The Hours Count

by Jillian Cantor

  “Millie,” Ethel said, leaning in closer and interrupting my thoughts, “are you sure everything is all right? You seem so nervous.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Are you worried about more riots?”

  “Yes, the riots,” I murmured.

  “We’ll be safe here at the cabin. They were rioting only because Paul Robeson had a concert scheduled.” I remembered what I’d heard on the radio about Paul Robeson being named a communist and being called to testify before the Un-American Activities Committee last spring. Last month, Jackie Robinson had been called in to testify against him, and now it seemed poor Robeson couldn’t catch a break. Ethel laughed a little. “It’s all so silly, isn’t it? That a man with such a beautiful voice can’t share his gift with the world. He can’t give a concert in peace just because he has aligned himself with a certain political view.”

  I thought about Ethel’s beautiful voice. She had made the choice to become a wife and a mother rather than pursue her dream to become a Broadway star, but what if she hadn’t? Ed had claimed that the government was only out to get Paul Robeson because he was a Negro, and I’d felt bad that the color of his skin had made any bit of difference. “It must be hard enough to be a Negro without being a communist, too,” I said.

  “As if it’s any easier being a Jew,” Ethel said. In our own little pocket of New York City, being a Jew wasn’t hard. It was what everybody was. It was who we were and what we knew, but I read the paper enough to know that it wasn’t like that everywhere, that there were probably as many anti-Semites as there were anti-Negros. “Sometimes I think the whole world is going crazy.” Ethel pulled her hat down over her eyes and leaned back in her chair.

  I did the same. I closed my eyes, but all I could see was Jake, the way he looked buttoning up his shirt. The way he’d felt last night, his skin so close to mine.

  “Something else is bothering you,” Ethel said. At the sound of her voice I jumped and opened my eyes again. “Was it the therapy you attended in the Catskills? It wasn’t going well. Is that why you had to cut it short?”

  “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t tell her the truth.

  “Millie.” She put her hand on my arm. “You can’t give up. You have to keep trying.” I thought about what Jake said, that he would get back to the city when he could. How long would that be? And what were David and I supposed to do in the meantime? I bit my lip to keep from crying. “Come on now,” Ethel said. “It couldn’t have been all that bad. Look how contented David looks now sitting by the water.”

  He was stacking his rocks and unstacking them again, but his posture appeared relaxed, at ease, the way it had on the rowboat yesterday. Maybe I needed Jake more than he did. Maybe this therapy I’d had him enrolled in had become about me and the way I was feeling about Jake, not about David at all. “I’m a terrible mother,” I said.

  “Oh, Millie, stop it.” She bit at the skin around her thumbnail. “I’m going to tell you something I’m not proud of. I have trouble controlling my temper with John sometimes.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve spanked him before when I just couldn’t take it anymore.” She turned and looked off at him in the water. John waved to her, and she lifted her hand and waved back. “I didn’t mean to hit him. I felt terrible about it afterward. But I can lash out, you see? And I’ve been working on that in therapy.”

  “Ethel, everyone lashes out,” I said.

  “You don’t,” she countered back. “You have the patience of Job with David. You are the exact opposite of a terrible mother.”

  “People lash out in different ways,” I said, and I wondered if that’s what I’d been doing with Jake. Lashing out? No. I didn’t think so.

  She turned back to watch John gliding nearly effortlessly through the water. “Whatever you’re feeling blue about today, it’ll pass, Millie. It always does.”

  I hoped Ethel was right, but I wasn’t sure how I’d ever forget what had happened between Jake and me in the cabin. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. And I had no idea where I was supposed to go from here.

  17

  After we returned to the city, the time ticked by ever so slowly without our biweekly visits to Jake’s apartment. Each Tuesday and Thursday, David and I still walked to Waterman’s Grocery and then climbed the twisty stairs, hopeful that when I knocked, Jake would answer the door. But he didn’t. No one did. I even began to wonder about the awful cat inside and whether she had died from lack of food and water, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk into Waterman’s and tell Mr. Waterman or ask him about Jake’s continued absence. I knew nothing of where Jake had gone, what had become of him, or when he would return. And what if Mr. Waterman knew more? What if he told me Jake was gone, forever? I couldn’t bear to hear that.

  As the days went by, I began to wonder whether our night in the cabin had even been real, if it had been anything more than a dream. If Jake had been nothing but an imaginary man. David still wasn’t speaking, and I’d been feeling too tired lately to keep up with the colored cars, the colored blocks. David was really no better off than he’d been last fall, I’d finally admitted to myself.

  The city seemed to stand still, everything exactly as it was, except now there was no Jake in it. Ed drank his vodka and fell into bed each night, fumbling clumsily on top of me. Ethel and the boys returned to the city, and John began the school year. Ethel and I took Richie and David to the playground, trying to take advantage of the last of the warm days before winter.

  And still each Tuesday and Thursday morning I set out with renewed hope that Jake would’ve returned, and then I found myself at Mr. Bergman’s shop, just around the corner from Waterman’s, when Jake’s apartment turned up empty again.

  “Bubbelah, boychik,” Mr. Bergman cried out with joy each time we walked in through the doorway. Today we made our way carefully to the counter, and, as we approached, I nearly lost my footing, the smell of meat so strong that I thought I might be sick. “Not that I don’t enjoy your frequent company,” he said as he leaned across the counter to kiss my cheek and place some yellow gumdrops in David’s outstretched hand, “but I am beginning to worry something is wrong.”

  “Nothing is wrong,” I said quickly.

  “Eh?” Mr. Bergman raised his eyebrows. I clutched my stomach uneasily, wishing the meat didn’t smell so strong today. “Have you seen the newspaper this morning?”

  I shook my head, and he pulled the paper out from underneath the counter, pushing it my way so I could see it but David couldn’t. A picture of a mushroom cloud graced the front page, with the headline “Truman Says Russians Detonated Test Bomb.”

  “What? When?” My hands shook as I grabbed the paper and scanned it for information. The article said that the Russians had detonated their first test bomb on August twenty-ninth. A month ago. I exhaled and calmed a little at the thought that some time had passed and we were all still here.

  “It is very scary,” I realized Mr. Bergman was saying as he took back the paper. “Today a test. Tomorrow . . .” He snapped his fingers and folded the paper back behind the counter. “Manhattan could be dust. Just like that. Goddamn Russians.”

  The Russians. I could hear Jake’s voice, the urgency, as he spoke on the phone that night in the cabin. A month ago. The night we spent together was that very same night that the paper reported the Russians had detonated the bomb, wasn’t it? Did Jake somehow learn about the test bomb then when he’d received his strange telephone call? But how? And why would someone call him to tell him? “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean to frighten you, bubbelah.” Mr. Bergman reached across the counter and put a hand on my shoulder, but I ran toward the back room, where I knew from my days in the shop as a small girl that there was a sink. The meat smell was so very strong in my nose that the deeper I tried to breathe, the worse it got. Maybe some of the meat had gone bad and Mr. Bergman hadn’t realized it. Was it possible h
e was getting too old to run the shop?

  In the back room, the smell was less, and I took a slow, deep breath. The smell dissipated and the nausea calmed. “Millie,” I heard Mr. Bergman’s voice calling from the front. His head peeked through the doorway. “Are you all right?” I took another breath and I nodded. He smiled. “Should I congratulate you, then?”

  “Congratulate me?” It was only as I said the words that I realized what Mr. Bergman must think. “Oh no,” I said, shaking my head, “I couldn’t possibly be . . .” I had worn the diaphragm I’d gotten at Planned Parenthood so faithfully every single night. Every single night . . . except for one. I hadn’t taken it with me to the Catskills. That night with Jake, on the couch, in the cabin. “No,” I repeated meekly, “I couldn’t possibly . . .”

  “Let me get you some seltzer,” Mr. Bergman said, motioning for me to come back out front. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. My feet refused to move, my lungs refused to move. And then I heard myself saying, “No, I don’t think so. Thank you, but David and I should get back.” I hustled David out onto the street.

  Outside, it was windy. The leaves had begun to turn and they swirled in golden colors off the trees. The world was the color of dust, and as I walked back toward Monroe Street I could hardly see. If the bomb came and took us right now, I felt I might welcome it. That it would be an easy way to go.

  18

  I waited until the following week to go back to Planned Parenthood. For one thing, I tried as hard as I could to talk myself out of it, to make myself believe that this couldn’t possibly be happening to me. And, for another, I needed someone to watch David. With Jake still gone, I asked Ethel and she agreed without hesitation.

  “Millie, is everything all right?” she asked as I walked David into her messy apartment. She noticed me staring at all the many toys, and she bent down to pick one up as if she’d just been in the middle of cleaning and I’d caught her midway, though we both knew she hadn’t been.

  “Just leave it,” I said, putting my hand on her arm. “The children will make a mess anyway.” Though she had been the one to ask me if I was all right, I noticed that she looked especially tired this morning, her face sagging under the weight of something, I wasn’t sure what. I knew there were some things going on at Julie’s company because I’d overheard Ed talking about them on the telephone. Ethel’s brothers had resigned from Pitt, and seeing how ragged Ethel looked now, I wondered if this had also stirred up some bad blood in her family. I thought about the way Ruth had seemed angry at Julie when I’d had them over for dinner last winter. Had this escalated in the time since? “Are you sure it’s okay if David spends the morning here?” I was hoping she would still say it was because I had no other option except to bring him with me, which I didn’t want to do.

  “Of course,” Ethel said. “Of course it’s okay.” She sat down on the couch, clutching the toy she’d picked up from the floor. Richie sat quietly, playing with his cars, and John ran through them, making Richie cry and David smile. “Boys . . .” Ethel said rather weakly. “Yes,” Ethel waved at me, “go on ahead to your appointment. Go. We’ll be fine.”

  “We’ll talk when I get back?” I said, and Ethel shot me a weary smile.

  I blew David a kiss, but he was so busy watching John that he barely noticed. And then I left Ethel’s apartment and rode the elevator down. I soon found myself in the busy morning rush of Monroe Street, caught up among all the people going somewhere, all with a purpose—all on their way, I imagined, to somewhere exciting, caught up in a life vastly more wonderful than mine.

  PLANNED PARENTHOOD felt less welcoming than I remembered it—darker, even—and this time neither the receptionist in front nor the nurse who took me back were smiling.

  I lay there soundlessly on the cold metal table, trying to breathe, as the nurse examined me. I thought of the last time I was here, of the magical pill the nurse spoke of and how in a world where such a thing as the atomic bomb existed there should also be such a thing as a magical pill for a woman to prevent a baby.

  “Well,” the nurse said. Her name tag read “Nurse Ames.” She was blond and pretty and, I was fairly sure, not Jewish. “There’s no need to bother a poor rabbit, Miss Kauffman.”

  “I’m not pregnant?” I said, using their very clinical term for it, my voice riding on a small wave of hope.

  “Oh no,” she said, “you most certainly are. I’d guess about eight weeks along.”

  Eight weeks. I tried to count back, to do the math in my head, but I knew it was unnecessary. There was only one night this baby could’ve been conceived.

  Nurse Ames cleared her throat. “You know, there are some . . . options,” she said.

  “Options?” I immediately thought of poor Harriet, pregnant in high school and oh so desperate. I was nothing like her, was I? I was a married woman, married to a man who wanted another child more than anything.

  She scribbled something on a piece of paper and slipped it into my palm. I clasped it tightly, squeezing it, and then I gave her a small nod so she knew I understood, though the truth was, I didn’t. I couldn’t quite comprehend the awfulness of it, what I was somehow implicitly accepting, simply by taking her piece of paper. “Why don’t you get dressed and I’ll get you some vitamins to take with you,” she said.

  BACK AT ETHEL’S, I found the apartment dark and quiet. She ushered me inside with a whisper. “The boys wore each other out,” she said. “They’re all asleep.”

  I’d been gone awhile, and it seemed the world had changed in my absence. The day had turned gray and Knickerbocker Village had appeared menacing from the street, the elevator ride interminably long as my stomach churned, as my hand still clasped the paper Nurse Ames had handed me. Just outside Ethel’s door, I’d stuffed it in my purse and then accepted her invitation to come inside and sit down.

  “You look terrible,” Ethel said.

  “So do you,” I said, and then she laughed a little and so did I.

  “Have a seat. Let me make you some ginger tea,” she said. “It’ll help with the nausea.” I hadn’t breathed a word to Ethel about how I was feeling or where I went this morning, but it seemed she could sense it. And if she could, it would only be a matter of time before everyone else would, too. My mother would, certainly—I’d been avoiding her all week, ever since that morning in Mr. Bergman’s shop.

  I thought about refusing the tea, about denying that such a thing was necessary, but I didn’t have it in me to lie to Ethel. And I knew she was right, that the tea would settle my stomach, so I thanked her and sat down on her couch, and, a few minutes later, Ethel handed me the steaming mug. “David will enjoy a sibling,” she said softly.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I didn’t know how David would manage when there was another child with us all the time, a baby, someone small with needs other than his. I didn’t know how I would manage.

  “They make it all worth it.” Ethel had a cup of tea in her hand, too, and she blew on it carefully before taking a sip. “The children, I mean. I want them to have everything I never did growing up.” She looked around the room. And I did, too, as I sipped my tea, my eye catching on the beautiful piano and all the many toys. “How’s David’s therapy going?” she asked.

  I suddenly saw Jake, the way he looked that last morning in the cabin, the way his hand felt as it brushed against my shoulder, pulling the afghan tighter. “It’s not,” I said. “We’ve had to stop. After our trip.” Then I added, trying to sound hopeful, “For now. Jake . . . Dr. Gold has had to go out of town for a while.”

  “But there has to be someone else you could go to in the meantime,” Ethel said. I shook my head. “Is it the money? Because maybe I can talk to Julie, see if we can help out. Or I can ask Mrs. Phillips if she knows of anyone there who might help him.”

  “No, no, it’s not that,” I said, though I was grateful for her kindness, her desire to help. “It’s just . .
.” I concentrated very hard on my tea, willing myself not to cry, not to remember that moment in the rowboat on Esopus Creek when the sunlight had turned my son into someone altogether different—glowing, happy, at peace. “I just don’t know,” I finally said. “What about you?” I thought it better to get off the subject of me entirely before I confessed everything to Ethel. I didn’t think she would understand what I had done with Jake. It was a terrible thing. I knew it was. What was worse was that I constantly longed to see Jake again, to be close to him again. “How is your analysis coming with Dr. Miller now that you’re back in the city?” I asked her.

  “It’s good, I think . . . We’ve been talking through everything, and, you know, it all comes back to my mother. I was never good enough for her as a child. Nothing I ever did could compete with my brothers. It’s all the same, even now. But I have to move past that so I can be a good mother myself. Do you know what I mean, Millie?”

  “David and Bernie have resigned from Pitt?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

  “Yes.” Ethel sighed.

  “Is that causing problems in your family? With your mother?”

  “Julie has done so much for my brothers. For my entire family. He paid for my father’s funeral, for goodness’ sakes. And they don’t appreciate any of it. None of them do.” She moved her hand to her forehead as if trying to quell an oncoming ache. “Well, not so much Bernie . . . Gladys is sick. Did you hear?” I shook my head. “Incurable cancer.”