Dream When You're Feeling Blue

  “Hey?”

  Tish. At the foot of the bed and as wide awake as she, apparently.

  “What?” Kitty whispered, lifting her nightgown away from her chest. Tiny rivulets of water were running into her armpits; it felt swell.

  “Do you love Julian?”

  Kitty bristled. “What a question! Of course I do!”

  Next to her, Louise mumbled, “What time is it?”

  Kitty squinted at the clock. “Almost four.”

  “I’m so hot I could die,” Louise said.

  “I’m so hot I am dead,” Tish said.

  Kitty snorted. “Then you wouldn’t feel hot.”

  Tish yawned loudly, elaborately. “I don’t think you love Julian, Kitty. I think you love Hank.”

  “What?”

  “Aw, keep your socks on. It’s just that you never know what to say to Julian. It’s kind of ridiculous. And you never seem to have trouble writing to Mr. Dreamboat. Your pen just flies across the page when you’re writing to him. And you talk about Hank all the time, too, and you hardly ever talk about Julian anymore.”

  Kitty waited in vain for Louise to defend her. Then she said, “I talk about Hank because he talks to me. I haven’t heard that much from Julian, so there’s not that much to say about him. It doesn’t mean I don’t love him. I love him, and someday I’m going to marry him, and we’re going to have four kids, and we’re going to live in Oak Park and have a maid and a collie and we’ll each have our own car, and every year we’ll go abroad.” She took a breath. “If it’s still there.”

  Tish said, “Look, I don’t care. So don’t go off on me. But it seems as though you never have talked about Julian much. Even when you were with him. I mean, you guys did stuff together, but you didn’t really talk about him. Usually if a girl loves a guy, she talks about him all the time.”

  “That’s actually true,” Louise said.

  “I love Julian!” Kitty said. “Jeez!”

  “But what do you love about him?” Tish asked.

  Kitty said angrily, “You can’t just list things like that! That’s not what love is.”

  “Well, what is it, then?” Tish asked. “Seems like you should be able to list some things. I mean, if you love someone, you—”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed,” Kitty said, “Julian is very good-looking.”

  “Yeah?” Tish said. “What else?”

  Kitty scoffed. “There is too much to tell, and anyway, it’s none of your business if I love Julian. What I love about him, I mean.”

  “Louise could say a million things she loves about Michael, couldn’t you, Louise?”

  Louise sighed. “Oh, Tish, the things you can list about a person are only…So what? All that ‘the way he smiles at kids, the way he always offers you a bite first, how he gets so wrapped up in the movies, the things he knows about—’”

  “See?” Tish interrupted triumphantly. “See all that stuff she just spouted out?”

  “All that stuff is not so important,” Louise said. “I think the most important thing about loving someone is not even the way you feel about him, but the way he makes you feel about yourself. And I’m sure Julian and Kitty…I’m sure if Kitty says she loves Julian, she means it.”

  The room grew silent, but Kitty could feel Louise’s thoughts moving toward her. Hey, wait a minute. Is it true? You do talk an awful lot about that Hank guy. You seem to have gotten to know him awfully well. You seem to tell him a lot of things, to ask him a lot of questions. You seem to really care what he thinks. Do you love Julian anymore? Did you ever, really?

  Kitty wanted to smack her sisters hard, both of them. What did they know? She swallowed drily. What did they know?

  AFTER MASS, MARGARET TOLD HER DAUGHTERS to get busy on Sunday dinner; she’d be back soon, she was going to see Mrs. O’Conner. Louise asked to come along, but Margaret told her it would be better if she didn’t. “This needs to be woman-to-woman,” she said.

  “I’m a woman!”

  “Yes,” Margaret said, “but I mean old woman to old woman.” And then, after a beat, when no one rushed in to say that Margaret was not really old, she made the pronouncement herself.

  By the time their mother got home, the chicken had finished roasting, Louise was mashing the potatoes, and Tish was setting the dining room table. Kitty, having finished preparing the green beans and the rolls, was playing double solitaire on the kitchen table with Binks. Frank was in the basement with Billy and Tommy, helping them work on the go-cart they were building from orange crates and scrap lumber.

  “Binks,” Margaret said. “Go down to the basement and get me some of those pickled beets.”

  “We already have—” Louise began, but Margaret looked sharply at her, then told Binks, “Go on now, and tell your father and the boys to wash up for dinner.”

  After Binks had left the room, Margaret sat down heavily at the table. “Bad news,” she said. “Katherine is very, very ill. It’s…Well, it’s female trouble. She’s very bad.” She looked at Louise. “Do you want my advice?”

  Louise hesitated, then said yes.

  “I think you should tell Michael. Apparently she has a few weeks. Not much more.”

  “Does she know?” Louise asked.

  “Doctor didn’t tell her. But yes. I think she does know.”

  Louise nodded, her eyes filling. “Did you talk to Mr. O’Conner?”

  “I did.”

  “Does he want me to tell Michael?”

  Margaret sighed. “The poor man’s beside himself. He doesn’t know what to do. If Michael knows, he’ll worry. If he doesn’t know, he might regret that he wasn’t able to say some things he might want to say, if only in a letter. I told him I was going to advise you to let Michael know, and he said thank you.” She lifted her shoulders. “I suppose that means he agrees that you should.”

  “I’ll tell Michael tonight when I write him. But…don’t you think his father should tell him, too?”

  “I think his father will, now. I think when she…I only hope they’ll let the boy come home for the funeral.”

  “The funeral! Shouldn’t he come home to see her now?”

  “According to Mr. O’Conner, they’ll not let him come home for an illness, only for a death. And depending on how things go over there…Well, I only hope they let him come for the funeral.”

  Louise’s face was a mix of emotions, and Kitty, too, felt the pull of opposing feelings. Michael might be coming home! But it was because his mother was dying. And after his mother’s funeral, he would go right back—Louise would have to say good-bye to him all over again. Kitty stacked the playing cards into a neat pile. Then she messed them up so that she could straighten them out again.

  “ALL RIGHTY TIDY, THAT’S ABOUT IT,” the woman at Douglas Aircraft who had read over Kitty’s application said. Her name was Doris Morris (“I know, I know,” she had said, upon introducing herself. “I shouldn’t have married Dick Morris. I should have married my other boyfriend. His name was Hal Morris.” Then she had laughed uproariously at her own joke, though Kitty figured she’d told it a few times before.) “Report at eight A.M. next Monday,” Doris had said. “We’ll have your identification button ready for you. You wear it on your left side, right over your heart.” She’d smiled. “Welcome aboard.”

  Kitty had bitten her lip and shaken Doris’s hand. She could hardly keep from shouting out; she’d been hired the very same day she’d applied! She’d called in sick to work, had gone instead to the factory and filled out an application, taken some tests, gotten fingerprinted, and she’d gotten the job! She hadn’t gotten the swing shift—they liked to give that shift to working mothers—but she’d been hired right away! Oh, they’d call the insurance company where she worked for references, but Kitty should assume all was fine and report to work next Monday. Sixty cents an hour! At first, Doris had said she should wear a Jeepsuit coverall and have her hair tied back—no loose hair on the job. Then she’d said, Oh, what the heck, might as well tell
the truth, most women didn’t like the coveralls and just wore slacks and a top. But! When the cold weather came (and here Doris had looked meaningfully over her glasses), no tight sweaters. They’d had some problems with women wearing tight sweaters. Kitty had smiled, recalling Bob Hope on the radio with Judy Garland. Judy had said, “Bob, why are men so crazy about sweater girls?” And Bob had answered, “I don’t know, Judy; that’s a mystery I’d like to unravel.”

  Doris had told Kitty to bring the tools listed on the mimeographed sheet she’d been given, in her very own toolbox. She might not be able to buy everything, what with the metal shortage, but she should try her best. What she couldn’t find, she could borrow from another worker. Bring a lunch to eat in the cafeteria or go out to lunch—a lot of workers liked to grab a hot dog at the place across the street. And one last thing, very important. “You know you’re going to get your hands dirty, right?” Doris had asked. Kitty had nodded. “I don’t mean a smudge on your pretty little pinkie that you quick wash off. I mean dirty.” Kitty had said yes, she knew. “Did you ever see a man’s hands after he worked on his car?” Doris had asked. “I mean that kind of dirty.”

  Kitty had nodded gravely. Oh. That dirty. Golly! Julian loved to work on his car, and it took some powerful soap and sometimes a couple of days to get his hands clean. Would her hands really look like that? For one brief moment she’d hesitated about taking the job, then chastised herself. Who cared about rough hands when she would be so directly working on something that would help win the war? You could say all you wanted about the home front and how every job contributed in some way. Every ad in every magazine tried to claim some link to victory: Eat our beets to keep your health—that will help win the war! Buy our badminton racket and get enough exercise—you’ll return to work refreshed, and that will help win the war! What was next? Brush your hair every night with our hairbrush to spur our boys on to victory?

  But here was something real. Something direct. Kitty’s hands would now be putting parts onto a plane that would be used in active warfare. In that respect, she would very nearly be fighting right alongside someone who was on a bombing mission, for he would not be able to get overseas without her. In her mind’s eye, Kitty saw a handsome young man coming into her cargo plane. And though she knew it was foolish, she couldn’t help it; she saw him look around and nod with approval at how well the plane had been put together, saw him looking at her part. What part she would be responsible for, she hadn’t yet learned, but her imaginary soldier was admiring it nonetheless.

  Already, Kitty knew how she would do her job, whatever it was. No matter how difficult her particular assignment might be, she would stay focused and ever mindful of the importance of what she was doing. Her work would be perfect; she would not complain of fatigue; she would willingly work overtime if called upon to do so. And not for the money. The whole time she labored, she would be sending her thoughts and her prayers for the safe homecoming of every boy who rode in one of her planes. Men had to die; she knew this all too well, but she would pray that no man who’d ridden in her plane would die.

  Though she had practically run out of the factory, now she walked slowly toward the streetcar. Because damping her elation at being hired was Tommy’s question, come suddenly back to her. If war was a sin, was she now part of it?

  “YOU’LL RUIN YOUR HANDS!” Margaret said.

  “That’s no place for a respectable young woman to work,” Kitty’s father said. “I’ll not have my daughter being thought of as a…as a…It’s not respectable, and you’ll not do it!”

  “It’s not your decision,” Kitty said. “It’s mine. And I’ve decided to work there. And that’s all.”

  “Eleanor Roosevelt thinks women should work in factories,” Tommy said, and Kitty wanted to hug him.

  “Who told you that?” Margaret asked.

  “Everybody knows that. And besides, it was in one of your Ladies’ Home Journals.”

  To this Margaret said nothing. The Ladies’ Home Journal was a publication she very much admired and often quoted from; and apart from the Virgin Mary, Eleanor Roosevelt was her most exalted heroine. Margaret set her mouth and cut her pot roast into smaller and smaller pieces. Frank pushed himself away from the table.

  “Hey, Pop,” Billy said. “Can I have your pot roast?”

  Frank passed his plate down to his son. “Share with the rest of the family,” he said.

  Kitty felt terrible. She wished her father would get angry. Turning down pot roast that was probably at least eight points and over fifty cents a pound! She should have waited until after dinner, but then she’d have interfered with her father’s radio and newspaper time.

  “When are you to begin?” he asked her.

  “Next Monday.” Kitty drew lines in her gravy with her fork. “I need to buy some tools before then.”

  “I’m going out,” Frank said, and the family sat still as he passed by them on his way to the front door. It closed quietly behind him.

  “Sure he’s on his way to O’Mallory’s, and that’s the last we’ll see of him tonight,” Margaret said.

  “I’m sorry,” Kitty said. “But I—”

  “I’ll hear no more about it now,” Margaret said. “And there’ll be no going out for any of you girls. You live in my house, you live by my rules. You sit and do your letters after dinner, and then it’s off to bed with all of you.”

  “Cripes, I didn’t do anything,” Tish said.

  “I didn’t say you did. Now I’m leaving, and I want you girls to take care of the boys.”

  “Where are you going?” Binks asked. “Ma? Where are you going?”

  “I’m taking myself to the pub, too. And that’s the end of it.”

  She went out the door. Tish raised her eyebrows and looked over at Kitty. “Nice work, sis.”

  AT TEN O’CLOCK, THE BOYS were in bed and the girls had just finished writing their letters when their parents came home. Margaret took off her scarf and hung up her sweater and, without a word, headed upstairs. Frank came into the kitchen and stared at his daughters. He wasn’t weaving, but it seemed as though he were ready to. From where he stood, Kitty could smell the whiskey. Frank didn’t drink often, two or three times a year at best, but when he did drink, he made the most of it, as did his wife. Margaret could handle her liquor; Frank could not. Later tonight, he’d be kneeling at the porcelain altar, as Julian would say. For now, though, Frank’s face was wearily benevolent, and he spoke softly, kindly.

  “Kitty, darlin’.”

  “Yes, Pop?”

  He waved for her to follow him, and this upset his balance. He bumped into the doorjamb. “Pardon me,” he told it.

  “Are you all right, Pop?” Tish asked. She didn’t seem to know whether to be amused or alarmed.

  “Never finer, grand altogether!”

  “Let’s go to bed, Tish,” Louise said. She wouldn’t look at her father. It didn’t matter how rare his times of such overindulgence, she didn’t approve of it.

  “Sweet dreams!” he said and then, to Kitty, “Come down to the basement with me.”

  In his small workroom, rich with the scent of wood shavings, Frank pulled the string to turn on the light. There was the half-finished go-cart for Billy and Tommy. Kitty ran her hands along the sides, where the lumber had been sanded smooth as silk; Frank always did exceptionally fine work. ROLLING THUNDER had been stenciled along the side and was half painted; Billy’s idea, no doubt.

  “Now then,” Frank said, crouching down next to his meticulously organized toolbox. “You’ll be needing this, and this. Oh, here’s a good one, you’ll be the envy of the workforce with this.” Beside him, he was amassing a shiny collection of mysterious things. He held up something Kitty recognized: a screwdriver. “D’you know what I first used this for?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Your crib that we carried home from the store, your pregnant mother and I, ’twas still in the box. What a sight, her big as a house and toting her end of that
load down the sidewalk for the entire block, proud as a peacock. And woe to the men who offered to help—she’d have no part of anyone interfering with her caring for her child, born or not. And didn’t I have a devil of a time getting it together! I was swearing at the directions so much your mother finally took them away from me and burned them.”

  Kitty laughed. “Did she?”

  “As God is my witness.” He wagged his finger at her. “Women are highly emotional and strictly unreasonable when they’re in the family way; you’ll see when your time comes. Or rather your husband will! No arguing with an expectant woman; there’s only one answer for her, and that’s ‘Yes, dear.’

  “So anyway, she burned the directions, and I congratulated her on her good sense, and then I sat staring at the parts for half the night, and then finally I put the thing together. I still don’t know if I ever did it right, but it held up for all of you kids, anyway.” He moved from crouching to sit on the floor, his back against the tool bench. “I remember when your mother and I brought you home from the hospital, both of us scared to death, and lay you in that crib. I couldn’t stop crying, and I didn’t want your mother to see. But she didn’t mind; she was crying even more; we were both so happy.

  “You were a wonderful baby, so you were. We used to brag about you to everyone, how pretty you were, how you never cried. No one believed us, but it was true—you almost never cried. In the morning, you would wake up and just lie there cooing to yourself, waiting patiently for someone to come in. Your mother would fuss at you sometimes, such a tiny thing and we weren’t sure you were getting enough to eat, but you just didn’t cry. On weekend mornings, I would come and get you myself and bring you to your mother. But first I’d sneak over to the rocker just to hold you a wee bit. I’d never felt anything like that, the lightness of a baby. The sweetness. The top of your head smelled like a field of fresh-mown clover.” He shook his head, remembering. “Ah, Kitty. I wanted the world for you then, and I still do. Your mother and I both. I hope you know that.”