“What do you think?” Kitty asked and spun in a slow circle.
“I think…Well, jeepers, you look just beautiful, Kitty! That’s the prettiest dress I’ve ever seen.”
Kitty smirked in Tish’s direction.
“She’s too ginned up,” Tish said. “She’ll embarrass herself. Wait till Ma and Pop see her; they won’t let her out of the house.”
“I already showed it to Ma,” Kitty said.
“When?” Tish asked.
Kitty moved to the mirror to adjust her hairpins. “When I brought it home.”
Tish snorted. “In the bag? Sure. But wait till she sees it on you!”
“You’re just jealous,” Kitty said, and when Tish crossed her arms and said, “No I’m not!” Louise told her mildly she was, too. Tish was wearing their mother’s faux pearl necklace and a nice skirt and sweater in a lovely blue color that set off her eyes, but she was nothing next to Kitty.
Tish went to the closet and pulled out one of the sisters’ oldest cardigans, a saggy white one, the bottom button hanging by a thread. “Wear this out of the house,” she told Kitty. And then, to Louise, “See? Would I help her if I were jealous?”
“I’m not wearing that!” Kitty said. “You still haven’t tightened the button, and besides that you got a mustard stain on the elbow!”
“Uh-oh,” Louise said. “I guess I got the mustard on it. I had a hot dog last time I wore it. Sorry.”
“Just wear it out of the house,” Tish said. “Believe me, I have experience in these matters.”
On this point Kitty had to agree. She snatched the cardigan from her sister, then returned to the mirror to finish perfecting her hairdo. Maybe she’d cut her hair. A girl at work had told her about a hairstyle she’d seen in a magazine called the Bombshell. You cut your hair short, then curled it into tight ringlets that “exploded” all over your head.
Louise put on a plain blue dress that she might wear to work and pulled her hair back in a snood. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”
Her sisters stared at her.
“That’s it?” Tish asked.
“What?” Louise looked down at herself.
“You’re so…plain,” Tish said.
“I’m engaged,” Louise said.
Tish laughed. “So are half the fellows! You’re not there to get involved; you’re there to show the guys a good time for one night! They’re scared, and they’re lonely. Most of them just want to talk!”
Louise marched over to the mirror and yanked the snood from her hair. She put combs on either side of her head and halfheartedly fluffed her curls. She put on lipstick and blotted it, using the other half of a tissue Kitty had left on the dresser top, then threw the tissue pointedly into the trash. “Let’s go,” she said, “or we’ll be late.” To Kitty, she said, “And I wish that for once you would pick up after yourself. I’m not your maid.”
Kitty said nothing. She had been wondering if this was the Moment. For almost a week now, she’d been waiting for it. In his brief note, Julian had told her that he had finished making the payments on the ring Michael secretly had on layaway for Louise. He’d done it at the last minute so Michael could do nothing about it—his pride would never stand for Julian doing such a thing. But Julian felt that if Michael and Louise were going to be engaged, let the girl have the ring. These were uncertain times. Let Louise have the ring.
Julian said he would tell Michael about it in a letter. Kitty was to give the ring to Louise when the moment was right, and then explain to her why Julian had done what he had. Well, the moment might have been right when Louise had said she was engaged, just before she started acting like Kitty’s mother. But now Kitty would wait for another moment, a time when Louise was blue. Anyone would agree that that was a better idea. Her maid!
MAYOR KELLY’S SERVICEMEN’S CENTER was at Washington and Wells, one block from city hall, in a fourteen-story building that had been an Elks Club. But nearly two years ago, the building had been vacated and offered free of charge for the center’s use. It had been renovated, then decorated by artists. Individuals and businesses had donated everything from furniture and board games to a pipe organ. The top three floors were dormitories with showers, a pressing room, and 150 beds, where men who signed up early enough could sleep. There was a library, a games room, and a music room with more than twelve thousand phonograph albums to listen to. There were rooms where men could dictate letters to “private secretaries” or make recordings of their voices to send home. Chicago artists offered to do men’s portraits. There was space for jewelry making, pottery making, wood carving, and leatherwork. There were two dining rooms, where servicemen could have a floor show and music with their dinner. The mayor himself visited often, and his wife served cake. But the most popular thing had to be this very ballroom, throbbing so hard with the sound of music and voices that Kitty could feel it in her chest.
She stood still, trying to take everything in. The walls were draped with American flags, and the place was packed with servicemen in uniforms—all kinds of men, tall and short, handsome and not so. They were on the dance floor moving to the sounds of the live orchestra playing “Moonlight Serenade,” and they were all along the sides of the room, sipping from punch cups and talking to one another or to girls or, sometimes, simply standing alone and staring. When the boys talked among themselves, it was bold and jocular, full of jabs to ribs and slaps on the back; when they talked to girls, it was different. Some of them looked painfully shy, standing far away and looking more at the floor than at the young women they were addressing. Others, in the dark corners of the room, leaned in close, one hand against the wall. They were saying things into the girls’ ears, and the girls were laughing. Kitty saw one man reach out and caress a girl’s throat, and the girl leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Well! If Margaret Heaney saw that, she’d escort all three of her daughters right out of the hall and never permit them to come to a dance again.
Mostly, though, people were just dancing. Madly. And Tish was wrong: lots of girls wore fancy dresses. When they’d arrived, Kitty hadn’t been able to get out of her cardigan quickly enough. She’d had a thought to toss it right into the trash, but then she’d have to add wastefulness to her list of sins for next week’s confession, so she stashed the sweater under a metal folding chair. And anyway, she’d need to wear the sweater home: Frank Heaney would be waiting up for them—asleep beside the radio, perhaps, but he’d wake up when his daughters came in and pretend he’d not been sleeping at all. He’d greet them and inspect them and kiss their foreheads before he climbed the creaky stairs to bed. And their mother, cold-creamed and hairnetted and in bed already, reading from one of the fat novels she’d checked out of the library, she’d be wide awake, and she’d know the precise second her girls crossed the threshold. No doubt she’d come down into the kitchen to make sure they did what they were supposed to.
After supper, Margaret had laid out writing paper and pens on the kitchen table for her daughters: they could go to the dance, all right, but they’d tend to their letter-writing duties as soon as they got home. So they’d better not stay out too late and get too tired. They’d better come home at a decent hour from that dance. A lot of girls were getting a reputation for being fast, going to those dances and staying out late, Margaret said. And a lot of them seemed to deserve that reputation, if the truth be told. Bad habits rubbed off, you know. A girl could be perfectly innocent, but put her around enough of those who weren’t, and…Well. Lie down with dogs and you’ll rise up with fleas. Remember where you came from, and get home at a decent hour. “Remember where you came from” was Margaretese for “Remember your morals.” And “morals” was Margaretese for everything from unfolding your napkin to laying it properly across your lap to…much more.
The tall, redheaded girl serving as hostess at the refreshment table poured punch for Kitty and nearly missed her cup, so busy was she scanning the crowd. “Sorry!” she told Kitty, and Kitty said it was okay,
although if the girl had spilled on her new dress there’d have been hell to pay. “Lotta cute guys tonight, huh?” the girl said.
“I just got here,” Kitty said, and the girl, scanning the crowd again, said, “Well, take my word for it, sister, there’s a surplus of droolies here tonight!” Kitty smiled; this one was what Julian would call “khaki wacky.” But he would also say that she was Able-Grable. A blackout girl. A dilly. Good-looking, in other words.
Kitty walked back over to Louise and nudged her. She pointed with her chin to a couple getting amorous in the corner. The man’s mouth was barely an inch away from the girl’s. Louise drew in a breath and turned away. “Stop staring!” she told Kitty, but Kitty wouldn’t. If they were going to kiss, Kitty wanted to see. But they didn’t kiss. They joined hands and moved farther into the shadows.
Tish had hit the dance floor as soon as they arrived. It was so crowded, it was sometimes hard to move. But move they did. Kitty saw every variation of the jitterbug: the Lindy Hop, the Balboa, the Jersey Bounce. Some people were doing the Jig Walk and the Flea Hop. They were shagging, trucking, and Suzy-Qing. Some couples were conversation dancing, standing close together and holding each other’s hands. Kitty moved her shoulders from side to side and tapped her foot. She knew all those dances, as well as the rumba and the fox-trot and the polka, too—people used to make admiring circles around her and Julian when they danced. It would be odd to dance with someone other than Julian, but Kitty couldn’t wait to get onto the floor. “War is fun!” Kitty had overheard a girl at the office say today, and she had been horrified. But maybe, in some respects, it was true.
The band ended its rousing rendition of “Dipsy Doodle,” and the dancers whooped and whistled. The boys mopped their foreheads, and the girls fanned their faces. Then a petite, dark-haired woman was pulled onto the stage, and people began to clap and cheer. “Hey!” Louise said. “I know that woman! I went to school with her. That’s Dorothy Hermann!” She grabbed Kitty’s hand, and they pressed closer. Dorothy, a pretty brunette with a dazzling smile, began to sing, “There’ll be bluebirds over / The white cliffs of Dover / Tomorrow, just you wait and see,” and the room quieted. The woman’s voice was lovely, and the song, with its message of hopefulness for peace and for freedom, never failed to stir its listeners. Kitty felt a tapping on her shoulder. A man whom she’d noticed on walking in, a tall, handsome, serious-faced man who’d been standing alone, his hands in his pockets, was asking her to dance. Kitty nodded and stepped into his arms.
“WILL YOU HURRY UP?” Kitty told Tish. “We’re going to miss the streetcar!”
“I can’t,” Tish whined. “I’m telling you, my dogs are barking!”
“Oh, stop,” Louise said. “You’ve gone to dances lots of times before. You must be used to this by now. You’re not even wearing very high heels!”
“It’s not the shoes,” Tish said. “It’s that dead hoofer I got stuck with for the last two dances. He stepped all over my feet. And then he kept laughing. He didn’t even apologize.”
“He was probably too embarrassed to know what to say,” Louise said.
“Aw, he was a creep,” Tish said.
Both of her sisters stopped walking and turned to stare at her.
“Well, it’s true. Oh, I know how you two feel. At first when you go to these dances, you think every guy in there is wonderful. Because you feel sorry for them, where they have to go and what they have to do. But after a while you realize that just because a guy’s a soldier it doesn’t mean he’s a peach. Some of them are ugly on the outside, and some of them are ugly on the inside, and some of them are both.”
“Tish!” Louise cried.
“It’s true! Most of them are good guys, but some are drips! I noticed you only danced with handsome men, Louise. And Kitty stayed with the same guy the whole night! In fact, I’m going to tell Julian, and let’s just see what he thinks about that.”
“Good luck finding out anything from him,” Kitty said. She’d gotten only one letter from Julian so far, and he hadn’t said much—he’d said so little, in fact, that Kitty had the letter memorized: Hi de ho, doll. All things considered, I’d rather be golfing. Off the rattler and onto the ship, off the ship and straight into hell. But don’t worry about me; now that Michael and I have joined the party, licking these goons will be eggs in the coffee. It’s going to take some time, though—a long time, I’m afraid. Well, kid, I’ve got to drift. More later. Love, Julian.
It would take a long time, he’d said. How did he know? What was happening that he couldn’t talk about? Of course, none of the men could talk about the specifics of what was going on over there, everyone knew that, and if you ever forgot, there’d be some gigantic face on a poster with her finger to her lips, warning you not to let any secrets fall into enemy hands. There was one poster of a drowning sailor, the caption at the bottom saying SOMEBODY TALKED! Oh, that was a terrible one. The sailor was a handsome blond man, and the sea was so dark and threatening. Another poster showed a motherly woman in an apron over the caption WANTED FOR MURDER. She’d blabbed to the enemy, and now look.
Sometimes, although she never told anyone, Kitty felt weary of it all. What enemies? Where were they? In line at the supermarket? Behind her in the movies? At a desk next to her at work? And what was the use of having plane spotters in Chicago? “Nobody knows how far they could fly in,” her father had said, but he didn’t fool Kitty—he didn’t think for a moment that Chicago was in danger of being bombed. Still, he did his part as an air-raid warden. For how could you ever know for certain? So much evil was suddenly in the world, so many impossible things happening. She wished she could grab Adolf Hitler by his ear and say, “Stop that!”
Love, Julian had said, signing off. He’d said the word. Well, written it. He’d never done that before. She’d been with Julian a long time; certain things were assumed, but they were never said. Kitty was certainly not going to write “I love you” first, and neither was Julian, apparently. She’d asked Louise once if Michael ever told her he loved her, and Louise had said, “Well, of course! Doesn’t Julian tell you?” And Kitty had said yes, he did. But not in those words. “He has to say those words,” Louise had said.
Kitty had traced the word Julian had written with her fingers, thrilled and uneasy both. What did it mean, really? What was he thinking when he wrote it? How did he look? Was he alone? Was he smiling? Was his face serious? What did love really mean, anyway? Of course, she loved Julian, too, but what did it mean?
Kitty pulled the ugly cardigan more tightly around her. Now she was glad to have it. What had started out as a mild May evening had turned chilly.
Tish was still going on about squealing on her. “That’s the first letter I’m going to write tonight,” she said. “I’m going to tell Julian how you danced every dance with a handsome stranger.”
“Go ahead,” Kitty said. “I can never think what to say to him, anyway.”
Louise looked over at her, frowning. “Really?”
The streetcar came then, and Kitty, grateful for the distraction, positioned herself to board. “Window seat, I called it first,” she said. But there were no window seats. The car was packed, as usual. Servicemen were all over Chicago, all the time. There were sailors in training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, pilots from the Glenview Naval Air Station, inductees going through basic training at the newly enlarged Fort Sheridan, naval midshipmen training at Northwestern. Other area universities trained for specialty jobs: language, electronics, weather forecasting—even spying, it was rumored. Tish sat down next to a smiling sailor. Kitty and Louise squeezed into a bench seat at the back. “Did you see the dimples on that guy Tish sat by?” Kitty whispered. Louise nodded gravely, then whispered back, “Did you see his muscles?”
“Not on my watch, baby!” one of the sailors yelled to a woman riding with him. She giggled loudly, then kissed him, one hand around his neck, one holding on to her hat. Those sailors. They were the ones. They had the worst reputations. Kitt
y leaned forward, trying to see what the boy looked like. But then a thought of Julian came to her, and she felt how much she missed him. It was as though the center of herself suddenly became a cavernous, empty place, full of whistling wind. She tightened her grip on her pocketbook. Oh, Julian. Tonight, at least, she’d have something to write about. She’d tell him about the dance, about how Louise’s friend Dorothy had sung so beautifully and in fact had told them later that she was on her way to New York City to audition for a Broadway play in which Jeanette MacDonald had practically guaranteed her a part. Although that might make him feel bad, to say she’d been to a dance. Better not mention that. She’d tell him Tommy had given away his Lionel trains for the metal drive and Frank had wanted to get mad at him but then couldn’t. She’d say that her mother had made stuffed green peppers using SPAM and her father hadn’t even known. And…what else? What else?
KITTY SAT CHEWING HER LIPS at the kitchen table while Tish rushed through letters to her now four men, and Louise filled page after page (front and back!) with her small, exceptionally neat script—in school, Louise always won awards for penmanship.
Kitty looked down at her paper, where thus far she had written three paragraphs. Oh, she had the guidelines beside her—“What the Boys Want to Know,” the pamphlet was called. You were supposed to talk about them first, then say the family was fine and very busy with everyone trying to help with the war effort. If you had children, you were supposed to talk about them; then you gave a report on relatives and friends. (“Anyone get married?” the pamphlet helpfully suggested, and Kitty stared blackly at the question.) “Pets always make good reading,” the pamphlet said, but her family didn’t have any pets. “What’s doing in town?” Well, obviously whoever wrote the pamphlet didn’t live in Chicago—how would she even begin to answer such a question? Finally, the pamphlet suggested that she end her letter with a “personal message.” How personal could a girl get when she didn’t really know where she stood?