“Well, do a dip for me,” Louise said. “I’ll have Hank get you at eight-thirty. What are you wearing?”
“Oh, just a black bouclé suit. Cream blouse. Pearls. And black heels, a nice Italian leather.”
“You’re going to kill yourself wearing those heels!”
“And die a happy death,” Kitty said, and then, “Hey? I’ll bet Kyle Leverett will be there, he’s still around. You used to have a big crush on him.”
Louise laughed. “No! I’m not coming with you. I’d rather remember Kyle as he was. What a good-looking fellow! Those eyes! And what a football player he was, too. Didn’t he marry Kate Marshall?”
“Oh, they got divorced years ago.”
“How do you know? Did he come after you again? He always had a big crush on you.”
“He had a crush on all three of us!”
“Lots of boys did,” Louise said proudly. “The Dreamy girls, remember?”
“Kyle did call me, once. Gosh, it was years ago. But we never got together.”
“Some catch,” Louise said. “I heard he’s worth millions. See if he still can do that thing with the nickel.”
“I will,” Kitty said. Louise was mixing Kyle up with Tom Bender—he was the one who pulled a nickel from his nose—but she wouldn’t tell her sister that. No point in correcting every single thing. Soon enough Hank would have to decide how best to care for his wife; some of the things she was beginning to do were dangerous: forgetting to turn off the stove burner, getting lost in the neighborhood when she went out for walks. Mostly, though, she was doing well enough. Her doctor had said it was likely cancer or a heart attack would get her before dementia would. “Imagine being happy to hear news like that,” Louise had said, and they’d laughed and laughed.
Kitty ordered a cab to take her to the high school and all the way there answered questions that the young man who was driving put to her. What was school like then? What had she done for a living? Had she lived here all her life?
A young historian! It was refreshing; most young people didn’t give a damn about her or her generation. For them, World War II was that Hitler thing, if they even knew that much. She answered the young man’s questions dutifully: school was far more disciplined and the kids learned a lot more. She had been a fashion writer, had written for many newspapers and magazines. And yes, she had lived here all her life, though she had traveled a great deal.
“Got any kids?” the driver asked.
“No,” Kitty said. “I’ve got a lot of nieces and nephews, though. And great-nieces and -nephews!”
The driver regarded her in the rearview mirror. “Bet you were a looker,” he said.
Kitty laughed. “People always used to tell me I looked just like Rita Hayworth.”
“Who’s that?” the man asked, and Kitty said, “Oh, she was a real famous movie star. Back then.”
“Did you come from a big family?” the cabbie asked, and Kitty said yes, adding that there were a lot of big families in those days. And she was lucky; all her siblings were still alive but for her sister Tish, who had died at forty-one of breast cancer. Her brothers all lived in California, but she and her sister Louise had stayed here in Chicago. Kitty told the driver that the house where he’d picked her up was the place she and her family had lived.
“There were six kids in that place?”
“And only one bathroom,” Kitty said, smiling.
“That’s too small a house for that many people!”
“It was big enough,” Kitty said. “People then didn’t mind sharing.”
“I can’t wait to have a family,” the man said, and Kitty said yes, she believed there was something to it.
“Here we go,” he said, pulling up at the high school. He got out of the cab to open the door for her, then offered his hand so that he could help pull her out. She needed a little help getting out of cars; sometimes it was awfully embarrassing—once, her skirt had ridden up right past her girdle. She thanked the driver and asked how much she owed. “Aw, that’s okay,” he said, smiling. “Wasn’t much of a ride.”
“I insist,” she said, her chin raised high. She paid him and tipped him well. He offered to help her into the school, but she told him no, she was just fine. She walked in alone.
KITTY STOOD OUTSIDE THE AUDITORIUM, waiting for Hank’s car. Here it came, the long blue sedan, ten years old and looking brand-new. Maybe twenty thousand miles on it. Hank got out and opened the door for her, and she settled herself on the wide bench seat. “You should have heard the band,” she told him, when he got back behind the wheel. “Just a bunch of young kids, but they’re really good, and they were playing all those old songs. ‘I’ll Be Seeing You,’ ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.’”
“‘Long Ago and Far Away’?” Hank asked, smiling. “That’s my favorite.”
“Mine, too,” Kitty said. “But no, they didn’t play it.”
“Did you dance a lot?”
“Not at all. Nobody asked me.”
“What?”
Kitty laughed. “Oh, you know, almost no one dances anymore. They just listen.”
Hank pulled into a parking place and turned off the engine. “Let’s go in there and dance. Shall we?”
Kitty looked doubtfully at him.
“Come on!”
“Oh, all right,” Kitty said. “But no Lindy Hop!”
“A fox-trot’s as fast as I can go, believe me.”
They walked back into the auditorium. Most of the people had gone; only about six or seven remained, sitting at tables with plastic glasses of wine and little sandwiches on paper plates, the lettuce wilting now. The musicians were beginning to pack up. But Hank got their attention, and the bandleader came over and crouched down at the edge of the stage to listen to what he said. The man smiled and looked over at Kitty, said something to the rest of the band, and they took up their instruments.
Hank walked across the floor and took Kitty gently into his arms. Oh, he was still a wonderful dancer. His steps were smaller, but his carriage as erect as ever, and he knew just how to hold a girl. A girl! A girl of eighty-five!
“‘Long ago and far away,’” Hank sang softly along, then smiled down at her. “Ah, Kitty. How’d we get so old?”
“Beats me,” she said.
“You know, I want to ask you something: Didn’t you ever want to marry anyone?”
“Once I did,” Kitty said.
Hank was quiet and then he asked, “Who?”
She thought for a minute; they were so old now, what could it matter? But then she said, “Oh, there was a man I met in Italy when I was thirty-five. I guess that would have been my last chance for a traditional life, you know, home and kids.”
“But you didn’t really want kids, either.”
And now she lied again, the old, practiced lie, said so often that it almost seemed like truth. “No,” she said, “I never really did. I only liked the fantasy. When it was time for the reality…Well. you know.”
“Yes,” he said, and there was such sorrow in it.
“But you’ve been happy, Hank,” she said, and she sounded more schoolmarmish than she meant to. What she really meant to do was not to tell him he’d been happy but to ask if he had been.
He stopped dancing. “You know there was only ever one girl for me, Kitty. And that was you.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“It’s true. May I tell you just one more time how very much I loved you?”
She swallowed with difficulty. For heaven’s sake, no tears! She put her cheek up next to his and began to move them about on the floor.
“Stop leading!” he said. And then, “Okay, I won’t talk about it anymore, but I meant what I said.”
“Oh, Hank. It was such a different time. It was a setup for romance, really: all those handsome young men in their uniforms, going off to war, all the love letters. And all the hopes about what would happen when the war was finally over.”
“And the music!” Hank said, and they laug
hed and finished dancing as the song ended, “Just one look and then I knew, / That all I longed for long ago was you.”
Kitty stepped away. “Thank you for that lovely dance.”
Hank bowed; oh, his hair was so thick and silvery and beautiful. “Thank you,” he said and took her arm. They walked out, their steps echoing in the all but empty room.
When he helped her into the car, Hank caught sight of a bracelet Kitty was wearing that had slipped from beneath her sleeve. “Is that…?”
“Uh-huh.” He had given it to her a short while after he’d come home from the war. They’d been walking by a jewelry store; she’d admired it in the window, and he’d gone right in and bought it.
“I’m so glad you still wear it sometimes,” he said.
The truth was, she never took it off. “Louise must be wondering where we are,” she said.
When Hank turned to back up the car, she saw that he was grinning.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“I’m just glad you still have that bracelet,” he said. “It must be over sixty years old!”
Sixty-two years. She turned to stare out the window and made herself speak lightly. “Well, Hank. You know this: there are some things you never say good-bye to.”
They drove home through a light rain. At one point, the car skidded slightly, and Hank reached over to put his arm across her, though her seat belt was buckled securely. “You all right?” he asked, staring straight ahead.
For a moment, she didn’t answer.
“Kitty?”
“I’m fine, Hank.”
She didn’t look at him, either; nor did she speak again until they got to the house, where Louise stood at the open door, smiling, waiting for them both.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM TRULY INDEBTED to the staff at the Chicago and Oak Park Public Libraries for assistance in the research I did for this novel. Especially helpful were the following: Mark Andersen, Mary Dempsey, Amy Eshleman, Noreida Hague, Margaret Kier, Kathy Mielecki, Carolyn Mulac, and Rashmi Thapliyal Swain.
I want also to acknowledge the generosity of my uncles, Frank Hoff and William Loney, who shared memories of the war and of the times. Both men served overseas in World War II, and both came home with medals.
My father, Arthur Hoff, also served in the war, and his wife—my mother, Jeanne Loney Hoff—wrote letters to him from the home front (where she, like the young women in the novel, shared a bed with her sisters). My parents were called numerous times with questions—sometimes about K rations or field conditions, sometimes about hemlines and forties mascara, sometimes about FDR or Marlene Dietrich or Amos ’n Andy. My aunts, Helen DeNet, Patricia Thornton, and Catherine Quigley, provided juicy details about flirting on streetcars, the content of V-mail, and which sister was the worst to sleep next to.
I stand in awe of my relatives for their kindness, patience and recall. And their character. This novel is nothing if not an expression of admiration for the people who so uncomplainingly took up the extraordinary burdens and sacrifices of a necessary war.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ELIZABETH BERG is the author of sixteen novels, including the New York Times bestsellers We Are All Welcome Here, The Year of Pleasures, The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY Award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her work, Berg is also the author of the nonfiction work Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago.
ALSO BY ELIZABETH BERG
The Handmaid and the Carpenter
We Are All Welcome Here
The Year of Pleasures
The Art of Mending
Say When
True to Form
Ordinary Life: Stories
Never Change
Open House
Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True
Until the Real Thing Comes Along
What We Keep
Joy School
The Pull of the Moon
Range of Motion
Talk Before Sleep
Durable Goods
Family Traditions
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth Berg
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Berg, Elizabeth.
Dream when you’re feeling blue: a novel / Elizabeth Berg.
p. cm.
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. World War, 1939–1945—United States— Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.E6996D74 2007
813'.54—dc22 2006036747
www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-627-6
v3.0
Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue
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