Only Oona by Tamatha Cain

Author:Tamatha Cain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orange Blossom Publishing
Published: 2022-12-29T16:56:56+00:00

Bainbridge Army Airbase, 1942

Dearest Oona,

I just knocked off my post for the day and took up another one—in front of this typewriter. I leaned back in the chair, pressed my knuckles, and then lit a cigarette. I can’t put it off any longer. I have to finally sit down to write a reply to Elizabeth Murray. Ever since she introduced us at the dinner at her house, the woman will not stop badgering me for details about my progress with you. How is it going? Is she in love with you yet? Will I propose?

Elizabeth already knows how I feel about you, Oona. I’ve already irrevocably committed that to paper in previous letters, and I’d like very much to be able to report that you have declared deep, undying love to me during one of my visits up to the city. But that has not happened. You have proven yourself impossibly slippery, and the damnedest part is I am completely in love with you despite myself and my better judgment. Despite your vapid friends and the shallow quotes they attribute to you in the gossip columns. Despite the revolving door of other suitors you swear are simply ‘school chums’ or ‘family friends.’ Despite your love of all things bright and sparkly and beautiful and, to me, fake.

The worst part is you make me face the fact that deep down I want all those things, too. And I tell you, I don’t appreciate that one bit. I would give you anything you want if he could. If you’d have me. But you’d have to let me close enough to figure out what exactly it was you want, for a start. Instead, it’s as if the moment I make the smallest break through the wall around you, you disappear completely until you’ve built it back up stronger than before.

At basic training, I‘ve spent most of my scant free time writing these long, ardent letters to you, and most of my leave traveling to and from Manhattan in the hopes of spending even one evening with you. I couldn’t let Elizabeth think I was failing to win you over. She is one of my most ardent supporters. I answered her instead with a clever little literary shrug, “Little Oona is hopelessly in love with Little Oona.” That’s a good one, don’t you think?

As I type those words, I imagined Elizabeth reading them. She would see right through my deflection. She always says men’s egos are the most delicate bits of gossamer floss in the universe. I can hear the woman now, scoffing as she tosses my letter aside to write her likely reply: “She isn’t falling at your feet, so something must be wrong with her. Is that it, Jerry?”

I’ve watched you navigate your world like a beautiful spider on the finest of threads, developing in the dark corners of my mind a real and true hatred for the fake, phony people, a disdain for those who hold the keys to everything I want, the ones who made the girl I love dance for her supper.

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