SYLVIA
Sylvia planned to go to Anna’s after her classes on Monday. It was a visit she had made often since that August day when she’d first gone to visit. Sylvia liked Anna, found her sharp and spunky, and admired the way she was making the best of a bad situation.
In all the times she’d been to Anna’s house, she had only met Anna’s mother once, and Anna had not told her that Sylvia was related to Lily’s father. She had only introduced Sylvia as a friend. This afternoon, with the money in her purse and the Brownie camera in her book bag, she waited impatiently for Anna to answer the door.
Anna greeted her warmly, as she usually did, and Sylvia could hear Lily babbling away in her playpen upstairs. Sylvia followed Anna to her apartment.
Anna took Lily out of her playpen and put her into a highchair, where she gnawed on a Zwieback biscuit and babbled babytalk to Sylvia, who by now felt Lily knew her. Anna took a baked potato out of the oven and set it on the table to cool.
“Sit,” Anna said to Sylvia. “There’s a pot of coffee on the stove. I just made it.”
“Thanks,” Sylvia said. “I’d like that.” When the coffee was poured and the decisions about milk and sugar made, Anna and Sylvia sat and looked at one another.
“Okay,” Anna said at last. “I suppose you got a letter too?”
Sylvia nodded. “First my parents got one telling us that he was alive.” Even as she said it, her heart skipped remembering the shock, the joy. No one had been angry. The happiness had overcome every other emotion. “And there was one for me too. Asking me to come to see you.”
“Oh, yeah? What for?”
“Well, first of all, he doesn’t know we’ve met.” Sylvia laughed. “Or that we are friends.” She looked at Lily sitting in the highchair and now banging her biscuit on the tray and saying, “Mama, Mama” over and over.
A small smile came and went on Anna’s face. She nodded. “Go on.”
In a rush Sylvia said, “He asked me to give you this money. And he said he’d send more.” She reached into her bag and took out an envelope and put it on the table.
Anna closed her eyes and shook her head. “I don’t need the money. You can see I don’t need money, but I’ll take it anyway. It’s the least he can do.” Her voice cracked, and Sylvia was afraid she would start to cry. The vocalizations from Lily were getting louder and louder. Anna got up and went to the refrigerator. She took out a baby bottle and put it in a potful of water to warm on the stove.
“I have to feed Lily. We can keep talking.” Anna then took out some grated cheese and butter, cut open the baked potato, and mashed it with the butter, then drifted some parmesan cheese on it. From the silverware drawer she took out two small spoons. She gave one to Lily, who proceeded to bang it on the highchair tray, and with the other she took a small spoonful of potato and blew on it before offering it to Lily.
“I really loved him, you know,” Anna said. She kept on feeding Lily, who opened her mouth like a little bird as each spoonful was offered.
Sylvia nodded. “He wrote me how much he loved you too,” Sylvia said. “He said he would have married you if all the trouble hadn’t happened. He wants to now.”
Anna kept feeding Lily, and Sylvia sat silent. She didn’t say anything but appeared to be thinking. When the mashed potato was finished, Anna put down the spoon and stood up. She took the bottle of milk from the pot, turned off the flame, and spilled two drops of the milk on her wrist to test the temperature. Then she handed the bottle to Lily, lifted her out of the highchair, and settled on the kitchen chair, cuddling Lily in her arms. Lily held her own bottle and sucked the nipple, all the while looking at Sylvia whenever she spoke.
Sylvia loved watching Anna doing all of the domestic things that mothers do with babies, and she was filled with admiration. She wondered what it had been like for her to go through the labor and delivery alone. Had she nursed the baby when she was first born? In all the times she had been with Anna, she had never asked her that.
“He asked me to take a picture of Lily. Is that okay?” Sylvia waited but Anna didn’t answer. “Can I?” Sylvia reached down and took her Brownie camera out of her bag.
Anna sighed, a long breath out. “Sure. I guess so, seeing as you have the camera ready.” There was a hint of a smile on her face. “He sent me a picture of him in uniform.” She got up and went to the counter near the refrigerator and brought back her letter and the picture of Morty. It was the same one he had sent to his parents. “Handsome devil, isn’t he?” she said to Sylvia. “Now let’s take the picture of Lily.” She took the bottle out of Lily’s mouth, turned her to face Sylvia, and posed with her baby, mirror images of one another. Sylvia snapped several pictures and gave the camera to Anna to take one of Sylvia with the baby.
When Sylvia left Anna and Lily, it was four thirty. They’d talked for an hour, most of it about Lily and about Sylvia’s studies at Brooklyn College. Just before she went home, she dropped the film for development at the camera store on Pitkin Avenue and then ran home to dinner.
The photographs were ready in five days. Sylvia picked them up and stood at the counter looking at them. Several of them were really good. Anna looked beautiful and serious. Lily, plump and dimply, was the quintessentially beautiful baby. There was one in particular that Sylvia loved, of her and Lily, and she was sure to include that one in the letter she wrote to her brother.
Dear Morty,
I did what you asked and went to see Anna and Lily. You can see from the photographs included in the envelope that she is a beautiful baby. And Anna is also beautiful.
We had a really nice visit.
Now I have to tell you something else that you don’t know. I have been seeing Anna since Lily was four months old. Anna had given me a letter to give you before we were told you were dead. I had it in my drawer and had forgotten about it, not knowing where you were. After the unveiling of the headstone on your supposed grave, I opened the letter. It was telling you that she was expecting. I knew the baby would have been born already, so I went to see her.
We became friendly, Morty. And I even introduced her to Mama and Papa. They love Lily too. So there are no secrets anymore. I don’t know whether she forgives you, Morty. She didn’t say. But she didn’t say no either. And she told me that she had loved you before. I told her you would have married her if things hadn’t gotten so bad. I think you have a chance.
Do you get any time off after you finish your training and before they send you to the war? If you do, maybe you can come home and make amends . . . to Anna and to Mama and Papa.
Me—I forgive you already. I missed you so much, you don’t have to do anything to make me love you again.
Sylvia