The afternoon sun sneaked through the closed venetian blinds. Her grandparents didn’t want anyone looking and seeing their powwow. Zaide shuffled a stack of pink invoices and set them off to the side. Nannie nodded and shut the file cabinet drawer. What was Nannie doing in the office? She should be supervising the kitchen or shmying around the cardroom, chatting up the ladies. Betty had walked into the middle of a conversation. This couldn’t be good.
“I’m sure Nancy’s family is happy to have her back. She was gone for what? Six months? For no reason? Meshuga!” Zaide said. “It was an opportunity, they said.”
“What farkakteh opportunity?” Nannie said. “There is only one reason a girl goes away for six months.”
“Who are you talking about?” Betty waved her hands in the air to attract her grandparents’ attention. “Who’s back? From where? And what does it have to do with me?”
“Nancy Green is back from Europe,” Zaide said. “And she’s entering Miss South Haven. Her uncle told me.”
Betty plopped into the captain’s chair across from her grandfather’s desk. “I’m doomed!”
“Don’t overreact,” Nannie said. “We just wanted you to know, since we knew it would be a surprise. There’s no reason you can’t win.”
“No reason? She’s won two years in a row. Why should this year be any different?” Betty asked. She would never win now. Nancy Green was perfect.
“You haven’t won because you were too young to enter,” Zaide said.
“I should just drop out, because I can’t compete with a girl who looks like Lana Turner.”
“You’re not dropping out,” Nannie said. “With that fancy swimsuit Zaide bought you, those judges won’t have a choice but to reconsider their favorite contestant.”
Betty bit her bottom lip and Zaide chuckled. “Can’t hide anything from this one.”
“It’s time for someone new to win that sash and crown,” Nannie said. “Someone who didn’t need to go to Europe.”
No one needed an extravagant excursion, but how glamorous it must have been for Nancy. How grown-up she must seem now, full of continental flair and sophistication. Why would she even want to be Miss South Haven?
Betty swung around and faced the small hanging mirror Zaide used to check his tie. She was a pretty girl with classic features. “A knockout,” some said. She stepped back enough to see part of her chest. It was ample compared to her friends’, but smaller than Nancy’s. A smile tugged at the sides of her mouth and she willed it away.
“I do have some advice,” Nannie said.
Betty swirled around. “Anything.”
“If this is as important to you as you say, be sure to get your beauty sleep. I’m sure Nancy Green has had plenty of problems, but I’m betting she doesn’t have circles under her eyes from late nights on the porch.”
Betty’s cheeks burned. She swallowed hard but didn’t glance away. She wasn’t sorry she spent hours in the middle of the night sharing stories and dreams and kisses with Abe.
“What am I missing?” Zaide asked.
“Seems Betty has taken up with Abe Barsky.”
“You said I could date him.” Betty prayed her cheeks didn’t look as red as they felt.
Nannie waggled her index finger. “I meant a date, not a steady—that’s what you kids call it, right? I see how you look at him but he’s not the one for you, Betty.”
“It’s summer, Yetta, let her be. You’re embarrassing her. She’ll go away to college and meet a nice Jewish doctor. If not, you can play yenta and find someone suitable.”
“He’s a nice boy, Nannie. You’d like him if you got to know him.”
“I never said I didn’t like him, just that he’s not the boy for you.”
Zaide walked around his desk and reached out his hand. Betty grasped it and he pulled her into an uncharacteristic hug. “Socializing is fine. We trust you. As for the pageant, if you don’t win, there’s always next year.”
Betty’s rush of relief was sidelined by worry. Nannie and Zaide knew she might not be back next summer. Or any summer. Didn’t they? Were they in denial? They’d nourished her potential throughout her schooling and then they’d set her future into motion by encouraging her to attend and graduate college—and to graduate with more than an MRS degree.
They knew. If they wanted to pretend, who was she to stop them?
But Barnard College and New York City—these places would change practically everything for Betty. Her relationship with Abe would change whatever was left.
She was counting on it.
Chapter 17
BETTY
Betty had never disappointed her grandparents and she wasn’t about to start then. For the next week she walked around the property with her shoulders pinched back and her head held straight. After calisthenics Betty would stride around the women with her pageant walk to applause and good wishes.
At home, Betty slipped on high heels and an old swimsuit and walked toward the cheval mirror in Nannie’s bedroom. Then she repeated. And repeated. She inhaled to compress her stomach and project her chest.
Better.
She smiled at herself in the mirror, trying to see what the judges would see, and gauge how she might stack up against the other girls.
Her complexion was fair and blemish-free, her eyes symmetrical—bright blue rimmed with dark lashes and groomed brows. Her nose and mouth were small and feminine, and the Strawberry Kiss lipstick was the perfect shade that said “look at me” but didn’t invite leering. Betty’s hair tumbled in waves past her shoulders, like someone was pouring caramel. She was proportionate but her figure wasn’t showy.
Maybe she could win after all.
For Betty, celebrating Independence Day was more figurative than literal. After a day of organizing children’s games of checkers, ring-around-the-rosy, and badminton, judging the resort’s blueberry-pie-eating contest, and timing the annual beach run, she grabbed a pail full of sparklers from the supply shed. Holding the bucket by its
