In the kitchen, Nannie held Betty’s arm firmly but gently, and patted butter on the burn, tsk-tsking with each circular motion. She wiped her greasy fingers on her apron in even strokes. Even Nannie’s messes were meticulous.
“Betty, how many times do I have to tell you not to iron with your eyes closed?”
“I only closed them for a second.” It hadn’t been much more than that. “I was thinking.”
Betty didn’t want Nannie to know she was thinking about necking when she should have been thinking about creases and pleats. Plus, Robert had dumped her for Joan Kepler, who had a bigger bosom and fewer morals.
“This is quite the burn,” Nannie said. “What on earth were you thinking about? Boys, perhaps?”
“No! I was wondering if the Bloomfields were coming back this year.”
Nannie narrowed her eyes. “Why wouldn’t they be coming back? Everyone comes back. Did you hear something?”
“No. I just liked my nights babysitting for them. That’s all.” Betty had enjoyed those evenings because the Bloomfields were a handsome couple who deserved a night away from their three girls. Or maybe because the Bloomfields had tipped her even though it wasn’t required.
“I’ll make sure you’re first on the list.” Nannie examined Betty’s arm again, then wrapped it with a cotton bandage she kept on hand for kitchen burns. “You’ll meet a nice Jewish boy at Columbia when you’re at Barnard. You’ll see. Someone with ambitions. Brains. Have patience.”
Betty had plans other than patience.
Nannie set the butter into the commercial Frigidaire marked with an M for milchig—for dairy products only. Then Nannie followed Betty to the laundry room. Betty lifted the half stack of pressed curtains from the bottom. The weight against her makeshift bandage sent a wave of prickling pain through her, so she placed the curtains onto Nannie’s arms with care. She did not want to iron them again.
Nannie stood on her tiptoes and kissed Betty’s forehead, then twirled one finger in the still, humid air. “I’ll finish these,” she said. “You go home and freshen up. It wouldn’t look right if you were late.”
An hour later, Betty returned. She wasn’t wearing the pink checkered shirtwaist Nannie had laid on her bed, but Nannie wouldn’t reprimand Betty in public. That afternoon she would see some of the staff who’d known her since they were college freshmen and she was fourteen. Betty needed to look grown-up to be taken seriously. She wasn’t in high school anymore, and her appearance should say “college girl.” She shuffled her feet and stared at her new summer loafers as she pressed the damp grass one way, then the other. No saddle shoes, even though they were in style.
Nannie and Zaide sat on the wrought-iron bench under the biggest maple tree on the property, on the center lawn. They sat there every year waiting for the staff to arrive before Memorial Day weekend.
She blew her grandmother a kiss. Later, Betty would explain that she hadn’t really disobeyed her grandmother by wearing a different outfit; she was simply saving the dress for another occasion and didn’t want to soil it. Nannie would, of course, see through Betty as if she were a piece of glass, but summer meant her grandmother would be distracted by the guests, the kitchen, and her image as the balabusta—the best hostess and homemaker—of South Haven. She might not even realize that Betty was wearing a gift she’d received from Tillie.
During one of her parents’ visits, Betty realized Nannie called them “Tillie” and “Joe,” so she had started calling them by their first names too. Everyone had thought it was so cute that a six-year-old with light-brown, sun-streaked ringlets and wearing a dress inspired by Shirley Temple would call her parents by their first names.
Or at least that’s how it played in Betty’s memory, since no one would ever refute or confirm her recollection. Ostensibly this served to safeguard her feelings, but not knowing where her parents had gone, or why, had been fertile ground for a little girl’s imagination. When the adults in her life had decided to be honest with her, she was ten, and more than a little disappointed that her parents weren’t spies or special agents or that they hadn’t been kidnapped by pirates. The truth: Tillie was a singer, and Joe her manager and piano player. They had kept their daughter with them until she was ready to attend kindergarten and then handed her off to her father’s parents.
Betty remembered most of the times her parents had visited. She’d straighten her room and theirs, wear her best dress, wait by the door after days, weeks, months of seeing them in every childless couple, hearing phantom voices, dreaming outlandish dreams of a normal family. When they arrived, Tillie and Joe behaved like distant relatives—polite and interested but detached. It was as if she had no bearing on their life. She knew she did not.
Betty always waved at the window and pretended their leaving didn’t hurt. She’d feared that seeing her hurt would wound her grandparents, who only wanted her to be happy. She owed them everything.
That’s why Betty usually packed away Tillie’s infrequent and feckless gifts, but this one was hard to ignore—a yellow sleeveless blouse with a stand-up collar, like the one Betty had seen in Seventeen, a full chambray skirt, and—the best part—a narrow red patent-leather belt. Tillie knew it would be just right, since Betty looked so much like her with peachy skin, blue eyes with flecks of green, and toffee-brown hair. Did Tillie know how the blouse and belt would show off Betty’s curves? Did she care?
Betty never wanted to give Nannie and Zaide a reason to be sorry they’d raised her. Most girls didn’t have mothers, let alone grandmothers, who were as encouraging as Nannie. She kvelled at Betty’s grades and ambition as much as (or maybe more
