The Enemy at Home

“Okay now, so what are those?” the short, thirtyish man asked, shouting in her ear over all the noise. He pointed at the airplane’s tail.

Squinting through her work goggles, which were so tight they gave her a headache, Nora studied the long copper studs that stuck out from the neat row of rivet holes along the tail’s edge. They looked like rifle cartridges. She knew they were temporary holders for the airplane’s outer skin. She would remove the cartridge-like pins before inserting the rivets. She’d learned about them in the orientation class on Friday—and again this morning—but the name of the damn things had slipped her mind for the moment. She pointed at them with the riveting gun, which had become oppressively heavy in her thick-gloved hand. “You mean those thingamajigs?” she asked, pointing to the pins.

“Ha! What a birdbrain!” the man laughed. “Yeah, honey, those thingamajigs!”

Nora stared at him. Oh, give me a break, she wanted to say. But then, giving her a break would have interfered with his mission to make the new girl feel like an idiot.

His name was Larry Krull, and he was training her this morning. At first, Nora had thought the dark-haired, swarthy-looking man seemed like a nice enough guy. She’d even found him attractive—even though he was a few inches shorter than her and kind of puny. But then she’d noticed Larry walked with a cocky swagger and never really smiled at her. He just smirked or sneered. And after a couple of hours with Larry barking instructions at her and criticizing her every move, Nora absolutely loathed him.

Larry had a work partner—a big, blond-haired oaf named Don, who was the bucker. He stood on the other side of the airplane’s tail with a bucking bar in his hand. The bar was a piece of steel about the size of a big box of safety matches. Nora was supposed to insert the rivet into the rivet hole, press the gun to the rivet’s dome head, and squeeze the trigger. Don would hold the bucking bar in place to flatten the rivet on his side. Nora had to be careful not to press the gun too hard against the rivet head; otherwise, she could dent the airplane’s skin.

She hadn’t yet put in a rivet by herself. She always had Larry on her back, practically grinding his slight, wiry body against her as he held her arms in place. They stood on a metal scaffolding ten feet above the floor of the vast assembly line, the fuselage and tail section of a B-17 in front of them.

From this viewpoint, Nora could see practically the entire shop. It was enormous—like five football fields under one roof. A huge American flag was suspended from the cross-beamed ceiling at one end. Nora couldn’t make out anything at the other end of the shop; it was too far away. Between there and where she stood were rows and rows of plane fuselages and tail assemblies encircled by scaffolding. Big steel frames on wheels held engines or wings.

Busily hovering around each airplane section were armies of workers in coveralls, thick gloves, and goggles or face shields. The women wore hairnets—or bandanas like Nora. And everyone had a security badge. The massive shop smelled like smoke, electricity and sweat. There was so much going on—plane engines dangling and moving from cranes overhead, sparks flying from welding tools at every other station, people continually on the go—and all of it in sync. Nora tried not to get distracted. Half the time, she couldn’t hear Larry—what with all the forklifts, drills and other machinery churning. It was even worse whenever Nora squeezed the trigger of her rivet gun. The searing blast actually hurt her ears.

“Hey, Don, did you hear that?” Larry shouted, with his hand lingering on Nora’s hip. He kept pawing at her—in the guise of showing her how to hold and work the gun. “The plant’s going to hell with all these stupid broads coming to work here. But at least, with this one, she’s improving the looks of the place—and good for a laugh or two! Thingamajigs!”

The other man laughed. It was the cackle of a moron—or a bully, or both. Don obviously thought Larry was the epitome of cool. He nodded enthusiastically or laughed at just about everything Larry said.

“Thingamajigs, yeah, that’s what they are, lady,” Larry went on. He turned to Don. “She’s never going to get it! I’d have an easier time teaching a monkey to do this work!”

“Yeah, as long as it’s not a lady monkey, right, Larry?” Don seemed to think this a pretty damn clever remark.

Larry let out a laugh.

Nora felt her face getting hotter and hotter. The pipsqueak son of a bitch still had his hand on her hip. She wanted to kick herself for saying thingamajigs. How did she expect these creeps to take her seriously when she used words from Jane’s vocabulary? Swallowing hard, she stared back at Larry and pivoted her body to brush his hand away.

This seemed to agitate him. “Maybe you should go back to your kitchen and start wearing a skirt again, honey—along with an apron. Stick to your cooking and knitting.” He plucked one of the copper-colored studs from the plane’s tail and shook it in her face. “If you can’t even remember the name of this thing—”

“It’s a cleco pin,” Nora heard herself say. Then she yelled it: “They’re called clecos!”

There was a crack in her voice. Nora told herself not to cry. For starters, she had goggles on. But more important, she didn’t want to give Larry and Don the satisfaction of seeing her break down.

Yet she was at the end of her rope. Her foot hurt from cutting it on the window glass last night, and she’d been doing her damnedest not to limp all morning. She didn’t want anyone thinking she was unfit for work on her first day. The damn riveting gun scared her, too, and not just the deafening noise it made. She was terrified the thing would slip out of her grasp and hurt someone or wreck something vital to the war effort. A part of her wondered if these two bullies assigned to train her were actually right. Would she ever get the hang of this?

She took a deep breath and looked squarely at Larry. “Would it be okay with you if I actually tried to do some riveting on my own? I think I can do it better if I didn’t have someone crowding me and screaming at me the whole time. Could you let me do a couple?”

Stepping back, Larry gave a mock bow and handed her a rivet. “Why, yes, milady. Please, go ahead, and please, try not to put a dimple in the skin of the goddamn plane.”

Don laughed again.

Bracing herself, Nora did her best to keep from shaking as she inserted the rivet in the hole and pressed the gun to the rivet’s dome head. Squeezing the trigger, she managed not to flinch when the gun let out the earsplitting noise.

“How’s that looking, Don?” Larry yelled.

His friend took away the bucking bar on his side of the tail, and then he inspected the results of her work. He looked disappointed. “It’s all right, I guess,” he replied.

Larry gave her shoulder a condescending pat. “Well, good for you, honey. You actually managed not to screw it up. Go ahead and try another . . .”

I’ll show him, Nora thought. She inserted a rivet through the next hole down along the edge of the B-17’s tail. Then she applied the gun to the rivet’s dome head and squeezed the trigger again. It wasn’t rocket science. These two clowns training her probably wanted to make the work seem a lot more complicated than it was.

She did another, and another, and then another. If this was all there was to it and the extent of what she’d be doing for eight hours every day, the job promised to be repetitive and dull. The instructor in her orientation class on Friday had said, “You gals are good at mindless, monotonous tasks—which makes you perfect for this type of work.” He hadn’t seemed to realize how insulting that had been to a roomful of women. Nora figured half the men in this place resented having females join their ranks. The two jerks training her certainly seemed determined to make her life miserable.

Nora wondered if every day would be this awful.

Then again, she was dead tired and that made everything seem bleak. She’d gotten less than three hours of sleep last night—thanks to the hellions who had vandalized her house, and thanks to her missing son.

After finding his bed empty, Nora had waited up for Chris to come home. She’d sat at the kitchen table and tried to read Kings Row. But she’d spent more time looking at the stove clock and getting up to glance out the front window every few minutes. She’d investigated each little noise, wondering if it was Chris or perhaps those hoodlums back to break another window. One minute she would be furious at Chris for disappearing, and the next, she’d be worried that something awful had happened to him. Of all nights for Chris to sneak out of the house. Nora kept thinking how, in just a few hours, she needed to be up and alert for her first day of work. She waited an hour and a half—until she finally heard footsteps outside the house.

Someone was coming around to the kitchen entrance. Nora prayed it was Chris. Because of the blackout curtains, he couldn’t have seen that the kitchen light was on. Nora heard the key in the back door, and then it opened—as far as the chain lock allowed.

“Oh, shit,” she heard him mutter.

Nora got to her feet, unfastened the chain lock and swung the door open.

Chris froze at the threshold. He wore his jacket open—over a dark sweater and jeans. He was slightly out of breath, and his wavy light brown hair was unkempt. Her son stood six feet tall, but he had a sweet, boyish face, which, at times, made him look like a lost lamb.

“Mom . . . what are you doing up?” he whispered.

“Waiting for you!” she hissed. “Do you know what time it is? Where in God’s name have you been?”

“I . . . I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a little walk,” he said.

“Seriously? You expect me to believe that? What do you take me for?” She opened the door wider. “Get in here . . .”

Stepping inside, Chris looked at the kitchen floor instead of her.

Nora closed the door and locked it. “You might be interested to know that while you were out gallivanting God-knows-where, we were vandalized again . . .”

At last, he looked at her, his brown eyes wide with concern. “Oh, no, what happened?”

“See for yourself,” she said.

Marching him to the front of the house, Nora showed Chris the hastily patched-up broken windowpane in the door—as if what had happened was his fault. Keeping her voice down so as not to wake Jane, she told him how he’d left her and his little sister all alone while some thugs—probably classmates of his—had damaged and defaced their home. His father had entrusted him to be the man of the house in his absence. Was that a mistake? His dad was risking his life in North Africa, and how disappointed he’d be in him right now. Nora knew she was laying it on thick, but she was furious. She also drove home the fact that she was reporting for her first day of work in four hours—and he’d chosen that night to sneak out of the house. And then he’d lied to her about where he was. “Your school chums broke that window two and a half hours ago, and you weren’t here. So don’t give me this story about going out for a little walk. Where were you?”

“They’re not my chums,” Chris murmured, looking down at the floor again. “I really don’t know for sure who’s been doing all this stuff.”

“All right, but where were you? I was worried sick . . .”

“I went out with Earl,” he confessed quietly. “He borrowed his dad’s Studebaker . . .”

“Oh, God,” she grumbled. She couldn’t stand his friend Earl McAllister. “What for? Exactly what was this pressing engagement you had at one o’clock in the morning on a school night?”

“Earl heard that a fleet of battleships was coming into the Naval Supply Depot at Smith Cove on Elliott Bay—y’know, by Interbay? Anyway, we wanted to see all the battleships.”

Crossing her arms, Nora sighed in resignation. “Well, it’s so good to know that you and your buddies are helping the war effort by not discussing troop movements and the like. That’s just swell. Don’t they have security guards posted all around that facility? How did you and Earl expect to get anywhere near there?”

Chris shrugged. “We ended up driving to a park in Magnolia. It had a good view of the bay, and we watched from there. Turned out to be only one battleship, and it wasn’t all that spectacular. Anyway, I’m sorry, Mom. I figured if I snuck out, you wouldn’t miss me. You could sleep and not even know I was gone. I didn’t count on us getting vandalized tonight. And I didn’t want to miss the battleships. Earl swore a whole fleet was coming in.”

“That’s what you get for listening to wartime rumors,” Nora said. She shook her head and pointed to the stairs. “All right, just go to bed. I can’t even look at you anymore, I’m so upset.”

“I’m really sorry, Mom,” he whispered—with his lost-lamb expression.

“Just go,” she said, turning away from him.

Chris meekly headed up the stairs.

Nora returned to the kitchen and switched off the light. Then she went to switch off the light in the family room. Beside the lamp on the end table was a pair of binoculars that belonged to Pete. With the constant fear of invasion, she and the kids were always using the binoculars to look up at the skies—or out at the water.

Nora switched off the lamp, but she stared at the binoculars for another moment. Then she glanced toward the stairs. If Chris had snuck out to watch a fleet of battleships, wouldn’t he have brought along the binoculars? Or hadn’t it crossed his mind that he might need them?

Nora was too tired to analyze it. She left on the front hall light and wearily climbed the stairs. But despite her exhaustion, she was too keyed up to fall asleep. She must have tossed and turned for an hour before finally dozing off.

It was still dark out when Nora left in the morning to catch the bus. She usually woke the kids and made breakfast for them before they headed to school, but they were on their own today. She thought about that as she rode the crowded bus to the Boeing plant by the Duwamish River south of Seattle. She had her purse and her new lunchbox in her lap. She’d heard mixed reviews about the cafeteria food at Boeing, so she’d made lunch for herself last night and stuck it in the refrigerator. It had been one of the many things on her mental checklist in preparation for today. The kids were covered as far as lunch was concerned because they got hot lunches at school. And they both had keys to get back inside the house—in case she was delayed getting home. But she worried about them sleeping past their alarms without her there to wake them at seven fifteen—especially Chris, who’d been out half the night.

At work all morning, Nora had tried to stay focused on the new job. But she was worried about Chris, wondering if he’d told her the truth about sneaking out last night to watch a fleet of battleships. He’d probably just forgotten to bring along the binoculars. Or maybe Earl had brought a pair. Why would Chris lie about where he’d been?

“Hey, slow down, for Christ’s sake!”

Nora froze and then eased her finger off the trigger of the riveting gun. She’d lost track of how many rivets she’d drilled into the plane’s tail. But she was suddenly aware of Larry hovering behind her, barking in her ear.

“You’re going off half-cocked,” he yelled. “Pay attention to what you’re doing—and to what Don’s doing! You need to keep pace with your bucker! Were you asleep during training class? That’s one of the first things they teach . . .”

“Sorry!” Nora said, wincing. She could see Don was annoyed with her, too—not that it was anything new; still, now, as her bucker, he had a legitimate reason to be upset. Nora didn’t glance over her shoulder at Larry. But she still felt his hot breath—and a little bit of spit—on her ear and the back of her neck.

“Keep your mind on your work!” he yelled.

She nodded wearily.

A shrill bell rang. Nora wasn’t sure what was happening.

“That’s lunch,” Larry said. He held out his gloved hand. “Here, give me the gun before you hurt yourself with it. You got forty-five minutes. Try not to get lost on your way back here.”

Biting her lip, Nora carefully set the riveting gun in his hand. Then she started toward the scaffolding’s stairs. She felt so tired and defeated. Taking off her gloves and tucking them under her arm, she rubbed her right hand. It was sore from holding the rivet gun for the past two hours.

Standing near the scaffolding’s steps was an older man with kind eyes and a splotchy complexion. His name, Ned, was sewn on his work shirt—right by his plant badge. “First day on the job?” he asked.

She nodded glumly. “How could you tell?”

“Don’t worry, it’ll get better,” he said with a fatherly smile. “Too bad some of these guys can’t remember how tough it was for them on their first day. Maybe then, they’d be a little kinder.” He patted her arm. “There, now, you keep your chin up, okay?”

Nora stared at him. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to hug him or cry. “Thank you,” she said with a tremor in her voice.

Then she hurried down the scaffolding’s grated steps.

* * *

Nora had thought, with the staggered lunch breaks and a cafeteria that sat sixteen hundred, she’d be able to find a spot to eat. But for the last ten minutes, she’d been wandering around in the vast, crowded canteen, looking for a vacancy among the four-top tables. That was in addition to however long she’d waited in line for a cup of coffee. The coffee was probably cold by now. Some of it had spilled onto the saucer as she tried to keep from bumping into people. Her hand was also a bit shaky from operating the riveting gun. She held her lunchbox in her other hand.

Every time Nora saw an empty chair and zeroed in on it, inevitably someone at the table would tell her the seat was saved for a friend. A few of them were even hostile about it. The ones who really irritated Nora were the employees who weren’t even eating. They used up perfectly good spots in the cafeteria so they could read the newspaper or knit or reapply their makeup. Nora wanted to tell them, Hey, y’know, they have a break room for that.

No sooner would a spot open up than someone would swoop in and grab it. The cafeteria’s bus staff tried to keep up with the turnover as they collected the dirty dishes, glasses and silverware. Efficiently moving around the tables, the men wore white coats and the women had on waitress uniforms. Most of the cafeteria workers were black. Nora had noticed a few black people on the assembly line, but didn’t see any of them in the cafeteria.

One of the men busing tables took pity on her. “Ma’am, are you looking for a seat?” he asked. He’d been pushing a cart stacked with containers of dirty dishes. He was in his forties and had a touch of gray in his hair.

Nora nodded eagerly. “Yes . . .”

He pointed to the wall to her right. “There are some empty spots at the tables in the section on the other side of the telephone booths.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Nora sighed. “Thank you so much. I thought I’d have to eat my lunch standing up. This is my first—”

“Boy!” a woman called from a nearby table. “Boy, could you take away these plates?”

With a quick, contrite nod at Nora, the man turned and hurried away to bus the table.

Nora nodded back, but he was already gone.

With a sigh, she headed toward the phone booths against one wall and noticed around the corner the annex full of long tables. She also noticed Larry and Don, seated with some friends at a four-top near the section. It looked like they hadn’t seen her, and Nora gave them a wide berth as she took a spot near the end of one of the long tables.

Once she sat down, she realized that nearly half of the workers eating in this section were black. She hadn’t seen any signs designating WHITE ONLY or COLORED in the cafeteria. But apparently, this was how it was—in some unofficial understanding. At least she wasn’t the only white person in the section.

She sipped her lukewarm coffee and used a napkin to dab up the mess in the saucer. She kept thinking Larry and his buddies were watching her. Hell, she felt like everyone was watching her—so pathetic, sitting there eating alone.

If only she could have joined the war workforce with a girlfriend. Then this whole lonely, scary ordeal might have been a fun adventure. And she’d have someone to talk to right now.

For several years, her best friend had been Betty Garner, who had lived two blocks away. Nora didn’t have much in common with the other women in her neighborhood or the wives of Pete’s doctor-associates. Most of them were clubwomen with maids and bridge games and beauty parlor appointments. But Betty was like her. She was busy with housework and her four kids. She was also very down to earth and funny. They would call each other up in the middle of the afternoon: “I’m going crazy. I need to get out of the house. Do you want to go for a walk?”

“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

Then they’d meet up and walk a few blocks to Volunteer Park. They’d tell each other their troubles, and Nora would feel halfway human again.

Betty’s second oldest, Danny, was Chris’s best friend. The boys had practically grown up together. Danny was, in fact, Chris’s only friend. Chris was like her in that way. He’d make one friend and stick with him—or he’d be by himself. Nora used to worry that Chris might get singled out and bullied at school because, despite his lean, athletic build, he wasn’t interested in sports. But Danny Garner was on the football and baseball teams. So Nora was always grateful that Chris’s best pal was such a popular, sports-minded kid—and her best friend’s son, to boot.

But then the Garners had moved to Cincinnati in the summer of 1940—shortly before Chris had started high school. Nora and Betty still faithfully wrote to each other at least once a month. But the boys—being boys, and young—gave up on letter writing after a few weeks, which, to them, seemed like an eternity.

As she sat alone at one end of the long cafeteria table, Nora figured this was how it must have been for Chris on his first day of high school—without his best friend, Danny. She remembered asking him how he’d managed to get through the day; Chris had told her he was fine.

And later, when she’d noticed him coming home with bruises, he’d told her that he was fine, again.

Nora sipped her coffee and opened her lunchbox. Peeling back the wax paper from her bologna sandwich, she found a piece of paper. It was a note from Chris:

Sorry I snuck out last night. I feel like a stupid jerk for making you worry. Have a good first day of work!

He’d doodled something beside the notation, and it took Nora a moment to realize it was a pair of work goggles. She couldn’t help smiling. But then she thought of how hard she’d been on him last night. With Pete away and her best friend in Cincinnati, Nora knew she’d come to depend on Chris way too much. And the poor kid had troubles of his own—not that he ever told her about them.

Nora always had to second-guess when something was bothering him. She figured he’d spent his freshman year friendless and keeping a low profile at his high school. Yet he seemed content, alone in his room, reading Jack London and drawing cartoons. He’d even created his own comic strip, Foley’s Fighters, an action-adventure epic inspired by Terry and the Pirates. In the one chapter that Nora saw, Chris had Foley and his motley crew fighting diamond smugglers in the Belgian Congo. It was actually pretty good. At the time, his dad was home, and Tak and Miko were living above the garage. There was always something going on around the house, and Chris wasn’t exactly starved for company. Besides, his grades at school were excellent, so Nora figured she shouldn’t worry about him.

But then Arlene came into the picture early in Chris’s sophomore year. Intelligent, off-beat pretty and rebellious, she seemed to hold a spell over him. Chris said they weren’t romantically involved, but Nora could tell that he had feelings for the girl. Chris would drop everything and run over to Arlene’s house whenever she called. Arlene didn’t come over to their house very often, but when she did, she rarely even acknowledged Nora was there. Nora would have to say hello first, and then the girl would roll her eyes, flick back her brown hair and sigh. “Hello, Mrs. Kinney,” she’d mutter. Then she and Chris would head out the door again or upstairs to his room. Nora couldn’t understand why her son was attracted to such a snob, but kept her mouth shut. Arlene also had a sharp, caustic sense of humor, which Chris picked up. He’d always been such a sweet kid, but he suddenly turned sarcastic and even defiant at times. Chris and Arlene never got together with other kids in their class. It was always just the two of them. When Nora asked Chris about it, he told her: “I don’t have any other friends, and neither does Arlene. Most girls don’t like her because she’s so smart.”

Arlene lived nine blocks away. Apparently, Chris used to slip out of the house in the middle of the night to meet up with her. Pete caught him once, trying to sneak back into the house at three in the morning. Nora and Pete grounded him for two weeks.

“What do you think he was doing with her until three in the morning?” she asked Pete in bed the following night.

“Playing Monopoly in her basement, he told me.”

“And you believe him?” Nora whispered.

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s even kissed her. She’s not interested in him ‘that way,’ he told me. She’s really got him dangling.”

“I don’t understand what he sees in her. She’s not even that pretty. And she talks down to me like I’m a complete moron. Chris could do better. Is it too much to hope that he gets over her during these next two weeks while he’s grounded? Or do you think the more we keep him from seeing her, the more he’ll want her?”

“The latter,” Pete answered, rolling on his side and resting his arm over her. “Let’s leave him alone. Maybe he’ll realize without our help that he’ll never get anywhere with her—and that she isn’t such a prize.”

“That little snot is going to end up breaking his heart,” Nora sighed.

“Yep,” Pete replied, spooning her the way he always did right before dozing off.

That was last spring, when Pete started talking about joining the medical corps.

At the beginning of the summer, Nora learned that someone else was leaving. A forlorn Chris gave her the news: Arlene’s parents had decided to send her to a private boarding school in Bellingham for junior year. Nora had to hide her elation.

Chris was determined to spend as much time as he could that summer with his friend.

But suddenly, Arlene didn’t want anything to do with him. Every time Chris called, she was too busy to talk. Whenever he stopped by Arlene’s house, she wouldn’t see him. She didn’t even bother coming to the door. Chris couldn’t figure out what he’d done to displease her. He was already miserable enough over his dad’s impending departure for God only knew where. The poor kid could have really used a friend at the time. Instead, all he got from that little drip was the cold shoulder.

After weeks of ignoring him, Arlene finally returned one of his calls. When he spoke with her, Chris took the phone into the broom closet under the front stairs. Nora was in the kitchen and could hear him murmuring. He didn’t sound happy. When he finally emerged from the broom closet with the phone, Nora asked him what Arlene had to say for herself.

Chris listlessly explained that Arlene had met a guy at the beach early in the summer, and she was in love. His name was Dale, and he lived in Santa Rosa, but was staying with his cousins in Seattle for the summer. “Arlene has a whole new set of friends now,” Chris reported with a pitiful shrug. “She said, ‘No offense,’ but she’s ‘outgrown’ me.”

Nora swallowed her anger. “And how did you respond to that?” she asked.

“I said, ‘Who in their right mind would name a boy Dale?’”

In a way, Nora was almost grateful to Arlene. The girl’s selfish antics were a distraction and kept Nora from completely distressing over Pete’s absence.

Chris tried not to show it, but Nora knew he was hurt and heartbroken. She just hoped that little snot wouldn’t come running back to Chris once her boyfriend had returned to Santa Rosa and forgotten about her. And of course, that was exactly what happened.

In mid-October, on her first weekend home from boarding school, Arlene called Chris. Nora did her damnedest to act disinterested. “So how’s Arlene?” she asked—once Chris had stepped out of the broom closet with the telephone.

He just shrugged.

“Are you going to see her?”

“She wanted to get together, but I told her I was busy,” Chris replied. He set the phone back on its stand in the front hall and wound up the cord. “I didn’t go into it with her, but she was really a jerk to me last summer. Plus, just now, she didn’t even ask about Dad. I’m not dying to see her again.”

Yes, thank God, Nora thought, but she kept her poker face on until Chris headed up to his bedroom.

The next morning, after 9:30 Mass, when they stepped out of the church, a couple of girls who had been in grade school with Chris practically pounced on him. They pulled him away from Nora and Jane—seemingly to talk to him about something urgent and confidential.

Jane scurried off into a huddle with some of her friends. So Nora was standing alone for a few moments while other parishioners continued to file out of the church. One of them made a beeline toward her. It was Agnes Gibbs, a petite, wizen-faced woman with bright red lipstick that ran into the cracks around her mouth. She wore a silly hat that made her look tipsy and a fox stole, complete with heads and paws.

“Nora, did you hear?” she said, grabbing Nora’s arm. People were passing them on the sidewalk. Agnes’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Your son is friends with the Drummond girl, isn’t he?”

“Arlene?” Nora said, and then she nodded. She remembered that Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs lived across the street from the Drummonds.

Agnes Gibbs pulled her closer, and Nora could smell her Chanel No. 5. With a hand over her heart, the older woman sighed. “It’s so tragic. The poor Drummonds! Their only child . . .”

“What happened?”

“Three thirty this morning, Herbert and I wake up to the sound of a shot. And then, a few minutes later, we hear the sirens. Neither one of us has slept since. I mean, how could we?”

Wide-eyed, Nora stared at her. She was getting impatient with Agnes’s buildup. “What happened?” she repeated.

Agnes frowned with disapproval. “The girl, Arlene? She killed herself.”

“What?” Nora whispered.

But she knew she’d heard correctly. She glanced over at Chris, whose back was to her. The two girls talking to him looked appropriately solemn, but even at a distance, Nora detected a glimmer of delight in their eyes. They either didn’t like Arlene very much or they were excited to share such a bombshell with someone who knew her—probably a combination of both. Nora could see Chris shaking his head over and over.

“The Drummonds were trying to act like it was an accident,” she heard Agnes say. “Herb and I got dressed and went over there to see if we could be of any help. I heard one of the policemen say what they think really happened. He said that while the Drummonds were asleep, the girl snuck down to her father’s study, dug his revolver out of the desk and shot herself in the head. They wouldn’t let me in the room, but I guess there was blood everywhere.”

She squeezed Nora’s arm. “Her poor mother found her. Can you imagine? There wasn’t a suicide note or anything. But I’m telling you, that Arlene was always a strange girl. In fact, I was genuinely surprised when I started seeing Chris over there so often. But then, he hasn’t been by in the past few months, has he?”

“No, he hasn’t,” Nora murmured. She bit her lip and glanced over at Chris again. He still had his back to her while the two girls spoke with him. He finally turned away from them, and Nora saw the stricken look on his face. Chris tugged at the knot of his tie to loosen it. He anxiously glanced around until his eyes met Nora’s.

“Excuse me, Agnes,” she said. Then she threaded through the crowd toward her son. She reached out to hug him, but Chris pulled back.

“I need to get out of here,” he said under his breath. “There are too many people . . .”

Nora spotted Jane nearby, still chatting with her friends. “Jane!” she called. “Jane, come on, we’re heading home!”

She realized several people were staring at Chris and her. Or at least, it felt that way.

Once she pried Jane away from her friends, Nora started home with her and Chris. St. Joseph’s was a mile away from their home, but since gas rationing had started, they usually walked to church and back. Of course, new shoes were scarce, too, so it was always a draw how to get around.

That October Sunday morning, Chris stayed several paces in front of Nora and Jane. Nora quietly explained to her daughter what had happened. All the while, she kept an eye on Chris up ahead, the distance between them widening as he picked up his stride. Slump-shouldered, he had his hands in his pockets and his head down.

If he cried for his friend, he never let anyone see.

The Seattle Star ran a brief article on page nine about Arlene’s death, describing it as the result of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.” The last sentence of the article stated that the funeral services would be private—for family only. Chris sent the Drummonds a sympathy card, which was very sweet. He’d shown it to Nora so she could check the spelling.

She kept an eye on him for the next several days. He was like a zombie and spent nearly every minute at home alone in his bedroom with the door closed. He didn’t even listen to the radio programs he liked so much. It was as if he was punishing himself.

One night, Nora finally knocked on his door. Talking her way into his sanctum sanctorum, she sat down on the bed with him. “Honey, I can practically guarantee that what Arlene did had nothing to do with you,” she tried to assure him. “It was probably because of that Dale person or problems at her new school. You don’t know . . .”

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “But she wanted me to come over, and I said no. I could have been there for her, and I wasn’t.”

Nora imagined Chris going over to Arlene’s house—maybe even sneaking out in the middle of the night. She could see that girl persuading him to pull the trigger for her, or, perhaps, even making it a double suicide. Nora thanked God that her son had refused to see Arlene that night.

She put her arm around his shoulder. “Honey, I don’t mean to put her down or speak ill of the dead, but Arlene dumped you. She cut you out of her life four months ago—and didn’t even bother to get in touch with you when Dad shipped out. She wasn’t there for you. And you’d been a good friend to her. She didn’t even write to you when she went away to school.”

Chris frowned. “So—in other words, I didn’t matter to her.”

“I’m not saying that,” Nora sighed, stroking his back. “I’m just pointing out that she was a girl with a lot of problems, and she pushed you away. There’s not much you or anyone else could have done to help her. It’s okay to feel bad, Chris. Just don’t blame yourself.”

She kept thinking that Pete would have known what to say to him. But all she could do was keep a close eye on Chris and try to cheer him up as much as she could. Nora figured he probably wasn’t getting much sympathy at school. Arlene didn’t have any other friends.

That had been six months ago. And Nora was still worried about him. In fact, she’d been hesitant about taking this job because it meant Chris would be on his own even more.

It was strange, because she hardly fretted about Jane at all. Her daughter had a different, major drama every day. But she also had scads of friends. She was always telling Nora about her latest projects and activities.

Chris was different. His only friend was Earl, and he hardly told her a thing.

Nora gazed at the note he’d left in her lunchbox. She wondered when he’d snuck downstairs to plant the message in there with her sandwich. She hadn’t heard him, and she’d been awake, tossing and turning most of the night after he’d come home. Had he ever gotten to sleep?

“You look positively grim,” she heard someone say.

Nora tucked the note in her lunchbox and looked up.

“But then I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the woman standing across the table from her. “I saw you working with Larry Krull all morning. Condolences.” She was plain-faced, skinny and in her late twenties. Her blond hair had been pulled back and tucked into a pink bandana with black polka dots. She carried a lunch tray that held a sandwich and a cup of coffee. “Larry loves to torture the new girls and make them cry,” she continued. “He’s a real woman-hater, that one. And he’s watching us right now.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Nora glanced over at Larry’s table. He and his buddies were staring at her. He had a cocky grin on his face, and his pals looked amused.

The woman set her tray on the table and then plopped down in the chair opposite Nora. She smiled, revealing a pair of slightly crooked front incisors that somehow made her face more interesting and attractive. “My name’s Connie,” she said, extending her hand across the table. “Connie Wiedrich.”

Nora shook it. “Nora Kinney. This is my first day here.”

“I figured,” Connie said. “Congratulations on having made it through the morning without running for the exit shrieking. Now say something to me, and we’ll both laugh—so Larry realizes he didn’t break your spirit.”

“ ‘Break my spirit,’ ” Nora repeated. “That perfectly describes what he did to me.”

“You’re still here, aren’t you? So . . . he didn’t succeed. Laugh.” She put down her coffee cup, threw her head back and cackled.

Nora forced a laugh and then stole a glance at Larry’s table.

His friends had suddenly lost interest. Larry was scowling at her.

“What’s so funny?” a second woman asked.

Sitting down beside Connie, she set her lunchbox and a glass of milk on the table. She was a big, sturdy-looking woman of fifty with wavy, short-cropped gray-brown hair.

“Fran DeLuca, Nora Kinney,” Connie said. “It’s Nora’s first day. Three guesses who trained her this morning.”

“Oh, God, not Larry.” Fran sighed. She took a thermos, an apple and a spoon out of her lunchbox. “Listen, Nora. First, it’s nice to meet you, honey. And two, whatever insults Larry threw at you, just ignore them. He’s an insignificant little worm. I’ve stepped on better.” She poured some soup from the thermos into the thermos top.

“That smells good,” Connie said.

“Go fetch yourself a spoon, Con,” Fran said. “There’s too much for me here anyway.”

Connie got to her feet. “You’re the best. That Marty is one lucky fella to get your cooking every night. Be right back.” She started toward the lunch counter.

“Is Marty your husband?” Nora asked Fran.

“No, my husband died a few years ago,” Fran answered—with the spoon halfway to her mouth. “Marty’s my son. He’s twenty-three. He was wounded in the Solomon Islands.”

Nora set down her sandwich. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

She nodded. “Thanks. They had him at that new naval hospital up in Shoreline for nearly a month. His ship was torpedoed. A lot of his friends were killed. He lost an eye. The navy gave him a glass one, and they stitched up his face. He was cut up pretty bad, but he’s healing. He’s been home for the last three weeks—sort of an indefinite sick leave.”

Fran ate some of her soup. “What about you? Are there a husband and kids in the picture?”

Nora told her about Pete and the children. She was showing Fran their photos in her wallet when Connie returned with an empty bowl and two spoons. “Nora, I brought a spoon for you, too. You need to try this . . .”

“Well,” Fran said. “You’re awfully generous with my lunch, aren’t you?” She poured some soup in the bowl and cracked a smile at Nora. “Seriously, there’s plenty. The vegetables are from my victory garden. Give it a try.”

“Thank you,” Nora said, sampling the soup, which was rich, savory and thick with pasta and vegetables. “This is incredible . . .”

“I overheard some gals talking in the lunch line,” Connie said. “They were saying that one of the machinists was strangled last night. Have you heard anything?”

Fran nodded. “It’s all they were talking about during the coffee break this morning. You know who it was? It was that Loretta—whatshername—Bryant. You’ve seen her . . .”

Connie shook her head and slurped some soup.

“Young, blonde, pretty. She and her sister work in the wing assembly section. They’re from Arkansas. A couple of good-time girls, but sweet . . . nice . . .”

“Oh, I think I know who you mean,” Connie said.

“The older sister—I forget her name—she found the body in their apartment when she came home from a bar late last night. Their place isn’t far from the waterfront. You know how sketchy that area can be. They were saying during the break that the police think Loretta might have picked someone up and taken him home.”

“So—they haven’t caught the guy?” Connie asked. “He’s still out there somewhere?”

Frowning, Fran nodded. “I’m afraid so. I’ll have to check tonight’s edition and see if there’s anything in there about it.”

“Where did you say this happened?”

“Belltown.”

“That’s right next to Queen Anne. It’s practically in my neighborhood!” Connie shuddered. “So—there’s a strangler on the loose. This is too creepy for words. I don’t know about you, but I’m double-locking my door tonight.”

Nora said nothing, but she was thinking how Belltown wasn’t very far from her house on Capitol Hill.

Connie pushed away the empty soup bowl. “Well, I don’t mean to sound like a hard-hearted Hannah, but I hope they don’t collect donations for a funeral wreath or anything. I’m strapped this week.”

Nora reached into her lunchbox for another napkin to wipe her mouth. Chris’s note fell onto the table. She dabbed her lips and read the note again:

Sorry I snuck out last night. I feel like a stupid jerk for making you worry. Have a good first day of work!

Nora folded the note and slipped it back into her lunchbox.