Dream When You're Feeling Blue (20 page)

Kitty nodded. She didn’t want to say anything about how hard it would be for Louise to raise a baby on her own, how unlikely it would be that she’d find a man who would take on a widow with a child.

KITTY AND TISH LAY ON THEIR BED,
reading letters aloud to each other. Margaret had sent them and the boys to their rooms, saying that she would call them when they could come back down. Louise was in the parlor, talking to Frank, while Margaret washed the dishes—very quietly, Kitty imagined, so that she wouldn’t miss a word. Tish was reading a V-mail from her newest pen pal, a Navy man named Curly Higgins, who’d seen her picture and asked if she’d write to him, too:

“I know the reputation us sailors have; people think we’re all wolves, out to take advantage of every girl we meet. But I think the thing all us guys miss most is just simple female companionship, the friend part of it. It’s swell to just walk alongside a woman down some city street, her carrying her purse and all. All dressed up. And I just like to talk to a woman, to hear her voice and see how she waves her hands and laughs. I like how women think, they have a nice way of looking at the world. I’m sure glad you agreed to write to me. I feel like the luckiest man on this ship, because next to my bed I’ve got a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead. Say, don’t take that the wrong way. I just mean it’s something to wake up and see those three smiles. Can’t help but smile back myself! Please write back soon and keep me always in your prayers.

“He sounds sweet,” Tish said. But then she put the letter down and said, “All right. that’s enough of this. Tell me what’s going on down there!”

“No,” Kitty said. “It’s not up to me to tell you. You’ll know soon enough.” She looked at the alarm clock beside their bed. “I predict you’ll know in…seven minutes.”

Tish crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not a child anymore! You don’t need to play those kinds of games with me.”

“Read me your last letter,” Kitty said.

Tish looked at her pile. “Didn’t I read them all?”

“You had four. You read three.”

“Oh! Right. But this last one is just a note from Julian.”

“Really,” Kitty said.

“Yeah, just a note, nothing new, nothing you don’t know.”

“Read it,” Kitty said, and she made a great effort to keep her voice neutral.

Tish stared at her sister, deliberating, then unfolded Julian’s letter. “He just talks about—”

“I want to hear the whole thing.”

“It’s my letter!” Tish said.

“He’s my boyfriend!” Kitty answered. “And I want you to read it to me, every word.”

“Fine!” Tish said and read:

“November fifteenth, 1943

“Surprise! Still here in the South Pacific

“Dear Tish,

“I think your idea about a pearl necklace for Kitty is fine. Munson’s Jewelers downtown on Wabash is the place to get it—they know me and my family real well. Then if you could take it over to Field’s and get it gift-wrapped—”

“Oh!” Kitty said.

Tish folded the letter back up and put it on the bottom of her pile. “Okay? Satisfied?”

“I didn’t know!”

“Well, now you do.” Tish looked at the clock. “Seven minutes are almost up. I’m going to the bathroom.” She took her letters to her dresser drawer and dropped them in. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. “I might cut my hair,” she said, more to herself than to Kitty.

Kitty lay on the bed after Tish left and put her fingers to her throat, imagining herself in her pearl necklace. She loved pearls. They looked wonderful with everything. Maybe he’d decide to buy earrings, too! Or a bracelet! Oh, and all she had sent Julian for Christmas was cigarettes and socks and food: sardines and pumpernickel and rye. Cookies and nuts. One of Margaret’s famous fruitcakes. But that was the way it always was with Julian; he spent freely on everyone, and never really expected anything in return. He would be the kind to buy a bracelet and earrings along with a necklace and think nothing of it. He might even have told Tish to go ahead and do that later in his letter.

Kitty listened for the sound of the bathroom door closing, then went to the dresser. She cracked Tish’s drawer just enough to slip out Julian’s letter and read it quickly.

…and get it gift-wrapped real nice, I’d so much appreciate it. The lettuce I’ve enclosed ought to cover all this and then some—take any extra and buy yourself and all your friends an ice cream soda. Although I wonder if you do that anymore, go to the soda fountain and sit with your friends smack-dab in the middle of the counter like the queen bee. I like to think of you the way I saw you that day, all pretty in blue and surrounded by your many admirers. I always think of you as a kid in saddle shoes and bobby sox, your pullover with the sleeves pushed up just so. But I’ll bet you’ve grown up a lot in the many months since I last saw you. I’ll bet you’re quite the hep kitten now, a real heartbreaker. Why don’t you send me another picture? Zeeps, seems like just everything has changed so fast. I’ve changed a lot, too, though not in the nice way you have. I’m pretty low most of the time. Keep your letters coming, they help more than anything.

Julian

Kitty folded the letter up and stuck it back in the drawer. Then she went to lie on the bed. She didn’t know how to feel. On the one hand, Julian was buying her pearls. On the other hand, he was sharing such intimate thoughts with Tish, telling her little sister more than he told her! And what was this about how pretty Tish looked, about him wanting another picture of her? When had she sent one before? And why did
her
letters cheer him up so much?

Suddenly there came the sounds of Frank yelling and then Margaret yelling and Louise crying. Kitty sat up and leaned forward, listening. The front door slammed shut so hard the house shook. This was followed by a terrible silence. Tish came into the room, her blue eyes wide. “Should we go down?”

Kitty nodded. The boys were already thundering down the stairs, Binks yelling, “Ma? Ma?” and Billy shouting in his new man’s voice, “What the devil is going on down there?”

“We’re supposed to stay here!” Tommy said. And then, “Hey? Wait for me!”

“IT’S ONLY THE BOYS I’M WORRIED ABOUT,”
Louise said. “I don’t care about Pop.”

It was nearly midnight, and the sisters were in bed, still wide awake and talking in whispers.

“I’ll bet Pop’s drunk as a skunk when he comes home,” Tish said.

“Undoubtedly,” Louise said. “And when someone behaves that way, why should I care what he thinks about me?”

But she did care, Kitty knew. She cared that her father had bellowed and slammed out of the house, she cared that Billy had flushed terribly on hearing the news about her pregnancy and that her younger brothers had sat silent and wide-eyed at the dining room table, their hands folded before them and staring straight ahead as though they were being reprimanded by the nuns. Margaret had admonished the boys as well as the sisters not to tell anyone else. “For now, this is strictly our family’s business,” she had said. “We will decide when and how others will be told.” Louise cared that her mother’s shoulders had slumped as she was saying this, that when she’d gotten up afterward, she’d moved slowly, nearly aimlessly.

“Pop will be all right,” Kitty said. “Look how he acted when I took this factory job. He went out drinking that night, too—and so did Ma, don’t forget! Now he’s proud of me.”

“He won’t ever be proud of me for getting pregnant outside of marriage,” Louise said. “You should have seen his face. How disgusted he was. How angry. He turned purple!”

“Well, it was a shock!” Kitty said. “He just needs some time.”

“He needs a drink,” Tish said, and her tone was pragmatic. Tish didn’t often condemn people for their weaknesses. Her reaction to her sister’s announcement had been unbridled joy, and when the sisters came upstairs, she had hugged Louise and said, “What are we going to name him?”

Louise’s face had had red spots from her crying, but she’d smiled as she blew her nose. “How do you know it’s a boy?” She’d pronounced “know”
doe.

“Because it’s what Michael would want,” Tish had said.

“He likes little girls a lot,” Louise had said.

“But he would want a boy first. Every man wants a boy first.”

“Pop didn’t!” Kitty had said. “Pop says he wanted all girls!”

“Oh, he just says that to you,” Louise had said. “He lies, too.”

Kitty had bristled. “What do you mean, ‘too’?” But she’d known exactly what her sister meant. She’d wanted to defend her father, but she couldn’t. The truth was, he shouldn’t have gone off that way.

AT JUST PAST ONE IN THE MORNING,
Kitty awakened to the sound of voices. She crept downstairs and saw Margaret standing before Frank at the front door. She was in her nightgown, her feet bare, her hair wild about her shoulders. “…for all the world to see,” she was saying. “You’re doing this far too often, Frank Heaney. I’ll not have you going off and getting drunk every time a problem comes along!”

“Who says I’m drunk! An Irishman is never drunk so long as he can hold on to one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth!”

“Ah, Frank, would you stop,” Margaret said.

Kitty hid in the shadows and watched her father go to the living room and fall heavily into his favorite battered brown wing chair. “My beautiful Louise,” he said. “Ruined.”

Margaret moved quickly over to Frank and, astonishingly, slapped his face.

He looked up at her, his hand to his cheek.

“Don’t you ever say that about any of our children! They are every one of them fine human beings. And a credit to us as parents. Louise is not yours, she is her own. And her terrible crime was to show love to her fiancé, a man grieving for his mother and on his way back to a war he may never come home from. Is it the way I would have wanted things to go? No. ’Tis the cart before the horse, and we all know it. Will we all have to endure the stares and the comments from all those around us,
especially Louise,
who has never been unkind to anyone? Yes. But these are terrible times, everything all topsy-turvy, and I for one will hold Louise’s baby with great happiness and pride. This child is here, asleep in his mother’s womb, and he isn’t going away. He’s part of our family now, part of me and you as well as Michael and Louise, and we will love him and stand by him. Starting now and lasting forever. Do you understand me, Frank Heaney?”

He grunted and leaned back in the chair. Then he looked up at Margaret and smiled. “And how d’ye know it’s a boy? Sure it could be a girl, a little bitty thing, pink-cheeked and beautiful like her mother. And her mother’s mother.” He pulled Margaret onto his lap and kissed her shoulder.

“Ejit,” she said, but her voice was soft.

Kitty walked noiselessly back up the stairs and into her bedroom. She stood beside Louise, who was sleeping soundly at the foot of the bed. Her sister was curled up on her side, covered for once, the blankets pulled up to just under her nose. Kitty leaned down and kissed her sister’s forehead, then climbed under the covers herself. She remembered helping her mother give newborn Louise a bottle, how her sister had clung so tightly to her finger with her tiny hand, how Kitty had felt a rising up of defiance against anyone or anything that might ever hurt Louise. It hurt
her
whenever she felt that kind of love; it was a solid ache, right at her center. But it was a good hurt; it helped make her strong. And it made her her best self.

A
WEEK LATER, LOUISE ANNOUNCED
to her family that she had been fired as a teacher’s aide. After she’d shared the news of her pregnancy, the director had said they were sorry to lose her, she was one of the best they’d ever had, but surely she could understand. Most pregnant women quit anyway. And what kind of example would she be setting, being pregnant and not married? No, she would have to go.

“They can’t do that!” Tish said, but of course they could, and they did.

“I don’t care,” Louise said, but clearly she did.

“There’s a less narrow-minded child-care center at St. John’s that’s desperate for more workers,” Margaret said. “I can’t think of a more perfect place for you to be now.” She acted as if this were a happy solution, but she buttered her bread so hard it tore. The only one allowed to criticize her children was herself.

“N
O!”
LOUISE SAID.

“Yes,” Kitty answered mildly. She had bought her sister the yellow negligee and peignoir. Word had gotten out about Louise
—Somebody talked!—
and many of the neighbors now offered a tight-lipped silence in place of a greeting. Louise wasn’t safe from wagging tongues even in church: at coffee hour only yesterday, a group of women had talked in disapproving tones and kept looking over at Louise until Margaret burst into the middle of them, saying, “And how are my
friends
here at
church
on this fine Sunday?”

“Kitty, you have to take this back.”

“Never. And I want you to try it on; I want to see you in it.”

“No!”

“I’ll
try it on,” Tish said, grabbing the bag. She ran into the closet and emerged moments later in the nearly transparent gowns. She looked wildly improper. Sexier than any starlet sticking her chest out on any movie magazine cover.
Holy Toledo,
Kitty thought, but what she said was “Take that off right now.”

“Why?” Tish danced left and right.

“Because it does not belong to you and it will bring bad luck to the marriage.”

Tish stopped moving. “It will?”

“It will,” Kitty said solemnly and hoped that Louise wouldn’t contradict her. And Louise didn’t. Instead, she said, “Oh, all right. Give to me. I’ll try it on.”

Tish went into the closet again and came out with the gowns neatly folded. “Sorry,” she said, handing them to her sister. Louise went into the closet.

“Oh my, they’re so light,” they heard her say. “They’re like putting on meringue.” Then she was quiet.

“Come out,” Kitty said. “Let us see!”

“That’s okay,” Louise said.

Kitty yanked the closet door open, and there stood Louise with her hands clasped before her, her legs pressed tightly together. “Come out!” Kitty said.

“You can see practically
everything,”
Louise whispered.

“That’s the idea,” Kitty whispered back, and she grabbed her sister’s wrist and pulled her out into the room.

Tish wolf-whistled. And then, when Louise blushed and started back for the closet, Tish said, “No, you look so pretty. Hubba-hubba!”

Louise thought for a moment, then smiled. “Thanks. I guess I’ll save this for after we’re married.” Now she laughed out loud. “Gee, I wish I’d had this for the honeymoon!”