“But not you.”
“Not me.” Betty whispered the words to round out any edges. She wanted to be honest, but not mean.
“When you do settle down, Betty, he’ll be one lucky son of a gun, even if it is Barsky. I have a feeling Debbie was my last shot.”
“Pity isn’t pretty.”
“What?”
“Pity isn’t pretty. That’s what Nannie would say. How do you expect to attract a wife if all you do is mope and put yourself down? It’s time to leave Debbie in the dust.”
“Is that your friendly advice?”
“It is.”
Rampant truths spun through Betty’s thoughts. She knew how Marv felt, what it was like to be left behind. The insecurity born out of her parents’ dismissal stuck to her like it had been affixed with glue, even with Nannie and Zaide stepping in to do a bang-up job as parenting grandparents. Marv would always feel the wound of losing Debbie, no matter who else he loved. Even if he packed away the loss, it would exist under everything in his life as part of its foundation, and sometimes it would seep through.
“I’m glad we’re friends,” Betty said.
“Now that you know I was dumped?”
“No, because you’re a decent guy. You’ll find someone. Someone who makes a promise and keeps it.”
Marv pressed his lips together, then exhaled. “From your lips to God’s ears.”
“You’re spending too much time with your mother.”
They laughed.
“You could be right. If you ever need anything, just ask me, Betty, okay? I’m more than just a pretty face. I can be a really good friend if you let me.” He winked, and Betty laughed again.
“You can call me Betty Boop. Just not in public. Now, go find Eleanor. Make a nice girl out of her.” Marv threw back his head and chuckled before releasing a deep and hearty sigh as Betty’s house came into view.
“He’s here.” Her breathy words floated out in sighs of relief when she saw Abe’s Sunliner parked across the street.
“I’ll be damned,” Marv said. Betty turned to him and scowled, partly in jest. “Go. But if he hurts you, he’ll have me to answer to.”
“You’re a doll,” Betty said. “But you don’t have to worry.”
Chapter 11
BETTY
Betty saw Abe sitting on the top porch step, long legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. This was the porch where child-Betty had played hopscotch, where teenage-Betty had waited for dates, where every-Betty had watched her parents drive away year after year, and where she had stood to greet them, burdened by a swirl of manners, obligation, and reluctant longing. She’d watched the sunset so often from this porch. She had always thought it did so especially for her—a selfish belief, perhaps, but what else was she supposed to think? The horizon was just outside her home, separating her lake from the sky. She now knew it was all an illusion.
But Abe was real.
Betty stood with the toes of her saddle shoes scratching up against the riser of the bottom step. She was close enough to smell Abe’s hair cream and to see his dimples dig into his cheeks as he smiled. He wore dark-blue work pants, faded and worn at the knees, like he’d had them for years. His belt was brown and worn, pulled so its tail circled halfway around his waist. His attire resembled that of delivery drivers or gas station attendants, not summer staff. It didn’t fit Betty’s image of a college boy.
His white shirt wasn’t wrinkled but it draped softly down his torso, and the sleeves were short, unlike the traditional crisp white long-sleeved tailored shirts he wore waiting tables. How long would it take her to unbutton that?
Stop.
Betty swallowed away any hitch in her voice. She might be smitten but she wasn’t going to be someone’s patsy. Not even Abe’s. If he didn’t share her feelings, she’d adjust her daydreams and growing expectations. “Fancy meeting you here.” The words sounded breezy, and not at all accusatory. Abe was clean shaven, and his skin smelled like talc and sandalwood. She bent to kiss his cheek, as if a man on her porch at midnight were commonplace, but Abe turned his face toward hers so the kiss landed on his lips instead.
Betty jerked back, or tried to, as Abe touched both sides of her face with his hands, grasping her cheeks with his fingers and drawing her into a hungry kiss. That was it—caramel! He tasted like her favorite candy—warm, sweet, and almost buttery. Betty steadied herself on the step, melting more and more into each sweep of Abe’s tongue against her own.
“My grandparents. They’ll be home soon.” Betty whispered each word without separating from Abe. He nodded and released her with tenderness. He traced her lips with his finger. Betty sat next to him but wrapped her arms around herself. This erased nothing. It didn’t matter how delicious he tasted. How much she wanted her world to be filled with kissing Abe. She wouldn’t be one of those girls who was courted on one side of the street and mocked on the other.
Betty stared ahead. It was easier to ask a difficult question if she didn’t look at him. It was also easier to hear an answer that way. She’d never taken any guff from anyone. And no matter how forcefully her heart hammered against her chest, she wasn’t going to start now.
“Hey, look at me,” Abe said.
Betty shook her head. “Where were you?”
“Is that what this is about? You walked home with Peck because I wasn’t waiting?”
Betty stared into the night and her neighbor’s wall. It was painted white—a blank canvas for her thoughts.
“I asked Eleanor to tell you I’d be late tonight,” Abe said.
Betty guffawed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
If he didn’t realize Eleanor would drop Marv in a minute, Betty wasn’t going to tell him. “Nothing.” She crossed her arms.
“I’m sorry you’re mad. Really, I am. I had somewhere I had to go.” He wrapped his arm around Betty’s shoulder and his hand dangled near her breast. Her heartbeat quickened even more. “I wouldn’t just ditch you like that,” he said. “I care too much about you.”
Betty’s throat tensed. She turned and looked into Abe’s eyes, which was the opposite of looking at a white wall. “I know.”
“No, you don’t, or you wouldn’t have been out with Peck.”
“I wasn’t out with him; he walked me home when you weren’t there.” She omitted the fact that Nannie had given her no choice. “Then I changed clothes and we took a walk, that’s all. Since I didn’t get any message from Eleanor, I didn’t know where you were.”
“Were you out looking for me?”
She couldn’t lie. Well, she could have, but she didn’t want to. “Yes. I was worried. And Marv didn’t know where Eleanor was either. I think he really likes her.” But who did Eleanor like?
“This isn’t about them. It’s about us. This isn’t going to work if you don’t trust me.”
There was an us and a this. “I’m sorry I doubted you. You’re not like other boys.”
“You mean I’m not like Peck?”
“Marv’s A-OK, believe it or not.”
If Abe didn’t want to be friends with Marv, that was fine, but two nice Jewish fellas should be able to find something in common. Something besides her. “So, can you tell me where you were tonight?”
“It’s not important.”
Betty reached for Abe’s hand. In theory, honesty was easy. It was harder in practice. “Everything you do is important to me.”
Abe smiled. “For me too.”
Betty’s heart swelled. How big could it get before it burst out of her skin? She laid her head on Abe’s shoulder, gently at first, and she relaxed, allowing him to bear its pressure. He was sturdy and strong. He could support the weight.
“I want you to know I was telling you the truth, so I’ll tell you where I was tonight. Where I’m going to be six nights a week,” Abe said. He stroked her hair, still in the bun. “But you’re not going to like it.”
They settled onto the glider on the screen porch. Betty�
��s shoulder fit under Abe’s arm like a puzzle piece. “You can tell me anything.”
Her head rested atop his chest. Her feet stretched to the end of the glider. Abe had his left arm around her, his hand gently on her hip. His heart thumped a rhythm that could have lulled Betty to sleep, had she not so badly wanted him to kiss her again.
She traced one of his shirt buttons with the pad of her index finger and wondered if hiding beneath she’d find a smooth chest or one covered in wisps of hair.
Abe turned his wrist without moving his arm from around Betty. “I’m not going to be able to walk you home at night anymore.”
She began to perspire. Had her grandparents objected? Had someone seen them together and snitched? “Why not?”
“I got a second job. I’ll be stocking shelves at night at the grocer’s. Doing some odd jobs they don’t want to take care of during business hours. This was the only time the owner could show me what to do. I start Monday after my dinner shift.”
Betty averted her gaze as a lump formed in her throat. Their nights. There would be no more walks, no more dunes, no more cuddling on the porch. “Oh.”
“Hey, it’s not so bad. I’ll be done before midnight. I need the extra money to send home. Well, I don’t need to, but I want to.”
Abe’s voice tinged with equal parts sorrow and pride. Betty hugged him, not sure what to say.
“No deliveries on Sundays, so I’m off tomorrow night,” Abe said.
Betty looked at him and lifted her eyebrows.
“I know you have to stay for the after-dinner show, but how about after that? We could go to the arcade or walk on the beach?”
“Sure,” Betty said. But she didn’t want to do either. She wanted to be alone with Abe, where they could talk just above a whisper without watching the clock. Where they could neck without fear of her grandparents waking up or walking in on them.
“We could double if you’d rather. Ask Marv and Eleanor?” Abe said.
“I was thinking maybe we could go back—” Betty’s cheeks warmed. She pressed her lips together and smiled. She was sure Abe could see her redden under the porch light.
“To the dunes?” he asked.
Betty nodded. She knew just the blouse she’d wear. The one with round pearl buttons that slipped easily through the buttonholes.
She shifted to an upright position but still leaned against Abe. He pushed on the floor with his feet so that the glider rocked back and forth. They sat in silence for a few moments. Silence with Abe was as comfortable and complete as their conversations.
“What did your father say about your new job?” she asked.
“I don’t really talk to him,” Abe said. “But he wouldn’t like it.”
“I thought you were doing this to help your family.”
“My mother. I’m doing it to help her. But I haven’t told her either. She wants all my money to go toward senior-year expenses.”
“I don’t mean to pry,” Betty said. “But are there any other family members that could help her?”
“You’re not prying. My family owns a store but it’s not like Georgia’s family’s store. It’s a five-and-dime, and we get by. I’m on a scholarship. But that doesn’t pay for all my fees and graduation activities. And unfortunately my mother’s rich parents don’t speak to her. I’ve actually never met them.”
Betty knew she had met Tillie’s family when she was a toddler, but only because there was photographic evidence of the gathering. Tillie was estranged from her entire family in Chicago, and they’d never reached out to Betty, something she’d pushed aside.
“Families are complicated. They shouldn’t be, don’t you think? But they are. My mother doesn’t speak to her family either.” Well, as far as Betty knew.
Abe bounced his knee like a jackhammer. “My grandparents disowned my mother. Literally wrote her out of the will and everything. My brother and I have never met them.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s horrible.” No matter Betty’s knowledge of strained families, disowning someone seemed worse than dumping them off with their well-to-do grandparents. “Why did they disown her? What did your mother do?” Surely parents had a reason for such a permanent decision and exclusion.
“She married my father,” Abe said.
Holy moly. Nannie wasn’t nuts about Tillie, but her grandmother would never disown Joe, her own son. All Betty’s grandparents ever wanted was for Tillie and Joe to give up their life on the road and live in South Haven, participate in the family business while raising their daughter. “Why didn’t they approve of your father?”
“Because he’s Jewish.”
The words rolled toward Betty with the rumble of a bowling ball. How could being Jewish be bad? Was he the wrong kind of Jew? Conservative to their Orthodox? Perhaps nonpracticing? So were many of the guests at Stern’s. But they were still Jews. “I don’t understand.”
“My mother grew up Catholic.”
Images of Christmas with Georgia’s family swirled in Betty’s head. The tree, the treif, the midnight mass, the presents, the statues, the saints, the sign of the cross.
Woozy with understanding, Betty nodded. His mother had given it all up for love.
But Judaism was based on matriarchal lineage, and the matriarch of Betty’s family wasn’t going to like this one bit. If Abe’s mother wasn’t Jewish, Abe wasn’t Jewish.
“You’re not Jewish?” Betty wanted Abe to correct her, to recite some rule or law that made him so. “Did you lie to my grandfather? He only hires Jewish boys.”
“I have a Jewish name, so people assume both my parents are Jewish. And if I hadn’t fallen for you, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’d leave at the end of summer. No harm done.” Abe waved his hand as if swatting away Betty’s concerns. “Does it matter to you?”
Betty wanted to blurt out “No!” but it caught somewhere between her heart and her lips. She’d never known anyone who’d married a gentile. She didn’t know how someone Jewish even married a non-Jew. By a judge, perhaps. In secret, for sure. A few Jewish girls in her class had dated gentile boys, but even that had drawn looks and whispers, on both sides.
“No,” Betty said. “It doesn’t matter to me.” She loved him, so she would make it be true.
“It will matter to your grandparents, though. Their entire livelihood is built on Jewish families. And coeds. I’m sorry I put you in this predicament. But if I’d told your grandfather, he wouldn’t have hired me, and I wouldn’t have met you—and I’m not sorry about that.”
Betty’s anger-tinged ache dissolved.
“I’ll understand if you need to tell them. That I’m not really Jewish, I mean. I grew up going to shul and celebrating High Holidays if that helps. My mother did that for my father, not that he deserved it. It’s too bad that half is not enough for anyone.”
Betty knew there was no such thing as half-Jewish. You either were, or you weren’t.
Looking at Abe, she realized their similarities and connections transcended their blood, their ancestry. They had similar values, a shared understanding of dreams. They were more alike than anyone she’d ever known.
It would have been okay with Betty if Abe said he’d grown up with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny living in his backyard. Betty looked into Abe’s eyes and didn’t glance away.
She noticed Abe’s eyes glistening as if he was about to cry. He’d been so brave to tell her the truth. He wanted her to know everything about him.
“We’ll figure it out,” she said. “Your father’s Jewish, right? That has to count for something.”
Abe stared at her. “My father isn’t such a great guy.”
“But he’s Jewish.” That’s what would be important to her grandparents.
“I guess that’s the bright side.”
Abe was Betty’s bright side.
They talked about Abe’s family’s five-and-dime, his sometimes-absent father, and his older brother, Aaron, who didn’t attend college and who had been drafted into the army just
six weeks after marrying his childhood sweetheart.
Betty didn’t see any bright side there. She shared the story of Tillie and Joe “giving” her to Nannie, Zaide, and South Haven.
“Neither of us won the parent jackpot, I guess,” she said.
Abe wrapped her hands in his. “No one has ever understood that like you do.” It was a unique and reassuring bond. Abe gulped before kissing her. He quickly pulled back. “I love you, Betty.”
She smiled—she couldn’t help it, even though it might have been a silly smile that stretched her cheeks out to look like a squirrel’s. A blanket of calm enveloped her. It warmed her more than need be on a summer night, but she wouldn’t have changed a thing.
She kissed Abe softly on the lips. “I love you too.”
Abe continued staring into her eyes. “When I graduate in May, I’ll move to New York . . .”
Betty nodded. “You’ll design skyscrapers.”
“You’ll continue at Barnard, and when you graduate we’ll get married. You’ll work at a fancy magazine in one of those skyscrapers.”
Had Abe just proposed? Or had he promised to propose? This was everything she had wanted, everything her grandparents wanted for her. Half-Jewish would do.
“We’ll be the toast of New York!”
“We’ll vacation here in South Haven,” Betty said. “I’m sure my grandparents would like that.”
“Like an ordinary Jewish couple on summer holiday,” he said.
They laughed, and Betty knew they would never be ordinary.
She pictured herself a guest at Stern’s, a visitor like her parents. She had never thought she’d move back here after college or take over the business. It wasn’t part of her plan, or her grandparents’ plan for her.
Abe tapped Betty and she jolted from her thoughts.
“Don’t you want us to raise our children here?”
Her stomach fluttered. “The career I want is in New York. There’s no fashion industry or magazine industry in Michigan. As for my children—” It was then Betty realized what Abe had said—our children—and the substantial meaning behind the two words. He had placed them into a joint future. One where she was a wife with a career.
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