The Hours Count (29 page)

I learned that physical wounds eventually healed, no matter how much you reopened them, no matter how many times you lifted something you shouldn’t have or bled through an ugly, large housedress. I learned that no matter how much it sometimes felt that way, I would not split in two. In a few weeks time, my incision began to turn into a scar, a jagged purple line down the length of my front that made it certain in a deeply physical way that I would never forget the pain of this summer.

Henry began sleeping through the night at only five weeks of age, and I worked hard each day with David, practicing with his communication cars, forcing myself to try to have the kind of patience that Jake did with him. I noted the presence of the strange men in our hallway and out on Monroe Street in front of our building, but I neither heard from nor saw Ed or Jake for weeks. I followed the news of the U.S. entry into the Korean War at the end of June, which the newscasters blamed on this terrible espionage that had taken place and which, according to them, was being investigated with all the might of the FBI. This was a sentiment that made me
laugh—
all their
might
seemed to be stationed around Knickerbocker Village these days and, to me, the men appeared not mighty but bored, smoking cigarettes, reading newspapers, and I even saw them once rifling through trash cans. They were waiting for something to happen outside the normal droll life of our apartment building. And so far, nothing had. Mainly, they watched women like me, mothers struggling to pull their carriages and their older children on the elevator without losing track of anyone or anything.

As much as I wanted each day to walk down the hall and knock on Ethel’s door, I followed her wishes and didn’t. Partly I knew that she wouldn’t talk to me even if I did. And partly it was self-preservation. I felt the men in the hallway might report anything to Jake or Ed—or, worse, another FBI man I didn’t know who might begin to suspect me of something, too. So I tried to ignore the men in the hallway and concentrate on my boys.

Yet, I still paid attention to what was going on over at Ethel’s. It seemed she was continuing on with her schedule of psychoanalysis several days a week, as I would hear her walk out at that time to the elevator. And Julius still went to and came home from work each day. Sometimes Ethel took the children out places, though not to the playground because I never saw her there anymore, but I guessed to go to Waterman’s Grocery or Mr. Bergman’s shop. They needed to eat, after all. Each time any of them left the apartment, it was immediately clear to me because I could hear the shuffle of the men’s feet in the hallway as if they were racing to watch the Rosenbergs step onto the elevator. The men didn’t always ride down with them, and I noticed there were usually different men on the street to follow Ethel or Julie to wherever it was they were going.

I watched the news and read the paper each evening, hoping for
more than what I could gather simply from listening to the footsteps in my hallway, but the news made no mention of the goings-on at Knickerbocker Village as far as I could tell. Mostly, I read about Korea: Truman appointed MacArthur to lead the UN forces, and there were predictions of the war going on for six to nine months. All the headlines I saw now about the
Reds
referred to the ones over there. I took some comfort in the fact that the rest of the world knew nothing of the FBI watch in my hallway. It meant that nothing would come of it, I guessed, and that soon the FBI would leave for good. I wanted Ethel and Julie’s life to go back to normal, but I also dreaded Ed coming back, and I hoped I would see Jake again before then so we could come up with a plan. But first I still longed to talk to Ethel, to warn her, so eventually I came up with a plan of my own.

One morning in July, after I heard the commotion in the hallway, I put Henry in the carriage and took David down the street to play in the park. I watched for Ethel and her boys to make their way back. When I saw them, I quickly scooped up David and grabbed the carriage and ran down Monroe Street after her. I bounded onto the elevator behind her just as the door began to shut. I put David next to the buttons, and I didn’t try to stop him as he pushed every single floor.

Ethel’s face turned in surprise, and then she seemed to realize what I had done and her features softened. We were completely alone in the elevator. Just me and Ethel and our boys. All at once, she leaned across the carriage and gave me a hug. “Millie,” she said, her voice breaking a little on my name, “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” I said, my voice catching. Life had been so lonely without Ethel. I’d been keeping the television on nearly all day and all night just to feel I wasn’t completely alone.

“Every floor?” I heard John say to David. “Really?” I laughed a little and pulled out of Ethel’s hug. I wiped away tears from the corners of my eyes. John shook his head, and from the peculiar look on his face it seemed clear to me that he understood something wasn’t right, that the adults in his world were acting strangely.

I patted him on the head. “We’ve missed seeing you, Johnny,” I said. “Haven’t we, David?”

David didn’t answer, of course, but he stared at John, his eyes open wide. John shrugged my hand away and folded his arms across his chest.

The elevator door opened to an empty first floor. The sound of the ding startled Ethel and she immediately jumped back as if she had never even spoken to me at all.

“I’m sorry, Millie,” she said when the door closed again and we rode slowly up to two. “I haven’t wanted to ignore you, but it’s for the best. For your own good. We shouldn’t want those FBI men to see us talking, to know we’re friends. They might start to follow you, too.”

I remembered how Jake told me to not get involved and I worried that Ethel might be right. With Ed gone, the FBI should want nothing of me right now, and it occurred to me for the first time that maybe Ed had left to protect me. The thought didn’t sit easily with me and I tried to push it away and get back to Ethel. I had only a short time before the elevator made it up to the eleventh floor. “Jake told me that your brother blamed Julie for getting him involved in espionage,” I blurted out. “David told the FBI this was all Julie’s fault.”

“No, Millie,” she said. “Absolutely no. That’s not true.”

“Ethel.” I reached for her hand. I thought about how there was so much about Ed that I never knew, that I still didn’t know. How
well could you really
know
a person, even your husband or your own brother? “David’s your brother. Why would he lie?”

“No, Millie. Your information . . . it’s just plain wrong. We’ve just been to see Ruth, who’s finally home from the hospital, thank goodness, and she said David has it all worked out with them now. He’s struck some kind of a deal with the FBI. Everything’s going to be fine. For all of us.”

“But Jake said . . .”

“Millie, you can’t trust Jake.”

“No, I can,” I said, but even as I said it I felt a flicker of doubt. I wanted to trust Jake. I really, really did. But could I?

“He’s been lying to you all along,” Ethel said. “And he’s FBI.”

I knew what Ethel said was true, but I also felt in my heart that Jake loved me and David. And Henry, even though he hadn’t met him yet. But he was going to adore Henry. “But now he knows me,” I told Ethel, feeling desperate to make her understand. “He might have lied before. But he wants to help me. He wants to help all of us.”

Ethel frowned. “Millie, the FBI is out to get us. They don’t want to help any of us. Julie thinks Jake is the worst of them. And the way he lied to you about helping David—”

“But he
did
help David.” My voice faltered a little as I glanced over at my still-silent son, now staring hard at John.

Ethel put her hand on my shoulder. “Trust no one but yourself. Please, Millie.”

“Ethel,” I said, thinking about what she’d just said, that David had worked out a deal, that everything was going be fine—for all of us. I wanted to believe that. “If your brother has fixed everything, then why are the men still in the hallway upstairs?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But Julie thinks they have it in for
us just because we’re Jews who used to be involved in the Party.” She lowered her voice as the door opened up to an empty third floor. “We’ve gotten our passport photos now. Julie thinks we can go to Mexico. Maybe for a longer . . . vacation than we’d anticipated.”

“You mean run away?” I asked.

“Mortie and his family did.”

“The Sobells went to Mexico?” I thought of Mortie Sobell, and he did not seem like the kind of man who would take kindly to so much sunshine.

“It doesn’t matter that we didn’t do anything wrong,” Ethel was saying, “everybody in this country is so afraid of Russia and the bomb. And they need someone to blame. They need to feel like they’re doing something. How silly is it that they’ve focused in on our little Jewish family here in Knickerbocker Village?”

“But are you sure that Julie wasn’t involved?” I said quietly.

“Yes, Millie. I’m absolutely sure. He told me he wasn’t and I believe him.” She looked at me and then quickly away. “We’re not like other couples. We tell each other everything. And Julie’s a good man.”

I thought of the way he helped me that morning in the elevator, the kindness he showed to David. “Jake thinks Ed was involved, but he doesn’t have any proof. Ed and I aren’t like you and Julie. It seems I don’t know much about my husband at all.”

Ethel frowned again, maybe at the mention of Jake’s name, maybe because I was telling her that I knew nothing real about Ed. But all she said was “They don’t have any proof about anything these days. It doesn’t stop them.”

The elevator rode up a few more floors and we rode in silence. Henry let out a little cry and I pulled him out of his carriage to comfort him.

“Millie,” Ethel said as we headed toward the ninth floor, “I want you to know that you’ve been a good friend to me. I’ll miss you. The boys will miss David. And little Henry.” She squeezed his chubby little leg. “I’ll want to write you from Mexico. But I might not be able to . . . It might not be in your best interest to receive letters from me.” She squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back.

When the elevator doors opened on the eleventh floor, Ethel quickly moved away from me, grabbed John’s and Richie’s hands, and walked off brusquely, her head held high as if we hadn’t ever spoken to each other at all.

THE NEXT EVENING
, after I’d put the boys to bed, I found myself smoking a cigarette in front of the television. I closed my eyes, listening to the voices of the men reporting the news without watching. As if I were just listening to the radio, not enjoying my television, which I wasn’t enjoying now anyway remembering how Ed had brought it here. For me.

Suddenly, I heard noises in the hallway. Louder than just the two men. Many, many sets of footsteps, a banging on a door, a woman screaming from somewhere down the hallway.
Ethel?

I cracked open my door and peered down the hall. There were so many men by Ethel’s door. I counted one, two, three . . . twelve? Was Jake there? I arched my neck, looking for him, but I couldn’t see clearly enough, and I was afraid to actually open the door and walk out into the hallway.

The men entered the Rosenbergs’ apartment and then they came back out carrying things—papers, a typewriter. “You can’t take my record!” I heard Ethel yelling. “I made that for my son.”
And I remembered that morning when I saw her about to ride down the elevator—so carefree, it seemed—off to the studio. How could they dare take that away? What possible use would they have for it?

I heard more shouting, more commotion, the sounds of
The Lone Ranger
on the radio still playing in their apartment. I heard Julie complaining that they didn’t have a warrant. “You have no right!” he kept shouting. And yet the men continued, in twos, carrying out things and riding down the elevator. If Ethel was right about her brother striking a deal, then why were all these men here taking things from their apartment?

At last, when it seemed they couldn’t take any more things, two men came out with Julie. I gasped as I watched them walk him out of the apartment, holding on to his arms, his hands in handcuffs. I couldn’t make out their faces, but, from the back, one of the men vaguely looked like Jake.
It couldn’t be him.
Suddenly Julie noticed I was watching and shook his head a little. I quickly shut my door before the FBI men saw me staring.