The Hours Count

by Jillian Cantor

  “I don’t know. Maybe Julius was the ringleader and Greenglass is telling the truth,” he said.

  “No,” I said quickly, “I just don’t believe that.”

  Jake nodded as if he didn’t believe it either. “Maybe Greenglass is just cutting a deal, trying to save himself.”

  “But Jake.” I grabbed onto his arm, “you just can’t let them arrest Julie. What about Ethel and the kids?”

  I suddenly felt so ill that I knew I was going to vomit. I stood and ran to the bathroom. I’d eaten nothing all day and yet I heaved into the toilet. All that came up was bile, leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

  I lay on the cool marble bathroom floor and rested my head against the toilet. Then Jake came in and lifted me up. He helped me back to the bed, where I lay on my side, watching David sleep so peacefully on the settee. In his dreams, I thought he was there again, on the creek in a rowboat, all of us together, all of us happy.

  Jake lay down behind me and wrapped his arms around me, his body so close to mine, so comforting, that I suddenly grew very tired. “I promise you,” he said, “everything is going to be okay. I’ll make sure of it.” I closed my eyes and leaned against him, feeling safe. I believed him. Nothing bad would happen if he said it was so. “Tell me about the baby.” Jake spoke into my hair, and I could feel the warmth of his words against my neck.

  “He’s wonderful,” I said. “I named him Henry.”

  “Henry . . . Oh, Millie.” Jake’s voice was thick with emotion. But then he was quiet as if he needed a moment to reconcile the brother he lost with the baby—his son—who now shared his name. “What’s he like?” Jake finally asked.

  “He’s calm and such a good sleeper. And beautiful. He has your eyes, just as I knew he would.”

  “He looks like me?” Jake sounded startled as if it never occurred to him until right this moment that the baby might take after him.

  “He looks so much like you. I think of you every time I look at him.” Jake pulled me tighter, and I could feel the weight of his body relaxing against mine.

  “I can’t wait to meet him.” Jake rested his face against my curls, and his closeness made me feel whole in a way I hadn’t felt in so long, since that last night in the cabin. I could feel my body sliding into an easy sleep. I wanted to stay awake, but I was too tired now, too sore, I’d been through too much.

  “You’ll help Julie, won’t you?” I murmured. “You’ll make sure nothing happens to him. We’ll find proof against Ed. And then we’ll be together.”

  Jake didn’t answer, but he pulled me even tighter to him so our bodies felt like one—one person, one being. This was the way it was supposed to feel, I found myself thinking just as I was drifting off to sleep. And then I thought that when I awoke, Jake would be gone. He would already be off, on a train, and I wanted to tell him not to leave us again. But I was too tired to say another word.

  24

  I was right, of course. Jake was already gone the next morning when I woke up, sunlight filtering in through the window, David’s awake and silent face, staring, close to mine. There was a note on the pillow, which still held the slight impression of Jake’s head. I pulled David onto the bed with me, then ran my fingers across the pillow and picked up the note.

  If you need me, call the number. Ask only for Dr. Zitlow, and say you’re Mrs. Zitlow.

  All my love, Dr. Z.

  I folded the note and sat up to put it in the pocket of my dress. As I moved, I grimaced in pain. But my head felt clearer after an uninterrupted night’s sleep, the first in many nights in which Henry hadn’t awoken me. Henry! How had I fallen asleep like that and forgotten all about Henry?

  I left the hotel and rushed to my mother’s with David in tow. He didn’t fight me today as we got on the subway. His body felt limp, deflated, as if he understood now that Jake could come back, and then he could leave us, again and again. Or maybe he was just hungry. I realized he hadn’t eaten dinner last night or breakfast this morning and on the way I stopped at Waterman’s and bought him a bagel. The counter was empty this morning as if Jake had never even been here at all.

  I ran into my mother’s apartment, out of breath, and inside it was quiet and still. “Mother!” I called out, frantic. David sat down on the couch, where Bubbe Kasha had sat knitting yesterday, and he chewed his bagel carefully with a surprising calm.

  “Shhh.” My mother walked out of the back bedroom and shut the door behind her gently. “The baby is asleep, and so is Bubbe Kasha.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you like that last night.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “The FBI man called me and told me you weren’t feeling well. He said you’d gone back to your apartment to sleep, that you’d be back here in the morning.” Jake. I wanted to close my eyes and remember the way it had felt to sleep so close to him last night. But my mother put her hand on my cheek. “Mildred, whatever trouble have you gotten yourself into?”

  I thought about telling her the truth, all of it. That I wasn’t in love with Ed and that I never had been, that living with him was a quiet kind of hell. That I was going to leave him very soon and begin a new life with Jake and the boys in the Catskills. That Ed was not just a bad husband but, it seemed now, a bad man, that he could be responsible for getting us all killed. If the Russians were to send a bomb across the ocean right now, it might be Ed’s fault. But instead I told her, “I’m not in any trouble, Mother. I promise.”

  “Then what would the FBI want with you?”

  “They wanted to talk to Ed,” I said, reasoning that that wasn’t entirely a lie.

  “So he’s the one in trouble?” She frowned at me. “Lena told me it has been very difficult for him, that he is hiding now because there are so many problems with him being Russian.” She paused. “And Lena said they are looking into Ed’s boss—your neighbor—the one whose wife watched David when you were in the hospital.”

  I wondered if Ed told Lena more than he’d told me. Or maybe he’d told her the same thing, that Julie was going to fry. Had Jake answered me last night when I’d asked him to help Julie? Now I couldn’t remember.

  “Maybe you should stay here with us,” my mother said, “until all of this is straightened out. The tenant upstairs moved out a few weeks ago. You could even have your old room back. And I’ll be just downstairs, to help out with the baby.”

  Though I appreciated her kindness, I was eager to get back to Knickerbocker Village to make sure Ethel was all right. “I’ll be okay, I promise.” I wondered how she would feel about me after I left the city, after I left Ed. I wondered if she would hate me then. I wanted to tell her not to, to tell her the whole story, as much of it as I knew, but I began to speak and then couldn’t finish.

  “What?” my mother asked.

  “Nothing.” I put my hand on hers and patted it gently. “Thank you for taking care of Henry last night.”

  WHEN I GOT BACK to Knickerbocker Village, I paused before getting off the elevator on the eleventh floor. I glanced down the hallway at Ethel’s apartment, wanting to go there and talk to her, to warn her that everything was much more serious than she thought yesterday. That her brother seemed to have taken his anger over their recent business feud and had done something incomprehensible with it. But two unfamiliar men were waiting in our hallway, milling about as if they were looking for something they’d lost, and I remembered what Ethel had said about staying away, about the FBI watching them.

  So, instead, I walked to my own apartment, went inside and got the children settled, and then I picked up the telephone and dialed Ethel’s number.

  “Hello,” she answered curtly.

  “Ethel, it’s me, Millie.” I spoke softly, though I wasn’t sure why. “I’ve heard—”

  “You shouldn’t have called,” she said quite brusquely, cutting me off.

  “I know, but, look, I need to talk to you. I
’m worried for you and Julie. Can you come over? Or can we meet somewhere later?”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment, and then she said, “Millie, I told you I can’t. Julie and I will be just fine.” The words were short, clipped, devoid of emotion. “Please don’t call back again.”

  Then I heard the click as she hung up the phone.

  25

  I learned that physical wounds eventually healed, no matter how much you reopened them, no matter how many times you lifted something you shouldn’t have or bled through an ugly, large housedress. I learned that no matter how much it sometimes felt that way, I would not split in two. In a few weeks time, my incision began to turn into a scar, a jagged purple line down the length of my front that made it certain in a deeply physical way that I would never forget the pain of this summer.

  Henry began sleeping through the night at only five weeks of age, and I worked hard each day with David, practicing with his communication cars, forcing myself to try to have the kind of patience that Jake did with him. I noted the presence of the strange men in our hallway and out on Monroe Street in front of our building, but I neither heard from nor saw Ed or Jake for weeks. I followed the news of the U.S. entry into the Korean War at the end of June, which the newscasters blamed on this terrible espionage that had taken place and which, according to them, was being investigated with all the might of the FBI. This was a sentiment that made me laugh—all their might seemed to be stationed around Knickerbocker Village these days and, to me, the men appeared not mighty but bored, smoking cigarettes, reading newspapers, and I even saw them once rifling through trash cans. They were waiting for something to happen outside the normal droll life of our apartment building. And so far, nothing had. Mainly, they watched women like me, mothers struggling to pull their carriages and their older children on the elevator without losing track of anyone or anything.

  As much as I wanted each day to walk down the hall and knock on Ethel’s door, I followed her wishes and didn’t. Partly I knew that she wouldn’t talk to me even if I did. And partly it was self-preservation. I felt the men in the hallway might report anything to Jake or Ed—or, worse, another FBI man I didn’t know who might begin to suspect me of something, too. So I tried to ignore the men in the hallway and concentrate on my boys.

  Yet, I still paid attention to what was going on over at Ethel’s. It seemed she was continuing on with her schedule of psychoanalysis several days a week, as I would hear her walk out at that time to the elevator. And Julius still went to and came home from work each day. Sometimes Ethel took the children out places, though not to the playground because I never saw her there anymore, but I guessed to go to Waterman’s Grocery or Mr. Bergman’s shop. They needed to eat, after all. Each time any of them left the apartment, it was immediately clear to me because I could hear the shuffle of the men’s feet in the hallway as if they were racing to watch the Rosenbergs step onto the elevator. The men didn’t always ride down with them, and I noticed there were usually different men on the street to follow Ethel or Julie to wherever it was they were going.

  I watched the news and read the paper each evening, hoping for more than what I could gather simply from listening to the footsteps in my hallway, but the news made no mention of the goings-on at Knickerbocker Village as far as I could tell. Mostly, I read about Korea: Truman appointed MacArthur to lead the UN forces, and there were predictions of the war going on for six to nine months. All the headlines I saw now about the Reds referred to the ones over there. I took some comfort in the fact that the rest of the world knew nothing of the FBI watch in my hallway. It meant that nothing would come of it, I guessed, and that soon the FBI would leave for good. I wanted Ethel and Julie’s life to go back to normal, but I also dreaded Ed coming back, and I hoped I would see Jake again before then so we could come up with a plan. But first I still longed to talk to Ethel, to warn her, so eventually I came up with a plan of my own.

  One morning in July, after I heard the commotion in the hallway, I put Henry in the carriage and took David down the street to play in the park. I watched for Ethel and her boys to make their way back. When I saw them, I quickly scooped up David and grabbed the carriage and ran down Monroe Street after her. I bounded onto the elevator behind her just as the door began to shut. I put David next to the buttons, and I didn’t try to stop him as he pushed every single floor.

  Ethel’s face turned in surprise, and then she seemed to realize what I had done and her features softened. We were completely alone in the elevator. Just me and Ethel and our boys. All at once, she leaned across the carriage and gave me a hug. “Millie,” she said, her voice breaking a little on my name, “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I said, my voice catching. Life had been so lonely without Ethel. I’d been keeping the television on nearly all day and all night just to feel I wasn’t completely alone.

  “Every floor?” I heard John say to David. “Really?” I laughed a little and pulled out of Ethel’s hug. I wiped away tears from the corners of my eyes. John shook his head, and from the peculiar look on his face it seemed clear to me that he understood something wasn’t right, that the adults in his world were acting strangely.

  I patted him on the head. “We’ve missed seeing you, Johnny,” I said. “Haven’t we, David?”

  David didn’t answer, of course, but he stared at John, his eyes open wide. John shrugged my hand away and folded his arms across his chest.

  The elevator door opened to an empty first floor. The sound of the ding startled Ethel and she immediately jumped back as if she had never even spoken to me at all.

  “I’m sorry, Millie,” she said when the door closed again and we rode slowly up to two. “I haven’t wanted to ignore you, but it’s for the best. For your own good. We shouldn’t want those FBI men to see us talking, to know we’re friends. They might start to follow you, too.”

  I remembered how Jake told me to not get involved and I worried that Ethel might be right. With Ed gone, the FBI should want nothing of me right now, and it occurred to me for the first time that maybe Ed had left to protect me. The thought didn’t sit easily with me and I tried to push it away and get back to Ethel. I had only a short time before the elevator made it up to the eleventh floor. “Jake told me that your brother blamed Julie for getting him involved in espionage,” I blurted out. “David told the FBI this was all Julie’s fault.”

  “No, Millie,” she said. “Absolutely no. That’s not true.”

  “Ethel.” I reached for her hand. I thought about how there was so much about Ed that I never knew, that I still didn’t know. How well could you really know a person, even your husband or your own brother? “David’s your brother. Why would he lie?”

  “No, Millie. Your information . . . it’s just plain wrong. We’ve just been to see Ruth, who’s finally home from the hospital, thank goodness, and she said David has it all worked out with them now. He’s struck some kind of a deal with the FBI. Everything’s going to be fine. For all of us.”

  “But Jake said . . .”

  “Millie, you can’t trust Jake.”

  “No, I can,” I said, but even as I said it I felt a flicker of doubt. I wanted to trust Jake. I really, really did. But could I?

  “He’s been lying to you all along,” Ethel said. “And he’s FBI.”

  I knew what Ethel said was true, but I also felt in my heart that Jake loved me and David. And Henry, even though he hadn’t met him yet. But he was going to adore Henry. “But now he knows me,” I told Ethel, feeling desperate to make her understand. “He might have lied before. But he wants to help me. He wants to help all of us.”

  Ethel frowned. “Millie, the FBI is out to get us. They don’t want to help any of us. Julie thinks Jake is the worst of them. And the way he lied to you about helping David—”

  “But he did help David.” My voice faltered a little as I glanced over at my still-silent son, now
staring hard at John.

  Ethel put her hand on my shoulder. “Trust no one but yourself. Please, Millie.”

  “Ethel,” I said, thinking about what she’d just said, that David had worked out a deal, that everything was going be fine—for all of us. I wanted to believe that. “If your brother has fixed everything, then why are the men still in the hallway upstairs?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But Julie thinks they have it in for us just because we’re Jews who used to be involved in the Party.” She lowered her voice as the door opened up to an empty third floor. “We’ve gotten our passport photos now. Julie thinks we can go to Mexico. Maybe for a longer . . . vacation than we’d anticipated.”

  “You mean run away?” I asked.

  “Mortie and his family did.”

  “The Sobells went to Mexico?” I thought of Mortie Sobell, and he did not seem like the kind of man who would take kindly to so much sunshine.

  “It doesn’t matter that we didn’t do anything wrong,” Ethel was saying, “everybody in this country is so afraid of Russia and the bomb. And they need someone to blame. They need to feel like they’re doing something. How silly is it that they’ve focused in on our little Jewish family here in Knickerbocker Village?”

  “But are you sure that Julie wasn’t involved?” I said quietly.

  “Yes, Millie. I’m absolutely sure. He told me he wasn’t and I believe him.” She looked at me and then quickly away. “We’re not like other couples. We tell each other everything. And Julie’s a good man.”

  I thought of the way he helped me that morning in the elevator, the kindness he showed to David. “Jake thinks Ed was involved, but he doesn’t have any proof. Ed and I aren’t like you and Julie. It seems I don’t know much about my husband at all.”

  Ethel frowned again, maybe at the mention of Jake’s name, maybe because I was telling her that I knew nothing real about Ed. But all she said was “They don’t have any proof about anything these days. It doesn’t stop them.”