All Good Women (6 page)

After an hour, the music grew slower and almost everyone rested on the sidelines. Randy and Teddy had given up several records before. Moira didn't want to encourage Stephen with too much cheek-to-cheek dancing, so she suggested they join the others in conversation. Looking around for a chair, Moira noticed that the only place was next to Randy on the love seat. What the hell, she sank down beside him. He smiled and returned to the argument among Ann, Rachel and Teddy.

Teddy was incredulous. ‘But surely the Europeans won't let Hitler continue. He's only one man.' Why had she got into this discussion? She hated how war talk was everywhere nowadays — the radio, the newspapers, the bus. She sighed, remembering how many times she tried to get Pop to talk about something else over dinner. But this was taking over people's minds.

‘He's driven,' Ann said, her neck aching. Should she get up and take an aspirin now? Yes, but she could not move. ‘Hitler's not an ordinary man.' She wanted to tell them Herb's stories from the Forum, but they wouldn't believe her any more than Papa had.

‘You just accept his propaganda if you take a defeatist attitude like that,' Teddy said, surprised by the conviction in her voice. Sometimes she believed they could stop the war with words.

Ann's headache was unequivocal now. ‘His anti-Semitism­?' she spluttered.

‘Not that — I mean you couldn't accept that. You're a Jew. I mean, you're Jewish.' Teddy flushed. She had meant to talk with Ann about that. Mom said the term was ‘Jewess', but she could no more say that than ‘Negress'.

‘There are anti-Semitic Jews,' Rachel said bluntly, ‘but Ann's not one of them.'

‘But, but,' Teddy twisted in her seat. ‘I didn't mean … I didn't think …'

Of course not,' Ann interrupted. ‘No one does
think
.
That's the problem. The “silly little hun” whom the newspapers joke about has power. The power of hate and lunacy. He'll march through half the continent before they stop laughing loud enough to see what's happening.'

Moira was alarmed by Ann's fear and anger. She wanted to do something to help, but nothing short of stopping Hitler counted. Everyone was talking like this lately. Was it selfish to want a rest on Saturday night?

‘Roosevelt will save the day,' Moira interrupted, noticing the pitch of her voice rise as she lost their attention. ‘Say,' she tried a different tone, ‘did you hear the one about Eleanor and the rhinoceros?'

Wanda shook her head; she hated these cracks about Eleanor.

Roosevelt's looks.
From women too!
She'd like to interview Mrs Roosevelt some day. She had been thinking a lot about writing tonight, because of the Willa Cather novels she had borrowed from the library. The author had started out as a journalist. She felt steadier and sipped her wine. ‘You think there'll be a war here?'

Ann leaned forward. Before she could reply, Randy spoke. ‘Sure. We've got so many damned treaties in Europe that the minute the next Lithuanian sneezes, we'll send 1,000 battleships across the Atlantic.'

‘Or the Pacific,' said Howard.

‘Because of China?' asked Randy. ‘Nah, the Americans don't care about the Orient. Nothing personal, you understand.'

‘How could we take it personally?' asked Wanda, avoiding her brother's critical glance. She thought she noticed a fleeting grin from Roy Watanabe. She wanted to tell everyone that Grandfather Nakatani opposed the Japanese invasion, but what did these people know of Manchuria? Fu Manchu probably. Someday she would go to the Orient and make that part of the world comprehensible to Westerners. She used to dream of her family returning to Japan for a holiday, as Emmy Yamamoto did. Now, she doubted they could afford it. But she would get an assignment. She would go alone.

‘I only mean,' Randy stammered, ‘that, that we're more likely to worry about Europe because that's where our people, Americans, oh, shoot, I get your point, Wanda. I'm sorry.'

Moira winced. How could they change this dreadful topic?

Wanda shrugged. ‘You're right, of course, about the general bias.' At least he had apologized and Moira was fading by the second.

‘Has anyone seen
Dawn Patrol
?'
asked Moira.

Ann's jaw dropped, then she picked up the cue. People were too tired or too drunk or too angry or too scared. She was all four. ‘The one with David Niven, Basil Rathbone and …'

Moira laughed. ‘How could you forget Errol Flynn?'

‘Indeed.' Ann took a long drag on her cigarette.

‘
Tail Spin
was the one I liked,' said Teddy, ‘with Alice Faye, Constance Bennett and Nancy Kelly.'

Wanda turned to Roy. ‘Teddy wants to be an aviatrix, like Jacqueline Cochran. She practically flew the entire Bendix Transcontinental Race with her last fall.'

‘Not true.' Teddy glanced inadvertently at Angela who was closely following the conversation. ‘I just read the newspapers.'

‘You practically ate the newspapers,' teased Moira. ‘You couldn't breathe during the entire race.'

‘Speaking of racing,' nodded Rachel, ‘I'd better get home.'

‘Honey!' exclaimed Moira, ‘the party's just begun. I'm sure Randy has more records.'

Before she finished the sentence, Glenn Miller was swinging. Moira dragged everyone into a large circle on the dance floor.

Chapter Five

Spring 1941, San Francisco

GERMANS INVADE YUGOSLAVIA

JAPAN GETS HAIPHONG PORT PRIVILEGES FROM FRANCE

ITALIANS SURRENDER IN ETHIOPIA

VIET MINH CREATED BY HO CHI MINH

US SUPREME COURT BARS RACIAL
DISCRIMINATION IN TRAIN ACCOMMODATION

‘SMOKE, SMOKE, SMOKE,
God
damn it, Ann, you're a regular locomotive,' coughed Moira, waving away the cigarette trail. She pulled a dust rag from her old blue housecoat. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I bother to clean the living room; it only ends up smelling like a Southern Pacific tunnel.'

Wanda sat on the couch reading a magazine. She tugged her pink chenille robe tighter. She felt that familiar ‘middle' sensation — the middle child located between Howard's and Betty's needs, the understanding daughter caught between Mama's and Papa's temperaments. She also hated the smell of cigarettes, but Ann had a right to smoke in her own house.

Teddy stretched and walked toward the kitchen, humming ‘You Are My Sunshine'. Slim, almost elegant in her new beige slacks, Teddy was the only one dressed this Saturday morning. She shook her head, wondering why Moira had started today's housekeeping so early.

Ann raised one eyebrow. Resisting Moira's tirade, she drew her legs into her nightgown and kept her eyes on the
Examiner
article about the Germans moving through Greece. ‘Well, don't worry, honey, sometimes it doesn't look like you've been here at all.' Silly even to respond when Moira was in a mood. Ann had to admit she, herself, had been in a mood this week too — because of Mama's illness and because of Herb going off to Europe. She was going to miss him.

‘What?' exclaimed Moira. OK, maybe she skipped an occasional spot. But she was damned if she was going to pin her heart on Mother's brand of fastidiousness. After twenty years of marriage, what did she have — a spotless house. Moira wanted a man easy about the state of the place — was this Randy? — somebody who understood her acting career, who loved her for her spirit and not for the speed of her mop. ‘What are you getting at? I work hard around here.'

‘Fighting, fighting in a house of women?' Wanda looked up from her
True Confessions
,
pretending alarm.

‘Well, we hardly see each other any more,' Moira said sadly.

‘Come again?' asked Teddy, returning from the kitchen with an orange and a cup of coffee. Her back tightened as it always did with arguing in the house.

‘Except on Saturday morning.' Moira hated herself for whining. ‘I mean during the week Wanda and Ann creep out at some unearthly hour.'

‘We're lucky to have wages.' Ann sat back, grateful yet again for her typing job at the college.

‘You make us sound like burglars.' Wanda flapped the magazine down on the couch beside her. ‘I can't help it that the cannery starts early.' She wanted to say that it was about the only place in town hiring Oriental bookkeepers. Of course the girls knew all about this. The point was to reach a broader audience with her articles. Lately she had felt too defeated to think much about writing.

‘I'm not blaming anybody.' Moira opened her arms wide and flicked the dust cloth as if it were a lace handkerchief. ‘It's just that I don't get home between the office and little theatre rehearsals. Teddy is never around between the Emporium and her family and the Bertolis.'

‘So what are you getting at?' asked Ann, now thoroughly distracted from the newspaper. Her voice was harsher than she intended, but Moira was infuriating. ‘We're not married to each other. We don't have any vows of forever and ever.'

Teddy stared at Ann. She was probably tied in knots about her mother being in that horrible hospital.

‘All I'm trying to say is that if we can't see each other during the week, then everything will come out on Saturday mornings,' sighed Moira.

Teddy and Wanda frowned at each other and shrugged.

‘I mean four people living together are bound to get on each other's nerves. We need to talk about what's bothering us.'

Wanda thought how her mother would cringe at Moira's intensity, how she had taught her daughter to show restraint,
uchiki na josei
.

‘OK, honey, take a seat.' Ann closed down her cigarette against the green glass ashtray. ‘What's on your mind?'

Moira slumped on the arm of the couch.

They waited.

Finally Teddy asked, ‘What happened with that visit John Randolph made from LA? Didn't he come to Pan-O-Rama and wasn't he going to take you out to lunch and discover you?'

‘Yes, I remember now,' said Wanda. ‘It must have been yesterday. That's why you borrowed my scarlet hat with the veil. How did it go?' Despite her amazement at Moira's ego, she believed her friend had the talent and the will to succeed. Why hadn't she thought to ask yesterday? Wanda considered how Moira was the only one of them without a family in town. Maybe that's why she relied so heavily on the girls. Besides, it wasn't too much to expect friends to follow the most important thing in your life.

‘Miserably.' Moira collapsed on the couch. ‘I sat outside J.D.'s office all morning looking like Jean Harlow warmed over — answering phones, directing stuntmen to the back lot, doing my fabulous receptionist routine, wondering whether J.D. was going to introduce me to Randolph before lunch or whether he was going to pick me up on their way to Nikko's. Well, two hours of the damn conference passed and finally a buzz came over the intercom. I was completely unnerved because how could I go in there when I had chewed off all my lipstick? I started to pick up Wanda's hat and then remembered I hadn't even answered the buzzer. It was J.D. all right and he said, hold all calls for the afternoon and could I send out for hamburgers — four rare hamburgers.'

‘Oh, hon, I am sorry,' Ann said, reaching for her cigarettes and then drawing back abruptly.

‘Maybe next time,' said Wanda, patting Moira's shoulder.

‘But I've been waiting so long for this time! A whole year as Ever-Ready Receptionist at sleek and shoddy Pan-O-Rama Studios and I've never come close to that break J.D. promised me.'

‘There's time yet,' said Teddy, sliding her coffee in front of Moira. At moments like this she was grateful not to have wild ambitions like the other girls. She enjoyed her job at the store, liked the people and the pace.

‘That's what Randy said. He kept trying to reassure me last night.'

‘Good,' smiled Ann.

‘But, well, I'm not getting any younger.' Moira sipped the hot, black liquid, indifferent to their laughter. ‘I'm almost twenty-two. For an actress every day counts.' She thought about her mother immigrating as a young bride in steerage at eighteen; bearing a child at nineteen; losing her husband at twenty; remarrying at twenty-one. What had she done with her own life?

‘At least you're working in the right field,' said Wanda. ‘What does keeping books in a cannery have to do with being a journalist?'

Moira nodded reluctantly. Wanda was right; she was fortunate in a way. But she was so frustrated. The other girls seemed to have natural stores of patience, but when she tried having faith and letting go of expectations, she felt as if she were drowning.

‘The way I see it,' drawled Teddy, ‘we're all lucky to have jobs. Look at what our parents went through.'

‘Then look at what we're going to go through in the war,' Ann said abruptly.

Turning to Wanda's surprised look, Ann said, ‘Oh, it's Mama again. They had to strap her down yesterday, like an animal.'

‘No, Ann.' Moira stood and took her hand.

‘She's been having these nightmares — visions she calls them — about the old country. All her brothers and sisters killed. It does no good to show her Uncle Aaron's letter saying everyone is fine. “Dead,” she lies there yelling with her eyes shut. “All dead.” Then she screams the names of relatives I've never heard of.'

Wanda bowed her head in her hands.

‘It must be so hard for you,' Teddy said.

‘For Papa.' Ann fought back the tears. ‘He sits there every day watching her, apologizing. “I should not have taken you away, Dvora.” He thinks she's crazy.'

Wanda watched Ann's face. ‘And you don't,' she said gently. You had to be careful with Ann. It was hard to tell which was more powerful, the love for her mother or the fear of her. ‘You think she's some kind of prophet.'

Ann scrutinized her friend's face for doubt. Finding only concern, she answered, ‘Who knows? Who in hell knows what is going on? Can you understand the reports from Germany? Seems to me there's a lot of censorship for a war America isn't fighting.'

Wanda was always taken aback by Ann's unmeasured cynicism about Roosevelt. For Oriental immigrants, who were unredeemably alien, who could not get citizenship, there was no room for public complaint.

Ann continued, ‘I'd like to believe that Churchill will buffer England against the German assault. I'd like to believe that my Uncle Aaron is right about the family being safe, but …'

‘Yes.' Teddy stared at her empty cup, ‘Everybody's got their blood up. My brothers are talking about enlisting. Even Hank with the baby and all. Mom's going nuts. And look at the newspapers and magazines. The covers of Ann's
Newsweek
have planes and tanks almost every week now.'

‘Men,' muttered Wanda, unravelling the pink tassel on her sleeve. ‘Wars are always designed by men and the results are mended by women.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Moira, distressed because Wanda was usually on her side, defending men against Ann's fury and Teddy's indifference. ‘Whatever happens will affect us all.'

‘But not in the same way,' Wanda answered urgently. ‘We're not chomping at the bit, like Teddy said about her brothers. Did you hear that talk between Howard and Randy last week — both of them dying to strut forth and gut the Krauts?'

‘I think they're brave,' said Moira. ‘It's not easy on them. Randy is scared and I'm sure Howard is — but they're going to fight to defend us.'

‘Well, what do you think women will do if we have a war?' asked

Teddy.
She imagined them all
working together somehow, rolling bandages, knitting socks. Of course she could never voice this silly, sentimental notion and she dismissed the reassurance it provided.

Ann stared out the front window. ‘Pick up the pieces.'

‘We don't have to be passive,' said Wanda.

‘I'm not talking about passivity,' answered Ann.

Moira interrupted. ‘We'll do what our mothers did in the other war. Work in defense industries, support the troops.' She thought of how Mother said that despite the cold and hunger in Scotland, their sense of purpose made the war days some of the best in her life. Daddy never spoke about the war.

‘Or we'll expose the lies.' Wanda was beginning to wonder if they had four soliloquies proceeding here. ‘As a journalist I'd show who profits from these murders; it's not the ordinary people.'

‘Don't be naive.' Ann lit another Camel. ‘There are censors in this country, you know. Where do you think you can publish subversion anyway?'

‘Where there's a will,' said Teddy.

‘Oh, come on.' Moira shook her head at Teddy and backed away from the smoke.

‘Well, there's one thing we don't have to worry about,' Wanda said. ‘Women don't get drafted.'