The Hours Count (26 page)

I thought about Ed’s late-night phone calls, his strange evasiveness with where he was working now, what he was doing. That he had disappeared . . . just the way Jake had disappeared. “Are you working for the FBI?” I said slowly. Even as I said it, it didn’t make sense. Ed and Jake were on the same side, working together? Why hadn’t Jake told me that? Why had Jake told me that Ed was the one they might be looking for?
Jake had lied to me.
Again. Maybe that shouldn’t surprise me so, but suddenly it was as if someone had taken every ounce of hope and drained it from my body. Again, I gasped for breath.

“Mildred.” Ed put a hand on my shoulder, gentler this time, the way he’d reached for Henry. “There are things you don’t know about me, and I’m sorry to upset you after you have just had my beautiful baby.” I shook my head unable to comprehend Ed’s words, that they seemed to be salted with kindness. “You got my telegram?” he asked.

His
telegram
.
Ethel had been right. I tried so hard to breathe, but I couldn’t.

“You are hyperventilating,” Ed said. “Take a breath.”

I did as Ed said and tried to take a breath, slowly. I closed my eyes and focused on my lungs for a moment, and when I opened them again, Ed was staring at me with a different kind of look than I was used to. The same way he’d looked at me when he’d offered to buy me my blue couch at Macy’s for a wedding present. “You’ve been working for the FBI?” I finally said when I regained my breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“There are many things I couldn’t tell you, Mildred. Many things you wouldn’t understand, or that might put you in danger.”

“Try me,” I said, but he didn’t. I took another deep breath. “The FBI came to see me before Henry was born.” I tried not to think about the feel of Jake’s lips on mine as he sat so close to me on my couch, the way he’d made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone anything. I wasn’t really, was I? Jake had lied to me again, and now I was just trying to figure out the truth. “They wondered if you are involved in all this . . . spying.”

“Who came to see you?” Ed asked.

“I don’t know,” I stammered. “I don’t remember the man’s name.” Ed’s face remained unchanged, stoic. He didn’t realize I was lying. “But are you?” I prodded, wanting answers. “Involved?”

“That is what you think, Mildred?”

“I’m not sure what to think anymore.” And this was absolutely the truth. I didn’t know what to think about anything . . . or anyone. Not Ed. Not Jake.

Ed nodded, but he didn’t offer anything else.

“Where have you been these past few weeks?” I asked.

“I have been waiting for everything to blow over . . . Getting us a future.”

“What
everything
? What kind of a future?” But even as I said the words, I knew I didn’t want any kind of future with Ed. What I wanted was the Catskills with Jake.
Jake.
Who’d lied to me.

Henry began to cry, and Ed took a step back from the carriage. I leaned over and picked Henry up, bouncing him against my chest until his cries subsided and he drifted back to sleep.

Ed leaned in and kissed Henry on the head. His face was close enough to mine that I thought he might kiss me, too, and I now
could smell the faint odor of vodka and cigars on his breath. “Rosenberg is going to fry for this,” Ed said calmly. “And then it will all be over. We will be able to go on with our lives. I am making sure our little family will be safe—”

“What do you mean, Julie is going to fry?” I interrupted him. I suddenly thought of a raw chicken floundering in oil. And I thought of the way Julie had looked this morning in the elevator, the kind way he’d spoken to David, and then the way he’d straightened himself up on the street, heading to his appointment.

“They’re interviewing him now,” Ed said, and I thought about that unfamiliar man in the elevator with us, how he and Julie interacted. “But Greenglass has already turned on him. He’s as good as done.” Before I had a chance to ask him further what he meant, Ed looked around the street and then took a step back. “I have to go now, but I will be back for you soon, Mildred. I promise.” Then he turned and quickly walked away.

AFTER ED DISAPPEARED
down the street, I ran back into Mr. Bergman’s shop, grabbed a reluctant David, and pulled him away from the counter. “But Mildred,” Mr. Bergman called after me as I ran out of the store. “You didn’t even get your brisket . . .”

But I didn’t turn around. I ran the whole way back to Knickerbocker Village and I didn’t stop. Not even when David yanked so hard on my hand that my wrist began to ache. He looked behind us, pulling and pulling. “Darling,” I said to him. I was frantic, fighting back tears. “I was wrong. Jake isn’t coming today. But we’ll see him soon, I promise.” David didn’t seem to care, or believe me, or maybe he could sense I was lying. That I had no idea when we’d see Jake
again. Because David struggled the whole way there, pulling against me, until finally I ignored the searing pain in my stomach, picked him up, threw him over my shoulder with one hand and pushed the carriage with the other.

My brain felt in a fog, unable to comprehend the new thought that Ed worked for the FBI, too. How was it that I was married to the man for so many years, that I slept next to him night after night, and I literally knew nothing about him at all? What was wrong with me?

By the time I reached Ethel’s door, I was breathing hard and tears were streaming down my cheeks. David was kicking and Henry was crying, too.

I knocked and Ethel opened the door. She wore a tattered housedress and her hair was a mess, but I was pretty sure I looked much worse because she put her hand to her mouth and cried out, “Millie! What’s wrong?”

“The FBI,” I said, though I couldn’t breathe at all now and I ached all over. I reached down to touch my stomach, and when I pulled my hand back, there was a little blood. I must’ve pulled out a stitch by carrying David—exactly as the doctor had warned me not to before I’d left the hospital.

Ethel stepped out into the hallway and quickly looked around. When she seemed satisfied that the hallway was empty, that there was no one here other than us, she invited us to come inside her apartment.

Henry was still crying and I knew he needed a bottle, but David had stopped flailing when he saw Richie on the floor, playing with a truck. I picked Henry up, and Ethel went into the kitchen, then came back with a towel. “You’ve ruined your dress,” she said,
reaching to take Henry from me. “Well, hello there, little one,” she cooed to Henry, and rocked him, and for a moment I forgot why I was here. It was as if I’d just brought my new baby down the hall to meet my neighbor—my friend—as if we just might enjoy a cup of coffee together while the baby napped and the boys played.

Ethel sat down on her couch, holding a calmed Henry against her chest. I held up Ethel’s towel, now dotted with blood. “I’ve ruined it,” I said, and she shrugged to say she didn’t care, it was only a silly towel.

“Yes,” Ethel changed the subject back, her voice surprisingly calm, “the FBI were here this morning.”

“Here?” So the man in the elevator with Julie hadn’t been a business associate at all. “Did the children see them?”

She nodded. “They knocked on the door so early, before we were dressed. Julie hadn’t even shaved yet.”

“And what did they say?”

“They wanted to talk to Julie about this whole matter with Davey.” She sighed. “So he went with them, to talk with them. But he’ll tell them he doesn’t know anything and this will all be cleared up, quickly.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Ed said that your brother
turned on him
.”

“Ed?” Ethel stood and handed a calmed Henry back to me. She paced the floor now, and bit at skin on the side of her thumb. “He’s come back?”

I told Ethel some of what I knew, about how Ed and Jake were both working for the FBI and how that made very little sense. I told her about Jake’s claim about someone in our circle being involved with the bomb and how I’d thought it might be Ed until today when I learned he worked for the FBI, too. As I spoke, I felt like I was
betraying Jake by ignoring the promise I’d made to him to keep his secret. But now I wasn’t sure who to trust. And, most of all, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Julie.

“I can’t believe this,” Ethel said when I was finished talking. “Ed is . . .” She let her voice trail off as if she couldn’t, or didn’t, want to finish the sentence.

“Ed is what?” I asked. “Tell me, Ethel, please.”

“Ed is a liar,” she finally said.

“About what?” I asked. “Working for the FBI? Your brother?” I leaned in eagerly, wanting more. I wanted all of it to be a lie. Ed and Jake couldn’t be on the same side, working together. That just didn’t make any sense. And if Ed was a liar, then maybe I could still trust Jake.

Ethel shook her head. “Look, I didn’t want to get into this with you . . . Last year, Ed approached Julie and told him he had an assignment from the KGB. He wanted Julie to help him, but Julie refused. Julie didn’t want anything to do with any of that. Julie’s no traitor to his country.”

“The K-G-B?” I spit out the letters slowly in disbelief.
The KGB?
If Ed was working for the FBI, then what would he possibly be doing with an assignment from the KGB? I remembered the night before I went to the Catskills how I’d overheard Ed on the phone, talking about destruction and his Russian friends.
A KGB assignment?
But I had called the number that Jake gave me this week—the FBI number—and Ed had gotten the message. He
must
be working for the FBI. It didn’t seem fathomable that he could work for either one, much less both. “Maybe it was a trap,” I told Ethel. “Maybe Ed was trying to set Julie up?”

“Why would he do that?” Ethel suddenly appeared very, very
pale, as if she might faint, and she grabbed ahold of the arm of the couch. I didn’t have an answer for her. I had only the information Ed had told me today and that Jake had told me weeks ago. But none of it made sense. “I don’t know what Ed’s done, Millie, or who he’s working for. But I just don’t trust him.” Ethel sat down on the couch next to me and took a deep breath to compose herself. “Why’d he leave you the way he did if he hadn’t done something wrong? Tell me that. What kind of husband leaves his wife when she’s nine months along and then abandons her after she gives birth to his son?”

I wasn’t about to tell Ethel that Henry wasn’t actually Ed’s son, but, of course, Ed didn’t know that either. Ethel had a point. Ed had said he’d left to
get us a future
, but why couldn’t he have done that from the apartment? Knowing how excited he’d been about the baby, something must’ve really scared him to send him away like that. Was he hiding now, worried he might
fry
, too? Or was he just on assignment with the FBI the way Jake was? I didn’t know much about the FBI, but I saw the way they’d called Jake that night when Russia detonated the bomb and how Jake had disappeared for a while after that, traveling somewhere, presumably working. That day he’d come back he’d said he’d had only a short stopover in New York before he was flying out again. Was Ed doing that, too?

I wasn’t sure who to trust anymore, who was lying and who wasn’t. Who was good and who was bad. “Oh, Ethel,” I finally said. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

She patted my hand.

But I couldn’t get Ed’s words out of my head, about Julie frying, and Ethel’s words about Ed working for the KGB. “Can I ask you something?” Ethel nodded. “How is your brother involved in all this? Would he have worked with Ed after Julie refused?”

“I don’t think so,” Ethel said. “Davey worked at Los Alamos years ago when he was in the army.”

“Ruth told me,” I said. “But she said he was just a low-level machinist, that he didn’t know anything.”

“He didn’t. But when he left, he stole a bit of uranium,” Ethel said.

“Stole uranium? To try to make his own bomb?” I couldn’t imagine the portly David Greenglass capable of such an enormous feat.

“Oh goodness no. Just a tiny, tiny little bit. As a souvenir.” She shrugged. “Apparently, lots of the guys working there did it at the time. It was nothing. It was dumb, yes, but it didn’t mean anything. He was young and stupid and that’s what’s got the FBI to question him in the first place.” I thought about that time I’d mentioned David’s stint in Los Alamos to Jake, at one of our therapy sessions, and I hoped that I wasn’t responsible for all of this in some way by putting such blind trust in Jake. “That’s all that Julie and I know about. And Julie had nothing to do with any of that,” Ethel added.

But if that were true, I wondered why the FBI was even questioning Julie now.
Greenglass has already turned on him,
Ed had said. But how? And David was Ethel’s brother. I couldn’t imagine how he would
turn
on Julie, his own sister’s husband, even if there was some bad blood between them over the business. “I don’t know, Ethel,” I said. “But I don’t like all this. I’m worried.”

She reached up and touched my shoulder. “You should stay away from here—from me—for a little while. I don’t want you to get in any trouble over all this.”

“But I don’t know anything about anything. And you’re my friend. I’m not going to stay away from you.”