“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just delivering the message and hoping the shnecken don’t burn or I’ll need to bake another type of cookie for tonight’s dessert plate.”
Betty wouldn’t shirk her duties. Not while Francine and the other laundry girls watched for her reply. “I’ll head over as soon as I’m finished.” What could they want now? Betty’s heart thudded as she rifled through her ruminations about Abe. What she could say. How she could say it.
Mabel turned to walk away. “Make it snappy.”
There was nothing snappy about hanging the laundry to dry, but her grandparents condoned the use of the electric clothes dryer only if it was too cold or too wet outside, and today it was neither. Betty knew they bragged about owning one of the first commercial dryers, but that didn’t mean they used it. She loaded the sheets into a basket, and lifted the basket into her arms.
“Go,” Francine said. “You can owe me one.”
“You’re a doll,” Betty said. She set down the basket and resisted the urge to hug Francine, who seemed more like a handshaker than a hugger.
The kindness was undeniable, but Betty wasn’t sure she wanted to hurry. Nannie couldn’t be summoning her for a good reason, could she? Had she and Abe been too public? Too brazen? Too reckless? Or did this have something to do with Barnard? Miss South Haven was two weeks away—was there news about Nancy Green? The legacy of Miss South Haven thrilled Betty. If she won, she’d be part of South Haven history apart from her family’s famous name and resort. Wherever Betty studied, traveled, and lived in her lifetime, she’d be Miss South Haven 1951. The free publicity? The nachas? That would belong to her grandparents.
When Betty looked up from her daydream, all the laundry girls were staring at the door.
There stood Nannie in a clover-green shirtwaist, her hair up in a tight bun with brown-gray tendrils loose at the sides, by an accident of wind or walking quickly, not due to style. Not on a weekday. She crooked a forefinger at Betty. Her expression was staid—not a smile nor a frown—but that meant nothing. Nannie didn’t bubble with emotions.
Betty’s heart felt heavy and she swayed with a bit of wooziness, in a premonitory kind of way. Something was wrong.
Nannie might have been less than five feet tall, but she strode across the lawn with giant steps.
Betty scurried to keep up, but her legs wobbled from fear. What was the hurry when Nannie could yell at her right then? Unless she wanted privacy. “Nannie, please. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”
“Just hurry along.”
Nannie said nothing as she pushed open Zaide’s office door. He sat behind his desk, and Abe stood in front of it, dressed in the shirt and tie he’d worn the first time Betty had seen him. A worn suitcase sat on the floor next to Abe.
Betty fell to her knees, her legs unable to hold her upright.
Where is he going?
What’s going on?
This was a mistake, a mix-up, an egregious error in judgment. Betty would take the blame for anything her grandparents were pinning on Abe to make him go. She’d stay away from him so he could keep his job. He needed his job.
“Don’t be dramatic, Betty,” Nannie said.
Betty stood.
“We’re going to leave you two alone,” Zaide said as he walked around his desk and shook Abe’s hand and patted him on the back. That was odd.
“We’ll be right outside,” Nannie said.
After the door closed, Abe reached out his hand and Betty flung herself against him. They’d fired him, she was sure of it. But they hadn’t been accusatory or angry.
“Tell me what’s going on. Do they know?” Betty pushed herself away from Abe. “I’ll tell them it was my idea—or better yet tell them you love me; tell them we’re getting married.”
“This has nothing to do with us, Betty. Or your grandparents.” Abe held both Betty’s hands and looked into her eyes. He’d been crying. He was crying again. Betty reached and touched his face and the boy she loved sobbed into her hands.
“I have to leave. It’s my brother,” he said. “He was killed.”
Abe climbed into the driver’s seat. Betty closed the door, and he rolled down the window.
“I’m so sorry about Aaron,” she said. “Please drive safely.” She leaned into the window opening and kissed Abe’s cheek. “I love you,” she whispered, and didn’t care if anyone saw or heard.
“Me too,” Abe said. He looked toward Betty but not right at her, his voice heavy, his words slow and laden with worry.
She omitted “come back soon” and “I’ll miss you”; it wasn’t the time. It was time for Abe to tend to his mother, to make arrangements, to be the man of the family. She swelled with pride at his sense of responsibility, though it was likely the wrong reaction for such a solemn day.
As Abe drove away, Betty inhaled the same deep breath as when she surfaced from under the lake, air in her lungs a new, lifesaving sensation—a welcome burn. Amid that familiar feeling, displaced facts tumbled together.
Boys on staff at Stern’s hadn’t been drafted because they attended college. Most of the housekeeping staff were women. The visiting husbands were either too old or they’d served in the war, which meant they weren’t required to register for the draft. That much she knew, because the kids her age talked about it sometimes.
Betty didn’t know why President Truman had sent troops to Korea or how long this conflict, as she’d heard it called, would last. Did Zaide know? Did the husbands talk politics between games of pinochle, or were they all too distracted by their weekends of glamour and gluttony? What about when they went back to their jobs and homes?
And why didn’t the wives Betty saw at every meal, at calisthenics, on the beach, at every Stern’s event, discuss politics in addition to bragging about their children, their figures, and their homemaking prowess?
Because they lived in
