Isabel’s War (19 page)

“Also,” Sibby breaks in, “Izzie had a date with Billy Crosby. He bought her a cherry Coke. Can you believe that?”

I give Sibby a look. “Helga's not interested in that kind of kid stuff.” I turn to Helga. “It wasn't a date. It was just a dumb coincidence. It was Sybil's fault really.”

What in the world are we doing talking about nonsense like this, while downstairs Mrs. F. is lying in bed, drugged with medicines to ease the pain of the disease that is killing her?

I lean toward Helga, still sitting almost zombie-like on the bed. “What will you do? You will come back to us, won't you, Helga? I mean, after, um...”

“After Aunt Harriette dies? No, I cannot. It is not right that other people should care for me...perhaps for years and years. This is impossible for me to accept.”

“So you'll stay here, then,” Sibby remarks, looking around the room admiringly. “I guess you could live here with your uncle, go to school here, make friends. Of course, it's a big house for just the two of you, but...”

My mother suddenly appears in the doorway of Helga's room. “Ah, so this is where you three are hiding out. It was so quiet downstairs. Isabel, please come with me. I have to talk to you.”

Now what have I done? I get up and follow my mother into the corridor and down the long, graceful staircase. At the bottom of the steps she turns to me. “Harriette Frankfurter wants to see you. I'll take you to her room. But I have to warn you, Isabel, that she is very ill. Don't stay long and don't jabber. Do you hear me?”

Trembling, I walk behind my mother as far as an alcove that leads to a ground-floor bedroom suite. The door is slightly ajar and a white-uniformed nurse invites me in. As I enter, she whispers, “Our patient's a bit sleepy but alert, so I'll leave you two alone. There's the bell if you need me.” Then she circles around me and disappears out the door.

I've never been alone with a dying person before. Only a little over a week ago, Mrs. F. was sitting at our Thanksgiving table drinking champagne. True, she looked thin and peaked, and my final glimpse of her as the elevator door closed was of someone who was in pain and trying to conceal it.

But when I glance at the face of the person who is propped up on the pillow before me, I can't believe that this is the same Mrs. F. Only her voice and the words she uses—“Isabel darling, how wonderful to see you”—assure me that she is truly the woman I've known.

Her face is of the palest ivory. Her eyes, naked now of the eyeliner that always circled them, are mere sunken dots. Her once-full lips are parched-looking, her nose and chin sharply etched.

Even so she manages a faint smile.

“I look a fright. I wanted to put on make-up today but I was out of it most of the morning. Oh, it's lovely, Isabel, when the pain goes away for a while, and then I don't care at all. Not about anything. Isn't that remarkable?”

I'm sitting on a chair beside the bed. I've never felt so tongue-tied in all my life.

But, as usual, Harriette Frankfurter takes over in an attempt to make it easier for me. “I wanted to see you, Isabel, to thank you for everything you've done for Helga, for being so welcoming and so helpful, for being such a good roommate, above all for being such a marvelous friend to her right from the start.”

I begin to shake my head. “No, no.”

“Don't tell me it's nothing. Not everyone would have been so loyal and so caring as you've been, from the very moment she first arrived at Shady Pines, a complete stranger to you.”

How can I stop Mrs. F. from going on with these undeserved compliments? Disloyal and dishonest acts I've committed race through my mind...from that first morning when I peered into Helga's chocolate box to two days ago when I read Roy's letter.

There were so many other things, too...my envy of the attention paid to Helga at Moskin's, how mad I was when she ended up with the dungarees I couldn't fit into, my tattling to both Ruthie and Sibby about the night Helga sneaked out with Roy. Was I caring? Ha. Was I loyal? Hardly.

I'm still trying to think of a way to denounce myself, to explain to Mrs. F. that, when it comes to Helga, I've been far from a model friend, when she utters a small,
thin shriek. “Oh, my dear,” she says in a suddenly stressed voice, “I think the pain is returning.”

But before I can get up to call the nurse, she grips my arm. “No, not just yet. There's more. It's about Helga. Herman has recently found out that his brother Josef, Helga's father, died some time ago in Buchenwald, where he was deliberately shot to death. Her mother and two sisters, having been smuggled into Holland, have now disappeared entirely. Herman believes they were discovered by the Dutch Nazis and sent to one of the extermination camps. Martina, you know, was guilty of having married a Jew and produced “crossbreed” children.

“But we've been afraid to tell Helga because something terrible is gnawing away at her. She is riddled with guilt. She doesn't feel she should have been given a chance to survive. I'm very worried about...”

Mrs. F. winces and this time her shriek of pain is much louder. I jump to my feet to ring the bell for the nurse. Probably she has been waiting behind the partly open door because she's already in the room. I turn to say goodbye to Mrs. F. and, although only an instant has passed, her eyes are closed and her face looks like a mask.

Words pass silently from my lips.
Goodbye, goodbye, darling Mrs. F
. Then I feel my mother's hands on my elbows, guiding me from the room. As usual I'm expecting a scolding. I stayed too long. I talked too much.
I wore Harriette Frankfurter out. If she dies as this very moment, it's my fault.

But no, my mother doesn't say a word. She directs me toward the front of the house, where my father and Sibby are already getting into their hats and coats. But where is Helga and the small suitcase she took with her when she left us at Thanksgiving?

My question is answered when Helga appears in the front hall with Mr. F. She isn't dressed to leave and there's no sign of her luggage. Mr. F., always so quiet and agreeable to almost everything, seems agitated. The three grownups look at each other helplessly. Apparently there's already been a fair amount of discussion about the fact that Helga refuses to go back home to the Bronx with us.

“When it is the right time,” Helga says with amazing authority for someone who's always been so soft-spoken and polite, “I take the railroad from here to you. I have a timetable for all the trains. I know what is the correct route to follow to the Grand Central Station and then on the subway. I am not such, as you say, a ninny.”

“Why Helga dear,” my mother exclaims, “nobody ever thought you were a ‘ninny.' I can understand your wanting to stay with your aunt until the very end. It's just that it will be so hard for you and so lonely here. It...it isn't a very good atmosphere for a young girl who's already been through as much as you have.”

“And,” I cut in, “you'll be missing a lot of school. It's still a couple of weeks until Christmas.” I get a bright thought. “You could go home with us now and then, when the vacation starts, come back...”

My mother taps me hard on the shoulder. I guess this is a dumb idea. How do we know Mrs. F. is going to live until Christmas? My trying to persuade Helga to come home with us now is probably more for my sake than hers, because I'm so racked with guilt toward her—more so than ever since my talk with Mrs. F.

We drive home in silence, each of us afraid—I suspect—to open our mouths and say the wrong thing in the awesome presence of approaching death.

Surely my mother is thinking of her long friendship with Harriette Frankfurter. They met in school when they were Sibby's and my age and have been close ever since. My father, on the other hand, is probably still focusing on his fantasy of Arnold, triumphantly flying a bomber one of these days over Nazi Germany.

Sibby, I'd guess, is mulling over the beauty and comfort of the sad house in Westchester, so different from her family's spare apartment in the Bronx.

And me...I'm still trying to puzzle out that next-to-last paragraph of Roy's letter to Helga.

Nineteen

Sibby and I are in Hansen's drugstore shopping for Christmas cards. “Stop looking around,” Sibby orders. “Just because he brought you here for a Coke a couple of weeks ago doesn't mean you're still going to find him sitting at the soda fountain.”

“I'm not talking to you,” I snap. “I wasn't even looking in that direction. What do you think of this card for Mrs. Boylan? Is it cold and icy enough?”

I don't know why we do this, but every year we buy Christmas cards to give to our teachers unless we absolutely, positively know that they are Jewish and definitely wouldn't like the idea. We always used to buy presents for them, too. But junior high, with a different teacher for each subject, makes that awfully expensive.

I would like to get something for Miss Damore, though. So after we finish up with the cards we go to the perfume counter and start sniffing the sample bottles.

“Which of these do you think smells more French?” I ask Sibby, spraying her with a little of each. “
Evening in Paris
or
Nuit d'Amour
?”

Sybil backs away, but not fast enough. “They both stink,” she says, waving her hands wildly in the air. “Leona says soap and water are the best perfume and a whole lot cheaper. Anyhow, don't the names mean the same thing?”

“Not at all.
Nuit d'Amour
doesn't mean ‘Evening in Paris'; it means ‘Night of Love.'”

“Oh, I see...a whole night of love all over France, not just an evening in Paris. Better get that one. It seems like more for the money.”

Even though it costs a dollar over what I was planning to spend, I buy the fancy crystal purse-size bottle of
Nuit d'Amour
. I wonder if Billy Crosby will even think of getting a gift for Miss Damore.

On the way out, I can't help stopping to admire the Christmas-tree decorations. The prettiest of the fragile, colored glass balls glazed with silvery sparkles always used to come from Japan, along with China dolls, toy tea sets, and, of course, anything made of silk—pajamas, negligees, and sheer stockings. Now, of course, there are no Japanese imports aside from hand grenades and bombs being delivered to our troops all over the Pacific. And I don't really know why I care about Christmas decorations because we never have a Christmas tree. As my father says, “It's against our religion.”

Still, it's hard to keep from getting excited about the Christmas season. We're singing carols in school assembly and the classrooms are decorated with pictures of Santa
Claus, red and green streamers, and Christmas wreaths, all of which is very confusing.

Even more confusing are the busy shopping streets, when Sibby and I emerge from Hansen's with our modest packages. Even though there are shortages of so many gift items this year, from waffle irons to cocktail shakers, from rubber galoshes to ice skates, Christmas lures passersby into the stores.

At the same time, reminders of the war are all around us. Signs with patriotic mottos mingle with the holiday tinsel—“V for Victory!”; “Win the War, Help the Boys”; “Uncle Sam Needs You.”

Today was a school day, only one more day to go before Christmas vacation begins, so it's already dark out when I softly turn my key in the door of the apartment. If my mother is home I'll show her the cards I bought for my teachers. But should I also show her the coat-lapel ornament I bought, which I just couldn't resist—a little snowman wreathed in miniature red berries and holding a tiny bell that actually tinkles.

Sibby bought one, too. “Leona won't mind, but what about your mom? You have to admit, it is sort of Christmassy.”

“It's not,” I insisted, carefully examining my trinket as I paid for it at the counter. “It's wintry. That's all it is, a symbol of the winter season.”

My mother's voice calls out from the bedroom. “Isabel, is that you?”

She's home after all. But why are there so few lights on, and why is there such an air of exceptional quiet in the apartment? Before I can reach my parents' room, my mother comes toward me, a handkerchief clutched in her hand.

“Oh.”

I know at once that the news we've all been dreading has come.

“Harriette Frankfurter passed away this afternoon,” my mother says in a doleful voice. I can tell that she's been weeping. “I'm waiting for your father. We're going up to Westchester to help with funeral arrangements. I think you should stay at Sybil's this evening if it's all right with her mother.”

I knew that Mrs. F. was dying when I last saw her, but this is a shock. Although the world is full of death these days, with the war on—and more and more gold stars appearing in people's windows—I haven't ever really been close to anybody who died. What is it like to say goodbye to someone forever? Will I have to go to the funeral? Will I have to see Mrs. F. in her coffin?

“No, of course, Sybil can't go. What's happened to you, Isabel? Are you using Sybil as a crutch? Aren't you thinking at all about Helga? It's your duty to be supportive of her
at a terrible time like this,” my mother reminds me.