Next to Love (29 page)

“Well done. Morris can never remember which side things go on.”

“Maybe you married the wrong man.”

“Maybe I did,” she says without looking up at him, and something in her voice plunges the knife into his heart again.

FIFTEEN

Millie

AUGUST 1952

T
HE CHILDREN PILE OUT OF THE CAR AND SWOOP OVER THE GRASS
still glistening with early-morning dew, but Millie stops and stands at the bottom of the path. She has never seen anything so gorgeous. The big bay window offers a glimpse into the still-empty living room, and the freshly painted green shutters glint in the slanting shafts of sunlight. Off to the right, the wide garage stands waiting for cars, bikes, lawn mowers, and gardening tools.

Al had been reluctant. Wait another year or two, he said, until the business is really up and running. She had tried, but everywhere she went,
FOR SALE
signs and model-house lures kept popping up. It was as if she were trying to diet or go on the wagon and people kept plying her with chocolate or offering her drinks. Then Babe mentioned that a new area of Riverview was opening, and Millie knew the time was right, no matter what Al said. She did not even give him a chance to take off his hat and coat when he got home that night.

“Okay.” He laughed and held up his hands with his palms toward her. “I give up.”

He comes around the car now and stands beside her with his arm around her waist.

“Not bad,” he says, “for a house built of cards—those cardboard credit cards that King Gooding, my uncle, and everyone else said would never catch on. Plastic now. A quarter of the state”—he gives her waist a squeeze—“and growing.”

Then the moving truck pulls up, Al says he has to get to the office and climbs back into the car, and Millie walks up the path to her house.

Babe and Grace come over to help her unpack. Naomi arrives to clean the new bathrooms and scrub the new kitchen. Millie follows the movers around, telling them where to put things, warning them not to chip the paint, and reminding them to watch the chandelier and be careful with that chest because it has been in her family for generations. There is so much to unpack and so many things to do that she does not notice that one of the boxes she had stored in her aunt’s house is missing. Why would she notice a single box unless it held the toaster or alarm clock or something they needed immediately?

JACK FOLLOWS THE
movers upstairs. His mom told him to go out to the backyard, where Amy is taking care of his sisters, but he likes it better in here with the two big burly movers and the skinny one, who is even stronger. “Watch the paint job,” one of the burly ones says as they maneuver the big mattress for his parents’ bed into the bedroom. He knows they’re making fun of his mom, but they don’t sound mean about it. They sound as if they like her. His dad says his mom could charm the birds out of the trees.

The skinny mover is bringing a stack of boxes up the stairs. As he bends to put them down, the top one slides off, and the flaps burst open. The man says a word Jack gets punished for, but that’s nothing compared to what spills out of the box. Letters and drawings and pictures slide across the floor. Jack stands looking down at the photographs. The man in them looks back up at him. In the light coming through the window and glinting off the shiny surface of the photographs, the man seems to be winking at him. You know who I am. You see my picture at Grandma and Grandpa Swallow’s. I’m the guy Mr. Gooding gave you a dollar just for looking like. I’m Pete Swallow.

He hears his mom calling upstairs to ask if the men want lemonade. He shoves the photographs and drawings and letters back in the box, drags the box into his room, and closes the door behind him.

SEPTEMBER 1952

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” his mom says, as she puts the sandwich, banana, and cookies in his lunch box. She said it last night after everyone went home from the barbecue, and she keeps saying it this morning. He wishes she’d stop.

“He’s not scared,” his dad says. “What’s to be scared of?”

Jack knows it’s not a real question, so he doesn’t tell him.

“You already know Billy Craig down the block,” his mom says.

Billy Craig is a bully. He’s also dumb. The two even out. Billy can beat up Jack, but Jack can outsmart him. Sometimes if Billy is winning at a game, Jack changes the rules halfway through, and Billy doesn’t even get it.

“I bet by the end of the week you’ll have a whole bunch of new friends,” his mom says.

He wishes she’d stop it.

“Are you sure you don’t want to walk to school with the girls and me?”

“That’s the last thing he wants,” his dad says, and winks at him over his coffee cup.

His dad’s okay. He can’t help it if he’s not like the guy in the pictures, his real dad, Pete Swallow. Pete Swallow played football in high school. When Jack saw the picture of him in his uniform, he asked this dad if he played football in high school. This dad said he was too busy working to make money for college.

There’s the business of the other uniforms too, the ones from the war. This dad wore a fancy white suit, the kind you couldn’t do anything in, the kind his mom would keep telling him not to get dirty. His real dad, Pete Swallow, wore the kind of uniform they wear in the movies. Nobody worries about keeping those clean. His mom says this dad was wearing his dress whites the first time she laid eyes on him, and didn’t he look handsome. Jack doesn’t care about looking handsome. He wants to look tough, like the guy in the pictures, like Pete Swallow.

There’s one more thing his real dad has over this dad. His real dad would never yell at him for fighting with his sisters, or take his bike away for a whole weekend just because he rode it out to the big road where he isn’t allowed, or make him go back into the magazine-and-candy store and apologize to Mr. Gray for swiping the pack of chewing gum. His real dad would understand him, and approve of him, and never ever punish him.

His mom hands him his lunch box, then does that thing he hates, licking her finger and smoothing down the cowlick at the back of his head. He doesn’t want to go to this new school, but he can’t wait to get out of the house.

He hangs around the side until he sees Billy Craig come down his driveway, then gives him half a block head start before he sets out. This dad is right. What’s there to be afraid of? So it’s a new school. So he doesn’t know anyone except dumb Billy Craig. What’s the big deal? The big deal is it’s a new school and he doesn’t know anyone except dumb Billy Craig.

He puts his hand in the pocket of his new corduroy pants and feels the picture. Pete Swallow wouldn’t be scared. He knows that from the football pictures and all the others. The letters too. He didn’t read the whole letters—he had to skip the mushy parts—but he read enough to know Pete Swallow wouldn’t be scared of starting some dumb new school.
The craps game is heating up, so I better get cracking and relieve those guys of their dough. I know I pulled some crazy stunts in my youth
. Jack has never pulled any crazy stunts. Except maybe hiding the box with the pictures and letters in his closet. Every night after his mom tells him to turn out his light, he goes into the closet, takes the flashlight from its hiding place, and looks at the pictures and letters. It’s his secret. It’s his secret society, just him and his dad Pete Swallow. Just Pete Swallow and Pete Swallow. That gives him an idea.

He hangs around on the edge of the playground until the teachers begin telling them to line up by class. Fifth grade over here, one of the teachers says, and dumb Billy Craig tries to trip him as he gets in line. Some of the other boys look at him as if he comes from outer space. Others don’t look at him at all. He’s the invisible boy. A girl says hello, but she’s a girl, and that’s worse than no one talking to him. He turns away from her.

The lines start moving, kindergarten, first, second. The fifth grade is next to the last. First the girls march in, then the boys. They line up along the sides of the room. The teacher says her name is Miss Tobias, and when she calls their names, they should take the next empty desk so they’ll be in alphabetical order. Fred Adams takes the first seat, then Judy Atkins, then Belle Berkow.

“Peter John Swallow Baum,” Miss Tobias calls, and snickers from the back of the room tell him how silly the long name is.

“Pete Swallow,” his voice rings out. It doesn’t even sound scared.

“Pardon me?” Miss Tobias says.

“My name is Pete Swallow.”

“Are you sure?”

“He ought to know his own name,” Billy says. He doesn’t know what Jack is up to, but he can’t resist a chance to make trouble.

“That will be enough out of you, William Craig.” She turns to Jack. “If your name is Peter Swallow, I don’t understand where the Baum came from.”

“That was someone else at my old school. He was Peter John too, and they were always getting us mixed up.” He can hardly keep from grinning. It’s the kind of thing Pete Swallow would pull. It’s relieving guys of their dough. It’s a crazy stunt from his youth.

“All right, then, Peter Swallow. You just hang on until we get to the S’s. William Craig, you take that desk, and zip your mouth.” She makes believe she is zippering her mouth, just like the teacher at his old school used to. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you until you’re called on.”

Pete Swallow stands with his back against the wall, fingering the picture in his pocket, and waits for his name to be called.

OCTOBER 1952

The phone is ringing as Millie opens the door. Betsy runs for it. Susan dashes after her. Millie has picked them up, but Jack prefers to come home on his own, and Al insists she let him. It’s lucky I came along, he tells her. You would have turned him into a real mama’s boy.

“Baum residence.” Betsy’s voice bristles with self-importance. She has just won permission to answer the phone. Susan stands watching her, half adoration, half raging envy.

A moment passes.

“I’m sorry, you have the wrong number,” she says, and replaces the receiver.

A moment later, the phone rings again.

“I’ll get it,” Millie says, and takes the receiver from Betsy’s hand.

“Is this Mrs. Swallow?” a woman’s voice on the other end of the line asks.

Millie’s first thought is that someone is playing a cruel joke.

“This is Mrs. Baum.”

The woman on the other end gives the phone number she is trying to reach. Millie says she has the right number. “I was Mrs. Swallow,” she admits.

“Are you Pete Swallow’s mother?” the voice asks.

“I was married to Pete Swallow.”

The voice laughs. “No, I mean young Pete Swallow. Pete Swallow, Jr., I would imagine. Your son.”

“My son’s name is Jack,” Millie says. “Jack Baum.”

There is a brief silence. “I’m afraid there’s been some confusion. Or else Pete—Jack has played a trick. On me. I’m Miss Tobias. His teacher. When I called out the names the first day of school, he told me Baum was another boy at his old school, and he was Peter Swallow. That’s what we’ve been calling him.”

“His name is Jack Baum,” Millie says again. She feels stupid. She is having trouble understanding what this is about.

“I’m afraid that makes it worse. I knew he was a troublemaker, but—”

“Jack isn’t a troublemaker.”

“He starts fights, Mrs. Swallow.”

“Mrs. Baum.”

“Your son starts fights. And apparently he lies as well.”

“You must have misunderstood him about his name.”

“I’m not the one who misunderstood. That’s why I sent you the note.”

“What note?”

“I sent a note home with Pete—Jack last week asking you to come in to see me.”

“I never got any note.”

Miss Tobias does not answer, but Millie can feel the smug satisfaction seeping down the line.

“Little boys fight,” Millie says.

“And our job is to teach them not to. I haven’t had much luck with your son. I think it’s time for his parents to step in.”

“My husband and I will take care of it,” Millie says.

As soon as she gets off the phone with the teacher, she dials Al’s office.

“I’m less upset about the fighting,” he says, “than I am about the note he didn’t bring home. I don’t want him to … Tell him I’ll be right with him,” he goes on, and Millie knows he is not speaking to her. “Listen, Mil, I can’t talk about this now. We’ll discuss it when I get home.”

After supper, they send Betsy and Susan to the family room to watch television. The girls drag their feet, looking back into the kitchen as they go. They worship Jack, but every now and then they like to see him catch it.

Millie puts the last of the dessert bowls in the sink, then sits. The three of them form a triangle at the long oval table.

Al asks about the fights. Jack insists he did not start them. He was only defending himself. Millie tells him next time to walk away. Al is silent, listening to the phrases ringing in his head. Dirty Jew. Sheenie. Kike.

“Sometimes,” he says carefully, “it’s all right to fight back. You just have to know when.”