The Hours Count (21 page)

“Yes, of course,” I said, willing David to eat quickly before Lena made her way over here, which I thought she might do once she realized she couldn’t reach Ed at Pitt. Inwardly, I chided myself for being stupid enough to mention Waterman’s Grocery, out loud and in front of her, despite the fact that it had worked to get David out of the apartment without a fight.

“Who’s your husband rooting for?” Mr. Waterman was saying. “I picture him as a Yankees man. Am I right?” Before I could answer, something brushed against my legs and I looked down and realized it was the black cat. Jake’s cat. She hissed at me and tried to jump up on the counter, but Mr. Waterman reached for her and threw her out back. “Damn cat,” he said when he walked back in. “The tenant upstairs keeps letting her out by accident.”

“The tenant?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even, steady. “Come on,” I said to David. He was almost finished eating the food on his plate. I leaned in and whispered one word in his ear: “Jake.” That was all he needed to hear. He quickly put his fork down and allowed me to take his hand. I paid and thanked Mr. Waterman, and David and I ran quickly out, then up the winding stairs. It was hard for me to breathe by the time I reached Jake’s door. I knocked on it, lightly at first, then harder.

At last the door opened and David stood up on his toes in anticipation, squeezing my hand tightly. An unfamiliar older man stood in the doorway. “Can I help you?” he asked.

“I’m looking for Jake . . . Dr. Gold. The tenant who lives here.”

“Sorry, don’t know him,” the man said, moving to shut the door. But I put my hand up to stop him.

“Sir, please,” I said. “This is very important.”

“I wish I could help you, lady, but, like I said, I don’t know him. I just moved in. Rented the place from Stan Waterman last week. Maybe you should talk to him.”

And that was when it hit me—when it truly hit me—Jake was gone. Jake was actually gone. He wasn’t ever coming back to this place. I had no way to find him. No way to reach him.

I SPENT THE REST
of the day in bed, in and out of sleep, half dreaming of Jake and half listening to the sounds of Lena vigorously cleaning my apartment. David stayed with me, calmly sitting on the end of my bed, content to gently play with his cars among my covers. I thought he could sense it, too, that everything was wrong now. Jake was gone. He was really gone. And I didn’t know or understand how he could leave us just like that. Where it was he might have gone after receiving a phone call where he spoke about the Russians.
Maybe their bomb?
I felt chilled at the thought that Jake knew too much and that then he had disappeared. Just like that. I couldn’t help but think of all the warnings about communists and their propaganda, that they were somehow to blame for everything the Russians knew. That’s what Jake was, a communist, wasn’t he? Had he done something so terrible that he might never be able to return here? I felt tears in my eyes at the thought that he might be in danger, that he might never come back.

After darkness fell over the room, I heard the apartment door open and close. Then Ed’s large voice and Lena’s smaller one. I supposed she must be telling on me, recounting my horribleness, to Ed. The pitch of their voices rose. I had the door shut so the words were muffled, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But I didn’t even care.

Then the apartment door opened and shut again. Lena was gone. Ed was silent. I heard the bedroom door creak open and I squeezed my eyes shut, pretending to be asleep.

“Mildred.” Ed said my name softly. I steeled myself for a lecture
from him about the way I’d treated Lena, but instead I felt him sit on the edge of the bed and gently put his hand on my shoulder. “Mildred, are you awake? I have brought you a present.”

“Hmmm?” I murmured, feigning waking up. I sat up and blinked my eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“Come in the other room.” Ed grabbed onto my hand. I stood, and the dizziness and nausea returned all at once, so I stumbled a little, and Ed quickly reached for my arm. “Are you okay?” he asked. In his voice there was something that sounded like genuine concern—not for me, I understood, but for the baby.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said. I heard David’s little feet hit the floor. He was following behind us. Ed ignored him.

Ed opened the bedroom door and an unfamiliar yellow light funneled in from just past the coffee table. I blinked, but it was still there. I turned the corner and saw where the light was coming from . . . a television! And a large one at that—I guessed it to be twice the size of Susan’s—just beyond the coffee table. “I don’t understand,” I said, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off it. A baseball player stood on the other side of the glass, a Yankee poised at bat, looking so real, as if he were almost just right here in our living room. “But we can’t afford this,” I finally said.

“Pitt has taken a turn for the better,” Ed said. “And Julie has given me a raise.”

“Ed?” I turned back to look at him, and our eyes caught as if acknowledging this thing, this giant lie he’d just told me. But then he quickly looked away. Ed no longer worked for Pitt, so where had he possibly gotten the money? But for the moment, I didn’t ask. There was a giant television in my living room.

THE NEXT MORNING
, I convinced Ed not to call Lena by promising to stay in all day and watch television with David. I almost thought Ed seemed relieved, and I wondered what Lena had said to him last night when he’d come home with a television and, as I was pretty sure she’d figured out after attempting to call him at work, no job to speak of.

I didn’t lie to Ed this time. David and I did sit on the couch and watch television. David was transfixed by all of it—the baseball players, the news updates, the UN General Assembly session.

Midmorning, I called Ethel and invited her to bring the boys over to watch, and they showed up at one, just in time for
Okay, Mother
, Susan’s favorite game show.

“Don’t you find this all a little strange?” Ethel asked as the host, Dennis James, addressed the audience as “Mother.”

I didn’t tell her that the show had pulled me in, that I knew I would tune in tomorrow to find out what letters Mr. James would read and to see what prizes might be won. I didn’t tell her that I planned to telephone Susan some time today and tell her that I’d watched . . . on my new, very large television. “I don’t know,” I said. I turned and smiled at her. “I think we just have to get used to watching it.”

Ethel laughed. “I suppose.”

A commercial came on for Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia Toothpaste and I turned to talk more to Ethel, wanting to get at the real reason I’d asked her over here. “Ed said that Pitt was doing well,” I
told her. “That Julie gave him a raise. He told me that was why he was able to buy the television.”

Ethel frowned and glanced down the couch at her boys, who, along with David, appeared mesmerized by Dennis James, just back from the commercial. “I don’t know, Millie. I don’t want to get in the middle of anything.”

“You’re not,” I told her.

“It’s bad enough that my mother and brothers are upset with me over everything going on at Pitt. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

“You won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

She hesitated for a moment, and then she said, “Pitt is not doing well. Julie’s really struggling . . . We both are.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t realize . . .” Though I remembered how Ruth said Julie wasn’t always paying David, and I wondered if I would’ve seen signs of hardship in Ethel if I’d stopped to pay attention. Ethel was wearing an old, worn blue dress today with a tear in the sleeve. John’s pants were much too short, and Richie was in a stained hand-me-down. I remembered her that afternoon I first met her a few years earlier when she was riding down the elevator in a dramatic red hat, so far along with Richie and practically buoyant as she was on her way to the recording studio. But things couldn’t be all bad now. Ethel was in psychoanalysis four times a week. I couldn’t imagine that was cheap.

“It’s all right,” Ethel said, and she shrugged. “Julie and I will get by. We always do.”

“You’re absolutely sure Ed doesn’t work at Pitt anymore?” She nodded. I thought of the last job Ed had been fired from, the loyalty oath he’d refused to sign, Lena’s concern about Ed, the growing distrust of Russians in New York City, which was now even that much
worse since everyone knew about their test bomb. “Did Julie fire him?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Millie,” Ethel said. “Can’t we talk about something else? The children? The weather? The Dodgers?”

“The Dodgers? You don’t really want to talk about baseball.”

“The children love the Dodgers,” Ethel said, which I knew to be true, but I also knew she was just trying to avoid my question.

“Was it because of his accent?” I asked. “Was Ed’s Russian accent bad for business?”

“Is that what you think of us, Millie?” Ethel’s voice rose.

I quickly said, “Of course not.” But the truth was, I wasn’t sure. If Julie’s business wasn’t doing well anyway, then maybe Ed being so Russian wasn’t helping. “The Russians blew up the bomb and everything’s changing again now, isn’t it?” I thought of Jake and I bit my tongue so as not to tell Ethel what I really meant.

“Maybe you’re the one who’s changing,” Ethel said. Her cheeks were flushed and she sounded annoyed. “Come on, boys,” she said, standing quickly. “Let’s go. We need to walk down to Waterman’s to pick up some food for dinner.”

“You don’t have to leave yet,” I told her. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just . . . trying to find out the truth.”

“You didn’t upset me, Millie,” she said, but we both knew she was
lying.

The inside of Sing Sing is nothing like I would expect it, at least the way Jake leads me in, past the barricades and the flares and the police officers, up a row of wide cement steps and through a large gate. The prison is a brick fortress, but there’s something almost architecturally astounding about it, the way it floats here, just on the edge of the Hudson.

I look up and I see the watchtower, the floodlights, the guards hanging out. Ethel is in here, locked away inside all of these beautiful bricks, with no way out. If she tried to run, surely one of those men in the watchtower would shoot her. I wonder if that would be better or worse than being shot with electricity, and I feel ill at the thought.

Jake stops once we’re inside the door and he turns and looks at me again. In the distance I can still hear the helicopter and the sounds of protesting, shouting. I’m not sure whether it’s coming from outside, on the road leading up to the prison, or from inside, from the cell blocks. Or maybe both. “Are you sure you want to
come in here?” Jake says softly, putting his hand on my shoulder again.

“Yes. I shouldn’t have waited so long. I should’ve come earlier.” I should’ve taken Ed’s car months ago and done what I did tonight, but I was a coward. “I never thought it would come to this. An innocent woman. A mother . . .” My voice cracks on the word
mother
, and I can’t help but think of John and Richie.
Orphans,
I think. And I bite my lip harder to keep from crying.

“Shhh,” Jake says, looking around. A guard stares at me and he doesn’t look friendly. “People here aren’t going to take kindly to you speaking like that,” he whispers.

“But it’s not fair,” I tell him. “It’s not right. You know that.”

He doesn’t respond, but he takes my hand and pulls me toward the next gate. He says something to the guard, who gets out his key and opens it for us. Jake turns back to me one more time. “You have to understand, it’s too late for you to change anything now.”

I shake my head, refusing to believe that. Refusing to believe that everything has been for nothing. That I truly am too late. “I have proof,” I tell him, and I reach inside my purse and pull out the crumpled piece of paper, dotted along the edges with drops of dried blood.