All Good Women Page 5

  ‘Yes, how did you know?’

  ‘It’s so pretty — neat and colorful — like her. She’s the only one of you to have framed pictures on the wall. And look at that quilt, I bet she made it herself, right? She has that kind of eye for detail.’

  ‘Like you, my dear.’ Ann closed the door and opened the next one. ‘So tell me whose room this is?’

  Rachel observed the clothes piled on a chair; shoes scattered on the floor; papers and bills spilling over the table. ‘A Hurricane Moira if I ever saw one.’

  ‘Right.’ Ann laughed, noticing an edge of satisfaction. She was annoyed by Moira’s sloppiness as much as she was charmed by her spontaneity. She probably also envied Moira’s lack of inhibition. ‘And this,’ she opened the door to the room overlooking the small garden, ‘is obviously Teddy’s room.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Rachel nodded, ‘with the spare, almost ascetic look. But what is that hideous picture in the corner?’

  ‘Something her sister Patsy painted in school.’ Ann smiled fondly.

  ‘Anyway, the room’s perfect for someone so indifferent to feminine things.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ann asked tentatively, her mind now switched downstairs, to the kugel in the oven. ‘Say, come back to the kitchen with me.’

  ‘Well,’ Rachel whispered as they walked. ‘She’s kind of boyish the way she stands and with that straggling hair.’

  Ann frowned, held the swinging kitchen door for Rachel and concentrated on her search for the sugar. Teddy wasn’t boyish, just gangly. Women developed in different stages. Oh, why was she so tense? Just jitters about the party. Concentrate, Ann, sugar, where is the sugar?

  ‘I envy you this house.’ Rachel leaned against the icebox. ‘It’s a shame that most girls shuttle from their parents’ home to their husband’s without having a place of their own.’

  ‘Teddy found the house, you know.’ Ann sprinkled sugar on the crusty noodles and paused to enjoy the aroma. ‘She still does cleaning for the family next door, who own the place. When it came up for rent, they wanted quiet people. Mr Minelli has a heart ailment. Also, they lost their daughter a while ago and liked the notion of four young women neighbors. Mitzvah all around.’ She loved using Yiddish with Rachel. Usually the only time she could use these words was when she was alone with Mama. Sometimes they came in dreams.

  ‘Sounds suspiciously communistic,’ Rachel laughed, adding, in gruff imitation of Mr Rose, ‘Pretty soon you’ll be sharing boyfriends and eating out of a common dish.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Ann smiled, once again comforted by Rachel’s familiarity — her teasing, her wonderful Jewish expressiveness. She never felt tongue-tied with Rachel as she sometimes did with Wanda. Well, their cultures were different. That was part of the adventure. ‘Look at that table in there … all rather uncommon dishes prepared by uncommon dishes. Oh, well …’

  ‘Yes,’ Rachel humored her friend. She glanced into the living room and noticed Teddy chatting in the corner with two dark women.

  ‘We have a lot in common. We’re all either the oldest girl or the only girl in the family,’ Teddy was telling the Bertoli sisters. Sometimes it was hard to explain what had drawn them together, why they had decided to share a house. Angela and Rosa still lived above the family grocery on the corner. Teddy noticed with gratification that they both looked more comfortable now, halfway through their glasses of wine. Wanda had been skeptical about inviting them, about whether they would ‘fit in’, and was also smarting from their father’s last crack about ‘Chinks stealing the flower business from the Italians.’ But Teddy knew the daughters were more neighborly than Mr Bertoli. Angela had offered to help carry some of the boxes and had stopped Teddy on the street once or twice to chat. She had a casualness that reminded Teddy of people back home in Oklahoma. Most Californians were too polite to drop in. It was natural to invite the Bertoli sisters. Besides, she didn’t know any other friends who were suitable for the party.

  ‘But all of you in one house, how do you stand it?’ asked Angela, the older sister.

  ‘Only four.’ Teddy laughed easily. Angela was a big woman for whom space seemed an important consideration. ‘How many do you live with?’

  ‘Six brothers,’ Rosa began, ‘two sisters, Mama, Papa. See Angela, four isn’t so many.’

  When Angela flushed like this, Teddy noticed her brown eyes darkened. They invited curiosity and returned it. Teddy was filled with a sudden tranquility as she looked around the room at her friends and her friends’ friends. She sank back into the old armchair Ann’s father had loaned them. This corner was her favorite spot in the house. From here she could see into the dining room and kitchen and even upstairs to the second floor landing. Sometimes late at night, she liked to fix herself cocoa and sit in this frumpy chair, looking around.

  ‘You come from a big family?’ Angela asked.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Teddy, wondering how long she had dropped out of the conversation. She reached over and patted Angela’s hand and then looked steadily at Rosa. ‘I’m used to noise. And company. I would be here except my older brother Hank got married and brought his bride home. They took over Jolene’s and my room. Now Jolene’s in with the other girls and there wasn’t anywhere for me besides the tool shed. The folks didn’t want me to go, we could have fixed something, but this house came up. Cleaning for the Minellis pays my share of the rent.’

  ‘A suffragist.’ Angela, recovered from her embarrassment, was eager to volley.

  ‘Pardon?’ Teddy took a gulp of wine, confused as she often was, when people changed the level of conversation to irony.

  ‘For women’s rights. A militant who believes women should live and work independently.’

  Teddy noticed Angela said ‘women’ as if she spoke of an inferior species, which was strange since Angela was pretty self-confident, taking a job at the ceramic factory against her father’s objections.

  ‘Sure, why not?’ Teddy answered finally. She didn’t know these girls well enough to say she didn’t ever plan to get married.

  Teddy turned at a knock on the front door. Noticing that Moira had abandoned her post by the wine table, she excused herself from Angela and Rosa. Briskly walking to the door, Teddy hoped, for Moira’s sake, that this was Randy Girard. But she also hoped that he had been run over by a large truck.

  A persistent ringing of the bell followed the knock. Moira glanced up from her sherry, which she found more fortifying than wine. She checked the heavy wooden mantel clock Wanda’s parents had presented as a housewarming present. 10.45, bloody late. Had he tried another party first? She paused, holding her breath, setting down the sherry glass and realizing how disappointed she would be if the caller were Ann’s friend Herb or her brother Daniel or Wanda’s cousin Keiko. There were only four guests who hadn’t appeared. Moira thought that although she might not meet Miss Fargo’s bookkeeping standards, she could calculate what was important to her — like any true Scot. Why was Teddy taking such a long time to reach the door, to open it. The ease in that girl would drive her crazy. The whole evening was playing in slow motion. As the door cracked, Moira strained to see, yes, blond curly hair; it must be him. She swivelled toward the bathroom, to wash her face.

  The worst thing would be to give the impression that she had been waiting all evening for him. And of course, she hadn’t. She had been enjoying her friends and, oh Christ, she hoped no one was in the bathroom because she was going to throw up.

  Ann and Rachel were drawn into the front room by the sound of Benny Goodman’s clarinet wowowowowing from their borrowed victrola. Wanda was swinging with Roy. Howard Nakatani had invited Rosa Bertoli. And there was Teddy dancing rather halfheartedly with Randy Girard. It was a new record.

  Ann considered their second-hand furniture — the shabby elephant of a couch, the scarred mahogany table that Wanda had painted black, the ancient floor lamp which jiggled on and off to the Goodman
beat, the thinning Persian rug which someone — must have been Teddy, who else would have thought to — had rolled against the fireplace. Surveying the room, Ann was alternately distracted by the dancers’ electric sexuality and by the restful sensation that this was her home. For so many years the Roses had looked for home. First in the New York apartment and then in the one here in San Francisco where she and Daniel did most of their growing up. Their father was determined to make the homes American. Non-Jewish. Non-German. All the old things had been left behind. He had bought so many new American gadgets that they lived on the edge of poverty. Mama complained the soup was never right. She suspected the pans. She needed kitchen things from home. Papa would contradict. ‘It is better in America [everything: the life, the soup], you just haven’t learned the way yet.’ And gradually Mama came to believe him. She tried and failed to learn the way, the language, the recipe, even the religion when he started to attend Episcopalian services. Just as gradually — or it was unconscious, no one was to blame — he transferred all his faith to the children. It would be different, better for them. Thus Ann had grown up among the furniture and books and music that frightened her mother, American artifacts upon which they were meant to build their family. How much better it would have been if they had had comfortable scraps like these here. Instead, their home was created with new American mines laid dangerously along the life of a woman who for years could speak only Yiddish before she stopped speaking completely. After all, Ann thought now, a couch, like this old elephant here, was to be sat upon, not exhibited. She sank down on the cushion next to Rachel, once more caught by the physical vitality of the dancers, particularly of Wanda and Roy.

  Although Moira had brushed her hair in the bathroom, she was still twisting at a side curl as she walked toward the music. She moved as calmly as she could, her eyes everywhere but the dance floor. Who besides Randy would have brought such a new record? She had heard it once, on the radio this week. Randy was always up on the newest, from white-walled tires to Clark Gable wisecracks. What would he be wearing tonight? She could just imagine him in those new wide khaki slacks and the heliotrope shirt, leaning impatiently on the side of the couch jingling his coins. Well, let him wait. She spread some of Ann’s cream cheese on a cracker. She hoped the chives would check the sourness in her mouth.

  ‘Hey, Moi, come on and dance,’ called Stephen, a husky longshoreman who lived down the block.

  She looked up, tickled at the thought and had almost joined him on the dance floor when she noticed Randy and Teddy. No, she hadn’t ‘noticed’ them. More precisely Randy had noticed her and pulled her in with those green, green eyes. Sea green, she had decided this afternoon. Now they gleamed satanic green. Was she jealous? Jealous of Teddy for heaven’s sake? Just look at the girl — nervous as a chicken skating on the Great Salt Lake. Look at Randy basking in his own self-confidence. Well, her silly feelings might be tender, but her head was tough and she knew the quickest way to lose Randy Girard was to mope. She smiled cheerfully, patted Teddy on the elbow and danced with her best Isadora Duncan abandon. Moira didn’t know if she had had too much wine or too little as she swung with Stephen. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t get into the mood. She had never liked this living room. She much preferred to sit in the kitchen with the others, cosy around the little table. The living room was at once too large and too confining. Now, she shook her head and tried to concentrate on Stephen’s rugged jaw. Randy was putting on a new record, ‘Jeepers Creepers’. Did he remember it was one of her favorites?

  After an hour, the music grew slower and almost everyone rested on the sidelines. Randy and Teddy had given up several records before. Moira didn’t want to encourage Stephen with too much cheek-to-cheek dancing, so she suggested they join the others in conversation. Looking around for a chair, Moira noticed that the only place was next to Randy on the love seat. What the hell, she sank down beside him. He smiled and returned to the argument among Ann, Rachel and Teddy.

  Teddy was incredulous. ‘But surely the Europeans won’t let Hitler continue. He’s only one man.’ Why had she got into this discussion? She hated how war talk was everywhere nowadays — the radio, the newspapers, the bus. She sighed, remembering how many times she tried to get Pop to talk about something else over dinner. But this was taking over people’s minds.

  ‘He’s driven,’ Ann said, her neck aching. Should she get up and take an aspirin now? Yes, but she could not move. ‘Hitler’s not an ordinary man.’ She wanted to tell them Herb’s stories from the Forum, but they wouldn’t believe her any more than Papa had.

  ‘You just accept his propaganda if you take a defeatist attitude like that,’ Teddy said, surprised by the conviction in her voice. Sometimes she believed they could stop the war with words.

  Ann’s headache was unequivocal now. ‘His anti-Semitism­?’ she spluttered.

  ‘Not that — I mean you couldn’t accept that. You’re a Jew. I mean, you’re Jewish.’ Teddy flushed. She had meant to talk with Ann about that. Mom said the term was ‘Jewess’, but she could no more say that than ‘Negress’.

  ‘There are anti-Semitic Jews,’ Rachel said bluntly, ‘but Ann’s not one of them.’

  ‘But, but,’ Teddy twisted in her seat. ‘I didn’t mean … I didn’t think …’

  Of course not,’ Ann interrupted. ‘No one does think. That’s the problem. The “silly little hun” whom the newspapers joke about has power. The power of hate and lunacy. He’ll march through half the continent before they stop laughing loud enough to see what’s happening.’

  Moira was alarmed by Ann’s fear and anger. She wanted to do something to help, but nothing short of stopping Hitler counted. Everyone was talking like this lately. Was it selfish to want a rest on Saturday night?

  ‘Roosevelt will save the day,’ Moira interrupted, noticing the pitch of her voice rise as she lost their attention. ‘Say,’ she tried a different tone, ‘did you hear the one about Eleanor and the rhinoceros?’

  Wanda shook her head; she hated these cracks about Eleanor.

  Roosevelt’s looks. From women too! She’d like to interview Mrs Roosevelt some day. She had been thinking a lot about writing tonight, because of the Willa Cather novels she had borrowed from the library. The author had started out as a journalist. She felt steadier and sipped her wine. ‘You think there’ll be a war here?’

  Ann leaned forward. Before she could reply, Randy spoke. ‘Sure. We’ve got so many damned treaties in Europe that the minute the next Lithuanian sneezes, we’ll send 1,000 battleships across the Atlantic.’

  ‘Or the Pacific,’ said Howard.

  ‘Because of China?’ asked Randy. ‘Nah, the Americans don’t care about the Orient. Nothing personal, you understand.’

  ‘How could we take it personally?’ asked Wanda, avoiding her brother’s critical glance. She thought she noticed a fleeting grin from Roy Watanabe. She wanted to tell everyone that Grandfather Nakatani opposed the Japanese invasion, but what did these people know of Manchuria? Fu Manchu probably. Someday she would go to the Orient and make that part of the world comprehensible to Westerners. She used to dream of her family returning to Japan for a holiday, as Emmy Yamamoto did. Now, she doubted they could afford it. But she would get an assignment. She would go alone.

  ‘I only mean,’ Randy stammered, ‘that, that we’re more likely to worry about Europe because that’s where our people, Americans, oh, shoot, I get your point, Wanda. I’m sorry.’

  Moira winced. How could they change this dreadful topic?

  Wanda shrugged. ‘You’re right, of course, about the general bias.’ At least he had apologized and Moira was fading by the second.

  ‘Has anyone seen Dawn Patrol?’ asked Moira.

  Ann’s jaw dropped, then she picked up the cue. People were too tired or too drunk or too angry or too scared. She was all four. ‘The one with David Niven, Basil Rathbone and …’

  Moira laughed.
‘How could you forget Errol Flynn?’

  ‘Indeed.’ Ann took a long drag on her cigarette.

  ‘Tail Spin was the one I liked,’ said Teddy, ‘with Alice Faye, Constance Bennett and Nancy Kelly.’

  Wanda turned to Roy. ‘Teddy wants to be an aviatrix, like Jacqueline Cochran. She practically flew the entire Bendix Transcontinental Race with her last fall.’

  ‘Not true.’ Teddy glanced inadvertently at Angela who was closely following the conversation. ‘I just read the newspapers.’

  ‘You practically ate the newspapers,’ teased Moira. ‘You couldn’t breathe during the entire race.’

  ‘Speaking of racing,’ nodded Rachel, ‘I’d better get home.’

  ‘Honey!’ exclaimed Moira, ‘the party’s just begun. I’m sure Randy has more records.’

  Before she finished the sentence, Glenn Miller was swinging. Moira dragged everyone into a large circle on the dance floor.

  Chapter Five

  Spring 1941, San Francisco

  GERMANS INVADE YUGOSLAVIA

  JAPAN GETS HAIPHONG PORT PRIVILEGES FROM FRANCE

  ITALIANS SURRENDER IN ETHIOPIA

  VIET MINH CREATED BY HO CHI MINH

  US SUPREME COURT BARS RACIAL

  DISCRIMINATION IN TRAIN ACCOMMODATION

  ‘SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE, God damn it, Ann, you’re a regular locomotive,’ coughed Moira, waving away the cigarette trail. She pulled a dust rag from her old blue housecoat. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I bother to clean the living room; it only ends up smelling like a Southern Pacific tunnel.’

  Wanda sat on the couch reading a magazine. She tugged her pink chenille robe tighter. She felt that familiar ‘middle’ sensation — the middle child located between Howard’s and Betty’s needs, the understanding daughter caught between Mama’s and Papa’s temperaments. She also hated the smell of cigarettes, but Ann had a right to smoke in her own house.

  Teddy stretched and walked toward the kitchen, humming ‘You Are My Sunshine’. Slim, almost elegant in her new beige slacks, Teddy was the only one dressed this Saturday morning. She shook her head, wondering why Moira had started today’s housekeeping so early.