The Hours Count (30 page)

I remembered what Ethel had said:
Trust no one but yourself.
Was she right? Was that really Jake out in the hallway? Arresting Julie? It couldn’t have been him. No matter what the rest of the FBI were doing, Jake would not arrest an innocent man. I wanted to believe that so badly.

The hallway was silent now, and I opened my door and walked out. No one was there, and if any of the other neighbors were home and had noticed the noise, they were now pretending not to.

Ethel’s door opened and she stepped out, holding on to one boy with each hand. “Ethel,” I called down the hallway. She looked up and tears streamed down her face. “What’s happened?”

“Julie’s been arrested,” she said. The words sounded unreal
coming from her. She said them almost without emotion as if she couldn’t even comprehend what she was saying. Tears kept falling down her face, but she made no attempt to wipe them away.

“Oh, Ethel . . .” I walked down the hallway toward her, but she let go of John’s hand to hold up her hand to stop me. “Where are you going?” I asked.

She shrugged and bit her lip. “The FBI men are driving us to my mother’s,” she said, and then she turned toward the elevator and stepped on.

“Wait!” I called after her. But she didn’t answer, and I heard the elevator door closing.

BACK INSIDE
MY APARTMENT
, I held the piece of paper with the FBI number on it in my hands. Julie had been arrested. Ruth must have lied to Ethel about the
deal
Davey had struck. Or maybe the FBI did have some other proof, although I had no idea what that proof could be. And I thought about what Ethel said in the elevator—that they didn’t even need proof. But that made no sense at all. This was America. I needed to call Jake and talk to him. Ethel had said I couldn’t trust him, but what other choice did I have?

Still, a little bit of doubt crept up inside me, a small, annoying itch that I couldn’t quite scratch. Even if he wasn’t here tonight among the men pulling Julie and Ethel’s possessions out of their apartment, he’d let Julie be arrested. But maybe he’d had no choice. Or maybe he was less involved than I thought and things had gotten beyond his control.

I dialed with shaking fingers. I could still feel the panic in Ethel’s voice as she’d yelled about her record that the FBI men stole.

“This is Mrs. Zitlow,” I said when the woman answered. “Tell Dr. Zitlow to call me as soon as possible.”

I hung up before I could say, or she could ask me, anything else, and I sat there and stared at the telephone, waiting and waiting and waiting for it to ring.

I fell asleep on the couch with my hand still on the black receiver, the television still on, its muted yellow light flashing on and on.

THE NEXT MORNING
, I awoke late to the sounds of Henry’s cries and David’s kicks. I was stiff from sleeping on the couch so awkwardly, and as I sat up and stretched, I remembered the way Julie had looked as the men had pulled him to the elevator in handcuffs last night: smaller than usual and very grim. I thought about Ethel now and how she must feel this morning, waking up without him, at her mother’s. It seemed an unfathomable sort of sadness and fear. When Ed left, it was of his own accord. And, anyway, I didn’t love and need him the way Ethel did Julie. These past few weeks without him had been a relief.

The telephone finally rang as I was fixing a bottle for Henry. I put the bottle down and I ran to answer it.

“Mills.” Susan’s voice, not Jake’s, rang through the line rather clearly. I stretched the telephone as far as it would go to grab Henry’s bottle off the table and put it in his mouth. “I saw on the news about your neighbor being an atom spy. I can’t believe it. You were friends with such a person . . . Has the FBI been there to question you?”

“Slow down,” I said, and I tried to take a moment to process what she was saying, that now the entire world believed Julie to be an
atom spy
. It sounded like such a silly phrase, almost harmless like
a science project, but I knew exactly how terrible it was. The FBI believed Julie to have given Russia secrets about the bomb. And now that it was reported in the news, the entire world would believe it, too.

“Well?” Susan said, sounding a bit out of breath as if she’d run to the telephone immediately upon seeing the news. I heard one of the twins calling for her in the background, the words so clear and obvious in her childish voice. I glanced at David, who was concentrating very hard on eating his cereal—silently, of course.

“No,” I said, thinking about Jake, who hadn’t returned my call. “No one has been here.”

“They say they’ve set his bail at one hundred thousand dollars.”

“One hundred thousand dollars? That’s absolutely crazy.” There was no way Ethel and Julie would be able to pay anything close to that. I was pretty sure that meant Julie was going to have to wait in jail until this was all resolved. I couldn’t imagine what Ethel was thinking right now. Or feeling.

“Well, apparently they believe him to be a very dangerous man. Who knows what else he might do should they let him out while he awaits trial?”

Dangerous? Julie? “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He’s so kind, and such a good father.” I thought again of that morning on the elevator, him talking to David so sweetly, reminding David to help me. “And very good with David, too.”

“Look, why don’t you and the boys come out here and stay with us for a little while. Until this all settles down.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I should go check on Ethel.”

Susan inhaled sharply on the other end of the line. “I read she’s inviting the press into her home today.”

That didn’t sound like Ethel at all. Inviting the press, here? “Let me call you back,” I said, and I hung up despite her protests.

I put David in front of the television and turned it back on. Henry was finishing his bottle, and I picked him up and took him with me down the hall to Ethel’s apartment. I knocked on the door and I was surprised when she answered with a flourish and a huge smile. As soon as she saw it was me who’d knocked, her smile faded rather quickly.

Ethel wore a brightly flowered dress today—one of her nicest, though, I noticed her bra strap was slipping free, down her shoulder, and I wanted to tell her to fix it, but she interrupted my thoughts by leaning out toward me and chiding me, in a hushed voice, “Millie, what are you doing here? The press are coming. I’m really in quite a rush, trying to get this place cleaned up. And I need to go out and buy a chicken.”

“A chicken?”

“For dinner.”

“You’re making chicken for dinner? Ethel . . . ?” I slung Henry under one arm and reached up to fix Ethel’s bra strap with my free hand.

Ethel pulled back quickly and finished fixing the strap herself. “I have to show them this doesn’t mean anything. That I’m not worried . . . because Julie’s innocent. I have to present a strong front.” Her eyes welled up with tears and she stopped talking to desperately wipe them away. “It’s what Julie wants me to do.”

“But Ethel . . . you
are
worried.” She bit her lip and wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “I’ve called Jake,” I said. “He’ll get this straightened out. I know he will.”

“Please, Millie, stay out of this.”

“I want to help you,” I said. “You took care of David the whole time I was in the hospital, and now you need a friend.” I put my free hand on her bare arm. “Let me help you.” Ethel’s features eased. I noticed her strap had slipped again, but I didn’t move to fix it. “At least let me go get you a chicken from Mr. Bergman.” She bit her lip again and didn’t say anything. “Come on,” I said. “No one will fault a neighbor for getting you a chicken on a day like today. And I was just about to go see Mr. Bergman anyway,” I lied. But I felt desperate to help her. To do
something
. And however small, this seemed to be it.

She nodded, but then she quickly shut the door.

OUTSIDE
, the sun was shining brilliantly, the cars driving across the Manhattan Bridge, small and glittering like colored stars over the sparkling East River. It was almost incomprehensible the way the world beyond Knickerbocker Village appeared so exceedingly normal this July morning.

The children were surprisingly calm on the walk to Mr. Bergman’s. They understood nothing but the warmth of the sunshine upon their faces, neither one of them seeming to comprehend the shift in the air or to sense that something enormous and almost entirely unbelievable had happened on the eleventh floor last night.

I wondered how much
press
would be there this afternoon. And I wondered if she could pull it off, acting, as she’d said, as if nothing were wrong, preparing a chicken for dinner for herself and the children. I remembered how she told me once that her high school class had named her most likely to be America’s leading actress by 1950 and it made me sad to think that
this
was it.

Mr. Bergman’s shop was fairly empty this morning, though
when he saw us walk in, he didn’t call out his normal buoyant greeting, and I guessed that he had heard the news, too.

I pushed the carriage up to the counter, and David jumped up, had a seat, and held his hand out expectantly, waiting for the gumdrops. Mr. Bergman leaned across the counter, patted him on the head, and pulled a few gumdrops out of the bag and put them into David’s hand. In his other hand he had an envelope, which he placed in my hand. “Mildred.” His voice was low, more serious than usual. “I was going to come find you after work. Your friend . . . a Mr. Zitlow . . . dropped this off for you this morning.”

I exhaled.
Jake had gotten my message.
Thank goodness. I ripped the envelope open and pulled out the letter inside:

I’m doing everything I can but cannot find any evidence yet for what we discussed. Things are getting bigger than me now, and I can’t contain them. Search your apartment and see what you can find to implicate the suspect we mentioned at our last meeting.

I have a plan for us. Will explain in person . . . making arrangements. Meet me in the lobby of the place we were last together. Will send word when. Until then . . .

With love,

Dr. Z

I turned the paper over in my hands, wanting it to say something else, something more. Excitement rose in my chest but then quickly subsided. Jake had a plan for us. But he hadn’t mentioned Ethel and Julie. Was he not able to help them? He was not able to prove that Ed had done anything wrong, that he might be at fault
for this whole horrible mistake. It was up to me to find something on Ed.

“Mildred.” Mr. Bergman’s voice sounded like a warning, and I wondered if he’d read the contents of the letter. I tried to imagine Jake here in his shop, just hours, or maybe moments, before I was. I sniffed the air to see if I could catch the faint waft of pipe smoke, pine trees, but all I could smell was raw meat.

I remembered why I’d come here, and I folded the letter up and put it in the pocket of my dress. “I need a chicken,” I told him. “For my neighbor Ethel. And one for myself, too. Two chickens.”

Mr. Bergman looked at me sternly. “Have you got yourself tangled up in this mess, Mildred? Atom spies?” He lowered his voice on the last two words as if he were almost afraid to say them out loud. “Is this Ed’s doing?”