raises her eyebrows at her mother, irked. She picks off a mushroom from her pizza and examines it suspiciously.
    â€œWhy are you picking off the mushrooms?”
    â€œThey look funny.”
    â€œHow can mushrooms look funny?”
    â€œThey just do. Look at this one.” Elizabeth holds it between her thumb and forefinger, delicately, as if handling a ticking explosive. “It’s all slimy.”
    â€œIs that why you’re handling it like it’s radioactive?”
    â€œMaybe that’s what’s wrong with it.” Elizabeth stabs it with a fork. “What was that place,