“The Kraut? Here?” Frank stands, his feet apart in a ready position. Hard to tell what he’s ready for, but he’s ready. “A Nazi? In this house?”
“Oh, Frank. We don’t know that.”
“Will he be bringing Little Miss Hitler Youth with him?”
“I have no idea, but Inga would have been just a toddler during the war, same as Marjorie.”
“Inga’s coming?” I ask, trying to not let my panic show. It makes my throat tighten to think about it.
“I have no answers to these questions, kids. Dad extended the invitation. I’m just the one making the coffee—and making sure the house is pulled together. Marjorie?”
“Okay, Mom.”
“So that’s it?” Frank slaps the table with his good hand.
Mom pulls her towel into a closed fist and places it on the table. “That is definitely it, Frank. This is Jack’s idea, and we are not going to interfere in any way or make a scene.”
“Well, we’ll see about that,” says Frank with a sniff. “I tell you what’s a good idea. How about I ask my buddies Sam Kennedy and Mac Barone to pay that den of Nazis a visit with a couple a bricks and a torch? Just give me an address. Better yet, I’ll draft Barry Goldberg and some of his boys. They won’t mind getting their hands dirty. Show those Krauts we don’t want their kind in this neighborhood. How ’bout we see about that?”
“We will not see anything of the kind,” Mom lets go of her towel and bangs her bare fist on the table like a gavel. The china cups jump in their saucers. “How would you have liked it if Jack had just said, ‘We’ll see,’ when you were lying in a hospital outside of Jackson? How about if I just say, ‘We’ll see’ the next time you ask me when’s dinner? We’ll see is not an acceptable answer when you are part of this family, is that clear?”
There is something steely in Mom’s voice, an edge that cuts sharply through the shafts of late afternoon sunlight coming in the window.
“No war goes on forever, Frank. Afterwards, the living take care of the living. The dead and the hate and the past, that takes care of itself.” She sighs. “Or it should.”
Frank shakes his head, poking his lower lip out in a pinched-up pout. “It’s time to take a stand against them types, thinking they can take over the neighborhood like they tried to take over Europe.”
Mom moves within spitting distance of Frank’s broken face. She looks up and points her finger at his chin. “You are not listening to me, young man. You pull something like that, you won’t have to wait for the police or Jack to come after you. I’ll pound the snot out of you myself.”
My eyes are so wide they’re like dry plates. Mom’s never talked like this before. To anyone. I think Frank must be surprised too, because he shuts up, just watching her.
Mom sniffs and says, “Yes. Then. Okay.” She straightens the front of her apron and takes a half a step back. “Jack’s invited that man to our home, and you will shake hands and act civil or,” she hesitates, her jaws and lips tight, “or else. You understand me?”
Frank stomps across the wooden floor of the dining room, making the cups on the table dance and rattling the entire contents of the china cabinet. He pulls open the basement door and disappears with a slam. Then he opens the door and slams it again for emphasis.
Mom’s glare falls on me.
“I’m moving,” I say, slinging my book bag over my shoulder.
CHAPTER 29
“You have a lot more going for you than a pretty face,” Mom says as she pulls open the door to Greektown Pizza, shuffling Carol Anne in ahead of her out of the blistering cold. Dad and Frank are parking the car.
The Detroit Auto Show had been like nothing I had ever seen before. Live music. Balloons. Models in evening dresses. It was a picture of what the future was going to look like, and the future was two-toned cars. Some of next season’s cars were set on pedestals rotating under spotlights. Some were displayed, doors wide open, on the floor where you could stand in line to slide in behind the wheel and imagine yourself cruising down Woodward Avenue.
We all had our favorites. Dad’s was the 1955 Thunderbird, a brand new sports car from Ford. It had a hard top convertible, a V8 engine, and something called jet tube taillights. Dad said he could go zero to sixty in that before you could blink twice. It has an automatic, but it also has a manual override for peeling out. After sliding into the driver’s seat, Dad whined his way through all three imaginary gears to demonstrate how fast the car would perform off the line.
“Always been a Chrysler man, but this car’s enough to turn me traitor. That’s one fine machine.” Dad kept looking over his shoulder at the T-Bird as we wandered away.
Some sales guy tried to steer Mom to a station wagon with genuine wood paneling on the sides, but she would have nothing to do with that. Instead she had her eye on a black Chrysler Imperial with whitewall tires big as full moons.
“If you’re going to dream, dream big!” she said, running her hands over the leather seats and checking out the electric windows. The trunk was so big on that car, I could have had a sleepover party in it and still had room left over.
Carol Anne didn’t care what kind of car it was as long as it was red, and she kept Mom running after her from one side of the exhibition hall to the other as she pointed them all out.
My favorite was the two-toned, baby blue and white 1955 Chevy Bel Air convertible with its brand new sleek back end that looked like fins. It was the most modern of all the new designs as far as I was concerned. It made the rest of the cars at the show look like they had old-fashioned bubble butts. I could just see myself gliding out of that car in front of school. If any car could make someone automatically popular, it would be this car. Plus, the radio had push buttons. I tried it as loud as I could until the salesman growled, “Keep it down, sister.”
But Frank was the one who really fell in love. He must have stood in line fifteen times to sit in the bucket seat with his hand on the gearshift of a new design from General Motors called the Corvette. It’s a sports car, same as the new Thunderbird, but smaller and closer to the ground, more like a real racecar. It’s light and small with a V6 engine and two-speed Powerglide transmission with the shifter on the floor. Priced at $3,498, it cost almost as much as a loaded Cadillac. Mom wondered what good any car was if you couldn’t squeeze two brown grocery bags into the back.
Dad just sniffed and said General Motors had tried to introduce this toy car in New York last fall and it was a total flop. He didn’t think the improvements amounted to diddly-squat in the new design and wondered what the engineers were drinking the day they came up with the idea of a plastic car body. The salesman tried to explain it was made of something called fiberglass, but Dad just sniffed at that. “Plastic’s plastic. I was born late but not stupid.” He said the Corvette was like putting a jet engine in a carnival kiddie car, and with an engine that size, a man wants some car around him for protection.
None of that mattered to Frank, though. He had stars in his eyes and a broken heart when we had to leave the Corvette behind.
Practically every new car at the Auto Show had a beautiful model standing alongside in a sparkly gown, her sweeping arms in long gloves. The new Cadillac had two, twins who were there to help demonstrate the car’s dual exhaust system. All the models wore movie star dresses that swept the floor when they rotated. Some of them were wrapped in clouds of netting or draped in lace. Some of the dresses opened at the back in a V shape almost to the waistline, and others rose in high collars to frame their faces. Each one looked like she had just stepped out of a magazine in high heels with pointed toes that had been dyed to match her dress. Not a magazine like Good Housekeeping or National Geographic, but the magazines that Bernadette and I try to sneak peeks of at the library or Stewart’s Drugstore. Huge magazines with titles like Vogue and Town & Country. They even wore eye makeup with black lines painted where their eyebrows were supposed to be, and red-lipped smiles were fixed on their perfect faces. They were the most glamoro
us women I had ever seen.
“Your daughter thinks she wants to be a model,” Mom announces to Dad when he and Frank shake off their snowy coats and slide into our booth.
“What’s this?” Dad asks.
Frank snorts, “Squirt wants to be a model. Right.” I try to kick him under the table, but he’s too fast for me and lifts his feet up, laughing.
Even though I hate him, I laugh, too. It’s been a magical day, looking at a future all polished and shiny and ready to take off from the starting line. The kind of day when you think anything’s possible.
After we put our order in, Mom excuses herself to go chat with Mrs. Papadopoulos, who’s working at the cash register. I see both of them bend over a notebook that Mrs. P. pulls out of a drawer. She holds a pencil in her hand, and it looks like she’s counting down some kind of list while Mom watches, nodding.
That’s about the books! I think to myself. Mrs. P. is the president of the Friends of the Library. I want to run over and ask, but I don’t want to give Mom away in case I’m right. Only I know I am right.
“We’re just doing a favor for Mrs. P.,” Mom had said when she dragged the box into the house and slid it under my bed. How many other women were doing her favors? She must have books stashed under beds all over town. When Mr. P. starts to walk their way, the notebook quickly disappears back into the drawer.
A secret list! What would Nancy Drew make of that? My rabbit ears go up and I lean toward the counter trying to pick up some clues to confirm what I’m pretty sure they’re talking about.
Mom stretches over the counter to coo at the new baby, who’s asleep in a basket on a shelf under the counter. And then I see Mrs. P. and Mom shake hands. Not a little finger touch like most women do. They nod at each other and shake hands like men, arms extended, two hard shakes.
“What’s that all about?” asks Dad when Mom comes back to our table.
“Oh, a little new mother advice,” Mom says casually. “That sweet baby is the cutest thing in ten states.”
“It didn’t look like you two were exchanging baby pictures.” Dad’s eyes linger over by the cash register where another family stands, paying their bill.
“I’m going to be Amelia Air-hurt when I grow up,” announces Carol Anne. “And I’m going to drive a red Cadillac.”
“Well, listen to that,” says Dad, his attention brought back to the table. “Good for you, sweet pea.”
“You girls are going to have so many more opportunities in the second half of this century,” smiles Mom. “It’s a new day. The walls are coming down.”
“What walls are you talking about, Lila?” Dad asks.
Mom just smiles, and says, “Mark my words, change is coming.” This is where Mom might have been quiet, but something about today and being out at a restaurant seems to have opened her up. She sits straight and tall and nods, folding her arms, lips spread tightly over her teeth in the littlest smile, as if she can see what the rest of us cannot. Then she reaches out to grab my hand and Carol Anne’s at the same time, “You girls. You are never going to be trapped by some women’s jobs section in the newspaper.” She hesitates before she gives our hands one last squeeze. “You girls are going to fly.” As she lets go of us, she nods again, firm as her handshake with Mrs. P.
“Like Amelia Air-hurt,” Carol Anne pipes in.
“Oh, for sure you want to turn out like her,” Frank grins.
“I tell you what I think,” Dad says. “They’re predicting that gasoline’s going to jump to over thirty cents a gallon one of these days, and you girls better catch yourself a rich one. Ain’t that right, George?” Dad shouts across the restaurant to Mr. P., whose big belly is covered by an apron that used to be white. He’s so splattered with pizza sauce he looks like he’s been shot in forty places.
“Marry rich! Is what my papa tell my sisters. But do they listen? Ohee! No! Now they live like paupers. They say they happy, but they poor like rats in a church.”
“Church mice,” Dad laughs.
“’Zactly,” nods Mr. P., wiping tables.
When the pizza arrives, we dig in.
My brain is pizza pie loaded with everything. Shiny chrome bumpers, satin dresses, and secret notebooks. I wonder how much it would hurt to pull my eyebrows out one hair at a time and then paint them back on again. I wonder how many secret notebooks there are in the world—Bernadette started one. Mom and Mrs. P. have one. Winston in the book 1984 had a really dangerous one. I wonder what I’ll do if there isn’t a section for me in the newspaper when I grow up. I’m not sure I want to fly. I definitely don’t want to wind up lost and probably dead like Amelia Earhart. I wonder if they say, “She did not die by natural causes,” if someone crashes a plane? I wonder how hard Frank would kick me under the table if I ask that question, or if he would just look sad, which would be much worse.
I reach for a second piece of pizza.
CHAPTER 30
Waiting on the porch is a man wearing a plaid shirt buttoned up to the neck.
It’s Sunday and it’s time.
The man’s jacket’s open, and he’s holding a folded black wool cap in one hand, slapping it against the other hand, looking out at the street. I grab a glimpse of him through the peephole in the door.
It is one of those March mornings when the whole world decides to melt. Carol Anne is packing up some stuffed animals to go play at her friend Harriet’s. Our house is so quiet you can hear the gutters drip. Water runs down the windows. If the sky weren’t Superman blue, you’d swear it was raining.
When I saw him turn up the front walk, I ran to the peephole before he could ring the bell. He’s alone, and he doesn’t look dangerous. No uniform. No high officer’s cap. Hardly any hair, definitely no horns. No Sieg Hiel with a one armed salute. He doesn’t even look mysterious. He just looks like a guy my dad might know.
Even though it’s eleven in the morning, the appointed time, I start to doubt the man on the porch is Mr. Scholtz. I might make him out to be a DP, but he definitely doesn’t look like a Nazi. He isn’t even wearing polished boots, just dusty work shoes.
Suddenly, he turns and I think maybe he looks me in the eye. I duck just as he rings the doorbell.
I don’t have to call for Dad; he’s right beside me with his hand on the doorknob as soon as the bell rings. “Move aside, there, private,” he says to me before exploding into a hearty hello. “Scholtz, Scholtz. Come right in.” Dad swings the door wide. “Welcome.”
Mr. Scholtz jams his cap into his jacket pocket and shakes Dad’s hand, nodding briskly. Mom enters the hallway. Introductions are made, but Mr. Scholtz doesn’t make a move to take off his coat until Mom asks to take it from him.
“I thought maybe you might bring Inga with you,” says Mom, smoothing his coat over her arm.
“Nah. Thank you. She stays at home. Help out her mama.” Mr. Scholtz looks at me and smiles. “You sit with my Inga at school, yes?” His English is better than Inga’s and his voice is soft and velvety. He does not click his heels together and he’s not barking orders at anyone. He’s not like any German I have ever seen before in the movies or on television.
I nod and then look at my feet. I wonder if I look as guilty as I feel. I do sit with Inga, but we haven’t exactly been best friends the last couple of weeks. In fact, we haven’t been talking at all.
“Marjorie tells us she’s a very sweet girl,” Mom says.
“Yah.” Mr. Scholtz nods in agreement. “Smart, too.”
“Marjorie says she speaks French.” Mom’s just making conversation to be nice. I can tell that it’s working. Mr. Scholtz smiles and runs his fingers through his hair. His head bobs up and down as he tells her, “Yah. French, German, a little Russian, now English.”
Russian? Inga speaks Russian? Wait until Bernadette and Mary Virginia get a load of that. Not only is Inga a Nazi, she also can speak the language of the commies? She’s doomed. I wonder—what else don’t I know about Inga?
“Who’s this little one?�
� Mr. Scholtz asks, bending to look at Carol Anne, who flashes out from behind Mom’s skirt before disappearing again.
“Carol Anne,” we all say at the same time. With that, Carol Anne darts from the hall and into the dining room. This breaks the ice a little and everyone laughs, except me.
“Come in. Let’s have a seat in the living room here. Lila, we’ll take some of that coffee you made. You take your coffee black?” asks Dad.
“Straight coffee, not light,” says Mr. Scholtz.
“Spoken like a good soldier,” says Dad. “No cream and sugar baloney in the field, right?”
“Jawohl,” says Mr. Scholtz.
“Frank,” Dad bellows. Mom and Dad exchange glances. You kind of have to know them to understand that they are talking to each other, because no words are said. But I know what they’re doing. Will Frank come up and meet Mr. Scholtz? Will he act polite or snort and paw the ground, ready to charge?
“I’ll call him up, you two go on and have a seat,” Mom says.
I silently shadow them into the living room, slide onto a footstool, and fold my hands. Motionless, I pretend I am part of the living room set. Mom calls, “Frank,” her voice sweet and musical.
The back door opens and closes. Exit Carol Anne. The waiting continues.
The clock on the mantel ticks. Mr. Scholtz makes a comment about today’s warmer temperatures.
“Mother Nature’s giving us a break, that’s for sure,” Dad nods. He scratches the back of his neck.
Silence rushes in to fill the spaces between their words. Tick. Tick.
Dad clears his throat as if he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t. Mr. Scholtz puts his hands in his pockets. He’s taking in the whole room. He strides over to the fireplace.
Dad stands behind his chair, running his hands back and forth across the back of it. He’s watching Mr. Scholtz. Not directly, but in little glances.
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