Isabel’s War (6 page)

From the back seat where she's sitting directly behind Arnold, my mother leans forward and strokes
the back of my brother's head. His hair is the color of dark butterscotch and very thick. “You need a haircut, my darling. Have you been working so hard that you didn't have time to get one?”

Arnold runs his hand over where my mother's has just been. “I'll get one soon. Very short.”

“Not too short,” my mother cautions with a bossy edge to her voice.

We're back at Moskin's in no time and my father parks outside the kitchen entrance so the busboys can bring in the hotel supplies.

“Come in, come in, everybody,” Minnie Moskin beckons. “Arnold made an early train. Surely he didn't have breakfast.” She clears one of her well-scrubbed wooden tables and starts to fuss at the stove. Would Arnold like French toast with maple syrup, eggs, cereal, coffee? What about the rest of us? My father says he'll have a little of whatever Arnold is having. Eating a second breakfast at Moskin's never bothers him. My mother and I shake our heads no thanks.

It's so homey sitting here in Mrs. Moskin's kitchen surrounded by all the good smells of her wholesome and generous meals. I keep wondering why my family can't be a happier one. Somebody, it seems, is always being criticized. I, of course, am the worst culprit with my demands for a nose job, for a pair of dungarees, for not
appreciating what Helga has been through, and for not doing enough for the war effort.

Arnold, so far, has been told that his visit to us at Moskin's is premature and that he needs a haircut. But then he hasn't even been here an hour.

Mrs. Moskin brings coffee and thick slices of golden, crusty-edged French toast that she makes from leftover loaves of her home-baked bread. “So,” my father says, stirring heavy cream into his coffee, “what's doing in the city? How's the job? Is the factory turning out its quota of uniforms? From the looks of all those draftees at the station, they'll soon go into overtime.”

Arnold digs into his syrup-drenched French toast. “Not me,” he says casually. “I quit the factory yesterday. Figure I'm due for a short vacation. That's why I'm here.”

“You
quit
!” my father explodes. “You left your summer job working for the war effort? What kind of an American are you?”

My mother has gotten to her feet. “Now, now, Harold, calm down. I'm sure our son has a good reason for what he did. Don't be so quick to judge.”

I remain sitting at the table, keeping an eye on Ruthie who has been lurking off in the distance where she's helping her mother roll out dough for strudel. I'm so glad that for once this isn't about me. It's almost like watching a really good movie.

Arnold, too, is now standing. “Pop, if you'd just give
the other fella a chance to explain once in a while. You're going to be pleased with what I have to tell you. I've joined the Army Air Force. They took me into the
Air Force
. Is that terrific or what?”

My mother sinks immediately into her chair. “You
what
? Oh, my baby. You're not even eighteen yet. You're starting college in the fall. Why did you do that?”

My father pushes his coffee cup away, plants his elbows on the table, and jams his face between his hands. “Crazy. I have a crazy family, crazy children. You couldn't wait for your draft number to come up? Meanwhile you could have started college, maybe—who knows—even gotten a deferment.”

Arnold sits down in dismay and, for the first time, he looks at me and something like a spark of shared sympathy passes between us. Then he goes on to explain that ever since last April when the American lieutenant colonel, James Doolittle, led a squadron of fifteen planes off the deck of an aircraft carrier to bomb Tokyo, he's had his heart set on getting into the Air Force.

“Ah,” my father retorts. “The Doolittle raids. Do you know how dangerous that was for the pilots of those B-25s? Every one of them could have gone off that carrier straight into the water. It was a cockeyed idea to try to get back at the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor. But how much actual damage did it do? Almost nothing compared to the thousands they killed at Pearl Harbor.
You're too young. You're underage. Don't worry, I'll get you out of it. You'll take a rest, like you said, and in a few weeks you'll start college.”

But my father is talking to nobody but my mother and me. Arnold has grabbed his overnight bag and dashed out of the hotel kitchen. I have a hunch that already he's on his way to Harper's Falls to board the next train for the city.

“Is everything all right here?” Mrs. Moskin wants to know, as she surveys the ruins of the breakfast she served, plates of half-eaten French toast and cups of cold coffee.

“Yes, yes,” my father says, rising from the table. “Perfect. Thank you so much, my dear woman.”

I start edging away from my parents to walk over to Ruthie, who's still working on the strudel dough. But I don't get very far. “Isabel,” my father roars in a commanding voice. “This way.”

Six

I can't believe how quickly my mother and father and I pack our bags and get into the car to go racing home to the Bronx. Even so, we're too late to catch Arnold at the Harper's Falls railroad station or wherever it is he disappeared to after my father's temper tantrum over his having joined the United States Air Force.

“I honestly don't see why we had to leave in such a terrible rush,” I complain from the back seat. Now that Arnold is the one my parents are so mad at, I figure I can take a chance and fuss a little. “I never even had time to say a proper goodbye to Ruthie. Helga and Mrs. F. weren't even back from the doctor's yet. We could at least have waited a few minutes for Mrs. Moskin to make us the sandwiches she offered.”

“That's enough, Isabel,” my father mutters ominously from behind the wheel. “When will you learn that we are a family...a family in trouble. And we have to stick together.”

I don't see our family as sticking together when one-quarter of it has already angrily walked out on us. Nor do
I understand how my super-patriotic father can justify the fact that he doesn't want his own son to fight for his country. Isn't there a word for that? Hypocrite? Two-faced?

“Please don't keep calling Harriette Frankfurter Mrs. F.,” my mother chimes in. “It's disrespectful. As for Ruthie and Helga, you can write to both of them.”

I don't even bother to answer. I feel really miserable. I know I didn't want to come to Shady Pines and now I'm sorry to leave it, which is stupid. Also, although I should be relieved of the burden of trying to be close friends with Helga, I feel guilty about having walked out on her.

Up front, my parents are now conversing softly with each other. I hear terms like “flat feet,” “a punctured eardrum,” “a trick knee,” “a hernia.”

“Colorblindness!” I offer, leaning forward and in a voice louder than I intended. “If you can't tell red from green, if they both look gray to you, you can't be in the Air Force. I know that for certain. Only I don't think Arnold is...colorblind. So how about a heart murmur?”

“Oh, Isabel!” my mother declares. “What a terrible thing to wish on your brother.”

I curl back into my corner. There's never any pleasing my parents. “Well, if you were hoping Arnold would be classified 4-F,” I say sulkily, “a heart murmur could have done it. Only it's too late for all that. He's already passed his physical. Remember?”

The closer we get to the city, the hotter the late August weather gets, so we ride with all the car windows wide open and there is too much noise for further conversation. Which is just as well as far as talking to my parents is concerned.

Now that we're on our way home, I'm glad there are only a couple of weeks to go before I can bury myself in school in September...seventh grade at Samuel S. Singleton Junior High. I keep telling myself it will be practically like going to high school because there will be ninth graders roaming the halls, eighth-grade boys who will actually be older than twelve, and I'll be taking intermediate French.

We find a temporary parking space on
Le Grand Concours
not too far from the entrance to our apartment building, and my parents send me into the lobby to try to find Quincy, the porter, to help bring in our suitcases. The heat rising from the sidewalk is stifling and there is also a furnace-like wind that whips old newspapers around my ankles. I'm sure that no boulevard in France looks anywhere as messy as this.

“Why, Miss Izzie, what you doing here?” Quincy greets me with his brilliant smile. “Thought you was in the country, same place as your brother went off to early this mornin'.”

I knew this was going to be embarrassing. When you
live in a six-story building with eight apartments on each floor and a genial janitor-porter-handyman like Quincy, everybody knows everybody else's business. At least, I can be sure that Arnold hasn't returned home yet and I can relate that to my parents before Quincy follows me out to the car.

The moment we're inside the apartment, my mother starts dashing around checking on its condition. The stovetop is greasy and has food splashes on it, the sofa cushions haven't been plumped up in the living room, and Arnold hasn't made his bed in the dining alcove where he sleeps.

“Leave a seventeen-year-old boy home alone for a week and look what happens,” she complains to my father. “I see now that we never should have gone up to Moskin's this summer. It was a waste of gasoline, wear and tear on the tires, and money. It's time to face it. There's a war on.”

“Aah,” my father groans despairingly. “You're telling me. What have I been saying all along? But who cares about the stove and the sofa cushions? Where is that boy? Did he run away to the Air Force already? Will he at least come say goodbye to us?”

This is all more than I can bear. It only proves that I was right in the first place. But when I complained about being dragged up to Shady Pines, I was scolded.

“Isabel, where are you going?” my mother wants to
know. “Aren't you even going to unpack?”

“My room is like an oven and you already took my electric fan and put it in the kitchen,” I announce. “So I'm going down to Sibby's to see if she's home.”

Sybil Simon, better known as Sibby, lives in the building and has been my friend since the start of sixth grade. If only she's back from her beach vacation in the Rockaways, I'll have some place to escape to during the continuing to-do at home over my brother's enlistment.

The Simon's apartment is 2D, at the opposite end of the building from ours, which is 4H, and, happily, Sybil herself answers the door. Her long, freckled face is reddened by the sun, and her tightly curled flaming hair is tinged with gold. She's back from the beach all right, and she looks it.

“What are you doing here?” Her greeting is none too friendly, but that's how she is.

“Who is it?” Sybil's mother calls out from the recesses of the apartment. I like Mrs. Simon. She's a little on the tough side, usually with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth, but really friendly and not “motherish” at all.

We sit down at the kitchen table where Sybil and her mother are having lunch, and Mrs. Simon pours some Coca-Cola for me and offers me a sardine sandwich.

“Aren't you back kind of early from your vacation at the hotel?” Sybil asks. “Everything okay?”

It's no use trying to keep anything a family secret
around here. “Arnold joined the Air Force,” I blurt out. “So my father thought we should come home. Uh, to see him off, you know.”

“Oh, good thinking,” Mrs. Simon remarks, reaching for a cigarette. “You can't do much for the war effort when you're being waited on at a hotel. When does he leave?”

“I don't really know, but I guess it's pretty soon. Um, how is Mr. Simon doing?”

Sybil's father is in the Merchant Marine and he's been ferrying supplies for England across the Atlantic for more than a year now, always at the risk of having his ship torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine. Sybil and her mother don't talk about his job much, but I usually hear the news when her father is expected home on leave.

“Okay, we hope,” Mrs. Simon replies, blowing smoke at the open window beside her, which might as well be shut tight for all the coolness it's providing. “Say, why don't you kids go out for a walk. It might be cooler over at the park.”

We skip down the two flights of stairs to the lobby. No use taking the elevator and meeting more neighbors to explain things to.

“Your mother seems a little sad,” I remark to Sybil once we're out in the street. “Not her usual self.”

“Listen,” she advises, “don't ask about my dad because
we haven't gotten a letter in a long time. There've been a lot of submarine attacks lately. Everything is hush-hush, so we can't get any information. You know what they say...
loose lips sink ships
. Anyhow, my mom is pretty nervous about how badly things are going with the war. So she's decided to get herself a defense job.”

“You're kidding. She's going to work? Who's going to take care of you and...and the apartment?”