PENNY AWOKE BEFORE DAWN, too excited to sleep. Today she would move into Eddie Shaffer’s apartment! The anticipation was like that moment in the movie theater when the lights dimmed and the music began to play. Music should be playing right now as the sun rose on this wonderful day. A huge banner should stretch across the sky saying, This Is Chapter One of Penny Goodrich’s Brand-New Life.
She got out of bed, eager to begin, and carefully smoothed the bedspread and fluffed the pillow, making her bed for the last time. The only thing that could dampen her excitement would be another argument with her parents – which was why she had decided to leave home early, before they woke up. Penny had tried as hard as she could to explain to them why she needed to help Eddie, and they had done everything they could to talk her out of it. The arguments had gotten louder and angrier every day for the past two weeks, but nobody’s mind had changed – not Penny’s, and certainly not her parents’. She had gone to bed early last night to avoid another fight. She wished her mother would hug her good-bye this morning and give Penny her blessing, but that was about as likely to happen as a blizzard in July.
Penny tiptoed into the kitchen with her two bags of belongings and fixed a bowl of cereal instead of toast so the aroma wouldn’t awaken her parents. She was putting the milk bottle back into the refrigerator when she heard her mother’s voice behind her.
“You’re making a big mistake, Penny. It’s not too late to change your mind, you know.”
“Yes it is. I promised Eddie I would help him. He’s counting on me.”
“His mother is the one who should be helping him with those children, not you. I told you I would go next door and talk to her for you.”
“Please don’t. It’s all arranged. I promised to stay with them, like I explained.”
“And I explained why you shouldn’t go. Your father and I are very angry with you for defying our wishes this way.”
“I know. I know you’re angry.” Penny sank down at the table and bowed her head to say grace before gulping down her cereal. She wanted to run out the door right this minute rather than endure any more lectures, but she needed to eat something first.
She glanced up at her mother and saw her standing in the kitchen doorway with her arms folded. She had such an angry expression on her face that it brought tears to Penny’s eyes. She knew she was supposed to honor her father and mother – they had quoted that Bible verse to her repeatedly in an effort to convince her to stay – but did that mean that Penny had to live here with them forever? Didn’t other daughters grow up and leave home and start lives of their own? Penny wanted so much to be like everyone else, but as her mother constantly reminded her, she wasn’t like other girls.
She gulped the last spoonful of cereal and rose to put the bowl in the sink. “I’ll stop by in a day or two and let you know how everything is going.”
“No, Penny. You will call me as soon as you get there. If you insist on leaving home against our wishes, then the least you can do is call and let us know you made it there safely. I don’t think I need to remind you of all the things that could happen to you on the way.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll call you.” She longed to add that she was only traveling across Brooklyn, not to the moon, but Penny had never spoken disrespectfully to her parents in her life. She had felt so courageous when she awoke this morning, but now the cereal she had just eaten churned in her stomach like the agitator on a washing machine. She needed to leave right now, before her mother made her feel any more frightened than she already was.
She slipped her purse strap over her head and across her chest the way her mother had taught her, so that purse-snatchers couldn’t grab it, and picked up the two shopping bags that held her belongings. Neither Penny nor her parents owned a suitcase. None of them ever traveled.
“I’m going now. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Wait!”
Penny obeyed, turning back to face her mother.
“You’re such a scatterbrain, Penny. Stop and think for a minute before you go running off like a fool. Do you have everything you need? Enough money for the bus? The directions to get there? And you’d better put your sweater on; it looks chilly outside.”
Tears squeezed Penny’s throat. “I’ll be fine, Mother. Goodbye.”
She closed the door behind her and walked to the bus stop as fast as she could with the heavy shopping bags. Penny didn’t own very many clothes and figured she could bring them over a few at a time when she came home to visit on the weekends. Eddie didn’t own a car. He had drawn the bus route for her, explaining which one to take and where the stops were.
The first bus that pulled up to the curb was hers. It seemed very crowded for a Saturday morning, and nearly all the passengers were servicemen. A young man in a U.S. Marines uniform sitting near the front jumped up when she boarded and gave her his seat. She thanked him and sat down by the window to watch for street signs and landmarks. Twenty minutes later she reached her stop. According to Eddie’s directions, she only had to walk one block to his apartment. She felt proud of herself for not getting lost or being accosted, the two things her mother had fearfully predicted would happen.
The storefronts and signs in Eddie’s neighborhood had a lot of Jewish names and Hebrew lettering on them. She walked past several men with black hats and beards and felt a ripple of fear. Her father had warned her that a lot of Jews lived in this part of Brooklyn. At last she rounded the corner onto Eddie’s street, then halted in surprise when she saw the burned-out building in front of her. Part of the roof had caved in, and black soot smudged the tan-colored brick around its broken windows. The air smelled like a bonfire. Was that Eddie’s apartment? She hurried forward, searching for his house number, finally finding it on the building across the street from the fire.
The sight of the ravaged building shook Penny. What if Eddie’s apartment caught on fire that way? What would she do? How would she and the kids escape from their bedrooms way up on the third floor? Maybe she had been wrong to take on so much responsibility. Maybe her mother had been right.
But no, Eddie was counting on her. Penny hurried up the steps to the narrow front porch and rang the doorbell with E. Shaffer printed beside it. A moment later she heard footsteps tromping down the inside stairs. Eddie opened the door. He looked relieved to see her.
“Hi. You found us.”
“Yeah, I made it here just fine. Your directions were great.”
“Let me take your bags.”
He led her inside the small, smoky foyer, and she saw right away that the steps to Eddie’s apartment on the second floor were much too steep for his mother to go up and down every day, especially with her rheumatism. Penny herself was puffing by the time she climbed to the top of them.
“Our landlord lives downstairs,” Eddie explained as they climbed, “and we have the second and third floors. Make sure the kids don’t jump around the living room too much and bother him.” Eddie opened a second door at the top of the stairs, where Penny saw his suitcase, packed and ready to go, standing in the small hallway. “Come on in and I’ll show you around.”
Penny peeked into the black- and white-tiled bathroom first. It could use a good scrubbing with cleanser, but she didn’t say so. The kitchen had a small wooden table with four chairs, a corner cupboard for dishes, and one of those nice kitchen hutches that Penny had admired in magazines. It had a porcelain countertop that slid out for rolling pie crusts and a built-in flour bin and spice rack behind the neat cupboard doors. From the window above the sink she glimpsed a second-floor back porch with a roof for shade.
“This kitchen is very nice.”
“It’s still a little smoky in here from last night’s fire.” Eddie led her through the dining room and into a living room that overlooked the street below. “You can open the windows later.”
“You mean that building just burned down last night? Was it an apartment building?”
“No, a synagogue. Want to see upstairs? Peter and Esther are still asleep.”
“Don’t worry about it. I can look around later. Was anyone hurt in the fire?”
“Yeah, our landlord, Mr. Mendel. They took him away in an ambulance. That reminds me, could you check on him when he gets home from the hospital? See if he needs anything?”
Penny didn’t know how to explain to Eddie that Jewish people frightened her, especially the kind with black hats and beards. Her father had ranted on and on about them for as long as she could remember. She was about to confess her fears when Eddie suddenly added, “Rachel was good friends with our landlord’s wife. She would take Mrs. Mendel shopping and things like that. In fact . . .” He paused to clear his throat, which had begun to sound very hoarse. “In fact, Mrs. Mendel and Rachel were both killed in the same accident.”
“Oh! I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah. And one other person, too. The other two died instantly, and Rachel died in the hospital a few hours later. Esther and Peter saw it all. They were with her.” Eddie turned and led the way back to the kitchen. “Here are my keys to the apartment. This one is for the back door and these are for the two front doors.” A moment later, Penny heard footsteps overhead, then the sound of two children thumping down the stairs. Esther froze in the doorway when she saw Penny, her expression hardening in anger and mistrust. Peter pushed past his sister to grip their father around the waist. Penny couldn’t recall ever hugging her own father that way.
“Good morning, sleepyheads,” Penny said, desperate to say something. “How are you this morning? Did you have a good sleep with sweet dreams?”
“We’re not babies,” Esther said.
“I know. I-I’m sorry.” Penny didn’t know how most mothers greeted their children in the morning, so she had said the words that she wished her mother would say.
“Hey, you be nice to Penny, okay?” Eddie said. “She’s doing us a huge favor. And she’ll write and tell me if you don’t behave. Right, Penny?”
“I’ll be glad to write to you, Eddie. Just let me know what your address is.”
Esther was still pouting, so Eddie lifted her chin until she had to look up at him. “Promise me you’ll be polite, okay?” he asked again. She nodded faintly.
“I can fix you some pancakes or scramble some eggs, if you want,” Penny said. “How about it, Esther? You hungry for something special this morning?”
“No, thank you.” She crossed the kitchen to remove two bowls from the corner cupboard and poured cornflakes for herself and her brother. Peter clutched his father as if he never intended to let go.
“Sorry about the mess,” Eddie said, gesturing to the dirty dishes piled in the sink.
“That’s okay. I can wash them later.”
“And I didn’t have a chance to change the bed sheets. You’ll find clean ones in the linen closet. Esther will show you where everything is, won’t you, doll?”
“I suppose.” There was so much ice in her voice that Penny figured they could keep cool all summer long.
“Washing machine is down in the basement. One of them belongs to the landlord. There’s a line to hang the clothes on out back.”
“Maybe I’ll just do all the washing at my house,” Penny said. “I have to go home every Saturday anyway to help my folks. And the kids can see their grandmother at the same time. Would you like that?” Neither of them replied.
“Listen, I don’t know how I will ever thank you,” Eddie said.
Marry me, she longed to reply. Instead, she said, “I don’t mind. Really.”
“Well . . . I guess I’d better get going.”
“No!” Esther wailed. “Don’t go, Daddy!”
“Please don’t make this any harder than it already is, doll,” he said softly. He gave Peter a long hug and kissed the top of his head, then pried his arms off so he could hug Esther. He even gave Penny a brief, stiff hug – a tantalizing glimpse of what it would be like when the war ended and they could be together forever. She would wake him up with a kiss every morning and give him another kiss before he left for work, just like the wives in the movies did.
Both kids were crying hard, and Eddie silently signaled for Penny to hold them back. Her heart broke for all of them as she watched Eddie hurry away, grabbing his suitcase and closing the door behind him. The children didn’t try to follow him. Instead, they twisted out of Penny’s grasp and ran upstairs to their room.
Penny couldn’t stop crying, either. She went into the kitchen and washed and dried the dishes as tears continued to roll down her cheeks. Nearly every dish in the house seemed to be dirty, so it took a long time. She tried to figure out where everything went in the cupboards and decided that it didn’t matter for now. The two bowls of uneaten cereal still sat on the table. Should she carry the kids’ breakfast upstairs to them?
No, maybe they needed to be left alone.
Penny wandered into the living room and saw pretty lace curtains on the windows and an upright piano that she hadn’t noticed before. She wondered who played it. The apartment was very quiet. She didn’t know what else to do, so she sat down in the rocking chair near the window and gazed down at the street below her. A crowd had gathered to gawk at the burned-out building.
A long time later the phone rang. Should she answer it? It seemed wrong to answer someone else’s phone, but the kids were still upstairs in their room. Besides, it might be Eddie, checking to see if they were okay. She lifted the receiver.
“Hello? . . . Um . . . Shaffer residence.”
“Penny! You were supposed to call me! It’s been hours!” Mother sounded furious.
“Oh! I’m sorry . . . I-I had things to do and . . . and Eddie was showing me all around and . . . and then I forgot.”
“You forgot? You would forget your head if it wasn’t attached to your body. Your father and I have been worried sick. I almost called the police. You didn’t give me the phone number so I had to go next door and bother Mrs. Shaffer for it. She’s a wreck, by the way, with three sons fighting in the war now, thanks to you.”
“Well, I arrived here just fine. I’m sorry I forgot to call. But you have the number now, in case you need anything. I have to go. Good-bye.”
Penny slammed down the phone, grabbed her shopping bags from the front hallway, and carried them upstairs to Eddie’s bedroom. He had emptied a bureau drawer for her to use, and she carefully filled it with her own neatly folded things. The room was messy but she might not straighten it up just yet. These were Eddie’s clothes. He had slept in this rumpled bed. His scent was everywhere.
Rachel was everywhere, too, in all of the feminine little touches. The crocheted doilies on the bureau and nightstands, the tatted lace and embroidery on the pillow covers. Penny sat down on the unmade bed. She had made a terrible mistake. What was she doing here? Eddie was gone and his kids hated her. She shouldn’t have come. Mother was right, as usual. Penny didn’t have the good sense that God gave a green bean.