CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
APRIL 1943
VALENTINE’S DAY, 1946
SEPTEMBER 2006
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY ELIZABETH BERG
COPYRIGHT
FOR MY FATHER, ARTHUR P. HOFF,
WHO TAUGHT ME THE MEANING OF
TRUE COURAGE
AND GOOD CHARACTER
APRIL 1943
IT WAS KITTY’S TURN TO SLEEP with her head at the foot of the bed. She didn’t mind; she preferred it, actually. She liked the mild disorientation that came from that position, and she liked the relative sense of privacy—her sisters’ feet in her face, yes, but not their eyes, not their ears, nor the close, damp sounds of their breathing. And at the foot of the bed she was safe from Louise, who often yanked mercilessly at people’s hair in her sleep.
Tonight Kitty was last to bed, having been last in the bathroom. Everybody liked it when Kitty was last in the bathroom because, of the eight people living in the house, she always took the longest. Apart from the normal ablutions, she did things in there: affected poses she thought made her look even more like Rita Hayworth—she did look like Rita Hayworth, everyone said so. She filed her fingernails, she experimented with combining perfumes to make a new scent, she creamed her face, she used eyebrow pencil to make beauty marks above her lip. She also read magazines in the bathroom because there, no one read over her shoulder. Oh, somebody would bang on the door every time she was in there, somebody was always banging on the bathroom door, but a girl could get a lot done in a room with a locked door. Kitty could do more in five minutes in the bathroom than in thirty minutes anywhere else in the house, where everyone in the family felt it their right—their obligation!—to butt into everyone else’s business.
When Kitty came out of the bathroom, she tiptoed into the bedroom, where it appeared her sisters were already asleep—Tish on her side with her knees drawn up tight, Louise with the covers flung off. Kitty crouched down by Louise and whispered her sister’s name. Kitty wanted to talk; she wasn’t ready to sleep yet. But Louise didn’t budge.
Kitty moved to the bottom of the bed, slid beneath the covers, and sighed quietly. She stared up at the ceiling, thinking of Julian, of how tomorrow he would be leaving, off to fight in the Pacific with the Marines, and no one knew for how long. And Michael, Louise’s fiancé, he would be leaving, too, leaving at the same time but going in the opposite direction, for he was in the Army and shipping out to Europe. And why were they not in the same branch of the service, these old friends? Because Julian liked the forest green of the Marine uniforms better than the olive drab of the Army or the blue of the Navy. Also because James Roosevelt, the president’s son, was in the Marines.
It seemed so odd to Kitty. So frightening and dangerous and even romantic; there was an element of romance to this war, but mostly it just felt so odd. As though the truth of all this hadn’t quite caught up with her, nor would it for a while. No matter the graphic facts in FDR’s Day of Infamy speech after the bombing of Pearl Harbor: the three thousand lives lost, the next day’s declaration of war on Japan, then Germany’s declaration of war on the United States. Kitty’s facts were these: she was Kitty; he was Julian; every Saturday night they went downtown for dinner at Toffenetti’s and then to one of the movie palaces on State Street. Sometimes, after that, he would take her to the Empire Room at the Palmer House for a pink squirrel, but her parents didn’t like for Kitty to stay out so late, or to drink. Now his leave after basic was up and he was shipping out, he was going over there. And both boys foolishly volunteering for the infantry!
Kitty rose up on her elbows and again whispered Louise’s name. A moment, and then she spoke out loud. “Hey? Louise?”
Nothing. Kitty fell back and rested her hands across her chest, one over the other, then quickly yanked them apart. It was like death, to lie that way; it was how people lay in coffins. She never slept that way, she always slept on her side. Why had she done that? Was it a premonition of some sort, a sign? What if it was a sign? “Louise!” she said, and now her sister mumbled back, “Cripes, Kitty, will you go to sleep!”
It was good to hear her sister’s voice, even in anger. It soothed and anchored her. She breathed out, closed her eyes, and in a short while felt herself drifting toward sleep. She wanted to dream of Julian on the day she first met him: confident, careless, his blond hair mussed and hanging over one eye, his short-sleeved shirt revealing the disturbing curves of his muscles. She tried to will herself toward that.
PEOPLE WERE PACKED IN SO TIGHTLY at Union Station that Kitty had to hold on to her hat lest it be jostled off her head and trampled. Elbows poked her; suitcases banged into her legs and she feared mightily for her very last pair of silk stockings. The noise level was so high, Julian had to lean in toward Kitty and practically shout to be heard. “Gonna write me every day?” he asked, grinning, and she nodded that she would. “Are you going to be careful for a change?” she asked, and he told her not to worry. He looked so handsome—there was something about a man in uniform—standing there with his duffel bag over his shoulder, his hat rakishly positioned at the side of his head.
Earlier that morning, Kitty and Julian and Louise and Michael had taken a Green Hornet streetcar to the train station and then breakfasted together at Fred Harvey’s. Both men ate every bite of food on their plates, but the sisters could hardly swallow their coffee. Now it was time to say good-bye—Julian was on the 8:11 to San Francisco; Michael would leave just a few minutes later, on his way to New York City.
“Boooard!” the conductor cried, then made his announcement again, more urgently. “Okay, kid,” Julian said. “I guess this is it.” He waved at Michael and Louise, who were holding hands and standing nearby, then kissed Kitty quickly. “Take care of yourself.” He spoke seriously, his voice thick, and for the first time she saw a glint of fear in his eyes. She stepped back from him and made herself smile brilliantly. She tossed her black hair and stuck out her chest. Already she knew how she’d sign the first photo she sent of herself: Hi, Private.
Louise was holding on to Michael and crying her eyes out, though she and Kitty had agreed not to do that, under any circumstances. They had agreed to look as pretty as they could, to wear their best outfits, to be cheerful and smile and wave at the boys as they pulled out of the station. They had agreed that it was their patriotic duty to behave in this fashion, and they had vowed to help each other be strong. But now Louise sobbed as Michael pulled away from her and ran for his train, and finally Kitty pinched her to make her stop. “Ow!” Louise said and pinched her sister back.
“Is this what you want him to remember?” Kitty asked.
Louise wiped at her nose with her sodden hankie. “I can’t help it.”
“You can!” Kitty told her angrily and then looked at Julian’s train, where she saw him hanging out a window and motioning for her to come over to him. He was packed in among so many other men, all those boys with all their caps, sticking their heads and their arms out of the windows, but she could have found Julian in the middle of ten thousand men. She ran over and grabbed his hand. “Good-bye, Julian. Be careful. I mean it.”
“I will, I promise. But Kat, listen, I almost forgot, I need you to do something for me. On Monday afternoon, go over to Munson’s jewelry store and tell them to give you what I left for you there.”
“What?” She laughed. “What do you mean?” A ring? Oh, it would be just like Julian, to do it this way! No bended knee, no flowery words of love. Instead, a cocksureness that Kitty found irresistible. Only a girl who had wrapped many men around her finger would be delighted by such cool assurance.
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The train hissed loudly and began moving forward. Kitty ran alongside, mixed in with a crowd of mostly young women, some smiling, some weeping, all reaching up toward the hands of the boys who were leaving them behind. “I love you!” Kitty shouted. “Julian! I love you!” The words were new, shiny inside her.
“Munson’s Jewelers, on Wabash near Harding’s,” he shouted back. The train picked up speed, and Kitty stopped running. Then she and the others on the platform stood still, watching the train grow smaller and finally disappear. It had become so quiet; a place that moments ago had reverberated with sound was now still as a chapel. Pigeons fluttered up onto steel beams and sat silent in rows, their feathers ruffled in the morning cold. Kitty became aware of the dampness of the place, the basementy smell, the spill of weak sunshine through the high, dusty windows onto the tracks below. And then, slowly, people began walking away, talking quietly to one another. One woman was holding a brown bag and crying to her husband about their son forgetting his lunch. “The other boys will share their food with him,” the father said, and the mother said but she wanted him to have the lunch she had packed, his favorite cookies were in there. “Someone else will have cookies,” the man said, and the woman said no, no one else would. She bumped into Kitty, crying hard, and apologized. Kitty touched her arm and said it was all right.
Louise stood forlorn and dry-eyed, holding her pocketbook hard against her middle. Kitty linked arms with her. “Now you stop crying,” she said, and Louise said, “I know. I’m a dope.”
They took a cab home, an extravagance. But they didn’t want to wait for the next streetcar, and anyway, Julian had given Kitty money so they could do exactly that. At first she’d thought about using the money for something more practical, but now she luxuriated in the fact that the cab would take them exactly where they were going, directly from where they had been. It was swell. She was Rita Hayworth, and Louise was Dorothy Lamour. She leaned back and looked out the window. There were their fans walking down the sidewalk, wishing they’d come out and sign autographs.
At a stoplight, Kitty pointed to the spring dresses in the window of Marshall Field’s. “Look how boxy sleeves are getting,” she said, and Louise snapped back, “Jeez! How can you even think about that now?”
Kitty fell silent, but in her head, she started the Mills Brothers singing “Paper Doll.” You couldn’t think about those boys and where they were going. You had to think about something else. Louise began to weep again, and the driver reached back over the seat to give her his handkerchief, frayed at the edges but clean and neatly folded. “Dry your eyes now, darlin’; he’ll be back before you know it,” the man said. He was Irish, as they were.
Louise cried harder, but through her tears she said, “Thank you very much. I’ll wash it and iron it and send it right back to you.” The Heaney girls were nothing if not polite—their mother made sure of that. The Dreamy girls, the sisters were called, for their considerable beauty; and their mother seemed to feel it was her duty to prevent their good looks from going to their heads. You didn’t want to be caught lingering before a mirror when Margaret Heaney was anywhere nearby. “Well, now,” she’d say, her arms crossed. “Don’t we find ourselves a fascination.” And then she’d suggest that if you had so much time on your hands, you might find a way to make yourself useful; and if you couldn’t think of something to do, she’d be glad to help you. Rugs didn’t beat themselves, you know, there was that. The refrigerator needed defrosting, the bathroom and kitchen floors had to be scrubbed.
But their mother was also proud of them. And she not infrequently remarked on how the beauty found in all her children—the dimples, the long lashes, the thick, lustrous hair, the clear skin—didn’t come from nowhere. Whereupon their father would inflate his chest, stick his thumbs under his suspenders, and say, “’Tis true! And no need to look any farther for the source!”
“You’re going to give yourself a headache with all that crying,” Kitty told her sister, and Louise said, “I don’t care! I want a headache!” Indeed, Michael’s mother lay at home on her living room sofa with a sick headache, a cold rag across her forehead, a throw-up bucket at her side—she’d been unable to come to the station, and Michael had told his father to stay home and take care of her. Julian’s parents had not come to the station, either. They’d said they wanted to give Kitty and Julian that time alone, but Kitty knew that, although they were proud of their only son, their hearts were broken at his leave-taking. They needed to keep their good-byes—and their anguish—private. Kitty turned to stare out the window again. Louise really ought to look at the beautiful things in the store windows: the hats lodged nestlike on the mannequins’ heads; the red open-toed shoes with the ankle straps. Or she ought to think about what she might say in her letter to Michael that night. They had agreed they would write to their men every night until they were safely back home: they’d put each other’s hair up and get into their pajamas and then sit at the kitchen table and write at least two pages, every night, no matter what. Tish was already writing to three men she’d met at USO dances.
Kitty snuck a look at her still-weeping sister. What weakness of character! Louise needed to stop thinking about herself. She could think about her job as a teacher’s aide, or her friends, or their three little brothers, only eight, eleven, and thirteen but out almost every day with their wagon, collecting for the metal drive. They got a penny a pound, and they’d raised more money for war bonds than any other kids in their Chicago neighborhood—they’d even had their picture in the newspaper. It didn’t do any good for Louise to carry on this way. It didn’t help Michael or even herself. But then Kitty’s throat caught, and she reached over to embrace her sister, and she began to cry, too. Julian with the sun in his hair, saying good-bye, perhaps forever.
“Ah, now, girls,” the cabbie said. “Get hold of yourselves, won’t you. We’ll take care of them Japs in short order, don’t you doubt it! And then wait and see if I’m not the very one taking you all home again! And won’t we be celebratin’! You keep my handkerchief; I’ll collect it from you on that far happier occasion.”
“Germans,” Louise said, her voice muffled by the handkerchief.
“What’s that, now?” the cabbie asked.
“Mine will be fighting the Nazis!” she wailed.
“Well, I meant them, too!” the cabbie said. “Germans, Italians, Japanese. What d’ya think any of them scoundrels can do against our fine boys?” He looked into the rearview mirror at the girls, and Kitty saw the worry in his blue eyes, the doubt. It came to her to say, “My boyfriend will be fighting the Japs.” But it didn’t seem to make much difference, really. She and Louise stopped crying, but they held hands the rest of the way home.
IT WAS THEIR YOUNGEST BROTHER’S HABIT to nearly run over people when he was excited, then call out their names as though they had failed to see him. As soon as Kitty walked in the front door, Benjamin came skidding around the corner and his head butted her stomach. “Kitty! Kitty! Guess what?”
She lowered her face level with his and quietly acknowledged him. Sometimes this worked to calm him down. Not today, though, for he continued to yell and hop on one leg, saying, “We collected for rubber today? And guess what? Old Lady Clooney gave us her girdle!”
“Well, that was nice of her,” Kitty said, and Louise, hanging her jacket on the coat tree, said, “Don’t call her Old Lady, Binks.”
“She is old! And also she’s a lady. So? Old Lady. It’s just the same as Mister.”
Louise yanked at his brown hair, grown longer than usual. “You know what I mean.”
“You’re a young lady,” Binks told Louise. “Does it bother you to be called Young Lady?”
Louise tilted her head, thinking. “No.”
Binks showed her his upturned hands, the physical equivalent of saying “So?”
“You’re exasperating,” Louise said and moved toward the kitchen.
“What’s that mean?” Binks called after her. “Louise! What?
??s that mean?”
“It means you’re interesting,” Kitty said and followed her sister. She felt guilty having her grief superseded by hunger, but there it was: she was ravenous.
Tish was kneeling before the oven, her head stuck in through the open door. Her blouse was hiked up on her back, and you could see two safety pins holding her skirt closed. She was terrible about mending. When it was her turn to sew buttons on Binks’s shirts, she’d say, “Oh, just wait a day or two and he’ll be too big for them anyway.”
“Hi,” they heard her muffled voice say.
“What are you doing?” Kitty asked.
“Drying my hair,” Tish said. “It’s murder. But this is what I have to do because Ma won’t let me get a permanent wave.” She pulled her head out, sat back on her heels, and smiled at her sisters.
“A permanent wave is too expensive, and besides that it would ruin your hair,” Margaret said. She was standing at the counter, briskly stirring the contents of a mixing bowl with a wooden spoon. “Now shut that door, Tish; the oven won’t heat properly, and my cake will fall.”
Kitty clapped her hands together. “We’re having cake?”
“Make-do cake,” Margaret said.
“Oh.” Kitty hated the eggless, milkless, butterless recipe so prevalent now. She longed for the burnt-sugar cake with caramel icing they used to have for dessert every Sunday dinner. She wanted cookies around the house again: pineapple nut and pecan fingers, blond brownies and coconut dreams. She wanted jam squares and ginger cookies, chocolate drops and raisin crisps. Ah well. Use it all, wear it out, make it do, or do without. Kitty reached for an apple from the bowl on the table.
“Don’t eat that,” her mother said. “I need it for the red cabbage I’m making tonight.”
“I’m hungry!” Kitty said.
“You had breakfast not two hours ago.”
“Yes, but I’m hungry.”