“Oh, Millie, is that what you thought? No.” Julie put his hand on my shoulder. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but then he didn’t.
“Is everything all right?” I asked him. “With David—your brother-in-law, I mean.”
“Of course,” he said. “Nothing I can’t handle.” He gave me a half smile as if he wanted to reassure me, but he couldn’t quite get there. “I would walk you wherever you’re going. But I’m afraid I can’t keep him waiting.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but we’ll be fine. David is going to stay with me now. Aren’t you, darling?”
David didn’t look at me. Julie waved and walked out onto the sidewalk. Once outside, he put his hat atop his head, and he seemed to make an effort to stand up straighter as he walked down Monroe Street, his business associate walking next to him.
“Listen to me,” I said to David. “We’re going to walk to Mr. Bergman’s shop, and he’s going to have gumdrops for you. And Dr. Jake might meet us there,” I added, though I immediately wished I hadn’t in case Jake didn’t show. But all at once David stopped pulling away from me, and he reached for the handle of the carriage and held on.
We walked out onto the street. The fog had cleared, the morning was warm and muggy, and I was sweating as we made our way to the butcher shop.
“MILDRED, BOYCHIK!” Mr. Bergman shouted above the din of the Friday morning rush. “And is that the baby boychik?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I struggled to push the carriage through the crowded shop, and Mr. Bergman left his station at the counter to walk around all the women demanding their Friday briskets and over to where we stood by the door.
Mr. Bergman peeked in the carriage, where Henry slept. “What a beauty,” Mr. Bergman said. “How proud your father would’ve been, bubbelah.” Suddenly I wanted to cry, imagining what my father would’ve really thought if he knew everything about Henry, about me, about Jake. He wouldn’t have been proud at all.
I shook the thought away as Mr. Bergman took David’s hand, led him to the counter, and rifled around back for gumdrops. I pushed the carriage closer to the counter, and all the old women waiting for their meat peeked inside and oohed at Henry and smiled at me. It seemed there was nothing quite like a baby to make everybody love you, even the impatient old hens who needed their Sabbath briskets right now.
I glanced at the clock behind the counter. It was quarter to ten. We’d gotten here early, but my heart thrummed in anticipation, and I looked through the crowd of women to the door. “Mildred, is everything all right?” Mr. Bergman asked. I gave him a weak smile and tried not to appear as anxious as I felt. “I worry about you with your . . . good-for-nothing husband, vanished.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him, and I glanced toward the door again. With no sign of Jake, I leaned in closer to whisper to Mr. Bergman. “I’m meeting a friend here this morning. He’s going to help me.”
“A friend?” Mr. Bergman raised his thick gray eyebrows.
“Yes,” I said, not wanting to divulge any more about Jake. I heard the bell chime on the door and I hoped it was him.
Mr. Bergman’s frown creased deeper. “What is he doing here?” he muttered.
For a second, I wondered how Mr. Bergman knew Jake and why he had such dislike for him in his voice. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I knew instinctively whose hand it was even before I turned around.
“You have brought my baby?” Ed’s Russian accent resonated in my ear, so familiar, and now so unexpected, that I couldn’t help but cry out a little.
I turned and there he was, looking as he always had, though did he appear angrier? Or was it my imagination? I wondered if he’d been drinking vodka this early in the day. But I couldn’t smell it on him. His hand tightened around my shoulder. “We will talk outside,” he said gruffly into my hair. “And bring the baby.”
My breath caught in my chest. What were the chances of Ed showing up here when I was supposed to meet Jake? And what would Jake do when he arrived and he saw me talking to Ed? He would leave, certainly. I would miss my chance to see him. But Ed would not let go of my shoulder. He held on so tight that it hurt, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out again in front of Mr. Bergman, who most certainly would make a scene if he thought Ed was hurting me, which would be bad for business. “Can you watch David for a minute?” I asked, and Mr. Bergman agreed. I could feel his eyes on us as Ed led me through the crowd of hens and out onto the street.
I was sweating, from the heat of the June morning, from nervousness. I glanced around the street for any of sign of Jake, but all I saw were women heading to Mr. Bergman’s shop.
Ed let go of my shoulder, and I reached up to rub it a little. He peered into the carriage. “He is a very beautiful baby.”
“Henry.” I resisted the urge to pull the carriage back away from Ed as he reached in and gently put his finger to Henry’s bald head. “His name is Henry.”
“Henry,” Ed repeated, a note of tenderness in his voice. I tried to remember if Ed had ever looked at David this way, and I thought that he had, before it was clear that something was wrong, back when David lay beautiful and perfect and sleeping inside his carriage in much the same way Henry was now.
“How did you get the number?” Ed asked.
“The number?”
“You called for me the other night and told me to meet you here. But I never gave you the number, no?”
The number? I couldn’t breathe again. I felt I was gasping for air and I couldn’t get enough of it. How did this make sense? I’d called the number Jake had left for emergencies. How did Ed even know about the number? How had Ed gotten the message? Had he been listening in somehow on the party line? Jake had told me to ask for him when I called the number. Had I done that? Now I couldn’t remember.
“My mother gave it to you?” Ed was asking a question, but he didn’t wait for me to answer. “It must have been her.” He muttered something in Russian and sighed, and then he stroked Henry’s head again with a gentleness I could barely comprehend coming from him.
I thought about Ed’s late-night phone calls, his strange evasiveness with where he was working now, what he was doing. That he had disappeared . . . just the way Jake had disappeared. “Are you working for the FBI?” I said slowly. Even as I said it, it didn’t make sense. Ed and Jake were on the same side, working together? Why hadn’t Jake told me that? Why had Jake told me that Ed was the one they might be looking for? Jake had lied to me. Again. Maybe that shouldn’t surprise me so, but suddenly it was as if someone had taken every ounce of hope and drained it from my body. Again, I gasped for breath.
“Mildred.” Ed put a hand on my shoulder, gentler this time, the way he’d reached for Henry. “There are things you don’t know about me, and I’m sorry to upset you after you have just had my beautiful baby.” I shook my head unable to comprehend Ed’s words, that they seemed to be salted with kindness. “You got my telegram?” he asked.
His telegram. Ethel had been right. I tried so hard to breathe, but I couldn’t.
“You are hyperventilating,” Ed said. “Take a breath.”
I did as Ed said and tried to take a breath, slowly. I closed my eyes and focused on my lungs for a moment, and when I opened them again, Ed was staring at me with a different kind of look than I was used to. The same way he’d looked at me when he’d offered to buy me my blue couch at Macy’s for a wedding present. “You’ve been working for the FBI?” I finally said when I regained my breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There are many things I couldn’t tell you, Mildred. Many things you wouldn’t understand, or that might put you in danger.”
“Try me,” I said, but he didn’t. I took another deep breath. “The FBI came to see me before Henry was born.” I tried not to think about the feel of Jake’s lips on mine as he sat so cl
ose to me on my couch, the way he’d made me promise I wouldn’t tell anyone anything. I wasn’t really, was I? Jake had lied to me again, and now I was just trying to figure out the truth. “They wondered if you are involved in all this . . . spying.”
“Who came to see you?” Ed asked.
“I don’t know,” I stammered. “I don’t remember the man’s name.” Ed’s face remained unchanged, stoic. He didn’t realize I was lying. “But are you?” I prodded, wanting answers. “Involved?”
“That is what you think, Mildred?”
“I’m not sure what to think anymore.” And this was absolutely the truth. I didn’t know what to think about anything . . . or anyone. Not Ed. Not Jake.
Ed nodded, but he didn’t offer anything else.
“Where have you been these past few weeks?” I asked.
“I have been waiting for everything to blow over . . . Getting us a future.”
“What everything? What kind of a future?” But even as I said the words, I knew I didn’t want any kind of future with Ed. What I wanted was the Catskills with Jake. Jake. Who’d lied to me.
Henry began to cry, and Ed took a step back from the carriage. I leaned over and picked Henry up, bouncing him against my chest until his cries subsided and he drifted back to sleep.
Ed leaned in and kissed Henry on the head. His face was close enough to mine that I thought he might kiss me, too, and I now could smell the faint odor of vodka and cigars on his breath. “Rosenberg is going to fry for this,” Ed said calmly. “And then it will all be over. We will be able to go on with our lives. I am making sure our little family will be safe—”
“What do you mean, Julie is going to fry?” I interrupted him. I suddenly thought of a raw chicken floundering in oil. And I thought of the way Julie had looked this morning in the elevator, the kind way he’d spoken to David, and then the way he’d straightened himself up on the street, heading to his appointment.
“They’re interviewing him now,” Ed said, and I thought about that unfamiliar man in the elevator with us, how he and Julie interacted. “But Greenglass has already turned on him. He’s as good as done.” Before I had a chance to ask him further what he meant, Ed looked around the street and then took a step back. “I have to go now, but I will be back for you soon, Mildred. I promise.” Then he turned and quickly walked away.
AFTER ED DISAPPEARED down the street, I ran back into Mr. Bergman’s shop, grabbed a reluctant David, and pulled him away from the counter. “But Mildred,” Mr. Bergman called after me as I ran out of the store. “You didn’t even get your brisket . . .”
But I didn’t turn around. I ran the whole way back to Knickerbocker Village and I didn’t stop. Not even when David yanked so hard on my hand that my wrist began to ache. He looked behind us, pulling and pulling. “Darling,” I said to him. I was frantic, fighting back tears. “I was wrong. Jake isn’t coming today. But we’ll see him soon, I promise.” David didn’t seem to care, or believe me, or maybe he could sense I was lying. That I had no idea when we’d see Jake again. Because David struggled the whole way there, pulling against me, until finally I ignored the searing pain in my stomach, picked him up, threw him over my shoulder with one hand and pushed the carriage with the other.
My brain felt in a fog, unable to comprehend the new thought that Ed worked for the FBI, too. How was it that I was married to the man for so many years, that I slept next to him night after night, and I literally knew nothing about him at all? What was wrong with me?
By the time I reached Ethel’s door, I was breathing hard and tears were streaming down my cheeks. David was kicking and Henry was crying, too.
I knocked and Ethel opened the door. She wore a tattered housedress and her hair was a mess, but I was pretty sure I looked much worse because she put her hand to her mouth and cried out, “Millie! What’s wrong?”
“The FBI,” I said, though I couldn’t breathe at all now and I ached all over. I reached down to touch my stomach, and when I pulled my hand back, there was a little blood. I must’ve pulled out a stitch by carrying David—exactly as the doctor had warned me not to before I’d left the hospital.
Ethel stepped out into the hallway and quickly looked around. When she seemed satisfied that the hallway was empty, that there was no one here other than us, she invited us to come inside her apartment.
Henry was still crying and I knew he needed a bottle, but David had stopped flailing when he saw Richie on the floor, playing with a truck. I picked Henry up, and Ethel went into the kitchen, then came back with a towel. “You’ve ruined your dress,” she said, reaching to take Henry from me. “Well, hello there, little one,” she cooed to Henry, and rocked him, and for a moment I forgot why I was here. It was as if I’d just brought my new baby down the hall to meet my neighbor—my friend—as if we just might enjoy a cup of coffee together while the baby napped and the boys played.
Ethel sat down on her couch, holding a calmed Henry against her chest. I held up Ethel’s towel, now dotted with blood. “I’ve ruined it,” I said, and she shrugged to say she didn’t care, it was only a silly towel.
“Yes,” Ethel changed the subject back, her voice surprisingly calm, “the FBI were here this morning.”
“Here?” So the man in the elevator with Julie hadn’t been a business associate at all. “Did the children see them?”
She nodded. “They knocked on the door so early, before we were dressed. Julie hadn’t even shaved yet.”
“And what did they say?”
“They wanted to talk to Julie about this whole matter with Davey.” She sighed. “So he went with them, to talk with them. But he’ll tell them he doesn’t know anything and this will all be cleared up, quickly.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Ed said that your brother turned on him.”
“Ed?” Ethel stood and handed a calmed Henry back to me. She paced the floor now, and bit at skin on the side of her thumb. “He’s come back?”
I told Ethel some of what I knew, about how Ed and Jake were both working for the FBI and how that made very little sense. I told her about Jake’s claim about someone in our circle being involved with the bomb and how I’d thought it might be Ed until today when I learned he worked for the FBI, too. As I spoke, I felt like I was betraying Jake by ignoring the promise I’d made to him to keep his secret. But now I wasn’t sure who to trust. And, most of all, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to Julie.
“I can’t believe this,” Ethel said when I was finished talking. “Ed is . . .” She let her voice trail off as if she couldn’t, or didn’t, want to finish the sentence.
“Ed is what?” I asked. “Tell me, Ethel, please.”
“Ed is a liar,” she finally said.
“About what?” I asked. “Working for the FBI? Your brother?” I leaned in eagerly, wanting more. I wanted all of it to be a lie. Ed and Jake couldn’t be on the same side, working together. That just didn’t make any sense. And if Ed was a liar, then maybe I could still trust Jake.
Ethel shook her head. “Look, I didn’t want to get into this with you . . . Last year, Ed approached Julie and told him he had an assignment from the KGB. He wanted Julie to help him, but Julie refused. Julie didn’t want anything to do with any of that. Julie’s no traitor to his country.”
“The K-G-B?” I spit out the letters slowly in disbelief. The KGB? If Ed was working for the FBI, then what would he possibly be doing with an assignment from the KGB? I remembered the night before I went to the Catskills how I’d overheard Ed on the phone, talking about destruction and his Russian friends. A KGB assignment? But I had called the number that Jake gave me this week—the FBI number—and Ed had gotten the message. He must be working for the FBI. It didn’t seem fathomable that he could work for either one, much less both. “Maybe it was a trap,” I told Ethel. “Maybe Ed was trying to set Julie up?”
“Why would he do that?” Eth
el suddenly appeared very, very pale, as if she might faint, and she grabbed ahold of the arm of the couch. I didn’t have an answer for her. I had only the information Ed had told me today and that Jake had told me weeks ago. But none of it made sense. “I don’t know what Ed’s done, Millie, or who he’s working for. But I just don’t trust him.” Ethel sat down on the couch next to me and took a deep breath to compose herself. “Why’d he leave you the way he did if he hadn’t done something wrong? Tell me that. What kind of husband leaves his wife when she’s nine months along and then abandons her after she gives birth to his son?”
I wasn’t about to tell Ethel that Henry wasn’t actually Ed’s son, but, of course, Ed didn’t know that either. Ethel had a point. Ed had said he’d left to get us a future, but why couldn’t he have done that from the apartment? Knowing how excited he’d been about the baby, something must’ve really scared him to send him away like that. Was he hiding now, worried he might fry, too? Or was he just on assignment with the FBI the way Jake was? I didn’t know much about the FBI, but I saw the way they’d called Jake that night when Russia detonated the bomb and how Jake had disappeared for a while after that, traveling somewhere, presumably working. That day he’d come back he’d said he’d had only a short stopover in New York before he was flying out again. Was Ed doing that, too?
I wasn’t sure who to trust anymore, who was lying and who wasn’t. Who was good and who was bad. “Oh, Ethel,” I finally said. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
She patted my hand.
But I couldn’t get Ed’s words out of my head, about Julie frying, and Ethel’s words about Ed working for the KGB. “Can I ask you something?” Ethel nodded. “How is your brother involved in all this? Would he have worked with Ed after Julie refused?”
“I don’t think so,” Ethel said. “Davey worked at Los Alamos years ago when he was in the army.”
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