The Hours Count

by Jillian Cantor

  “Pitt has taken a turn for the better,” Ed said. “And Julie has given me a raise.”

  “Ed?” I turned back to look at him, and our eyes caught as if acknowledging this thing, this giant lie he’d just told me. But then he quickly looked away. Ed no longer worked for Pitt, so where had he possibly gotten the money? But for the moment, I didn’t ask. There was a giant television in my living room.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I convinced Ed not to call Lena by promising to stay in all day and watch television with David. I almost thought Ed seemed relieved, and I wondered what Lena had said to him last night when he’d come home with a television and, as I was pretty sure she’d figured out after attempting to call him at work, no job to speak of.

  I didn’t lie to Ed this time. David and I did sit on the couch and watch television. David was transfixed by all of it—the baseball players, the news updates, the UN General Assembly session.

  Midmorning, I called Ethel and invited her to bring the boys over to watch, and they showed up at one, just in time for Okay, Mother, Susan’s favorite game show.

  “Don’t you find this all a little strange?” Ethel asked as the host, Dennis James, addressed the audience as “Mother.”

  I didn’t tell her that the show had pulled me in, that I knew I would tune in tomorrow to find out what letters Mr. James would read and to see what prizes might be won. I didn’t tell her that I planned to telephone Susan some time today and tell her that I’d watched . . . on my new, very large television. “I don’t know,” I said. I turned and smiled at her. “I think we just have to get used to watching it.”

  Ethel laughed. “I suppose.”

  A commercial came on for Phillips’ Milk of Magnesia Toothpaste and I turned to talk more to Ethel, wanting to get at the real reason I’d asked her over here. “Ed said that Pitt was doing well,” I told her. “That Julie gave him a raise. He told me that was why he was able to buy the television.”

  Ethel frowned and glanced down the couch at her boys, who, along with David, appeared mesmerized by Dennis James, just back from the commercial. “I don’t know, Millie. I don’t want to get in the middle of anything.”

  “You’re not,” I told her.

  “It’s bad enough that my mother and brothers are upset with me over everything going on at Pitt. I don’t want to lose you, too.”

  “You won’t,” I said. “I promise.”

  She hesitated for a moment, and then she said, “Pitt is not doing well. Julie’s really struggling . . . We both are.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t realize . . .” Though I remembered how Ruth said Julie wasn’t always paying David, and I wondered if I would’ve seen signs of hardship in Ethel if I’d stopped to pay attention. Ethel was wearing an old, worn blue dress today with a tear in the sleeve. John’s pants were much too short, and Richie was in a stained hand-me-down. I remembered her that afternoon I first met her a few years earlier when she was riding down the elevator in a dramatic red hat, so far along with Richie and practically buoyant as she was on her way to the recording studio. But things couldn’t be all bad now. Ethel was in psychoanalysis four times a week. I couldn’t imagine that was cheap.

  “It’s all right,” Ethel said, and she shrugged. “Julie and I will get by. We always do.”

  “You’re absolutely sure Ed doesn’t work at Pitt anymore?” She nodded. I thought of the last job Ed had been fired from, the loyalty oath he’d refused to sign, Lena’s concern about Ed, the growing distrust of Russians in New York City, which was now even that much worse since everyone knew about their test bomb. “Did Julie fire him?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Millie,” Ethel said. “Can’t we talk about something else? The children? The weather? The Dodgers?”

  “The Dodgers? You don’t really want to talk about baseball.”

  “The children love the Dodgers,” Ethel said, which I knew to be true, but I also knew she was just trying to avoid my question.

  “Was it because of his accent?” I asked. “Was Ed’s Russian accent bad for business?”

  “Is that what you think of us, Millie?” Ethel’s voice rose.

  I quickly said, “Of course not.” But the truth was, I wasn’t sure. If Julie’s business wasn’t doing well anyway, then maybe Ed being so Russian wasn’t helping. “The Russians blew up the bomb and everything’s changing again now, isn’t it?” I thought of Jake and I bit my tongue so as not to tell Ethel what I really meant.

  “Maybe you’re the one who’s changing,” Ethel said. Her cheeks were flushed and she sounded annoyed. “Come on, boys,” she said, standing quickly. “Let’s go. We need to walk down to Waterman’s to pick up some food for dinner.”

  “You don’t have to leave yet,” I told her. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just . . . trying to find out the truth.”

  “You didn’t upset me, Millie,” she said, but we both knew she was lying.

  June 19, 1953

  The inside of Sing Sing is nothing like I would expect it, at least the way Jake leads me in, past the barricades and the flares and the police officers, up a row of wide cement steps and through a large gate. The prison is a brick fortress, but there’s something almost architecturally astounding about it, the way it floats here, just on the edge of the Hudson.

  I look up and I see the watchtower, the floodlights, the guards hanging out. Ethel is in here, locked away inside all of these beautiful bricks, with no way out. If she tried to run, surely one of those men in the watchtower would shoot her. I wonder if that would be better or worse than being shot with electricity, and I feel ill at the thought.

  Jake stops once we’re inside the door and he turns and looks at me again. In the distance I can still hear the helicopter and the sounds of protesting, shouting. I’m not sure whether it’s coming from outside, on the road leading up to the prison, or from inside, from the cell blocks. Or maybe both. “Are you sure you want to come in here?” Jake says softly, putting his hand on my shoulder again.

  “Yes. I shouldn’t have waited so long. I should’ve come earlier.” I should’ve taken Ed’s car months ago and done what I did tonight, but I was a coward. “I never thought it would come to this. An innocent woman. A mother . . .” My voice cracks on the word mother, and I can’t help but think of John and Richie. Orphans, I think. And I bite my lip harder to keep from crying.

  “Shhh,” Jake says, looking around. A guard stares at me and he doesn’t look friendly. “People here aren’t going to take kindly to you speaking like that,” he whispers.

  “But it’s not fair,” I tell him. “It’s not right. You know that.”

  He doesn’t respond, but he takes my hand and pulls me toward the next gate. He says something to the guard, who gets out his key and opens it for us. Jake turns back to me one more time. “You have to understand, it’s too late for you to change anything now.”

  I shake my head, refusing to believe that. Refusing to believe that everything has been for nothing. That I truly am too late. “I have proof,” I tell him, and I reach inside my purse and pull out the crumpled piece of paper, dotted along the edges with drops of dried blood.

  1950

  19

  In the winter of 1950, President Truman announced that we were developing a hydrogen bomb. I watched his speech on the television, the steady way he promised we would defend ourselves against the Russians at all costs. Across the ocean, in Britain, a scientist by the name of Klaus Fuchs admitted to spying and giving the Russians nuclear secrets. His arrest seemed to me the end of something, a way to tame some of our fear, a way for us to breathe easier again. But then a senator, McCarthy, made a speech that he had a list of communists and a spy ring . . . in the State Department! And suddenly all the world was afraid again. As news about Senator McCarthy’s speech had come on one night as we’d eaten dinner, Ed had laughed and shaken his head. “Idiot,” he’d muttered. But whe
n I’d asked him what he meant, he wouldn’t elaborate.

  I didn’t understand the idea of hydrogen in a bomb, but it sounded terrible, worse than just the regular atomic bomb. Vastly more destructive and explosive. If such a thing were even possible.

  I tried not to think about it as I headed off to Mr. Bergman’s shop with David. My stomach had grown larger and my constitution stronger this past month. I felt the baby’s tiny flutters now as David and I walked out of Knickerbocker Village into the frigid winter air. I rested my hand on my stomach, hoping to calm the tiny feet, and also myself. Just because they were developing a hydrogen bomb didn’t mean they’d make it work, didn’t mean they’d actually use it, I reasoned. It didn’t mean anything at all. At least not to us.

  David yanked hard on my arm, and I looked up, and for a moment, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. He was here again on Monroe Street, looking as he had the first morning when I met him out here, dressed in that same brown coat and brown derby hat. Jake. I blinked hard, wondering if he was real. I’d seen him standing here before. Or at least, I’d thought I had. But then I would run to catch up with him and he would disappear. Or I’d walk up to talk to him and he would turn and he wouldn’t be Jake at all.

  But this time, David saw him, too, and he let go of my hand and started running down the street. “David, wait!” I called, running after him.

  David was fast, and when I caught up to him, Jake had already grabbed him. “Hold on there, son.” At the sound of his voice, I knew he was real. David grabbed onto his arm, his awkward attempt at a hug. Or maybe it was his way of saying that now that he’d found Jake again, he wasn’t prepared to let him go.

  Jake looked up. “Millie . . .” His eyes met mine over David’s head. I suddenly felt completely exposed and I tried to pull my coat tighter across my midsection, hoping Jake’s eyes wouldn’t fall there and notice the bulge immediately before we had a chance to talk.

  “I wasn’t sure we’d ever see you again.” I attempted a smile, but midway my face seemed to freeze and all I could manage was half a frown.

  “Can we go inside to talk?” Jake asked. “I don’t have much time.”

  WE RODE THE ELEVATOR back up in silence, and when the bell dinged and we stepped out on the eleventh floor, we practically ran into Ethel and her boys, waiting to step onto the elevator. Ethel glanced at Jake, as if maybe she recognized him vaguely, and she shot me a funny look.

  “You know him,” John turned and said to Ethel, and I remembered that morning when John had found Jake and me talking in the hallway and I’d promised him Jake wasn’t a stranger.

  “You remember Dr. Jake Gold,” I said to Ethel. Then I leaned in and lowered my voice. “David’s psychotherapist.” Jake tipped his hat quickly in her direction, but I noticed he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Of course,” Ethel said, then frowned. We’d been to the playground together only once since that afternoon Ethel came over to watch Okay, Mother. Of course, the weather had been cold, and no one was playing outside anyway. I’d been feeling sick until the past few weeks. And David and Ruth had had a terrible accident last month. Ruth’s nightgown caught the gas heater and she caught on fire, and she’d been hospitalized with severe burns. I’d read the horrible account of it in the New York Post and went to Ethel’s right away to see if I could help. But she’d said what they really needed was O negative blood for Ruth, and neither I nor any of my family members had it. And that had been the end of our conversation.

  “How’s Ruth doing?” I asked Ethel now.

  “Getting better,” Ethel said quickly, and then pulled herself and the boys onto the elevator without any more pleasantries. Things between us had been strained lately, and no matter what we had once promised each other, I felt it was the weight of whatever went on between Julie and Ed. I still hadn’t been able to figure out why Ed didn’t work for Pitt any longer or what Ed did each morning when he left for work. Ed was no source of information for me, and I was pretty sure Ethel knew more than she’d told me. Ed had been friends with the Rosenbergs first, and I had begun to wonder if him unraveling that friendship somehow stunted Ethel’s and my friendship. Nevermind that Ethel still seemed mad that I’d asked if Julie fired Ed because of his Russian accent. That certainly hadn’t helped.

  The elevator doors shut and then the hall was quiet. Jake put his hand on my shoulder, and I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and walked down the hallway and opened up the door to my apartment.

  “That’s quite a television,” Jake said as the three of us walked in. I nodded, but didn’t say anything about Ed bringing it home or about him lying about how he got it.

  I unbuttoned my coat and hung it on the coat rack, forgetting for a moment about the breadth of my stomach underneath. It wasn’t until I felt Jake’s hand—right there, on the bulge—that I remembered again that he didn’t know. “Millie.” He said my name carefully, and I bit my lip to keep from crying. “You and Ed are having another baby?”

  I turned and looked at him “Not Ed,” I said.

  His eyes widened in surprise, and then, in another instant, his face softened. I saw him the way he looked that night, on the couch, in the cabin. The way his skin still smelled of the sun, that day, and creek water and pipe smoke. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes, very sure.”

  “A baby,” he said as if it were a lark and something he had not considered as real or possible until right this very moment—that he might become a father. That he would not be alone in the world any longer. He moved his hand gently across the entire length of my stomach as if he were feeling it in order to understand that it was true. That it was his. “If I had known . . .”

  “You would have come back sooner?” I asked.

  “Oh, Millie.” He sighed and moved his hand back down to his side. “I came back as soon as I could.” He stepped away from me and began pacing the short length of my apartment, from the kitchen to the window and back.

  David watched him from the couch, his eyes wide with something, I wasn’t sure what. Wonder? Happiness? He would never understand. Jake was here. And he would leave again. Just like that. I already felt sure of it. “We need a plan,” Jake said as he paced. “After the baby’s born, I’ll come back. We’ll be a family. The four of us.”

  “Jake.” I put my hand on his shoulder to get him to stop, to stand still, to talk to me. “I need you to tell me what’s going on first. Where have you been? Who called you that night at the cabin?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” he said.

  “Well, I need you to tell me something.” The words came out sharper than I meant them to, but I was suddenly so tired—tired of everyone lying to me, hiding things from me, thinking I couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t want to understand. It was one thing with Ed. But, with Jake, it felt . . . different. If we really were going to be a family—a family—then I needed it to be real, to be based in truth.

  Jake sighed again and sat down on the couch. David quickly gathered up all his cars, brought them to the couch, and began lining them up in rows next to Jake. But these rows were different than usual, the colors all mishmashed together. Yellow met red met blue. He was trying to express something he didn’t understand how to, maybe feeling something he hadn’t quite felt before.

  I understood. I felt it, too.

  “Darling.” I put my hand softly on David’s shoulder. “Can you go into the kitchen and go grab yourself a snack from the counter?” He ignored me, and he seemed to become more anxious, rearranging the cars, without any order and more frantically, so they were crashing into one another, tiny toy accidents. “Jake will still be here in a few moments. I promise.”

  David stopped moving the cars and looked to Jake, who said, “Go ahead, son. Listen to your mother.”

  David looked back to the cars, and perhaps their disorder was too much of a mess for him to protes
t any further, but I was surprised when he stood, when he listened, when he walked into the kitchen. It was as if the mere presence of Jake made him better, made him try harder.

  I slid the cars over and sat down on the couch next to Jake. He looked at me and he reached for my hand. “Can I trust you, Millie?”

  “Of course you can trust me.” I felt a little hurt that he had to ask.

  “I mean it. If I tell you something, can you promise me you won’t tell anyone else?”

  “I promise. I won’t tell a soul.”

  He leaned in closer to me, close enough so I could feel the warmth of his breath against my cheek. “I wasn’t in New York to do therapy,” he said.

  I exhaled, his confession seeming so obvious that it was almost as if I’d already known it somewhere deep down. Nobody does something for nothing these days, Ethel had told me. Jake’s free therapy had been too good to be true. “But you were really helping David before you left,” I said.

  “I know.” Jake leaned down and held his head in his hands, running his fingers through his hair. “Dammit,” he said.

  “So why were you here?” I asked. “What did you want with us?”

  “The FBI sent me.”

  “The FBI?” The letters sounded like nonsense coming out of my mouth, so unexpected they didn’t even seem real. I’d thought maybe this had something to do with him being a communist, with all the politics everyone around me had once been so deeply involved in, but the FBI? The FBI was something far away, foreign. Part of Washington, D.C. It had nothing to do with all of us here. “The FBI?” I repeated. “I don’t understand. Why would the FBI send you here?”