“I do know that, Pop.” Her voice was thick.
Frank patted the concrete floor for her to sit beside him. When Kitty hesitated, he closed the toolbox so she could sit on it; then he began to laugh.
“What?” Kitty said.
“You! Telling me you’re going to work in a dirty factory and then you’re too dainty to sit on your father’s clean-swept floor! You of the ruffles and the lace and the painted fingernails. I’ve never seen anyone stare at clothes in a magazine the way you do; I’ve often told your mother you ought to wear a bib for the drooling. And now it’s off to work looking like Joe Blow. There’s no explaining it. But then you know the expression, don’t you?”
Kitty nodded.
“Tell it to me.”
“‘There are only three kinds of Irishmen who can’t understand women,’” Kitty began, and she and her father finished the old saying together. “‘Young men, old men, and men of middle age.’”
“Well! I’m glad to see we agree on that point, at least,” her father said. “Now help a knackered old man off the floor and up the stairs, and we’ll dream our way to tomorrow.”
ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, THE SISTERS went together to the Kelly Club, as the servicemen’s center was now called. Louise volunteered to serve coffee at the canteen—she was feeling too bad about Michael’s mother to dance—but Kitty and Tish took to the floor.
Kitty danced first with a sailor named Elwood, a redheaded, freckle-faced young man straight off the farm, headed for the Pacific. When he talked about catching the train to the West Coast that night, his voice cracked and his palms began to sweat. “It must be hard,” she told him, “going so far from home.”
“Yeah, but I got no kick,” he said. “I’m willing to do my part.”
“But…working on a farm, weren’t you classified essential labor?” she asked.
“I got four brothers; they’ll help out my parents.”
“So you enlisted?”
He nodded. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. You eat good in the Navy.” He looked down into her face. “You sure are pretty. I never danced with such a pretty girl before.”
“Thank you,” she said and pressed her cheek to his. His ears stuck out so far they were almost like visors; Kitty could see the glow of light coming through them. “And you are a very fine-looking fellow.”
He laughed. “No, I ain’t. But thank you for saying so.” “Yours” ended with a musical flair, and he dipped her dramatically. The dancers around them smiled and applauded.
Next the band started up with “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar.” Elwood said, “I ain’t handsome, but I can swing. How about it, toots?” He moved his eyebrows up and down.
Kitty laughed, then went on to dance every dance with him. On the fast songs, he showed off; during the slow ones, he talked softly into her ear. He had a cow he’d raised from birth, named Goldie. He had a chicken named Red; she came when he called her, too. He had a few good dogs and too many cats to count—barn cats, real good mousers. He had a girl he liked a lot, had liked her for a long time, but he hadn’t told her until the night before he left for basic. Her name was Mary, and she had blond hair clear down to her knees, looked like corn silk. She was going to write to him, and he hoped that when he got home she’d marry him and they’d live on his family’s farm. He didn’t know of a place prettier than that farm. If you watched the sun come up over the fields, it could make you feel like busting out crying. Once he did bust out crying, he confided, but he was just a little boy then. He was about to see the world, that was one of the reasons he’d joined the Navy, but he knew he’d never see any place better than home; he just knew it. He couldn’t hardly swim, though, wasn’t that funny, that a guy who couldn’t swim would join the Navy? Yes, that was funny, Kitty told him, but she didn’t think it was.
When it was time to leave, Kitty and Louise waited impatiently for Tish, who was taking far too long to say good night to a young lieutenant. “I told you, I can’t give you my address!” she said, laughing. “It’s against the rules!” He whispered something in her ear, and she said, “Oh! Okay. They live at 411 Pine.” She’d given them the Lawsons’ address, their next-door neighbors.
With this, Kitty marched up and grabbed her sister’s elbow. “We have to go, nice meeting you,” Kitty told the soldier and began walking quickly away.
“Wowsa. What’s your name?” he called after her.
“That man is stinking drunk!” Louise told Tish, and she said, “I know. But did you see the cleft in his chin?”
After they were home and dressed for bed, the sisters gathered around the kitchen table to write their letters. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that they hadn’t always done this, that the practice was relatively new. It was a lesser equivalent to what one of Tish’s penpals had said in a letter to her: that he and his buddies felt they’d always been fighting this war, that their life before seemed somehow to have fallen away, this life now was the only life they knew.
The kitchen still smelled of that night’s dinner of tuna loaf, which all of them, even Margaret, had found revolting. The compensation had been that she’d made a real yellow cake with chocolate frosting for dessert—a small one but a real one. Wednesdays and Fridays were meatless days in the Heaney house, as they were in many households across America now. Wednesdays and Fridays were also the nights Frank tried to schedule meetings of one kind or another. He had failed to find anything to do tonight, however, and had suffered through dinner with the rest of them. “Oh, it truly is awful, isn’t it?” Margaret had said and then admonished her family to eat it anyway. Billy had asked why they couldn’t just have cold tuna sandwiches. “This makes my eyes water,” he’d said.
“Believe me, next time we will have sandwiches,” Margaret had said. “But you’ve got to try new things; that’s the only way you know if something’s good. Imagine if Ruth Wakefield had thrown away those Toll House cookies—they were an accident, you know! Don’t worry, you won’t see me making this recipe again; I’ve given it the black X. I wouldn’t feed it to a Nazi.” She’d stared miserably at another bite on her fork, put it in her mouth, and spoken around it. “Although if I did, we’d probably win the war a lot faster.”
Now the front door opened and slammed shut, and into the kitchen came Margaret, the bun at the back of her neck slid off to the side, her cheeks flushed.
“What happened to you?” Tish said. “Were you the victim again at the Red Cross meeting?”
“’Tisn’t the meeting I’m coming from,” Margaret said and sat at the table with her daughters. She was humming, and she had an odd light in her eyes.
Louise looked up from her pages. “You said you were going to a Red Cross meeting!”
“I’m well aware of what I said, but that’s not where I went.” She got up to open the bread box. “Where’s the rest of that cake?”
“Billy and Pop ate it,” Kitty said. “Where have you been?” She and her sisters looked at one another. Why was their mother behaving in this mysterious way?
Margaret turned to her daughters and spoke quietly. “Now, don’t be telling your father, but Maureen O’Reilly and I went to a USO dance.”
“What?” Tish said. “Where?”
“The Catholic Center on South Wabash. I wanted to see what those dances were all about, and I did see. You girls can keep on going, it’s perfectly innocent and nothing I’d ever forbid you from doing. Oh, that narrow-eyed water snake Mernie Gunderson and her talk about the immorality there, how she won’t let her daughter go to the dances and how I’d better go and have a look if I don’t believe her! All that goes on is some lonesome soldier boys barely old enough to shave dance with some pretty girls and forget about their troubles for a while. It’s lovely.”
“Well, I told you,” Tish said, but it was all she could do to keep from wiping her brow. Good thing their mother hadn’t gone to the Kelly Club, where the latest fad was the infamous dance taught to American boys by French sailors. It was ca
lled the Kiss-on-the-Carpet, and you took turns going around a circle with a little rug, choosing a partner and then kneeling down on the rug to kiss. Some “dance”! None of the sisters had taken part in that yet, but Tish kept talking about how much fun it would be, and how it wouldn’t hurt to try it, it wouldn’t hurt to just try it.
“Did you dance?” Louise asked Margaret.
“Did I! And may I say more than one young man pronounced me light on my feet and good-looking to boot!” Her face grew sober, and she said again, “Don’t be telling your father; he wouldn’t understand.”
From the parlor came Frank’s voice: “And who would I be to deny the pleasure of your company to our fine boys?” He came into the kitchen and regarded his wife. “So long as all you did was dance! In fact, may I have the honor?” Margaret smiled but waved him away.
“Ah, come on, aul’ doll. Don’t break a man’s heart.” He held out his arms, Margaret walked into them, and they waltzed out of the kitchen.
Louise shook her head, smiling. Then she said, “Michael and I will be just like that. We will be.”
The sisters said nothing. They knew it was true.
AT BREAKFAST ON THE MONDAY MORNING she was to start her new job, Kitty couldn’t eat much and Tommy wouldn’t eat at all.
“Here now, son,” Frank said. “Don’t you know an egg is good as gold these days? Only yesterday I read in the paper about a minister in France charges an egg to marry people! He won’t take money, only an egg. They get only one a month over there. Think how he’d feel, seeing you let yours go to waste.”
“It doesn’t have to go to waste,” Tommy said. “I’ll give it to someone. I’m just not hungry, Pop. Do you want it?”
“Give it to one of your brothers,” Frank said, and then, anticipating the brawl, he said, “Give it to little Binks over there, wasting away to nothing.”
“What about me?” Billy said. “I’m wasting away to nothing, too!”
“If you’re going to fight about it, I’ll take it,” Tish said. “I need more protein for my hair.”
“Is that where my mayonnaise is going?” Margaret asked. “I noticed a lot of mayonnaise missing. Did you take it to put on your hair again?”
“I have to go to work,” Tish said and ran out the back door. Inspired by Kitty’s new job, Tish had begun volunteering at the hospital. She was the juice girl, pushing around the cart and offering patients their choice of beverage. She’d come home the first day resolved to be a nurse; on the second day, she’d said maybe not—she’d seen a bedpan.
Margaret put the backs of her fingers to Tommy’s forehead. “Do you feel sick?”
He shrugged. “Not really.”
“Why don’t you eat something? You’ll feel better if you do.”
He got up from the table. “I will. I’m just not hungry now. I’ll eat a big lunch.”
“All right then,” Margaret told him, lightly, and watched him go outside. But worry was in her face when she told Frank, “He’s not himself.”
“The boy’s not hungry, that’s all,” Frank said. “He’ll make up for it later. I’m off now; don’t expect me home too early. It’s not only the mail that’s gotten heavier, it’s the time I spend. Used to be I’d exchange a few pleasantries here and there. Now it’s a woman waiting for me on the porch half the places I deliver to, standing there and wringing her hands: ‘Is a letter there for me today? Are you sure? Oh, Mr. Heaney, do you think he’s all right?’ Sometimes they’re so disappointed they start to cry, and nobody to comfort them but yours truly. It’s getting so I dread seeing them, for I’ve run out of things to say.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” Margaret said. “Just say something. Say you’re sure he’s fine, that the mail is slow.”
“It is really slow, even V-mail,” Louise said. “That I can vouch for.” She was anxious about hearing from Michael; every day now was weighted with concern over how he’d take the news about his mother. Louise was stopping by every evening after work to see Mrs. O’Conner; no apparent worsening yet, but no improvement, either. Their visits were bittersweet; Mrs. O’Conner told Louise stories about Michael as a little boy, as though she were entrusting her memories of him to his wife-to-be. Thus far, Louise’s favorite story had been the one in which nine-year-old Michael had labored long at the counter of a fancy women’s dress shop, trying to find something he could buy his mother after he’d learned he could not afford the tweed suit in the window. The saleswoman had practically been in tears, she’d later told Mrs. O’Conner. Young Michael had been so earnest in his desire to buy the suit, then so devastated to learn he could not afford it. But how resolute he’d become, and what care he took in choosing a belt! And all this for the occasion of nothing—it was not his mother’s birthday, or Mother’s Day, or Christmas. Rather, it was that Michael had filled his cigar box with money he’d made doing odd jobs, and he wanted to spend it, and it would never occur to him to buy something for himself.
Kitty contrasted this story to one she knew about ten-year-old Julian, who gave his mother a birthday gift of a paperback book of riddles and a candy bar from which he’d taken one discreet bite. Still, even at that age, there was something irresistible about Julian. His love of life was contagious—he wanted everyone to have as good a time as he did. And if he was insensitive at times, well, just tell him what you wanted and he’d do it for you, no hard feelings, and was there anything else you wanted?
Kitty forced down another bite of toast and then pushed her plate away. She was too excited to eat. It felt odd to be going off to work in slacks, but she liked it. It felt as if she were going to a picnic, or to ride horses with Julian. “Well, here I go,” she said, and her parents said nothing. Frank hid behind his paper, and Margaret noisily stacked dishes in the sink. Still disapproving. Well, they’d come around. Kitty slid her purse over her shoulder—it was heavier with her lunch packed inside. Then she grabbed her toolbox, heavier still, and headed for the streetcar.
As she walked down the block, she felt her neighbors’ eyes on her. Florie Dorrisburger, out watering her garden in her robe, shouted, “Good for you!” and flashed her a victory sign. Everyone else who saw her said nothing. She knew that women all over were working at men’s jobs now—they were cabdrivers, elevator operators, bellhops, trolley drivers, even long-distance truck drivers. Was she such an oddity, leaving her office job to work in a factory? Or was she being oversensitive, reading things into an innocuous silence?
Oh, but if the truth be told, she herself was ambivalent about her decision. Last night, she had tossed and turned, thinking about how she’d no longer be dressed in pretty clothes—and those new V-necked ruffled blouses worn with massive beads, weren’t they just the cat’s meow! But she’d not buy such a blouse now, and she’d no longer go to the drugstore for lunch with her office girlfriends; and she would indeed ruin her hands.
When Kitty boarded the streetcar, she saw a number of other women wearing slacks. She had seen them before, of course, but now she saw them in a different way, and she felt reassured by them. She found a seat and stared out the window during the long ride, wondering exactly what she’d be doing. She imagined telling her sisters about her job, tossing off technical terms—and then patiently explaining them—while she washed the grime off her hands. Maybe she’d get muscular like that woman on the poster. Though if she did, she wouldn’t be rolling up her sleeves that way. In fact, maybe she’d request a job that required no heavy lifting. Then Kitty felt ashamed and resolved again to do whatever she was asked without complaint. If she got muscles, she’d find a blouse that would work well with them. No more sheer sleeves, that was for sure.
When at last Kitty reached the stop near the factory, a number of women got off the car with her. One of them, a robust girl with dark, curly hair and ruddy cheeks, seemed unsure of herself. Kitty moved to walk beside her. “This your first day, too?” she asked, and the woman nodded shyly.
“I’ve only just moved here,” she said.
English! Kitty asked the woman where she was from.
“Just south of London,” she said. “I’ve been in America for five years now, but I’ve been living in New York—I’d only just come to visit my sister when the war broke out in Europe, and of course I’ve not been home since. Last month, I married the best man in world, Don Ramsey, just before he shipped out. He sent me here to Chicago to live with his parents for the duration. Then we’ll get a little place of our own, and truly, I can’t wait. It’s not that I don’t like his parents, they’re lovely, but a girl needs a little more privacy than sleeping in the dining room allows! I really should have stayed with my sister, but Don felt—” She laughed. “Listen to me go on. My name is Laura. Laura Ramsey.” She blushed, saying this, and looked at her wedding band.
Kitty felt a familiar surge of longing. Oh, that Julian. If he’d done what he was supposed to do, she could have introduced herself as Kitty Stanton, also married to a man in the service, and she and Laura could talk about…Well. they could talk about whatever wives talked about.
As it was, Kitty introduced herself and asked Laura if she’d like to have lunch together. “I would,” Laura said. “But I brought my own.” She held up her purse. Kitty held up her own. And then together the women walked down the hall to the small room where they were to have their orientation.
“MY DADDY, HE WAS ASKED to grow peanuts for the war effort,” Hattie Johnson said. She was a tall, light-skinned Negro, another one of the new girls starting today. She, Laura, Kitty, and another new girl named Lala Denet, from a small town in southern Illinois, were having lunch together outside. Lala was a curly-haired blonde who, at four feet eleven, was as short as Hattie was tall. She said her real name was Helen, but when she was born, her two-year-old brother couldn’t pronounce Helen, so he called her Lala, and it stuck. She was married to an Army man stationed in Hawaii; he did something there with radio equipment. After he shipped out, Lala had decided to come to Chicago to get a defense job and had rented a small apartment that an older couple had made out of attic space in their large home in Oak Park. They charged very little rent—said it was their way of helping out with the war effort. Lala said they had fixed the place up real cute, but holy moley, there was enough chintz in there to drive you nuts, and Mrs. Dooley really needed to make some friends her own age.
Dream When You're Feeling Blue Page 10
