coz. At least the other displaced couple hasn’t bugged
you about what’s happened.”
“The Kidds?” Judith said, going to the refrigerator
and taking out a package of bologna. “No. They were
very nice about it. In the Izards and the Kidds, you see
the two ends of the spectrum when it comes to guests.
Some—most, really—are wonderful, and then others
can be a huge pain.” She deftly buttered two slices of
bread. “I’m going to take Mother a snack. She’s been
shortchanged today.”
Upon entering the toolshed, Judith expected a testy
greeting. Instead, Gertrude was writing on a ruled
tablet as fast as her arthritic fingers would permit. She
barely looked up when her daughter arrived.
“I have a bologna sandwich with apple slices and
some hot chocolate,” Judith said as the old lady scribbled away.
Gertrude still didn’t look up from the tablet. “Put
’em there,” she said, nodding at the cluttered card
table.
Judith moved a bag of Tootsie Rolls and a copy of
“What are you doing? Writing a letter?”
“Nope,” Gertrude replied. She added a few more
words to the tablet, then finished with an awkward
flourish and finally looked up. “I’m writing my life
story. For the moving pictures.”
“You’re . . . what?” Judith gasped.
“You heard me,” Gertrude snapped. “That writer
fella, Wade or Dade or Cade, told me that everybody’s
life is a story. So I told him some things that had happened to me over the years and he said I should write
it all down. So I am.” She gave Judith a smug look.
Judith was puzzled. Her mother had led a seemingly
ordinary life. “What exactly are you writing?”
Gertrude shrugged her hunched shoulders. “My life.
Fleeing Germany in my youth. Starting a revolution in
primary school. Drinking bathtub gin and dancing the
black bottom. Eloping with your father.”
“You were a baby when you came to this country,”
Judith pointed out. “I don’t recall you ever mentioned
fleeing much of anything.”
“We fled,” Gertrude insisted. “We were fleeing
Grossmutter Hoffman. Your great-granny on that side
of the family was a real terror. She drove your grandfather crazy, and how she treated your grandmother—
her daughter-in-law—is hardly fit to print.”
