Isabel's War - Lila Perl

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directed at her by worried well-wishers from all over the dining room. “How much does your leg hurt now?” “Is there any kind of burning sensation where you were bitten?” “Are you sure the wound isn’t infected?” “Have you got a headache?” “Can you drink water?”

      After Helga wanly assures everyone that she has no symptoms of rabies, interest focuses on Roy who, by now, admits to our meeting in the woods. He asks me how my “snake bite” is doing and did I remember to suck the venom out after I got back to Moskin’s?

      I don’t think this is very funny. And it lands me in trouble with my parents. My mother immediately demands an “explanation” and promises that we’ll “talk about this later.” Which makes me feel like a baby in front of Roy and Helga, who are the golden couple at the table.

      Both my father and Mr. F. want to know how come Roy enlisted in the Navy and whether he thinks it’s better to choose your branch of service or wait to be drafted. I know my father is thinking about my brother Arnold, who’s getting awfully close to being assigned a draft number. Roy, it turns out, is seventeen and just out of boot camp, which is why he’s on furlough waiting for an assignment, maybe in the Pacific, maybe somewhere else. Helga gazes at him worshipfully as he relates his plans for the future. He is only a raw seaman at the moment, but he might as well be an admiral as far as she’s concerned. And doesn’t Roy know it? And isn’t he just eating it up?

      Lunch is finally over and Helga has been ordered by all the grownups to go back to her room and rest. Minnie Moskin herself comes out of the kitchen with a glass of half-milk and half-cream and a tray of her thick round cookies for Helga to take to her room. Mrs. F. carries the tray for her as she limps off toward the annex, while Roy stands looking after Helga wistfully.

      I rush up to Roy, dragging Ruthie behind me, and I introduce them. “You should have come to the casino last night. We had such a great time,” I tell him, poking Ruthie and crossing my fingers behind my back.

      “Yeah,” Roy sighs, his eyes still focused on Helga’s slowly retreating figure. “But how was I supposed to know she’d be there? I figured it would just be a bunch of kids or a lot of older folks.”

      “Oh, thanks a lot,” I reply. Even Ruthie looks hurt at Roy’s remark. “So how long is this furlough of yours, anyway?” I ask the great lover.

      “Just one more day.”

      “Quel dommage!” I know it’s not nice of me but I just can’t help it.

      “Whatever that’s supposed to mean,” Roy mutters as he starts sauntering off...the last he’ll probably see of Shady Pines.

      “You shouldn’t have cursed him in French like that,” says Ruthie, as Roy disappears across the road. “He’s fighting for our country. He could get killed in the Pacific. The Japanese are sinking our battleships right and left. Or don’t you read the papers?”

      “I don’t. Not the way my father does. Who can remember the difference between New Guinea and Guadalcanal? And where in the world are the Solomon Islands? Anyhow, what I said to him wasn’t a curse. Dommage is the word for pity, so all it meant was, What a pity.”

      “It sounded,” Ruthie insists, “like you called him a dummy. And very sarcastic, too.”

      Since Ruthie and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms at the moment—and she has to take her little tykes off to the playground (two rope swings and a bumpy slide) after their naps—I go slouching off to the deserted social hall to practice piano. It’s the best way I can think of to avoid waking Helga, who’s supposed to be sleeping or at least resting.

      I wish I didn’t have such mixed feelings about Helga. It’s stupid of me, of course, to be angry with her because of Roy. It isn’t her fault that she ran into an unfriendly dog and that Roy came to her rescue. And it isn’t her fault that there’s a war on in which she’s one of the victims, so that in this small world up at Moskin’s, people are centering their feelings of sympathy on her.

      I’ve been practicing my Czerny exercises for twenty minutes or so, when I hear a step behind me.

      “Oh, I thought I heard tinkling noises in here.”

      I turn around. It’s Mrs. F. She’s changed out of her colorful playsuit and is wearing an orange blouse and a tan walking skirt. “I just looked in on Helga,” she reports. “She’s up and about and says she’s well enough to go into town for our little shopping trip. I told her I’d asked you to come along and she seemed very pleased. Are you ready, Isabel?”

      It’s about half a mile from Moskin’s to Harper’s Falls along a rutted dirt road studded with stones and tree roots. Most of the guests at Shady Pines walk to town, but because of Helga’s wounded ankle, her uncle will drive the four of us in. As I soon learn, my mother is coming along, too. The only good thing about that is that maybe, maybe, she’ll buy me the pair of dungarees that I’ve been yearning for.

      As soon as we are in town, it’s pretty noticeable that the war has come to Harper’s Falls and changed it from a sleepy country village to a place of bustling activity. Banners in support of the war effort are flung across Main Street, and there is now a Red Cross center and a blood bank. Even the sleepy old railroad depot behind the five-and-ten seems to have come alive with announcements of extra trains daily.

      We’re dropped off at the town’s so-called “department store,” which is really just a single-story building, nothing at all like Macy’s or the other real department stores in New York City with their elevators and escalators to take shoppers to the upper floors filled with endless amounts of merchandise.

      “Dungarees, hmm?” says the salesperson who I’ve rushed to approach as we walk in the door. She’s a short, stocky country woman, probably the wife of the owner. “We had a few pairs back in the spring. Might be some left. But there’s not much of a choice of sizes.”

      “What’s this all about?” my mother wants to know, as the saleswoman goes off to check the stockroom.

      “Nothing, nothing,” I reply. “They probably don’t have any.” I figure there’s no use getting into an argument over something that may not exist. Meantime, Mrs. F. has led Helga over to the resort clothing to look at playsuits, halters, shorts, slacks, and cotton skirts.

      Helga hops around on one leg inspecting the garments that her aunt takes off the counter or the rack to suggest to her. “Such bright colors,” Helga murmurs.

      “Exactly,” says Mrs. F. “We don’t have to hide ourselves in camouflage here in America. You’re safe here, Helga, safe at last. But keep in mind that the selection will get smaller and smaller as the war goes on and there will be shortages of material, even of buttons and zippers, of everything.”

      “That’s true,” says the saleswoman who went to search for my dungarees. “Buy now. Our stock of everything is running low.” She’s holding something made of dark blue cloth folded up under her arm, and I reach out to touch it.

      “Oh yes.” She turns. “Only this one pair left. It’s a small size, though.”

      “What are those?” Helga wants to know, as I grab the dungarees and head toward the curtained-off fitting room just across the floor. My mother is there even before I’ve gotten out of my shorts. I start pulling the stiff, coarse blue denim pants up my legs. They’re fine until I try getting them over my backside.

      “What on earth...” My mother is standing there with one hand under her chin and her lips pursed. “Are you crazy, Isabel? You’ll tear them. There is no way you can get into them, much less zip them up. Take those things off this minute.”

      I don’t answer her. I’m too busy tugging away. But I know it’s hopeless. Even if I got the pants zipped up, my mother wouldn’t buy them for me. And if I could somehow buy them myself, she wouldn’t let me wear them.

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