Eve's Daughters (37 page)

Frances and I became best friends, even though we didn’t have much in common. I loved school and worked hard to get good grades. Frances loved movie stars and spent more time reading about their private lives than doing her homework. She was the youngest in her family, with two older sisters and an older brother, and Frances’s parents spoiled her. She ate all the sweets she
wanted, any time she wanted, and was as plump as a cream puff.

“Want to come to my house after school?” she asked one day. I had never been invited to another girl’s house before. “We can do homework together,” she said. “You can stay for supper.”

For the first time in my life I saw what it was like to live in a real home with a father and a mother, sisters and brothers. The truth shocked me.

“You’ll never believe what it’s like!” I told Mother when I got home. “Frances and her sisters fight with each other day and night. Her parents yell and scream for them to stop, and threaten all sorts of punishments if they don’t, but they keep fighting anyway.”

I was suddenly grateful to be an only child, grateful for a mother who made me laugh, even if we were so poor that we ate soup all the time, and bought our clothes at church rummage sales. But I’d never noticed how dreary and run-down our apartment looked until I saw Frances’s apartment. The Weavers had three bedrooms and a rug on their living room floor instead of linoleum. They even had a bathroom all to themselves. In spite of all the bickering, life at the Weavers’ house fascinated me. I spent a great deal of time there.

One day when I met Frances after school she was fairly dancing with excitement. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked, laughing. “Do you need a privy or something?”

“No! Guess what? My two older sisters are going to be away next weekend, and my mother said I could invite you and Dotty and Marian to a pajama party!”

I had heard of pajama parties, but I’d never been invited to one. Now it was my turn to dance with excitement. But as we walked home from school the day before the big event, Frances and the other two girls came up with a new idea. “Wouldn’t it be fun,” they decided in a fit of giggles, “if we all wore our fathers’ pajamas to the party?”

“Oh yes, let’s! That’s what all the older girls are doing at their pajama parties!”

They must have forgotten that I didn’t have a father because they waved good-bye to me at the corner of King Street and went on their way assuming it was all arranged. I had wanted to go to the party so badly, but now all my fun was ruined. I couldn’t be the only one who didn’t wear her fathers pajamas. I sat down on the front stoop of our apartment house and cried. I didn’t want to go upstairs because I didn’t want my mother to know. She became as crazed as a mama bear if anyone hurt her cub, and I knew she would read the riot act to all three girls
and
their mothers if she heard about it.

I had just decided that the only solution was to pretend I was sick and avoid the party altogether when Father O’Duggan suddenly rounded the corner and came limping up King Street.

“Good afternoon to you, Gracie,” he called.

I threw him a halfhearted wave, shielding my reddened eyes. He halted midstride, turned, and came up our short front sidewalk to sit on the stoop beside me. Neither of us spoke for at least two or three minutes. Then he said, “Will you tell me what’s troubling you?”

I heaved a heartbroken sigh. “I know that God is
my real
Father, but He doesn’t wear pajamas!”

“Excuse me?” His voice sounded strangled. I glanced sideways and saw him fighting a gallant battle not to laugh. He frowned in an effort to look deeply concerned and pressed his fist to his lips to hold back a grin. When I realized how ridiculous my statement must have sounded I started to giggle. Father O’Duggan exploded into laughter like a cork let out of a champagne bottle.

“I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry,” he said at last, wiping his eyes. “I’m sure the situation isn’t funny at all. But why would God be needing pajamas, if you don’t mind telling me?”

“He doesn’t need them, Father O’Duggan—I need them. Frances Weaver invited me to her pajama party, and all the other girls are going to wear their fathers’pajamas.”

“Ah, I see the problem.” He took a moment to ponder my dilemma, stroking his chin thoughtfully as if my dilemma was as important as all the other issues he’d considered that day. “Could you borrow a pair from someone?” he said eventually.

“I don’t know anyone. There’s Mr. Harper, the traveling salesman, but Mother would never let me ask him because he’s sweet on her. And Mr. O’Malley, who lives on the first floor, is too old! His pajamas would give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Well . . . I was thinking you might borrow a pair of mine.” I couldn’t believe my ears. I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking Father O’Duggan for his pajamas, remembering how he had refused to let me call him Daddy years ago. I looked up to see if he was serious.

“Really?”

His blue eyes sparkled with laughter. “Aye . . . unless they would give you the heebie-jeebies as well.”

“Are your pajamas black, like all your clothes?”

He laughed and hugged my shoulder. “Nay, I’m allowed to wear other colors besides black at night. Come along, then, and we’ll see if my housekeeper, can rustle up a clean pair, shall we?” As we walked to the rectory together it was like old times. I realized how much I had missed talking to him since I’d started walking home with Frances Weaver.

“What should I tell the other girls if they ask whose pajamas they are?”

“Hmm. I suppose it isn’t nice to tell them it’s none of their business, which it isn’t . . .” He held the door of the rectory open for me. “But since I’ve been ‘Father’ O’Duggan to you all these years, I don’t think it would be a lie if you told them they were your ‘Father’s’pajamas—with a capital ‘F,’ of course. But they won’t be knowing about the capital letter, will they now?”

The rectory had a lot of dark, polished wood panelling like the inside of the church. It smelled good, like Mam’s soda bread, but I was surprised at how chilly the rooms were. As I followed him through the foyer and down a dark hallway to the kitchen, he called out for Mrs. O’Connor, his housekeeper.

“But what should I say if the other girls start asking me all kinds of questions about my father?” I asked when I caught up with him. He stopped short, as if surprised by the question, and turned to me.

“You don’t have to answer their questions, Gracie. The girls are wicked to be
so
nosy. You won’t be in the wrong if you use that excellent imagination of yours to avoid answering them.”

“You mean like Mother always does when I ask her questions?”

“Exactly. Make a game of it. You can do it without telling a lie, Gracie, I know you can.”

That’s precisely what I did. By the time we fell asleep at three A.M., I had won everyone’s admiration as the girl with the most mysterious father. And Father O’Duggan’s blue-and-white-striped pajamas—so huge on me that I looked lost inside them—had won the prize for the ritziest pj’s.

“What does your father look like?” Frances asked me a few days after the party. We lay sprawled across her bed, doing our homework together.

“My mother has a picture of him in her photo album,” I said. “It’s their wedding picture. Come up to my apartment sometime and I’ll show you.”

“Can’t you take it out and bring it over here with you?”

France’s question stunned me. I stared at her in surprise, watching her stretch her bubble gum out of her mouth with her fingers, then stuff it inside again. “What’s wrong, Gracie? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I just realized something! We’ve been friends for more than a year, and you’ve never been inside my apartment—even on Saturday afternoons.”

Frances jumped up from the bed to get another candy bar out of her dresser drawer, but not before I saw the guilty look on her face.

“Want some?” she said, breaking a Hershey bar in half.

I shook my head. “Tell me why you’ve never been to my house. Is it because we live in such a run-down building?”

“No . . . I . . . I can’t say.” She quickly stuffed half of the candy bar into her mouth.

“Then I guess I’m not really your best friend after all, am I?” I gathered my school books together, preparing to leave.

“No, wait! Don’t go, Grace!” she said with a full mouth. I waited, hands on my hips, while she chewed and swallowed. “It’s because your mother is divorced.”

“I don’t understand. What does that have to do with coming to my apartment?” Frances didn’t want to say, but I forced her to tell me, with the threat that I’d never speak to her again.

“My father says divorced women usually live in sin,” she told me, “and your mother . . . well, you know . . . your mother doesn’t go to church . . . she works in a nightclub . . . she dresses like a Bohemian. . . .”

“My mother doesn’t live in sin!”

“I know, I know . . . just be glad she doesn’t have a boyfriend. My father said if she starts entertaining boyfriends or if you get a stepfather, we can’t be friends at all.”

I went home feeling saddened and confused. The older I got, the wider the gulf seemed to grow between me and all the other girls. That Saturday night as Mother was dressing to go to the nightclub, I pleaded with her to go to church with me the next day so that at least the question of her sinfulness would be laid to rest. She wouldn’t budge. I finally lost patience and blurted out, “People think you’re immoral because you’re divorced and you don’t go to church!”

Mother calmly applied a layer of scarlet lipstick, then blotted her lips. “Gracie, I refuse to live my life to please other people. I married Karl to please my parents and it was the worst mistake I ever made in my life. I don’t care what other people think of me and neither should you.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked, remembering what Frances’s father had said.

“No, dear . . . do you?”

“I’m too lumpy and awkward. Boys will never like me.”

She planted her hands on her slender hips, outraged. “Grace Eva Bauer, you are not! You’ve become a lovely young woman! I’ll be beating the boys off with a carpet beater in another year or two.”

I didn’t reply, but I knew that if the other parents felt the same way the Weavers did, their sons would never be allowed to date me. I also saw that my mother had deftly changed the subject.

“Are you going to get married again someday?” I asked.

“Certainly not! Once is enough! You don’t understand that now, but you will after you’ve been married for a year or two, I guarantee it!” She tried on a cloche hat, appraising the results in our tiny mirror, then pulled it off and tried on a beret. It looked gorgeous on her. Mother turned and took both of my hands in hers. It was one of those rare times when she wanted to have a serious talk.

“When the time comes, Gracie, choose your husband carefully. Don’t make a terrible mistake like I did. I married Karl because I was lonely, and he was nice to me while we were courting. And as I said, I wanted to please my parents. I didn’t stop to think about what Karl was really like until it was too late. Set a high standard for yourself, look for qualities that really matter in a husband, and don’t say yes until you find a man who has all of them.” She pulled me into her arms and hugged me hard.

“Mother, can we buy a radio?”

She laughed out loud as she held me at arm’s length again, studying my face. “Goodness, you leap from one topic to the next like a frog on a hot sidewalk. What does getting married have to do with buying a radio?”

There was a connection in my mind. My mother wasn’t getting remarried, she didn’t have boyfriends, and she wasn’t immoral. If the Weavers were going to make accusations without getting to know her, then I didn’t want to go to their house anymore. But that meant I would miss all my favorite radio programs.

“I’m tired of walking back and forth to Frances’s house to hear
Little Orphan Annie
, especially when the weather’s cold. If we had a radio, I could listen at home.”

“You’re right,” she said softly, and the depth of her love for me shone in her eyes. “I think we should get a radio.”

Mother brought home a used one from the second-hand shop a few days later. When Hitler invaded Poland that September, we followed all the latest reports as we sat at our kitchen table. The radio brought World War II—and
our favorite programs—right into our apartment.

We were listening to it on a Sunday afternoon two years later when the announcer interrupted the program with a special bulletin—the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. As we listened in shock to the reports of all the casualties and destruction, Mother began to cry. I didn’t understand why. She was usually so optimistic about life.

“This war will change our lives,” she said, wiping her tears. “That’s what happened during the last war. It changed everyone’s life forever.”

The next day I asked Father O’Duggan what he thought she meant. He was walking me home from school again now that my friendship with Frances had cooled. “I imagine your mother is remembering the First World War,” he said. “So many things did change after that war.” His voice sounded soft and faraway.

“Do you think she’s worried about all the rationing?”

“I don’t know. Rationing is going to change the way a lot of people live, I suppose.”

“But it won’t change the way Mother and I live. We don’t have a car, and we rarely have money for meat and sugar anyway, so we won’t have to sacrifice much.”

“No one likes change, Gracie,” he said when we reached my apartment. “But you don’t have to be afraid of it if you trust in God.”

The first big change came when Mother’s nightclub band broke up. Everyone but her and two ancient saxophone players had gone off to boot camp. Then the Regency Room closed due to lack of business. Mother got a job in a local factory that had retooled for the war effort. She wore huge brown coveralls to work and joked about being “Rosie the Riveter.”

Now that Mother worked the day shift, we were home together in the evenings for the first time since she started working in O’Brien’s speakeasy. We ate supper together, followed the events of the war on the radio, then listened to all our favorite programs. Mother loved
Fibber McGee and Molly
. She said that our kitchen cupboard, crammed with mismatched dishes and dented pots, was worse than Fibber’s closet.