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Dafne had hoped to see Glenn Streppy again but didn’t expect him to answer the door.
“Oh, hello,” she said.
“Hi.” He smiled. “Miss Graham. What a pleasure.”
Dafne was pleased by his initial reaction at seeing her. Her mind immediately returned to the dance and how much fun she’d had dancing with him.
“May I come in?”
He quickly moved to the side of the door, looking embarrassed for having unconsciously blocked her entry.
“Is Jeanette home?” She turned her head over her shoulder toward him as she entered. It was still fairly early on Saturday, a week after the dance at the grange.
“I believe she’s bathing,” he said. “You’re welcome to sit down.”
His manner seemed apologetic. She remembered how awkward he was at the party until he began to dance, but she found it endearing.
He was a handsome man, despite the apparent lack of confidence. He stood slightly under average height but was still taller than Dafne. His dirty-blond hair had natural waves. His shirt and vest were comfortably filled out, but he was by no means overweight. Dafne thought he dressed well. It was no wonder—given that he’d lived near Boston for three years.
He closed the door as she sat on the edge of the couch, propping her elbows upon her knees.
“I was going to make tea,” he said. “Would you like some?”
“Yeah, great!”
He disappeared into the kitchen as Dafne chuckled. She wondered where the Streppys’ servant girl was, that Glenn would prepare tea himself.
She had always liked the Streppys’ house. It was built in the same style as hers but to a smaller scale, having only two stories. The front door opened into an antechamber separate from the main sitting room, where she now waited. Dafne thought this house was cozy, while Jeanette thought it was cramped. Conversely, Dafne considered her own house vast, while Jeanette claimed it was luxurious. They had bickered on the subject many times.
Glenn returned and set the tea tray on a small table. It looked like he had taken a moment to quickly comb his hair. He lifted the table with the tray on top and moved it effortlessly in front of the couch. Dafne was impressed. She couldn’t have moved that table without spilling a few drops of milk or water.
She took the cup he poured and sipped at it, immediately starting away as she burned her tongue. She set her cup down and reached for a piece of toast while it cooled.
“Will you tell me about Harvard?” It was the question she wished she had asked at the party.
His smile verged on laughter.
She laughed for him. “I reckon that’s what everyone asks you.”
“It’s all right. What else are we to talk about?”
“Any number of things. I never have trouble finding things to talk about.”
“Then I should talk to you more often.”
“But I want you to talk to me. You’re the one who’s been to college.”
This time he did laugh. “I’m afraid I didn’t make Harvard as exciting as some have.”
“But to a girl who’s stuck in Lindenhurst, the very idea of Boston is thrilling.”
“You’ll get your chance, too. How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” she stretched.
“See. I’m twenty. It’s not such a long time.”
“I can’t go to college, though.”
“But you will do other things.”
“Like what?” She picked up her cup of tea, which had now cooled to an acceptable temperature for sipping.
“You will soon be spending more time in New York, I’m sure.” He paused for a second. “You know Thelma Blaine?”
“Yes.” Dafne sat up rigidly.
“Well, she went to New York just yesterday.”
“What!” Dafne momentarily lost her composure. “How the dickens did she get away with that?”
She took a large glug of tea. While the tea was at an ample sipping temperature, it wasn’t suitable for glugging as Daphne felt her throat begin to burn from the hot liquid.
“She went with a fellow going to look at colleges for next year. He was at our table last weekend at the dance, though I don’t know him personally. Swanson . . . Swaner . . . something like that.”
“Sweeney.” Dafne scowled viciously.
“Yes, Sweeney. That’s him. It’s nothing, really. The Blaines have family in the city. But it just goes to show you how close Lindenhurst really is to the rest of the country. You could go to New York yourself.”
“Somehow I don’t think so.”
Glenn could obviously tell how much his casual gossip had upset her. It seemed to confuse him as he quickly ate two pieces of toast. Oh well, let him wonder.
“Jeanette must be ready by now. I’ll go upstairs.” Dafne picked up her cup with a thought of draining the remaining tea. Remembering her scorched throat, she set it back on the tray and rose. “Thank you for the tea.”
Jeanette wasn’t finished with her toilette. When she returned to her bedroom, Dafne was stretched out on her bed, sobbing. Jeanette stood precariously above her. She wasn’t used to being cried to.
“How could he?” Dafne moaned.
Jeanette bit her finger. “What did he do? Who are you talking about?”
“Will, silly! He ran off to New York with Thelma. It’s like they’re laughing at me.”
“What a pig! I thought he liked you.”
“It’s hard for me to compete with Thelma.”
“Well, if he’s that fickle, he doesn’t deserve you.”
“I don’t want a boy who deserves me. I want a boy who’ll take me to New York!”
“What a scandal this could be, though,” Jeanette’s voice was suddenly excited. “Think about it, Daf!”
Dafne sat up on the bed to listen.
“Do you suppose they got rooms in the same hotel? If they’re caught together at night their names will go in the paper!”
For a moment Dafne was excited too, but then she shook her head. “They wouldn’t be so careless, and Will isn’t that bold even if he did fancy sleeping with her. Your brother said she has family in the city, so she’s probably staying with them.”
Jeanette nodded.
“I bet he kissed her, though.” Dafne grimaced.
“Thelma will probably blow him off in the end,” Jeanette said. “Then maybe he’ll want you again.”
Dafne wiped her eyes. “I don’t like him anymore—especially if he kissed her. Eww! What we need is to meet some new boys.”
“Where are we going to meet new boys? We know every boy in Lindenhurst.”
Dafne thought for a moment, then squealed and grabbed Jeanette’s arms. “Let’s go to Coney Island!”
Jeanette gasped. “My mother forbade me from going there again.”
“We won’t tell anyone. We can go right now and be back in time for dinner. It’s only an hour and a half on the train.”
Jeanette hesitated, but that was enough encouragement for Dafne. “Come on, get ready. I’m calling Elsa so she can bring my things and meet us at the train station.”
Jeanette whirled into high gear. Dafne dashed for the telephone. In half an hour the three girls were on the train heading west on a forbidden adventure.
––––––––
Elsa didn’t have time to consider the implications of Dafne’s call until it was too late for her to do anything about it. Only once they were on the train did Dafne tell her explicitly that the trip was a secret.
“Darling, I couldn’t tell you before, or you wouldn’t have come!” Dafne smiled.
Elsa remained dismayed.
“Don’t worry, you won’t get in trouble. You’re my servant, too, and you have to do what I tell you. Besides, our parents will never know.”
Elsa had heard of Coney Island when she lived in the city. Some of the girls at the shirtwaist factory talked about going there on Sundays. Now she knew that parents on Long Island felt the same way as parents in the city about the notorious peninsula of fun. It was supposedly no place for nice young ladies. Elsa didn’t like the idea of going to a place with such a raunchy reputation.
As they got closer, Dafne began to plan their activities like a regular veteran of the amusement park. She and Jeanette had each been only once before, but Dafne had heard all the latest from her classmates so she felt well prepared to organize their adventure.
A layer of morning clouds had burned off by the time the train reached Brooklyn. At Coney Island, the sky was clear. The boardwalk shone in the late morning sun. The ocean sparkled, blue and inviting. Colorful flags flapped in the wind above painted rides and booths. There was mechanical music coming from several parts of the park. The giant Ferris wheel towered above everything.
Despite all Dafne’s plans, Jeanette insisted that they go on the Ferris wheel first. Dafne disagreed, and they engaged in a heated argument as soon as they stepped off the train. Elsa had never seen friends argue that way before and wondered whether this was the end of Dafne and Jeanette. But after a few moments Dafne acquiesced, and peace was restored. Elsa was beginning to learn how normal these types of arguments were for them.
As they approached the Ferris wheel, Dafne smirked. It seemed she might win after all. The line extended all the way back around the steeplechase ride and the hotdog stand.
“This will take us all day,” said Dafne. “Come on, let’s go shoot darts at the balloons.”
Jeanette, having won the argument, wasn’t to be let down now. She quickly devised a plan. She spotted three boys together near the front of the line and pointed them out to Dafne.
They sauntered over. At first Elsa held back, but Dafne forced her to come along.
“Fellas, thanks for holding our place,” said Jeanette as she approached. Dafne was right behind her with a smile and a wink for the boy she had selected. After a moment of hesitation, the boys were in on the plan and had let the girls into line.
In order to maintain their guise for the suspicious people behind, no names were asked or exchanged. Dafne and Jeanette skillfully drove the conversation as if the six young people had been friends for years.
The boys looked close in age to Dafne and Jeanette, a few years younger than Elsa. It was easy to see they were schoolboys, not working boys, although their accents gave them away as not being from the upper rungs of Brooklyn society. They all wore wool tweed caps that were a little too big, though that was the style. The boy who acted like the leader of their little group had a necktie sloppily tucked into his vest. He had been quick to pick up on the girls’ plan and now looked to be making some plans of his own. The second boy, on whom Dafne was focusing, seemed shy but was the most handsome of the three. As Jeanette talked to the leader, Elsa felt she was expected to make some sort of conversation, or at least make eye contact, with the third boy. Naturally, they had left the fat one with red cheeks for her.
She didn’t mind. She thought she would like this one best—a misfit in this game of flirtation, like herself. Despite her continued apprehension, Elsa was actually enjoying the adventure and smiled at the boy in spite of herself.
Reaching the front of the line, the girls expected to be on their way. But the boys had other ideas.
“Them’s big cars on this wheel,” said the boys’ leader. “We can all fit on, nice and cozy-like.”
Unable to protest after they had let them in line, the girls boarded the Ferris-wheel car but got cozy with one another on one side while the three boys jostled and shoved into the other side.
Conversation during the ride was painfully awkward. But at least they finally managed to exchange names. The leader was Tommy. Nate was the shy one. And the chubby one they called Turnip. Try as the girls did, Tommy and Nate—not to mention Turnip himself—refused to reveal his real name.
Elsa tried to distract herself by looking out at the view, but the height was terrifying. She wished Dafne had let her sit in the middle like she’d wanted to. When the car revolved back toward the base she expected it to stop, but up they went again for another terrible rotation. By the third time around Elsa finally began to relax and look out at the view. The sparkling ocean extended out to the jetty of the Rockaway Peninsula. Far past her right shoulder she could see the Jersey shore stretching south. It really was incredibly beautiful. She was actually disappointed when their ride finally ended.
The boys hurried to get off the car first with the intention of helping the girls off. The move was less for the sake of chivalry than for the prospect of getting to touch a female hand. But as Tommy and Nate exited, the weight imbalance dropped the girls’ side precariously. Jeanette shrieked as their legs kicked ungracefully in the air. The ride operator steadied the car just before poor Turnip would have fallen into their laps.
As if nothing had happened, Tommy doffed his cap and offered Jeanette his hand. Dafne smiled sweetly at Nate to make him do the same for her. Then Tommy returned, usurping Turnip to assist Elsa out of the car.
“You gals want a hot dog and a cola?” asked Tommy.
“Why, sure!” they answered in unison.
The six of them spent the entire day together. They rode more rides. Tommy threw darts at balloons and won a stuffed bear, which he gave to Jeanette. They saw a freak show featuring a blue-faced man, a bearded lady and “The Strongest Man in the World,” who lifted a thousand-pound weight. They ate more food that gave Elsa a stomachache. But it was some of the most fun she’d had in all her life.
Before any of them realized it, the afternoon sun was getting low in the sky.
“Oh, gosh, we gotta go!” said Dafne, realizing that they only just had enough time to get back for their family dinners.
Tommy, Nate, and Turnip walked them to the train station. The girls already had their return tickets, but the train was just pulling out when they got there. They would have to wait another fifteen minutes.
As Elsa looked around she realized that Jeanette and Tommy had disappeared. At first worried, she glanced at Dafne and saw her smiling. She understood. Tommy had probably taken Jeanette behind the station to kiss her. She saw Dafne slipping her arm inside Nate’s, perhaps hoping he would get the same idea. Elsa took a half step away from Turnip.
Jeanette ran up just as the next train pulled in. Tommy walked behind her with a smug expression.
Handshakes were the extent of their intimate good-byes as the girls boarded the train.
“Well, did he kiss you?” asked Dafne once they were settled in their seats.
“I’m not telling.”
“He did! Did you enjoy it?”
Jeanette couldn’t help herself. “Yeah, he was sweet.”
“Aww. I would’ve liked it if Nate had kissed me.” After a moment, she added softly, “I’d really like to be kissed . . . by someone.” She had already confided to Elsa that she had never been kissed.
“Would you have let Turnip kiss you, if he had tried?” Jeanette asked Elsa.
“Certainly not!”
Jeanette and Dafne both laughed.
“Don’t worry, dear,” said Dafne, “we’ll get you kissed soon enough.”
The train moved slowly through the suburbs of Brooklyn. Would they have made it in time had they caught the first train? Elsa rather doubted it. But on this train, she quickly knew they would be late and their cover would be blown. The dinner hour came and went. The train continued to be painfully slow.
Elsa admitted she had told Chris she was going to the train station that morning. She didn’t know at the time it was a secret. By now he had probably told their parents. Jeanette and Dafne tried to devise an excuse that didn’t involve Coney Island. The train didn’t reach Lindenhurst until almost nine o’clock.
Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Streppy were at the station themselves, stoic and angry. Stepping off a Brooklyn train, their arms loaded with trinkets and stuffed animals, no excuses could be made. They were busted. Dafne and Jeanette were immediately grounded. There would be no dancing, no boys and no fun for at least two weeks.
Elsa was terrified. Surely now she would get fired. But Mrs. Graham didn’t speak a word to her about it, either that night or ever again.
Back home, Chris offered her supper in the kitchen, but her stomach still hurt from the hot dogs. So did Dafne’s, so she didn’t mind going to bed without supper.
Alone at last in her room, Elsa prepared for bed. But just as she put on her nightgown, Dafne burst into her room and sat on her bed, smiling and laughing. Elsa was taken aback, but Dafne grabbed her and hugged her tightly, then sat up with her legs crossed on Elsa’s bed.
“Oh, wasn’t that fun!”
“Yes, it was. But was it worth it?”
“Oh, ’course! Mommy will forget she grounded me in a day or two.”
“But what about me? Now I will get axed for sure.” Elsa surprised herself by how quickly she had adopted some of Dafne’s slang words.
Dafne laughed. “You’re adorable, darling. You’re not in trouble at all. Just say I made you do it. That’s true, right?”
“Well, yes, I suppose.”
“Exactly! You wanted no part of it. I made you go. Mommy knows that.”
Elsa smiled. She realized in that moment that as long as she kept Dafne happy, her place in the house was entirely secure. It made her feel good to have such an ally and friend. But she wanted to please Mr. and Mrs. Graham, too.
Dafne was so innocent, almost even naïve, but Elsa found her to be like a breath of fresh air. The things Elsa had faced in her life had been serious and heavy. It was refreshing to have a friend whose worries were about which boy looked at her and why. There was so much Dafne could teach Elsa about this new world she was in, but Elsa might end up teaching Dafne a thing or two as well.
Dafne slipped back to her room down the servants’ stair. Elsa was still too wound up to sleep. She had so much on her mind, for it really had been quite an adventure.
She sat at her small desk and turned on the lamp. It had become clear that nobody minded how late her lamp shone. She took out a sheet of paper and pen, and began to write in German.
Dear Mother,
I am sorry it has taken me so long to write a first real letter to you. My first note announcing my arrival hardly counts. I have been kept exceedingly busy. It has been . . . in a word, Wunderbar!
My employers, the Grahams, are good people. Mr. Graham has been a patient teacher as I learn the craft of legal translation. I worry less about my frequent errors. He knows how hard I try, and I do think I improve a little each day.
Dafne is my employers’ daughter. Though, I sometimes wonder if I am Dafne’s servant more than Mr. and Mrs. Graham’s. She requires me to accompany her on all her adventures. But more than a mistress, Dafne has become a friend. She includes me as if I were her equal. Although I have sometimes to remind her of propriety, I am honored by her friendship. She is a remarkable young woman.
I do hope you are well, and that your work is manageable. I wish I could come visit you one day . . . as well as Sonja and Christof. Dafne always talks about wanting to come to the city. Perhaps she will bring me along and make this wish come true.
Your loving daughter,
Elsa
She blew the ink dry and folded the page. She would ask for an envelope and postage tomorrow. She had almost told her mother about her specific adventures with Dafne—the dance party and trip to Coney Island. But since Nina couldn’t read, Elsa suspected she would take the letter to Pastor Reus to read it to her. The minister who had known Elsa since her childhood would be horrified to learn that she had grown up to consort with strange boys at Coney Island and go to dance halls that permitted turkey trots and tangos!
She smiled.