The Hours Count

by Jillian Cantor

  The elevator rode up a few more floors and we rode in silence. Henry let out a little cry and I pulled him out of his carriage to comfort him.

  “Millie,” Ethel said as we headed toward the ninth floor, “I want you to know that you’ve been a good friend to me. I’ll miss you. The boys will miss David. And little Henry.” She squeezed his chubby little leg. “I’ll want to write you from Mexico. But I might not be able to . . . It might not be in your best interest to receive letters from me.” She squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back.

  When the elevator doors opened on the eleventh floor, Ethel quickly moved away from me, grabbed John’s and Richie’s hands, and walked off brusquely, her head held high as if we hadn’t ever spoken to each other at all.

  THE NEXT EVENING, after I’d put the boys to bed, I found myself smoking a cigarette in front of the television. I closed my eyes, listening to the voices of the men reporting the news without watching. As if I were just listening to the radio, not enjoying my television, which I wasn’t enjoying now anyway remembering how Ed had brought it here. For me.

  Suddenly, I heard noises in the hallway. Louder than just the two men. Many, many sets of footsteps, a banging on a door, a woman screaming from somewhere down the hallway. Ethel?

  I cracked open my door and peered down the hall. There were so many men by Ethel’s door. I counted one, two, three . . . twelve? Was Jake there? I arched my neck, looking for him, but I couldn’t see clearly enough, and I was afraid to actually open the door and walk out into the hallway.

  The men entered the Rosenbergs’ apartment and then they came back out carrying things—papers, a typewriter. “You can’t take my record!” I heard Ethel yelling. “I made that for my son.” And I remembered that morning when I saw her about to ride down the elevator—so carefree, it seemed—off to the studio. How could they dare take that away? What possible use would they have for it?

  I heard more shouting, more commotion, the sounds of The Lone Ranger on the radio still playing in their apartment. I heard Julie complaining that they didn’t have a warrant. “You have no right!” he kept shouting. And yet the men continued, in twos, carrying out things and riding down the elevator. If Ethel was right about her brother striking a deal, then why were all these men here taking things from their apartment?

  At last, when it seemed they couldn’t take any more things, two men came out with Julie. I gasped as I watched them walk him out of the apartment, holding on to his arms, his hands in handcuffs. I couldn’t make out their faces, but, from the back, one of the men vaguely looked like Jake. It couldn’t be him. Suddenly Julie noticed I was watching and shook his head a little. I quickly shut my door before the FBI men saw me staring.

  I remembered what Ethel had said: Trust no one but yourself. Was she right? Was that really Jake out in the hallway? Arresting Julie? It couldn’t have been him. No matter what the rest of the FBI were doing, Jake would not arrest an innocent man. I wanted to believe that so badly.

  The hallway was silent now, and I opened my door and walked out. No one was there, and if any of the other neighbors were home and had noticed the noise, they were now pretending not to.

  Ethel’s door opened and she stepped out, holding on to one boy with each hand. “Ethel,” I called down the hallway. She looked up and tears streamed down her face. “What’s happened?”

  “Julie’s been arrested,” she said. The words sounded unreal coming from her. She said them almost without emotion as if she couldn’t even comprehend what she was saying. Tears kept falling down her face, but she made no attempt to wipe them away.

  “Oh, Ethel . . .” I walked down the hallway toward her, but she let go of John’s hand to hold up her hand to stop me. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  She shrugged and bit her lip. “The FBI men are driving us to my mother’s,” she said, and then she turned toward the elevator and stepped on.

  “Wait!” I called after her. But she didn’t answer, and I heard the elevator door closing.

  BACK INSIDE MY APARTMENT, I held the piece of paper with the FBI number on it in my hands. Julie had been arrested. Ruth must have lied to Ethel about the deal Davey had struck. Or maybe the FBI did have some other proof, although I had no idea what that proof could be. And I thought about what Ethel said in the elevator—that they didn’t even need proof. But that made no sense at all. This was America. I needed to call Jake and talk to him. Ethel had said I couldn’t trust him, but what other choice did I have?

  Still, a little bit of doubt crept up inside me, a small, annoying itch that I couldn’t quite scratch. Even if he wasn’t here tonight among the men pulling Julie and Ethel’s possessions out of their apartment, he’d let Julie be arrested. But maybe he’d had no choice. Or maybe he was less involved than I thought and things had gotten beyond his control.

  I dialed with shaking fingers. I could still feel the panic in Ethel’s voice as she’d yelled about her record that the FBI men stole.

  “This is Mrs. Zitlow,” I said when the woman answered. “Tell Dr. Zitlow to call me as soon as possible.”

  I hung up before I could say, or she could ask me, anything else, and I sat there and stared at the telephone, waiting and waiting and waiting for it to ring.

  I fell asleep on the couch with my hand still on the black receiver, the television still on, its muted yellow light flashing on and on.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I awoke late to the sounds of Henry’s cries and David’s kicks. I was stiff from sleeping on the couch so awkwardly, and as I sat up and stretched, I remembered the way Julie had looked as the men had pulled him to the elevator in handcuffs last night: smaller than usual and very grim. I thought about Ethel now and how she must feel this morning, waking up without him, at her mother’s. It seemed an unfathomable sort of sadness and fear. When Ed left, it was of his own accord. And, anyway, I didn’t love and need him the way Ethel did Julie. These past few weeks without him had been a relief.

  The telephone finally rang as I was fixing a bottle for Henry. I put the bottle down and I ran to answer it.

  “Mills.” Susan’s voice, not Jake’s, rang through the line rather clearly. I stretched the telephone as far as it would go to grab Henry’s bottle off the table and put it in his mouth. “I saw on the news about your neighbor being an atom spy. I can’t believe it. You were friends with such a person . . . Has the FBI been there to question you?”

  “Slow down,” I said, and I tried to take a moment to process what she was saying, that now the entire world believed Julie to be an atom spy. It sounded like such a silly phrase, almost harmless like a science project, but I knew exactly how terrible it was. The FBI believed Julie to have given Russia secrets about the bomb. And now that it was reported in the news, the entire world would believe it, too.

  “Well?” Susan said, sounding a bit out of breath as if she’d run to the telephone immediately upon seeing the news. I heard one of the twins calling for her in the background, the words so clear and obvious in her childish voice. I glanced at David, who was concentrating very hard on eating his cereal—silently, of course.

  “No,” I said, thinking about Jake, who hadn’t returned my call. “No one has been here.”

  “They say they’ve set his bail at one hundred thousand dollars.”

  “One hundred thousand dollars? That’s absolutely crazy.” There was no way Ethel and Julie would be able to pay anything close to that. I was pretty sure that meant Julie was going to have to wait in jail until this was all resolved. I couldn’t imagine what Ethel was thinking right now. Or feeling.

  “Well, apparently they believe him to be a very dangerous man. Who knows what else he might do should they let him out while he awaits trial?”

  Dangerous? Julie? “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “He’s so kind, and such a good father.” I thought again of that morning on the elevator, him talking to David so sweetly, reminding David to
help me. “And very good with David, too.”

  “Look, why don’t you and the boys come out here and stay with us for a little while. Until this all settles down.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I should go check on Ethel.”

  Susan inhaled sharply on the other end of the line. “I read she’s inviting the press into her home today.”

  That didn’t sound like Ethel at all. Inviting the press, here? “Let me call you back,” I said, and I hung up despite her protests.

  I put David in front of the television and turned it back on. Henry was finishing his bottle, and I picked him up and took him with me down the hall to Ethel’s apartment. I knocked on the door and I was surprised when she answered with a flourish and a huge smile. As soon as she saw it was me who’d knocked, her smile faded rather quickly.

  Ethel wore a brightly flowered dress today—one of her nicest, though, I noticed her bra strap was slipping free, down her shoulder, and I wanted to tell her to fix it, but she interrupted my thoughts by leaning out toward me and chiding me, in a hushed voice, “Millie, what are you doing here? The press are coming. I’m really in quite a rush, trying to get this place cleaned up. And I need to go out and buy a chicken.”

  “A chicken?”

  “For dinner.”

  “You’re making chicken for dinner? Ethel . . . ?” I slung Henry under one arm and reached up to fix Ethel’s bra strap with my free hand.

  Ethel pulled back quickly and finished fixing the strap herself. “I have to show them this doesn’t mean anything. That I’m not worried . . . because Julie’s innocent. I have to present a strong front.” Her eyes welled up with tears and she stopped talking to desperately wipe them away. “It’s what Julie wants me to do.”

  “But Ethel . . . you are worried.” She bit her lip and wiped a stray tear off her cheek. “I’ve called Jake,” I said. “He’ll get this straightened out. I know he will.”

  “Please, Millie, stay out of this.”

  “I want to help you,” I said. “You took care of David the whole time I was in the hospital, and now you need a friend.” I put my free hand on her bare arm. “Let me help you.” Ethel’s features eased. I noticed her strap had slipped again, but I didn’t move to fix it. “At least let me go get you a chicken from Mr. Bergman.” She bit her lip again and didn’t say anything. “Come on,” I said. “No one will fault a neighbor for getting you a chicken on a day like today. And I was just about to go see Mr. Bergman anyway,” I lied. But I felt desperate to help her. To do something. And however small, this seemed to be it.

  She nodded, but then she quickly shut the door.

  OUTSIDE, the sun was shining brilliantly, the cars driving across the Manhattan Bridge, small and glittering like colored stars over the sparkling East River. It was almost incomprehensible the way the world beyond Knickerbocker Village appeared so exceedingly normal this July morning.

  The children were surprisingly calm on the walk to Mr. Bergman’s. They understood nothing but the warmth of the sunshine upon their faces, neither one of them seeming to comprehend the shift in the air or to sense that something enormous and almost entirely unbelievable had happened on the eleventh floor last night.

  I wondered how much press would be there this afternoon. And I wondered if she could pull it off, acting, as she’d said, as if nothing were wrong, preparing a chicken for dinner for herself and the children. I remembered how she told me once that her high school class had named her most likely to be America’s leading actress by 1950 and it made me sad to think that this was it.

  Mr. Bergman’s shop was fairly empty this morning, though when he saw us walk in, he didn’t call out his normal buoyant greeting, and I guessed that he had heard the news, too.

  I pushed the carriage up to the counter, and David jumped up, had a seat, and held his hand out expectantly, waiting for the gumdrops. Mr. Bergman leaned across the counter, patted him on the head, and pulled a few gumdrops out of the bag and put them into David’s hand. In his other hand he had an envelope, which he placed in my hand. “Mildred.” His voice was low, more serious than usual. “I was going to come find you after work. Your friend . . . a Mr. Zitlow . . . dropped this off for you this morning.”

  I exhaled. Jake had gotten my message. Thank goodness. I ripped the envelope open and pulled out the letter inside:

  I’m doing everything I can but cannot find any evidence yet for what we discussed. Things are getting bigger than me now, and I can’t contain them. Search your apartment and see what you can find to implicate the suspect we mentioned at our last meeting.

  I have a plan for us. Will explain in person . . . making arrangements. Meet me in the lobby of the place we were last together. Will send word when. Until then . . .

  With love,

  Dr. Z

  I turned the paper over in my hands, wanting it to say something else, something more. Excitement rose in my chest but then quickly subsided. Jake had a plan for us. But he hadn’t mentioned Ethel and Julie. Was he not able to help them? He was not able to prove that Ed had done anything wrong, that he might be at fault for this whole horrible mistake. It was up to me to find something on Ed.

  “Mildred.” Mr. Bergman’s voice sounded like a warning, and I wondered if he’d read the contents of the letter. I tried to imagine Jake here in his shop, just hours, or maybe moments, before I was. I sniffed the air to see if I could catch the faint waft of pipe smoke, pine trees, but all I could smell was raw meat.

  I remembered why I’d come here, and I folded the letter up and put it in the pocket of my dress. “I need a chicken,” I told him. “For my neighbor Ethel. And one for myself, too. Two chickens.”

  Mr. Bergman looked at me sternly. “Have you got yourself tangled up in this mess, Mildred? Atom spies?” He lowered his voice on the last two words as if he were almost afraid to say them out loud. “Is this Ed’s doing?”

  “This is all a terrible mistake,” I said in a low voice. “That’s why Ethel needs a chicken. She’s going to prepare one while the press watches, show them that none of this is worrisome to her. That Julie’s completely innocent.”

  “A chicken?” He raised his eyebrows. “What they need is a good lawyer. Do they have one?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “I suppose they must.” I wondered how expensive a good lawyer was and whether they were able to afford one. Ethel had already said Julie was paying for David’s lawyer, and now he would need one for himself, too. They were supposed to be using that money to go to Mexico this summer.

  “All right, I will get you your chickens,” Mr. Bergman said. “But first, let me tell you a story.” He cleared his throat. “When your father was still alive, back in ’28, and the slaughterhouses were trying to gouge us, do you know what he did?”

  I vaguely remembered that time, when I was a little girl, before the market crashed, before the war, when people still had it in them to get all up in arms about things like the price of meat, but I didn’t remember anything specific my father did. “No,” I said. “What?”

  “He organized all the kosher butchers in the city to call a strike. He was the one who said he wasn’t going to stand for it. He was going to make a difference. And do you know what happened?” I shook my head. “Even after the strike was over and things were resolved, the slaughterhouses were very angry with us. They wanted to get even. They sent us terrible meat for months. If it hadn’t been for the chickens—we always have had the best chicken”—I nodded, listening—“it would’ve put us out of business for good.”

  I thought about my father, standing up and organizing all those butchers to fight for something that wasn’t right, and I felt a proud of him in a way I hadn’t ever felt before. Then I remembered why Ethel said she’d been so involved in the Party to begin with—to help organize labor unions, fairness for workers. My father would’ve understood that being a communist once didn’
t mean you were a spy. “I miss him,” I said, my voice breaking.

  “So do I, bubbelah.” Mr. Bergman reached across the counter and squeezed my hand. “But you know what he would tell you if he was here now?” I shrugged. “He’d tell you to go give Ethel her chicken and then get the hell out of Knickerbocker Village. Go out to New Jersey, stay with Susy for a little while. Keep away from all this.”

  I was fairly sure that wasn’t what my father would tell me at all. “I can’t do that,” I said. “I’m not going to abandon my friend.” I lowered my voice and leaned in closer. “I don’t understand everything that’s gone on. I know Ethel’s brother David got into some trouble and he’s somehow dragged Julie into it now.” I paused, wondering whether I should say this next thing to Mr. Bergman, whether I should bring him into this at all. His brown eyes were fixed so heavily on my face as if he were imploring me to continue, so I did. “But I don’t think Julie would’ve given atomic secrets to the Russians no matter what the FBI or the papers say. He’s so kind, and he’s such a good husband and father. He’s always playing baseball in the courtyard with his boys.” I said it firmly as if this were all the evidence anyone might need. But wasn’t it? A man like Julie, who loved his children and his wife so, he would never want them murdered, just like that, by the Russians suddenly dropping the bomb.

  “You gotta look out for yourself in this world. You can’t worry about everybody else. I have a bad feeling about this, Mildred. They’re not going to stop with arresting just Julius Rosenberg.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “Everyone is so afraid. The Russians have the bomb now. We’re at war with Korea. The House Un-American Activities Committee is looking into so many supposed communists, and that Senator McCarthy keeps talking about all the spies in the State Department, changing his mind about how many of them there are. The government needs to look like they’re doing something or else how will everyone sleep at night?” He sighed. “What do I know? I don’t know,” he said. “Listen to me. I’m just an old man talking.”