The Wartime Sisters

by Lynda Cohen Loigman

  “Yes,” Ruth said when she finally opened her mouth. “Lenny was special. Of course he was.”

  Millie

  Brooklyn, New York (September 1936)

  The day after Mrs. DeLuca died, Millie had nowhere to go after school except home. She longed to see Paulie and Nico, to play marbles with them on their kitchen floor. But Leora had made herself all too clear: Millie was not to visit, not even for a few minutes.

  When the buzzer sounded, Millie jumped up from the couch, certain Nico or Paulie had snuck over to say hello. But when she opened the door, a delivery boy was waiting. He was a few years older than she was, she guessed, with dark wavy hair and an easy grin. He looked at her as if he thought she’d been expecting him, and the confidence in his expression made her blush. She had never seen a boy so handsome—he looked like the movie stars in Photoplay magazine.

  “Can I help you?” Millie asked.

  The young man held up a round, shiny box. “Delivery for Mr. DeLuca.”

  “What is it?” Other than pills from the drugstore down the street, she couldn’t remember the DeLucas ever receiving deliveries.

  But the young man didn’t answer. Instead, he turned the box around so she could see the printing. He tapped at the gold block letters. SOLOMON BROS. HAT SHOP.

  “A hat?”

  “Well, it ain’t a telephone!” he tried to joke. “Sure, it’s a hat.” He cleared his throat for dramatic effect. “Open-crown homburg, black fur felt, five-and-a-half-inch crown, two-and-a-half-inch brim, lined in black silk. Your old man must have someplace important to be. Wedding, maybe?” He leaned forward slightly. “Not yours, I hope?” Despite his perfect features, his laugh was awkward and high-pitched, like the laugh of a child who knew he’d said the wrong thing. There was no way he could have known how mistaken he was. Mrs. DeLuca was dead, and her young sons were motherless. How could anyone laugh in the wake of such tragedy?

  Millie threw back her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest. “Mr. DeLuca is my neighbor, not my father. And the hat isn’t for a wedding; it’s for his wife’s funeral. So try not to laugh when you make your delivery.” She slammed the door in the young man’s face before he could respond.

  She had barely sat down when the buzzer sounded again. I shouldn’t answer it, she thought. But what if it really was Paulie or Nico this time?

  When she opened the door, his expression was repentant. “I shouldn’t have joked like that,” he said, his eyes serious and sad. “I’m sorry.”

  Millie went to shut the door again, but he reached his hand out to hold it open.

  “Wait! Did you know her? The old lady that died, I mean?”

  “She wasn’t old. She had two little boys. She was … good to me.” A lump rose in her throat when she tried to explain. Mrs. DeLuca had recognized qualities in her that no one else ever had. She had praised Millie’s resourcefulness, her creativity, and her patience. She hadn’t cared about Millie’s appearance—she hadn’t even noticed. She cared about Millie’s opinions. She told Millie she was smart.

  Before she could stop herself, Millie began to cry. The delivery boy reached into his pocket, pulled out a handkerchief, and offered it to her. It was rough white cambric, and Millie wasn’t sure it was clean. But she took it from him anyway and dabbed at her cheeks with the scratchy square of fabric. When she was done, she tried to give it back. “Thank you,” she said.

  But the boy shook his head and turned in the direction of the DeLucas’ apartment.

  “It’s all right,” he said gently. “You can keep it.”

  * * *

  Millie’s sixteenth birthday had fallen on a Sunday, and by midafternoon, she had received half a dozen phone calls—invitations to the movies, to dances, and for ice cream. By evening, Ruth suggested that they take the phone off the hook. But their mother had refused, and the ringing continued.

  Millie had to admit that it was exciting at first, but after a few months of dating, she grew discouraged. Her evenings always seemed to follow the same disappointing trajectory. A young man would show up at the door and shake her father’s hand. By the time they reached their destination, he would be staring at her chest. In an effort to impress her, he would tell her about the sports he played or the clubs he ran at school. He might try to hold her hand or put his arm around her waist. Eventually, the conversation would turn to careers and college.

  “You’re lucky,” the young man would say. “A girl like you doesn’t have to worry about all that.”

  “What do you mean, a girl like me?”

  “A girl as beautiful as you—it’s a compliment, that’s all.”

  The conversations varied, but the message was clear.

  After a full year of dating high school boys, Millie was no longer interested. Unfortunately, the college-age men her mother set her up with weren’t much better. The only real difference between them and their younger cohorts was that at the end of the evening, they expected something more than a peck on the cheek.

  In the month leading up to Mrs. DeLuca’s death, Millie gave up dating entirely. Young men still called, but she refused to come to the phone. Her mother was annoyed, but her father understood. “Florence, don’t be such a yenta. Let the girl be. She’ll call back all the schmendricks as soon as she’s ready.”

  * * *

  On the Monday after Mrs. DeLuca’s funeral, the delivery boy was waiting for her. When the dismissal bell rang and Millie left school, she heard a group of girls buzzing just outside the double doors. Did you see that boy standing at the bottom of the stairs? I swear he looks exactly like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. When Millie saw that he was waving in her direction, she almost tripped down the flight of stone steps. The other girls sighed and went back to their conversations.

  “Hi,” he said easily, without a trace of embarrassment.

  She was curious to know how he knew where to find her, but he didn’t seem to think it was much of a mystery. “I asked around,” he said, shrugging. “It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

  “Do you go to school near here?”

  “No, I’m all done with school.”

  “You graduated already?”

  “That’s one way of looking at it. Hey, do you want to get a Coke?”

  A wave of dizziness washed over her, but she couldn’t say whether it was from the afternoon sun or the intensity of his stare. She didn’t answer.

  She had spent the last month caring for a dying woman’s children. She had tried to be a comfort, but the effort had exhausted her. In the last few weeks, the DeLucas had kept their shades drawn and the apartment lighting dim. By the end, Millie felt as if she’d been working in a tomb.

  “The drugstore is on your way home,” he insisted. “We’ll be quick, I promise. Just one Coke.” When he held out his hand, she was powerless to refuse him. It was an invitation out of the darkness, a reminder of the seventeen-year-old girl she still was. She wrapped her fingers around his and heard the girls behind her giggle.

  It was only after they ordered their Cokes that she realized she didn’t know his name.

  “It’s Leonard,” he said, “but everyone calls me Lenny. You’re Millie, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I asked the lady down the hall from you, when I delivered the hat. She told me your name, and then she warned me to stay away from you.”

  Millie pictured Leora’s face and frowned. “But you didn’t listen.”

  “I guess I don’t like it when people tell me what to do.” He flashed the same lopsided grin Millie remembered from the day they had met. “Besides, I got the feeling that the two of you weren’t exactly friends.”

  “I babysat for the DeLucas for almost four years. Mrs. DeLuca was never really well, but this year she got worse—she was too sick to take care of the boys on her own. The day after she died, her husband’s sister moved in with them. That was the woman you met last week. She told me she didn’t want me to babysit anymore.”

  “She fired
you? After four years? Just like that?” He shook his head angrily. “What a crummy thing to do.”

  Millie found his outrage enormously satisfying. The week before, when she’d told her family about the way she’d been dismissed, her mother had smiled and said she’d have more time to socialize. “You can finally return all those phone calls you missed. Who knows, sweetheart? One of them might turn out to be your future husband. Don’t worry, I kept a list. You can start calling tomorrow.”

  Ruth’s reaction was different, but no less infuriating. “Maybe now you can concentrate on getting a job for when you graduate,” she said. Neither Millie’s mother nor her sister acknowledged Millie’s grief. Neither of them expressed even the smallest bit of sympathy.

  “The worst thing is that she doesn’t even want me to visit the boys. She said that if I come by, it will only confuse them.” Millie could feel the tears starting to form, but she didn’t want to cry in front of Lenny again. She wanted to say more, but she didn’t have the words. How could she explain how lonely she was without the company of the DeLuca children to fill her afternoons? How could she explain the ache she felt in her chest when she walked home from school, knowing that no one was waiting for her, that no one needed her anymore?

  Stop thinking about Paulie and Nico. Stop being so sad. Whatever you do, don’t make a scene. Millie took a sip from her straw and forced herself to smile. “I’m probably going to die of boredom now that I don’t have to babysit anymore. I have so much spare time now, and nothing to do.”

  Lenny spun a few degrees toward her on the red leather stool so that their knees touched. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll help keep you busy.”

  * * *

  A few weeks later, Ruth found out about Lenny from one of Arthur’s friends. “Anything you want to tell me?” Ruth asked on the phone. “Because Roger said he saw you with someone at the Sunday matinee. You shouldn’t go around kissing people at the movies, you know. Even in the dark, people can still see. Do you want to get a reputation, like Shirley Gittleman?”

  “Mind your own business,” Millie snapped. She hung up the phone and went back to her magazine. Later on, when her mother asked who had called, Millie lied and told her it had been a wrong number.

  Although Lenny lived in a neighborhood not too far from her own, Millie felt as if he were from a different world. He was Jewish, but he rarely set foot in a synagogue. He was smart, but he’d dropped out of high school when he was fifteen. He worked, but he changed jobs so often that Millie was never quite sure of his schedule. At twenty years old, he roamed the streets of Brooklyn with limitless freedom.

  Millie didn’t know any parents who would allow their son to drop out of high school. It was possible that Lenny’s own parents wouldn’t have tolerated it either, but his father had left soon after Lenny was born, and his mother had passed away the year he’d turned ten. For a while, Lenny had lived with a bachelor uncle, but now he shared an apartment with his older brother, Murray.

  What set Lenny apart most from the other young men Millie knew was his seemingly endless network of friends. The first time he took Millie to the movies, one of his buddies was behind the box office window, and another was working the concession stand. Admission and popcorn were both free of charge. The next weekend at a Dodgers game, Lenny seemed to know every person who worked at Ebbets Field. The young man checking tickets waved them in through the gate, and another friend found them empty seats not too far from third base. She didn’t question why it was that Lenny managed to get so many things without paying for them. He was outgoing and handsome—it made sense to her that people wanted to do him favors. Though she hadn’t met his brother, she imagined him to be the same, especially since people were always asking Lenny to tell Murray they said hello. “Give your brother my regards,” the peanut vendor at the baseball game said as he handed them free bags of nuts from his tray.

  She tried to forget Ruth’s warning about kissing Lenny in public, but she felt so self-conscious at the baseball game that she only let him hold her hand. At a dance the next weekend, he was far more persistent. After introducing her around to more of his friends, he took her hand without a word and led her to the dance floor. When he held her in his arms, the buzzing in her head blocked out the reluctance she knew she was supposed to feel. He didn’t ask permission before his lips pressed against hers.

  Afterward, she was surprised, not only by how grateful she was for his silence, but by how easy it was to let go of the formalities she had always assumed were so important. She had spent too many months with her dying neighbor, and Lenny was bristling with life.

  It didn’t take Millie’s parents long to start asking questions. Ruth was already married, and they recognized the signs. But the boys Ruth had gone out with were always boys that they knew. No one in their neighborhood had heard of Millie’s young man, and he wasn’t one of the college boys her mother had set her up with. They didn’t know his family or what he did for a living.

  “Invite him for Shabbat dinner on Friday,” her father ordered.

  “But he doesn’t usually celebrate—”

  “The boy eats, doesn’t he? Tell him to come for dinner. Your mother and I want to meet him.”

  Ruth

  Millie’s beau was late. By just a few minutes, but it set Millie on edge. She was picking her fingernails and chewing her bottom lip so intently that most of the lipstick was already gone. Ruth supposed that her sister wasn’t used to waiting for men—her dates were usually early.

  At exactly ten past six, the doorbell rang. Millie jumped up from her seat on the faded sofa, but their father motioned for her to stay where she was. Millie’s mother, wearing her second-best dress, hurried in from her bedroom when she heard the door open. She had been checking on Ruth’s twins, to make sure they were still napping. The scent of roast chicken hung in the air.

  There was no mistaking the attraction between Millie and their guest. Ruth had seen plenty of young men try to catch her sister’s eye, but when Lenny looked at her, Ruth could have sworn the lights flickered. He carried a bouquet of red roses, which he handed to Millie, and a box of their mother’s favorite chocolates. “These are for you, Mrs. Kaplan,” he said, presenting them. “Thank you for inviting me.”

  “Thank you, Leonard. Please, come in.” Their mother’s voice was measured—distant and cold. Lenny’s wavy hair and chiseled jaw were straight off a movie screen, but Florence Kaplan wasn’t going to be persuaded by good looks alone. She would need to know about Lenny’s family, his education, and his prospects. If Lenny wasn’t worthy, Ruth knew this dinner would be his last. Her beautiful sister was meant to marry a prince, and their mother wasn’t about to let her settle for a pauper—no matter how handsome he happened to be.

  “We understand that you’ve been spending a lot of time with Millie,” their mother began.

  “I’d spend more if she’d let me, Mrs. Kaplan. But Millie is dead serious about school.”

  Ruth began to cough. She could feel Millie glaring at her, but she couldn’t help herself. The words were out of her mouth before she could think. “Serious about school?”

  The truth was, Millie had asked Ruth about her college classes a few times. But when Ruth wanted to know why, Millie wouldn’t say.

  If Lenny noticed the tension between the two sisters, he didn’t let on. Instead, he took Millie’s hand and smiled at their parents. “Millie is the sharpest girl I ever met,” he gushed. He stared at Millie’s face with such adoration that it made Ruth embarrassed to be in the same room with them.

  At dinner, he ate with gusto, complimenting the kreplach, the chicken, and the tiny potatoes. But he slurped his soup clumsily and picked up the drumstick with his fingers. When Millie’s father asked if he had any plans for attending college, he shook his head and shrugged. “School’s not for me,” he said, unembarrassed, and Ruth watched her mother’s face crumple into a frown.

  But her father wasn’t fazed. “It isn’t for everyone,” he
agreed good-naturedly. “You’re a workingman, then? What do you do?”

  “Right now, I’m working a few different jobs, trying to figure out what’ll be best. My brother wants me to work for him, but I want to see what I can do on my own first.”

  “What line of work is your brother in?”

  “He sells soap flakes and detergents to the laundries and hotels all over the city. It’s a big business.”

  “I’m sure it is. But you’re still not interested?”

  “Like I said, I want to see what I can do on my own.”

  Ruth’s father nodded. “You want to be independent.” He speared another piece of chicken from the platter with his fork while his wife gave him dirty looks from the other side of the table. For the rest of the meal, Ruth couldn’t figure out what her father was thinking. Was he impressed by Lenny’s pluck or disturbed by his lack of stability? His body language and expression were impossible to decipher.

  Ruth’s mother, on the other hand, made no attempt to hide her feelings. When Lenny spoke about delivering hats for Mr. Solomon, her frown grew into a full-blown scowl. “I’m sure you don’t want to be a delivery boy forever, Leonard. What kind of future could there possibly be in that?” When Arthur mentioned yesterday’s Dodgers game and Lenny remarked that he’d been in attendance, her mother huffed loudly and pushed her chair away from the table. “Who has time for baseball games on a weekday afternoon?” She returned from the kitchen a moment later with dessert, slamming down the cake plate with such force that the entire table shook. Ruth was surprised the glass plate hadn’t cracked in two.

  Millie said little and ate even less, and by the time the meal was over, she was as pale as the tablecloth. “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Kaplan,” Lenny said. “That was one of the best meals I ever had.”