by Lila Perl
Mrs. Moskin, Ruthie, and I sit in silence. I could tell Lilli over and over again not to blame herself. I could assure her that it was only because she was trying to protect her sister that the accident took place. But I know it wouldn’t do any good. It’s going to take a long time for Lilli to come to terms with the guilt she feels over what happened to Helga.
“So,” I venture, trying to start a conversation, “actually, you’re fifteen. You’ve been fifteen all along. I wonder why that seems so much older than fourteen?”
We are driving through the winter night on dark deserted highways, Lilli and I in the back seat of Mr. F.’s luxurious Cadillac. Late this afternoon, Mr. F. and my father arrived at the Moskin house in Harper’s Falls to take us home. But of course Mrs. Moskin and Ruthie wouldn’t let us return without serving a meal. So it’s now nearly ten P.M.
“Ja,” Lilli sighs. “Fifteen.”
Only two years younger than Roy, I think to myself. But, of course, I don’t mention his name. I wonder if she suspects how it was that I tracked her to Harper’s Falls. In any case, this is a good subject to avoid, especially now when I’m trying to smooth things out between Lilli and me. But it seems even harder to get “Lilli” to talk to me than when she was “Helga.”
I know this is a bad time to ask her questions, but now that Lilli is coming back to live with us, probably until she’s old enough to be on her own, I want us to be friends… really friends.
“Did…did I ever do anything horrible to you, Lilli?” I ask hesitantly. “If I ever hurt you or made you talk about things you didn’t want to, I’m sorry.”
She turns to me warily. “Nein, there is nothing.”
“See, this is what I mean,” I reply, my voice rising in frustration. “I always feel like you’re holding something against me and you won’t tell me what it is.”
Lilli doesn’t answer and I exhale a deep sigh.
My father, who is in the passenger seat next to Herman Frankfurter, turns around. “Are you young ladies all right back there? We’ll be making a rest stop soon. Just behave yourself, Isabel.”
I don’t say another word until Lilli and I are in the women’s rest room, washing our hands and looking at each other in the mirror over the sink. Maybe it’s easier to talk to our images than to each other.
“Lilli, honestly…” I begin.
But I don’t get very far. Watching her in the mirror I can see that, for the first time since I’ve known her, Lilli is looking at me with eyes that are angry and hostile. She starts splashing water on her face in short, violent bursts. “Why did you have to come to that place to look for me, Isabel? Always, always you are following after me. And always, you are asking me questions.”
She gulps as she thrusts water from the running faucet into her mouth, “How did you leave Germany, how did you come to England, what happened to you there? Always questions, questions,” she rants. “Why is my life so important to you?”
“Why?” Doesn’t Lilli understand how much our relationship has changed since we first met? Did she even notice how cool I was toward her back in those first days at Moskin’s? I was at war with the war then, and I was at war with the whole idea of having “Helga” in my life. So what? I learned some things. People change. That’s good, isn’t it?
“Listen, Lilli,” I reach over and turn off the faucet in her sink, giving it an extra hard twist. “If I ever upset you by being too nosy, I’m sorry. But I had to do it. Because, I was as ignorant as most of the kids at Simpleton Junior High. And plenty of the teachers, too. By asking you all those questions, I learned…so much…”
I stop and take a deep breath, because my heart is pounding and my head is throbbing. “So I’m really thankful for everything you shared with me. And if you want to hate me for the rest of your life, it’s okay with me. I think we should go now. My father’s probably wondering why we’re taking so long.”
On a Saturday morning in January, Sibby, Lilli, and I emerge from the subway at Times Square. It’s a surprisingly mild day for the middle of winter and a good thing, too, because we head straight for the huge Paramount Theater building, where we’re probably going to have to stand in line for hours.
“Never did I see a theater so tall,” Lilli remarks looking up from the subway stop to the glass globe atop the baby skyscraper.
Sibby and I smile knowingly. We’ve been here before and we can hardly wait to see Lilli’s face when we walk through the tremendous arch and into the part of the vast building where the block-long movie palace is located. (The upper floors, of course, are offices.)
The inside of the theater is plush with red hangings and glittering gold pillars, high-ceilinged and gorgeously decorated. It seats four thousand people and has an orchestra pit in the basement that can be raised up to the level of the stage for the live show.
“There he is!” Sibby screeches. Beneath the marquee is a huge picture of “Frankie,” as she insists on calling him. He’s singing with Benny Goodman’s band. There’s a full-length movie too, starring Frankie’s older and more successful rival—so far—Bing Crosby. The “crooner” (that’s Crosby) and the “swooner” (that’s Sinatra) is what their fans call them.
But ever since Frank Sinatra opened here in the New Year’s Eve show on December 31, 1942, he’s been the singer everyone’s talking about. Girls our own age—bobby-soxers in short skirts, sweaters, and saddle shoes—have been mobbing him. They’ve been shrieking and moaning and swooning—yes, fainting dead away—over Frankie. This excitement is said to have started in smaller theaters all over New Jersey, including Frankie’s home town of Hoboken.
As we join the line of chattering, gossiping, and giggly girls, I can’t help wondering what we’re doing here in the midst of a world war. Every second that we stand waiting, young men are being killed or wounded or captured on one of the fighting fronts. And those deaths don’t even include the unwanted citizens of Hitler-dominated Europe, trapped in the ghettos and in the camps where they are facing the Final Solution.
Yet I suppose that life has to go on. Even though Arnold is now in North Africa, where he’s part of a unit that is probably going to invade Italy this summer. Even though Sibby’s father is still zig-zagging across the submarine-infested Atlantic with war supplies. Even though Roy (according to Lilli’s most recent letter) is now on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Even though the war is likely to last for years.
Some things are looking a little better than they did last year, though. I don’t think Lilli hates me after all (of course, she still doesn’t know I read Roy’s letter). For one thing, she’s now taking all ninth-grade classes at Simpleton and will soon be going into tenth at the high school. So I’m sticking with my campaign to get her to stand up for herself and stop taking “punishments” for imagined sins. I just hope some day she’ll learn that surviving a world disaster, in spite of all its sadness and loss, is nothing to be ashamed of.
When we emerge at last from the darkened theater into the hubbub of Times Square, a wintry dusk is descending. Sibby’s flushed cheeks are the same carrotyred as her hair, which is in a terrible state of disarray. We’ve sat through three shows without daring to go to the bathroom for fear of losing our seats.
“You could have stopped screaming after the first two shows,” I remark to Sybil. “You know you’re going to be hoarse for days.”
“Well,” she croaks at me in a stringy voice, “somebody had to show some enthusiasm. You two just sat there and listened to him sing ‘That Old Black Magic’ like it was the school hymn. Even ‘Night and Day’ didn’t get your juices stirring.”
“Never mind us,” I reply. “You had plenty of company in that audience. Do you think Frankie might have noticed that Lilli and I were the only ones who weren’t howling loud enough to drown him out?”
“I applauded the most loudly I could,” Lilli offers apologetically, “because I think he has a very—how you say—dreamy voice. But never before in Germany or one time in England did I hear peopl
e become so crazy in a theater. Besides, he is nearly three years already a married man, and he and his wife Nancy have a child. What do these girls who throw their underwear on the stage look for?”
“To me,” I add dryly, “his voice is only just okay, a B-minus. Also I can’t stand the way his Adam’s apple goes galloping up and down when he sings. I have to tell you that that part reminded me of Mr. Jeffers. Also, Sibby, your Frankie’s as skinny as a strand of spaghetti and his ears stick out something terrible. And how tall is he anyway, maybe five-feet-seven…and a half.”
“I think you’re both disgustingly mean to Frankie,” Sibby exclaims as we thump our way down the subway steps. “I suppose, Izzie, that you think Billy Crosby is better-looking than Frankie.”
“That’s a ridiculous comparison. Who knows what Billy will look like when he’s as old as Frankie? I hope you realize that your hero is twenty-six. And if the draft boards drop the exemption for married men with children, he might have to go into the Army.”
Just then, the train comes thundering into the Times Square subway station and we jump aboard, our three-way argument silenced by the noise.
Later, when I tell Billy about my squabble with Sibby after seeing Sinatra at the Paramount, he just smiles. “Even if Sinatra gets called up,” Billy predicts with a knowing grin, “he’ll get out of Army duty because of a punctured eardrum, or some such dopey reason. He might get hit with an egg or a rotten tomato now and then. But none a’ that will matter. He’ll go on to have a great career.”
Once again I’m reminded that Billy thinks he knows everything, even if—in this case—he might just be right.
For the time being, though, neither Lilli nor Sibby nor I can agree on the question of Frankie. What, I ask myself, is the reason for all these differences of opinion? And I answer myself in French. C’est la guerre.
