Nineteen

That night Sarah lay in bed trying to quiet her mind enough to fall asleep. Her father had tried to comfort her about the poor showing her painting had made, but with little success.

Fanny was awake too, tossing restlessly.

“Fanny, you’re flipping around like a fish out of water.”

“Mama and Papa’s door is closed, isn’t it?”

Sarah reached for the curtain and looked under it. “Yes.”

“I’m really worried.” Fanny rolled to her side and faced Sarah. “It’s about Sean. He’s…in bad trouble. I’m so mad at him!” Fanny drew in a quivering breath. “Some other boys broke into a saloon. Afterwards, he went with them to this empty railroad car. The police found them. The one night he’s with them. And now he’s in detention. He might be put in jail.”

It took Sarah a moment to take in what Fanny had said. “How did you find out about it?”

“His sister Polly gave me a note in school.”

“How did she know who you were?”

“I’ve been to Sean’s house. I know the whole family.”

“Oh…so it’s all right with his parents that he has a Jewish girlfriend?”

“Not at first. They yelled and screamed. Now they like me. I think that Sean told them if we ever get married I would convert.”

Fanny’s words hit Sarah like a fist in the stomach.

“Don’t look like that!” Fanny said angrily. “I didn’t say I would marry him, I just said if.”

Sarah heard the words in a daze.

“That’s what’s wrong with this family!” Fanny’s voice rasped with the effort to keep it low. “Everyone is so…emotional. If I told Mama and Papa about Sean, they’d have heart attacks. It makes me sick!” She burrowed under the covers. Only a strand of blonde hair was visible on the pillow.

Sarah lay very still until Fanny emerged. “I love being with Sean,” she said softly. “I feel as if I’ve been living in a closed room all my life and he’s opened the door and shown me how big the world is.” She sat up and put her arms around her knees. “We walked to the lake and everything—stinking garbage boxes, broken sidewalks, crazy old beggars—they all disappeared. All we saw was blue water and sand. We took off our shoes. The water was freezing.” She bit her lip trying to swallow a sob. “And now I don’t know when I’ll see him again.”

They heard their parents’ bedroom door open and their mouths and eyes closed.

§

The days were long now and the afternoon light filtered in through the worn ivory curtains. Sarah and Fanny earned ten cents for each silk flower they made for the milliner on Polk Street. Their fingers handled the silk skillfully, Sarah’s blunt-nailed and workaday, Fanny’s pale, her tapered nails carefully buffed.

Fanny had been quiet and irritable since Sean was sent to the detention center. Their parents still knew nothing about him. To Sarah, their ignorance hung like fog in the room.

Fanny pushed her mother’s hand off her forehead. “I don’t have a fever, Mama.”

“You’re not yourself for two weeks now.”

Jacob looked up from the horse he was whittling for Sammy. “Our Fanny’s like a balloon that’s lost its air.”

“I’m fine! Just leave me alone.” Fanny half threw another rose onto her growing pile.

§

It was while Sarah was polishing the butcher shop display case—a job, along with sweeping the floor, that she did on Mondays (Fanny’s day was Thursday)—when her father asked her the dreaded question: Did she have any idea what was wrong with Fanny?

She rubbed the rag over the glass for the third time. “She’s just in a quiet mood, Papa.”

“Over two weeks is no mood, Sarahla.”

“Fanny can be in a blue mood for a month.”

Her father took the rag from her and lifted her chin so that she had to look into his eyes. “Is it anything with a boy?”

“Don’t ask me, Papa. Please.”

Her father studied her flushed face. “I see,” he said. “I see.”

§

Sarah felt tense during the entire dinner that night. She knew that a storm was brewing. Her father’s silence was ominous. She tried to engage her mother in a conversation about the millinery shop’s new owner, but it didn’t work.

Dinner had been what Sarah called a five-pot meal: one for chicken soup, one for the noodles, one for the chicken giblets, one for the carrots, and a baking pan for the noodle pudding.

“You did enough in the kitchen, Mama,” Sarah said. “Fanny and I will clean up.”

Fanny threw Sarah an “Are you crazy?” look.

Jacob untied the apron from around his wife’s waist and led her to a chair. “Sit,” he said. “Let your daughters be nice to you.” He took the chessboard and pieces out of the cabinet drawer and set up a game.

At the sink, noisily scouring a pot, Sarah motioned with her head for Fanny to come close. “Papa asked me if you’ve been seeing a boy,” she whispered. “He may ask you.”

Sarah ladled more water from the barrel into the pot. Rifke glanced their way.

“Shh,” Fanny whispered.

The chess game was slow. Rifke left the table to carry a sleeping Sammy from the couch into the bedroom. Jacob put the chessboard and pieces back in the drawer.

“Fanny,” he said. “Come into the shop. I need to talk to you.”

“I’m not finished wiping the pots, Papa.”

“They won’t run away. Come.”

“Should Sarah come too?”

“No.” He opened the door to the shop and waited. Sarah watched out of the corner of her eye as her father and sister disappeared behind the closed door. Her mother would follow. Rifke couldn’t let anything concerning Fanny happen without her.

Sarah finished wiping the pots and put them away, then carefully lifted the half-filled tub, placed it on the floor and circled it with a protective layer of newspaper. She took her shoes and stockings off with ritualistic pleasure, then dipped her feet in the warm water, swished them around slowly and felt the tightness in her neck and shoulders melt away. A small wedge of carrot caught between the toes of her left foot. She flicked it free.

Rifke closed the bedroom door behind her. “Sarah, listen if Sammy cries.” She glanced at Sarah’s submerged feet. “We don’t want to taste your feet in the next pot of soup.”

Sarah wiped her feet and dumped the water out the back door, onto the few flowers hardy enough to survive in the clay soil.

She strained to hear what was being said in the shop, but soon gave up. Sighing, she took the newspaper into her bedroom and stretched out to read. The front page headline read: Winds Take Toll at World’s Fair. Glass Dome Shattered. Her eyes traveled quickly over the print. Only two workmen had been injured and they were electricians. Leo was safe.

She expected Fanny to come storming out of the shop any minute, yelling or crying or both.

Fanny didn’t do either. She walked through the curtains as if frozen. She didn’t look at Sarah, just pulled off her clothes, slipped into a nightgown, and slid under the bedclothes.

“What happened?” Sarah asked cautiously.

“Nothing.” Fanny turned her back on Sarah. “How long are you going to keep that light on?”

Sarah ignored her. She scanned an article on the need to increase attendance at the World’s Fair and was going to turn the page when she saw the headline, More Saloon Break-Ins. She read the article through, folded the newspaper, pushed it under her bed, and turned off the light.

“Thank you,” Fanny said caustically.