The ringing woke Estelle at ten o’clock on Sunday morning. She stumbled half asleep to the door but found no one there. The ringing continued and she hurried to the phone that was hidden under a heap of bills and old newspapers in the kitchen cupboard. Before the receiver had reached her ear she heard Sid say, “Hi, did I wake you?”
Estelle pulled a kitchen chair over to the phone and said, “Good morning.”
“Look, I’m in the army,” he said. “I came in from Camp Dix late last night. Thought I’d see you today, but I have to stay home with the family. You wouldn’t want to come here, would you?”
She said, “Sure,” feeling that he had wanted her to say no. “Why didn’t you write to me?” she asked. “I didn’t know what happened to you.”
“I don’t write,” he said. “Wait a minute, will you?” She looked at her fingernails, which were bitten down to half moons, while she waited for him to come back to the phone.
“If you’re coming here, you better come to dinner. Around two o’clock. We’re on Eastern Parkway, near Utica Avenue.” She wrote the number he gave her on the edge of a piece of newspaper.
When he hung up, she sat down on the edge of her bed and put her hair up in pin curls. She heard her mother at the door before she was done and opened it for her. Her mother’s arms were laden with paper bags. The odor of fresh rolls filled the kitchen.
“I’m going out this afternoon,” she said as if talking to herself.
“Where?” asked her mother.
“To Sid’s house. I’m having dinner with his family.”
“Thank God,” said her mother.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Did I say it means anything?” her mother answered. “But did you have to cry all week? Who is he that you should cry for him?”
“All right Ma, all right.”
“But I’m asking, do you know yet what he does for a living?”
“He’s a bookkeeper.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know where. What difference does it make, where.”
“I don’t know, Estelle. I don’t see how a boy can come into a house three times a week half a year and never say a word to anyone. What are we, wild animals that will bite him?”
Estelle’s mother poured some coffee for her and watched while she took nibbles out of a sweet bun and turned the pages of the Sunday paper. When Estelle was finished she carried the dishes to the sink and took out a nail file and some polish. She painted her fingernails and toenails carefully and then sat waiting for them to dry.
When she went back to her bedroom her mother was making the bed. Estelle took some clothes out of her closet and held them up against herself critically. She tried on first a blue suit and then a brown checked one. “Which is better, Ma?” she asked.
“They’re both nice,” her mother said. Estelle looked at them for another minute and decided on the blue one. She washed slowly, and left a trail of powdery footsteps in the bathroom and the hallway. The scent of toilet water and face powder followed her wherever she went.
Her mother looked her over when she had finished dressing. “You look nice. Don’t worry how you look.” Her lips brushed Estelle’s forehead quickly, “For good luck.” She followed Estelle out into the hallway. “When do you think you’ll be home?”
“Maybe late. We may go out in the evening from his house.”
“Be careful, Estelle,” she said solicitously, but her daughter stopped her with an outraged “Ma,” and she could not tell whether it was the anger of acquiescence or defiance.
“I’m not a baby, Ma. I’m twenty years old.”
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Estelle took the subway for the three stations. The ride was shorter than she expected. When she came out of the train, it was only half past one. She stopped to look in the mirrors of all the gum-vending machines she passed, wondering at each one whether she should have worn a hat. It looked so formal, she was tempted to carry it. But she left it on. The sun was warm outside, and the air glistened so that she blinked when she came out of the darkness. The trees on Eastern Parkway were covered with tiny leaves, still bright green and waxy. She walked a few blocks in the opposite direction and turned in time to come to his house at five minutes to two.
Estelle rang the bell in the outer hall and walked noisily across the tiled floor to the self-service elevator. When she came out on the third floor, Sid was waiting for her. He put his arms around her and they stood close together until they heard a doorknob turning somewhere in the hall. No door opened but they moved apart and Sid opened the door to his family’s apartment. He took her hat and pocketbook and she looked at him carefully. She thought he looked younger in his army shirt, even thinner than usual, but less serious.
Sid’s two older sisters and their husbands were in the living room. Sally and Marian both looked like Sid, narrow-boned, dark-haired, with sharp-featured intense faces. Estelle was confused by the brothers-in-law. They were introduced so quickly that she didn’t know which was Morty and which was Sam. They sat together on the couch, sharing the sports section of the paper, and said “Hi” without getting up. Sid’s father and mother came out of the kitchen together and Sid introduced Estelle.
“What do you think of Sid going in the army?” Marian, the younger sister, asked Estelle. “Some surprise.”
Estelle nodded.
“Come in. Sit down,” Sally said. Estelle sat down in the chair closest to her.
“Show your girl your uniform Sid,” Sally said. “She’ll never know you with the broad shoulders. Go on, take your jacket out.”
Sid left the room and came back quickly wearing a visored cap that reached almost to his eyebrows and a jacket much too large for him. He came in stiffly, bowed low, pulled the jacket in back to make it fit, and shouted, “Hut, two, three, four, hut, two three four.”
“Not so loud, Michael’s sleeping,” Sally warned, but he marched on his heels all the way through the living room, to the foyer, and back through the dining alcove. He stopped in the middle of the living room, pretended to drop his rifle and pick it up. He bent forward at a precarious angle and leaned on the imaginary rifle with his mouth hanging open and his eyes crossed. His sisters and their husbands bent over and shook with laughter. Estelle, not knowing what else to do, laughed with them. Their laughter made him sillier and sillier and his faces were more dreadful each minute. When he stopped and stood with his hand on the piano, waiting for the others to stop laughing, they only laughed harder. Then Estelle saw his mother standing behind him in the doorway that led to the kitchen. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she said, “Look, look what they’re sending to war.”
Sid’s father took her arm from behind and said almost sternly, “Not now Annie, not now. This is not the time.” He pulled her into the kitchen and a few minutes later, when the others in the living room were still gasping with laughter, he called out, “Come and get it, everybody.”
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The table in the alcove next to the kitchen was laden with food. The napkins were buried under the plates and the silverware hung over the edge of the cloth. They took each other’s glasses and silverware and didn’t know the difference. There was chopped herring and chopped liver and chicken soup and stuffed fish and olives and pickles, even grapefruit that Estelle discovered after the dishes were taken away to make room for the tea. Long after they had all had enough to eat, there was roast chicken, potato and noodle puddings, kashe with gravy, and finally applesauce and sponge cake. Sid’s father pressed wine, beer, and soda water on everyone all through the meal. “Have something,” he begged. “This is on Sid. Have a little more, it will give you an appetite.”
Estelle sat next to Sid, her knee touching his, wondering how the others would move from the table after consuming so much food. “I’m going to burst,” said one of the brothers-in-law. “Why did you make so much, Ma?”
“No one forced you. You didn’t have to eat so much,” she said drily.
“Now there’s a girl for you,” said Sid’s father pointing to Estelle. “She’ll make a good wife. She doesn’t eat anything. Someone will save a lot of money on her some day.”
The daughters helped carry the dishes to the sink and Estelle moved to help them but Sid’s father took her arm and gently pushed her toward the living room. “Company doesn’t wash dishes,” he said. “Sit down.”
The two brothers-in-law left the house. “They’re going over to our apartment to watch the ball game on television,” Sally said. Sid went to answer the phone and came back to say, “I have to run down the street for a minute. I’ll be right back.” He squeezed Estelle’s hand and hurried to the door.
“Where’s he going?” his mother asked. She came into the living room with her apron on and her hands wet. A few strands of hair were loose from the bun she wore at the nape of her neck.
“Why didn’t you ask him?” her husband asked.
She shrugged her shoulders and raised her brows as if to say, who can ask Sid anything.
“Sit down Annie. You worked enough already. You have plenty helpers in there. Take off your apron and fix your hair.”
She took her apron off and dried her hands on it. Then she made a vain effort to tuck the straying hairs back with the others. She sat down on the edge of the chair, gingerly, as if she were not accustomed to sitting. After a long silent minute she turned to Estelle and asked, “Do you know where Sid is stationed?”
“At Camp Dix,” Estelle said. “Didn’t you know?”
“Camp Dix?” she said slowly. “Where is Camp Dix?”
“In New Jersey.”
“New Jersey isn’t far away,” she said as if she were asking a question.
“No, it’s not far,” said Estelle. “Why didn’t Sid tell you?”
“Sid is a funny boy. He doesn’t talk. We never know where he goes, what he does. He doesn’t tell us and it’s hard to ask him. If he wants, he answers us but he doesn’t tell us anything. Do you know what I mean?”
Estelle nodded.
“Do you think he even told us he was going in the army? A week and a half ago he says I’m going. Doesn’t say where. Oh how much aggravation he gives us.”
“What are you complaining to her for?” Sid’s father asked. ‘It’s her fault?”
“I’m not complaining. I’m just talking.”
She touched Estelle’s shoulder and said, “I’m very glad to see you Estelle. I’m glad you came.”
Sid’s father left the room, and as if she had been waiting for him to go, she stood up quickly and took a photograph album, almost four inches thick, from the top of the piano. “Do you want to look?” she asked.
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She put the open book half on Estelle’s lap, half on her own. It was heavy, even with the weight divided. At the beginning there were pictures of herself and her family. They wore bathing suits or wedding dresses, long formal suits with fur pieces and plumed hats, dresses covered with beads. They posed in Monticello, at Sharon Springs, leaning on a gate at a farm, at Coney Island, in front of an apartment house in Manhattan. It was exactly like the album Estelle had at home, even the few foreign pictures from Poland, with plain, sad faces, funny haircuts, and sack-like homemade clothes. Estelle looked at the pictures but was listening all the time for the door to open. When they came to Sid’s pictures, she paid more attention. She looked thoughtfully at the fat naked child that smiled from each page. First in his mother’s arms, then on his father’s shoulder, his sister’s lap. He was lying on a leopard skin, grinning broadly, and then the baby pictures ended. It was as if he had not existed for the next ten years. Then there was a Boy Scout picture with Sid’s face circled, and his Bar Mitzvah pictures. He stood alone in one, with the same face he still had, serious except for the mouth that looked as if it had swallowed a smile. The prayer shawl hung smoothly without creases and the prayer book was closed in his hand. Opposite this was a picture of Sid standing between his grandparents. His grandmother had the same full mouth and black brows that his mother had but she wore a wig and a long-sleeved dress with the skirt down to her ankles. She was a head shorter than Sid. His grandfather was almost as tall as he. The old man with the short pointed beard and the young boy resembled each other. Estelle first looked at the picture to be polite but she kept staring at it, trying to see what features they had in common. Sid’s mother seemed pleased at her interest.
“My mother died only two months later,” she said. “My father passed away seven years ago. Sid was the apple of his eye,” she said, her eyes filling. “I wonder what he would say to his going in the army. And Sid is so pleased to go. It’s a joke to him. If only he weren’t so anxious to go, it wouldn’t hurt me so much. It’s as if he wanted to run away from us all.”
“I can’t get over it, somehow,” she continued. “In the old country, my father moved heaven and earth to keep out of the army. My husband came to America and my son goes.”
“What are you telling the girl, Mama?” Sid’s father asked from the foyer door. “This isn’t Russia or Poland or Austria. In America you go to the army if they call you. What’s the matter with you?”
“I know,” she said humbly.
“If you know, then what do you want? Why are you so foolish? Your son went to school here; we make a living here; we have a nice house and all the food we can eat. We have the best, the best of everything, and if you have to go to war, you go.”
“And if you don’t want to go?” “If you don’t want to go, then you sit in jail, so stop the woman’s talk.”
Sid’s mother moved to get up and Estelle helped her put the opened album on the couch. She went to the window and waited there until she saw Sid coming into the house. She went to the door to meet him. It opened as she came to the foyer and the two brothers-in-law came in, laughing and jostling each other. Estelle had decided which was Morty and which was Sam at the dinner table, but she forgot again, they
looked so much alike, both heavy and tall, with round pink faces and eyeglasses. They passed Estelle and went into the living room. She opened the door for Sid. They stood close together in the foyer while he took his jacket off. She thought she could feel her heart beating and her face flushing.
“We won’t stay long,” he whispered. “I just made some plans for tonight.”
Sid noticed the open album as soon as he came into the room. “Why do you have to take that thing out for, Ma? Can’t a man have any privacy?”
“What’s so private about an album?” she asked innocently. “We were just looking at your. Bar Mitzvah pictures and I couldn’t help wonder what your zaydeh would think about your going to the army.”
“What he would think? What can he think?” her husband said. “The world is different than he left it. Why do you have to repeat the same thing over and over. It’s time to be still about it already.”
“What are you screaming at her for, Pa?” one of the sisters called from the kitchen.
“Look Ma,” Sid said. “You wanted me to stay home today. I’m home. But if you’re going to spend the afternoon crying over me, I’ll never stay home again.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” his mother said. “I just want to tell your father one thing. A war is still shooting and killing. It’s not a pleasure trip for summer. And it’s not a joke for a boy to go away.”
_____________
One of the sons-in-law, who had been sitting, staring blankly into space, suddenly came to life. “What are you talking? You know what you’re talking?”
They all turned to look at him.
“I spent three years in the army, remember? Maybe I wasn’t such a marvelous soldier, but I was there. Let me tell you. I had a friend, a kid maybe twenty-two years old, left a pregnant wife some place in Iowa, Idaho, some place, God knows.”
“So,” his wife asked, her voice rising and falling with the single word.
“Let me talk a minute. You can’t start a story in the middle,” he answered. She made a wry face and fidgeted in her chair. He continued.
“Anyway at the beginning, this guy, I can’t even remember his name, he wasn’t any more of a shooter than I was. We both were always running and hiding, scared out of our pants. Then one day I see he’s shooting and a little later, he’s not only shooting, he’s enjoying himself.”
“OK, so come to the point,” his wife prodded.
“The point is, you get used to it, like anything else.”
“Tell me, Morty, you got used to it too?” his mother-in-law asked.
“Sure,” he said. “Sure I got used to it. I’ll tell you another thing. One day at the very end, we were some place in Germany, this same fellow and I. I don’t remember if we were on patrol or just wasting time, when we saw some enemy soldiers. They were far away but not too far. This guy shoots and I shoot after him. It was no different than shooting ducks on the boardwalk at Coney Island. It’s just like anything else, like I said, after a while you get used to it.” His wife buried her face in a copy of Life magazine and nobody answered him.
“But the funny thing,” Mort went on, “is that later we found that the war was over and we didn’t even have to shoot them. But it didn’t bother us much.”
Sid sat next to Estelle on the couch, curling her hair with his finger. Waves of love and sleepiness flowed over her.
“But what was the good of it then?” Sid asked. Estelle was surprised to hear him. She thought he wasn’t even listening.
“It’s not a question of the good of it. It’s how it is. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Sure Mort,” his wife said. “We know you get used to it.” She kicked her foot rhythmically to some music singing itself in her head. “You can get used to anything. Who knows better than I?”
“Well,” said Sid’s mother. “Your grandfather was nobody’s fool but he didn’t believe in fighting.”
“What do you mean, didn’t believe in fighting? He was probably scared,” Morty said belligerently.
“My father wasn’t scared, Morty,” Sid’s mother said quietly. “If you were half as brave as he, you would have nothing to worry about. I can remember as if it were yesterday, and it was almost fifty years ago, that someone broke into our house. My father filled his hands with sand and threw it in the man’s face. He was twice my father’s size, but my father beat him with a stick, with a stick mind you, not a gun, until he nearly killed him. I and my brothers and sisters looked out from the corners where we were hiding with our mouths open. Even then we knew that for him, fighting was the worst thing in the world. He couldn’t even spank his own children. If a fly came into the house, he would open the door and chase it out rather than kill it.”
“Are you talking about zaydeh, the little old guy?” Sam asked.
“Yes, that’s who I mean. He came to your wedding, remember?”
“And you, Pa? Were you ever in the army?” Morty asked Sid’s father.
“Me? I was in Rumania. Why should I go in the army? For the two cents a day they paid? For the black coffee and hard bread they gave the soldiers? You think it’s today? They chased us from one place to another. We never had a decent place to lay our heads. My father’s house was one room with a dirt floor. Ten children in one room. What can you understand? I’m proud to have my son fight for America. How can you appreciate anything when you don’t know how it was?”
“And you can’t appreciate without sending young men out to kill each other? To send them away in their best years?” Sid’s mother asked. “What do you get for such appreciation? A nice thank you, from whom?”
“I’m ashamed to listen to you,” her husband said, and left the room.
“Don’t take it so seriously, Ma. The world isn’t coming to an end,” the older daughter said.
“What shall I do then? Shall I laugh with you? Laugh! I’ll laugh too when you explain what is accomplished every few years with the fighting. Their minds are all changed, all those in the cemeteries?”
“What are you worrying for? It’s not time yet to worry. Sid will probably spend all his army days behind a desk anyway,” the younger sister said.
“And if not Sid, who are the others, they’re not mothers’ sons?”
“See children, how good your mother is?” Sid’s father said, standing in the doorway. “Her own children aren’t enough to worry about. She worries about everyone, everywhere. The whole world is her problem.”
Estelle thought that Sid’s mother was going to cry, but she stood up slowly and took a box of chocolates from the top of the piano. She carried it around the room, offering it, “My Mother’s Day candy,” she said to Estelle.
_____________
Estelle and Sid left soon afterward. The sisters and their husbands remained. Sid had borrowed a car from a friend and they drove out of the city to a place he knew of for dancing. It took almost two hours to get there, because he wasn’t sure of the way. When they finally found the night club, it was crowded. Their table was far from the orchestra and not close enough to the windows to enjoy the cool air. They ordered sandwiches and rum cokes and left their table to dance. The music was slow, but they cut the time in half, taking careful, measured steps around the other dancers. Estelle felt as if she were floating, hardly touching the floor at all. Sid stared at her while they danced, meeting her eyes again and again until she hid her face in his shoulder.
They danced until the music stopped before the entertainment began. From their table they saw only the heads of the Spanish dancers and nothing at all of the comedian and the juggler. But they remained until the dance music began again. They came out into the cool moist air a little before midnight. Sid drove slowly, still uncertain of the way. They stopped for a while to look at the moonlight shining on the Hudson and then they continued home, stopping frequently to ask for directions.
Estelle was home at half past two. Sid kissed her quickly in the hallway and hurried out to the car. When she opened the door she heard her mother turning in bed and knew she had been waiting up for her. The morning seemed like a week ago. She felt so tired that she wondered how she had remained awake so long. She took her clothes off quickly and fell asleep without even washing her face.
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At seven o’clock Estelle turned the alarm . off and pushed her face deeper into the pillow. She awake at noon, with her mouth dry and her hair in snarls. Her mother looked at her coldly as she came into the kitchen. “What do you want for breakfast?” she asked. “Or are you still full from yesterday?”
“Fried eggs,” said Estelle.
“I don’t mean to mix in your affairs,” her mother said without looking at her. “But tell me what kind of girl comes home nearly three o’clock in the morning when she has to go to work the next day?”
“Sid’s in the army. He only had one day off.”
“He’s in the army so you can’t go to work; is there at least a ring in the proposition?”
“I told you yesterday there wasn’t. He’s in the army. I don’t even know when I’ll see him again. Look Ma, please let me alone.”
“That makes it better? Now he goes away, without promises, nothing. I hope you had a good time.”
“I did,” said Estelle. “The best time I ever had.”
When Estelle was dressed and ready to leave for work, her mother asked, “What kind of family does he have? Did they make you feel welcome at least?”
Estelle stopped at the door and shrugged her shoulders, “A family, like anybody else.”
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