The Wartime Sisters Read online

  “Probably,” Ruth agreed, suddenly exhausted.

  On the way back from the drugstore, she stopped worrying what he thought of her. There was no way to change the outcome of the evening, so she decided to learn what she could from the humiliation. “Just out of curiosity,” she decided to ask, “what kind of girl would you say is your type?”

  Walter wrinkled his forehead and clasped his hands in front of his face. He leaned forward slightly, lost in his own thoughts. “Good question,” he said as if she’d just won a prize. “My type is a girl who appreciates me, someone who likes to have fun and isn’t too serious. I don’t want her to be stupid, but I don’t want to be with someone too intellectual.”

  “You mean, you don’t want a girl you think is smarter than you?”

  “Exactly!” Walter said, oblivious to her sarcasm. Ruth felt her hope melt away, like the ice cream in the paper bag she carried. “Of course, there is one more thing…” His voice trailed off.

  “What’s that?” Ruth asked, too far gone to care.

  “It sure wouldn’t hurt if she looked like your sister.”

  Millie

  Millie knew something was wrong as soon as they returned. There had been a quiet confidence in Ruth’s bearing when she had set out for the drugstore, but when she got back to the apartment, the glimmer was gone. Millie watched, unsmiling, as Walter inhaled his dessert. When his plate was clean, he wiped his lips with his napkin, put his hand on his grandmother’s arm, and told her it was time for them to head home. “I have a paper due on Monday that I have to get started. Thank you so much for the meal, Mr. and Mrs. Kaplan,” he said. “Good luck with calculus next year, Ruth.”

  Puzzled, her mother turned to Mrs. Rabinowitz, but the old woman seemed equally taken aback. She lifted her shoulders upward into a shrug and raised her eyebrows as if to say, I have no idea. Ruth was the only one at the table who didn’t seem surprised. After Walter left, she went into the bedroom and shut the door behind her.

  Grandmother and grandson exited so quickly that Millie’s father didn’t even have time to get up from his seat. “Vat happened?” he asked, slapping his open palm on the table. “The little pisher bolted like a spooked horse!”

  “Shush, Morris, please. Ruth can hear you.” Millie’s mother cleared the plates with anxious efficiency. “Maybe my cooking didn’t agree with him.”

  “Bah!” her father said. “Did you see how much he ate? It’s a miracle he didn’t choke!”

  “Too bad he didn’t,” Millie muttered under her breath.

  Her mother gasped and teetered on her feet, sending one of the plates she had been holding to the floor with a crash.

  “Do you want to tempt the Evil Eye? God forbid anyone should choke in this house!”

  “There’s no such thing as the Evil Eye!”

  “Don’t raise your voice to your mother like that!”

  They were all yelling now, bickering like children, despite the fact that Ruth was the one who should have been the most upset. The noise drew Ruth out from behind her closed door. When she saw the commotion, she skirted past the broken plate, retrieved the broom and dustpan from the back of the hall closet, and began to sweep up the shards. Her diligence shamed the rest of them into silence. Ruth had always been the best of them at cleaning up messes.

  “I’m sorry, Ruth.” Their mother was the first to speak. “I thought for sure … this time, after what Mrs. Rabinowitz told me…”

  Her father shook his head. “He was a putz,” he lamented.

  Millie chimed in with her own observations, hoping to show her sister some support. “I didn’t like him one bit, Ruthie. He wasn’t nice, and he wasn’t good-looking either.”

  “That’s too bad,” Ruth said coolly. Her words came out jagged, like the fragments she swept so neatly off the floor. “He certainly liked you. Apparently, you’re just his type of girl.”

  Millie’s stomach lurched. Ruth might as well have struck her with the handle of the broom.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you have to keep talking about my math classes?”

  “I wanted him to know that you have the same interests. I was trying to help!”

  “Well, it didn’t help at all. You made me sound like the dullest girl in the world! ‘Ruth loves calculus, she studies all day.’ What kind of boy wants to ask a girl like that for a date? Meanwhile, you sat there and batted your eyes at him. No wonder he liked you better than me!”

  “Batted my eyes? I barely even looked at him!”

  “Well, he was looking at you!”

  “That isn’t my fault!”

  “Enough!” Their mother’s voice rang out over their shrieking, stunning the girls into temporary silence. After their father made them sit, the sisters glared at each other from across the dining room table. The evening had started with such high hopes, Millie thought—with silverware that gleamed and freshly pressed napkins, with a promising young man and a hint of romance for her older sister. But now it was over; all of that was gone. The silverware was sticky and the napkins full of wrinkles. The young man was indifferent—Ruth would not see him again.

  “Of all the boys to fight over,” their mother began, “that one isn’t worth the aggravation. Believe me.”

  “I’m not fighting over him,” Millie insisted. “I never wanted anything to do with him!”

  Ruth crossed her arms over her chest and glared. Her rage was so fierce that it made Millie’s eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t!” Millie whined. “Stop saying I did! Mama, make her stop looking at me like that!” She lowered her head onto the table and sobbed. Why did Ruth always blame her when something went wrong? She had spent the entire evening complimenting her sister. She had thought Walter would be impressed, not put off or intimidated.

  “Shush now, mameleh,” their mother said, patting Millie’s back. Then she turned to Ruth. “I was sitting here the whole night, just the same as you. Your sister didn’t do anything to get that boy’s attention. Whenever she spoke, it was to say something nice about you. He must have said something on your walk to make you so upset.”

  “He said I wasn’t his type. That I should marry an Ivy League boy.”

  Their father grunted. “He’s not so wrong about that.”

  “Then he said he wanted a girl who wasn’t so serious. And that he preferred a girl who looked like Millie.”

  Millie’s head began to ache, her temples to throb. There was a long stretch of silence before her father spoke up. “Millie can’t help the things the boy said. It isn’t her fault his parents raised a schmuck.”

  Ruth uncrossed her arms and unclenched her jaw. “I know,” she admitted, her voice softer than before. “I have to get used to it. It’s just the way it is.” She got up from the table and went back to sweeping. Her dustpan was almost full by the time Millie raised her head.

  “What does that mean?” she wanted to know. The skin around Millie’s eyes was swollen and raw.

  Ruth didn’t look up. She searched the floor for stray shards, for any broken bits she might have missed. “It means people notice you, but they never notice me. They like you better, they treat you differently, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Everyone thinks you’re special. Everyone goes out of their way to be nice to you.”

  “Not everyone,” Millie said, her voice low and miserable. “Not my own sister.”

  Millie

  Springfield, Massachusetts (June 1942)

  If it weren’t for the fence, she would have thought she was in the wrong place—the view from Byers Street made the armory look more like a park than anything else. But the wrought iron fence had an unmistakably military air. It was at least ten feet high, pointed at the top, ominous and impenetrable. The fence ran the full length of the block, and as Millie turned the corner onto State Street, it seemed to go on forever.

  Millie walked slowly so that Michael could keep up on his tiny, two-year-old legs. Although the walk was just a little over a mile, M
illie wished she had splurged on a taxi at the train station. She felt conspicuous dragging her shabby suitcase up this half-empty sidewalk. There were no fruit sellers, no pickle men; there was no shouting of any kind. The silence made her uneasy. Back home in Brooklyn, the sidewalks were always crowded—no one ever noticed if an unfamiliar woman walked by. But here, the people she passed gave her strange looks and stared. By the time she turned onto Federal Street, she could feel a line of sweat running down her back. She smoothed her curls, trying to neaten the ones that spilled out from underneath her hat. She needed a visit to the beauty parlor, but there had been so little time before leaving, and she hadn’t wanted to spend the money. She knew Ruth would notice.

  Ruth had always taken note of Millie’s shortcomings—every misspelled word in her school essays, every pimple on her chin. Surely she would see that Millie’s hair needed trimming, surely her eyes would linger on the tear in Millie’s stocking, and without question, she would notice the faded hat on Millie’s head. It was the same hat Millie had worn when the sisters last saw each other five years ago—the hat Millie had purchased for their parents’ unexpected funeral, and the same one she’d worn again a few weeks later at her wedding. It was, then and now, the only hat that Millie owned, and the fact that she hadn’t been able to afford a replacement would be one more reminder of how much more successful Ruth’s life had been than her own. Millie imagined the face Ruth might make when she recognized the hat: the tiny lift of her eyebrows and the pucker of her lips. Millie sighed and kept walking.

  When they saw the guards at the main entrance, Michael cried for Millie to pick him up. Behind the pillared entry, a stately brick building ran the length of the entire block. At its center was a tiered double balcony with wide white columns and a painted railing. The building’s effect was more collegiate than military. If not for the guards and the armory seals, Millie might have thought it was a university. She balanced Michael on her hip and greeted the guard.

  Only after he found her name on the list was she able to breathe. She had left her home on the strength of the letter in her pocket, signed in her sister’s dutiful hand. But when the man with the clipboard checked off her name with his pen, her lungs flooded with a relief she had not known she had been seeking. There would be no returning to Brooklyn—no more nights of uncertainty. She had left behind the noise, the crowds, and the piteous glances from the morning milkman. The guard made it official.

  “I’ll call up and let Mrs. Blum know you’re here,” he told her.

  “Call up where?”

  The guard pointed to the building behind them. “Administration. Mrs. Blum works in the payroll office.”

  “She does?”

  “Yes, ma’am. We have a note to call when you arrive.”

  Ruth hadn’t mentioned her job in her most recent letter, or in any of the letters that had come before it. Of course, there had been fewer than a dozen since the sisters last saw each other, and half of those had been mailed in the past six months—after the United States entered the war, and after Ruth learned that Millie’s husband had enlisted. Ruth had written to say how pleased she was to hear of Lenny’s decision. Wasn’t it wonderful, she wrote, that they both had brave husbands who were fighting for their country?

  Millie had resisted the urge to write back her true thoughts: that Ruth’s husband, Arthur, wasn’t “fighting” at all, and that he was, in fact, the farthest thing from brave. Yes, his degrees were impressive. But hadn’t Arthur studied so hard, in part, to avoid having to fight? Hadn’t he told her parents his calculated plan all those years ago at the kitchen table during one of their dinners? He would study hard and become an officer. The wars to come would be wars of science and technology, he insisted, and brains like his would be needed. He never intended to dirty his hands. And now, Millie knew, Arthur spent his days at the armory in laboratories and development meetings, perfecting the weapons he would never have to fire.

  Of course, Millie hadn’t written any of that. She wrote that Lenny was missing in action, that Brooklyn was becoming unbearable without him. She enclosed a photograph of Michael as well. He is the sweetest little boy, she wrote. A few months later, Millie was forced to write the unthinkable. Lenny is gone.

  Ruth wrote back quickly, a letter filled with more practical suggestions than condolences. We have an extra room for you and Michael. You can live with us and find a job at the armory. They need people desperately, as they are now running the factories twenty-four hours a day.

  It didn’t take long for Millie to make up her mind. Her parents were dead, and she had no real friends left in Brooklyn. She needed a job, and her son needed a family. She would go to Springfield, she would work at the armory, and somehow, she would find a way to mend what had broken between her and her sister. What was it her mother used to say? A seam sewn crooked is still better than a hole.

  After a few minutes, Ruth emerged from the building. Her dress, though cut in the latest fashion, hung aimlessly on her slender frame. Initially, she was more focused on her nephew than her sister. She tried to take Michael’s hand, but he pulled it away and crammed his face up against Millie’s shoulder.

  “He’s shy,” Millie apologized, accepting Ruth’s dry peck on her cheek. “Michael,” she whispered into his hair, “this is your aunt Ruth.”

  “It’s only natural,” Ruth said. “He doesn’t know me yet.”

  You could have known him if you wanted to, Millie thought. If you ever visited us in Brooklyn, or if you ever invited us here. It was unsettling to see her sister in this place, so far away from their childhood home. Millie motioned to the trees that surrounded them. “It’s pretty here. So quiet too. I wasn’t expecting it to look this way.”

  Ruth pointed to the other side of Federal Street. “The shops—that’s what we call the manufacturing buildings—are across the street. Right now, we have more than ten thousand civilians working here.” Ruth had always liked explaining things, especially to her younger sister. Nothing gave her more satisfaction than knowing all the answers. “But the officers and their families live on this side of the street, in Armory Square. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Millie’s head buzzed with the strangeness of it all. She had never heard of Springfield before her sister’s move. The only places she knew in Massachusetts were Boston and Cape Cod. Now that she was here, everything was unfamiliar and unexpected. The square, for one thing—two football fields wide, with its manicured lawn, ancient trees, and tennis courts—how could she have known that the armory would be like this? She had pictured noise and dust, belching chimneys and bad-tempered foremen—not manicured shrubbery and sweet-scented breezes.

  The perimeter of the square was dotted with houses and small buildings. When they reached the northwest corner, they stopped in front of a mansard-style home with a patterned slate roof. Two sets of stairs led to twin front doors, shaded under a generous porch that ran the length of the house.

  “Is all this yours?” Millie asked. Her fingers tightened into fists as she lowered Michael to the ground. She had never imagined that her sister would be living in such an elegant place. You have so much, and you never offered us anything. Only the one baby gift when Michael was born.

  “Just half. We’re the door on the left, and another family has the right side.”

  Millie didn’t say a word when Ruth showed her the fireplaces, the separate dining room, and the updated kitchen. She was silent when Ruth led her up the sweeping staircase and showed her the brightly lit bedroom she and Michael would share. She was so shaken that she forgot to be embarrassed when Ruth offered to help unpack her suitcase.

  The clothes she had brought took up almost no room in the closet. “When your other things come, there’ll be plenty of room,” Ruth assured her. “It was smart of you to send them.”

  For the first time since their reunion, Millie found the strength to look her sister in the eye. “I didn’t send anything,” she said. “This is all we have.”

  A gl
immer of understanding swept across Ruth’s face, but she offered no real sympathy. “You have all you need,” she insisted, “and once you have your job, you can always buy more.”

  “Yes,” Millie agreed, choking on the words. She took off her gloves and placed them on the dresser before reaching up to unpin the hat from her head. Once the hat and gloves were off, she felt Ruth’s stare last a bit too long.

  “You still have the ring,” Ruth murmured, surprised.

  “Of course I do,” Millie answered. She lifted her hand and glanced at the stone, a shimmering opal cabochon, round and iridescent, surrounded by small diamonds on a thick platinum band. It was too elegant for her, for the kind of life she led. She knew full well that she had no business wearing it. There were so many times she had been tempted to sell it, but it had belonged to her great-grandmother, and she hadn’t wanted to part with it. She was glad she had it now, glad her sister would see that no matter how little she had, she had not yet sunk low enough to be forced to sell the heirloom. In keeping it, Millie thought, she had kept a small part of her dignity.

  Ruth’s eyes traveled slowly from Millie’s hand to her head and back again. Her lips turned downward, forming a hard, familiar line.

  “You need a haircut,” Ruth said, unflinching. “And for goodness’ sake, Millie, you’ve got to get yourself a new hat.”

  Ruth

  She and Arthur had set out for Massachusetts the day after Millie’s wedding. For the entirety of the ride, the twins slept and Ruth cried. She cried for her parents, who had died a month before, together on a highway, speeding home to their daughters. She cried for all the words that had been left unsaid between them—all the I love yous that had never made it past her lips. She cried for her girls, who would never know their grandparents, who would never remember the smell of their grandfather’s pipe or the taste of their grandmother’s chicken soup. When she and Arthur arrived in Springfield, the buildings were too far apart, the streets were too quiet, and the grass was too green. The strangeness of the sights stalled her tears for a while, but when she walked into the house in Armory Square, she began to cry all over again. This time, she knew, they were tears of relief. I can start over here, Ruth thought. Here, where no one knows me. Where no one knows my sister. Where no one will ask why I left her behind.