spy. He went on, 'You are my dear wife, and I love you exactly the way you are.'
'You're sweet.' That was usually another automatic reply. This time, Nellie listened to what she'd just said. 'You really are sweet, Hal. I'm glad I married you. I was scared to death when you asked me, but it's worked out pretty well, hasn't it?' If she sounded a little surprised, she could hope her husband didn't notice.
If he did, he was too much a gentleman to show it. 'The best five years of my life,' he said. 'Being here with you, and being here to watch Clara grow up…' His face softened. 'Yes, the best years of my life.'
With more than a little surprise, Nellie realized the years since the war had been the best of her life, too. She'd made more money when the Confederates occupied Washington, but she'd been worried and afraid all the time: worried about what Edna would do, afraid Bill Reach would tell the whole world what he knew, worried and afraid the U.S. bombardment would blow her and Edna and the coffeehouse to hell and gone.
Now Edna was married, Bill Reach was dead, and the country was at peace. And living with Hal Jacobs hadn't proved nearly so hard as she'd feared. 'I love you, Hal,' she exclaimed.
Saying it surprised her: it seemed an afternoon for surprises. And discovering she meant it surprised her even more. Hearing it made her husband's face light up. 'I love it when you tell me that,' Hal said. 'I did not know I could be more happy than I already was, but now I am.'
'I'm happy, too,' Nellie said. By the way all the stories were written, she should have been in love with her husband before she married him, instead of finding out she was five years later. Well, she thought, it's not like I've lived a storybook life. She tried to remember if she'd ever told Hal she loved him before. Once or twice, maybe, in a dutiful fashion, as she occasionally gave him her body. But the words hadn't come from her heart, not till today.
Perhaps Hal sensed something of the same thing. He walked up to her and gave her a kiss a good deal warmer than the pecks that usually passed between them. She returned it with more warmth than usual, too. For once, she didn't mind the gleam that came into Hal's eye. The idea of making love while kindled suddenly struck her as delicious, not disgusting.
But Clara was still playing not far from one of the tables, and a customer chose that moment to come in. Can't have everything, Nellie thought as she walked over to ask the man what he wanted. She looked around. No, she couldn't have everything- she wouldn't be rich as long as she lived, for instance. What she had, though, was pretty good.
XX
As Hosea Blackford did whenever he came up to the Lower East Side of New York City, he looked around in astonishment. Turning to his wife, he said, 'I can't imagine what growing up here would have been like, with the buildings blocking out the sky and with swarms of people everywhere.'
Flora Blackford-after being married for a year, she hardly ever signed her name Flora Hamburger any more- shrugged. 'It's all what you're used to,' she answered. 'I couldn't imagine there was so much open space in the whole world, let alone the USA, till I took that train trip out to Dakota with you this past summer. I felt like a little tiny bug on a great big plate.'
Up till 1917, New York City was all she'd ever known. Up till the train trip to Dakota, all she'd known were New York City, Philadelphia, and the ninety-odd built-up miles between them. Endless expanses of grass waving gently in the breeze all the way out to the horizon had not been part of her mental landscape. They were now, and she felt richer for it.
A boy in short pants ran by carrying a stack of the Daily For-ward. 'Buy my paper!' he yelled in Yiddish. 'Buy my paper!'
'I understood that.' Blackford looked pleased with himself. 'The German I took in college isn't quite fossilized after all- and being around your family is an education in any number of ways.'
'I'll tell my father you said so,' Flora said. She walked up the stairs of the apartment house that seemed so familiar and so strange at the same time.
Following her, Blackford said, 'Go ahead. He'll take it the right way. He has better sense than half the people in the Cabinet, believe you me he does.'
'Considering what goes on in the Cabinet, that's not saying so much,' Flora answered. Her husband rewarded her with a gust of laughter. She laughed, too, but a little ruefully: the scent of cooking cabbage was very strong. 'I don't think this building is ready for the vice president of the United States.'
'Don't worry about it,' he said, laughing again. 'Compared to the farm I grew up on, it's paradise-a crowded paradise, but paradise. It's got running water and flush toilets and electricity. The farm I grew up on sure didn't, not that anybody had electricity back then.'
'This building had gas lamps up until a few years ago,' Flora said. It did not have an elevator; she and Blackford walked upstairs hand in hand.
Knocking at the door to the flat where she'd lived so long seemed strange, too, but it also seemed right: she didn't live here any more, and never would again. When the door swung open, David Hamburger was the one with his hand on the latch. His other hand held the cane that helped him get around.
Flora embraced her brother carefully, not wanting to make him topple over. David shook hands with Hosea Blackford, then shuffled through a turn and walked back to the kitchen table. Each slow, rolling step on his artificial leg was a separate effort, each a silent reproach against the war that, though more than six years over, would echo through shattered lives for most of the rest of the century.
Blackford shed his coat; the October evening might have had a nip to it, but the inside of the flat was warm enough and to spare. 'Here, I'll take that,' Flora's younger sister Esther said, and she did.
'Chess?' David asked. He pulled out the board and pieces even before Blackford could nod.
'I'll take on the winner,' Isaac said. The younger of Flora's brothers wore in his lapel a silver Soldiers' Circle pin inscribed 1918-the year of his conscription class. She thanked heaven that he, unlike David, hadn't had to go to war… and wished to heaven he wouldn't wear that pin. Soldiers' Circle men could be almost as goonish as the Freedom Party's ruffians down in the Confederate States. But he did as he pleased in such things. He was a man now, and let everyone know it on any excuse or none.
'Hello, Aunt Flora!' Yossel Reisen said. Coming home so seldom, Flora was amazed at how much her older sister's son grew in between times. He'd been a baby when she went off to Congress, but he was in school now. He added, 'Hello, Uncle Hosea!'
'Hello, Yossel,' Hosea Blackford answered absently, most of his attention on the board in front of him. He played well enough to beat David some of the time, but not too often. He'd already gone down a pawn, which meant he probably wouldn't win this game.
Abraham Hamburger came in from the bedroom, puffing on his pipe. He hugged Flora, then glanced at the chess board. Setting a hand on Blackford's shoulder, he said, 'You're in trouble. But you knew that when you decided to marry my daughter, eh? If you didn't, you should have.'
'Papa!' Flora said, indignation mostly but not altogether feigned.
'He's not kidding, dear,' Blackford said. 'You know he's not.' Since Flora did, she subsided. Her husband started a series of trades that wiped the board clear like machine-gun fire smashing a frontal assault. By the time the dust settled, though, he was down two pawns, not one. Stopping David from promoting one of them cost him his bishop, his last piece other than pawns. He tipped over his king and stood up. 'You got me again.'
David only grunted. He grunted again when Isaac took Blackford's place. Before he and his brother could start playing, Sophie stuck her head out of the kitchen and announced, 'Supper in a couple of minutes.'
'We'd better wait,' David said then.
'Ha!' Isaac said. 'You're just afraid I'd beat you.' But he scooped his pieces off the board and put them in the box. He and David had been giving each other a hard time as long as they'd been alive.
Sophie came out with plates and silverware. Behind her came Sarah Hamburger with a platter on which rested two big boiled beef tongues. While Sophie and Esther and Flora set the table, their mother went back into the kitchen, returning with another platter piled high with boiled potatoes and onions and carrots.
'Looks wonderful,' Hosea Blackford said enthusiastically. 'Smells wonderful, too.'
Isaac gave him a quizzical look. 'When I was in the Army, a lot of… fellows who weren't Jews'-he'd caught
