Chapter 11 Absolutely
ABSOLUTELY
On the following afternoon—another sunny day!
—I dismounted from my bicycle, leaned it against the wall of the house, pulled the bag of groceries from the basket, and started up the front steps.
I had to dodge, though, as a young woman came pelting out the door.
I juggled my bag, and two apples fell out and bumped their way down the steps.
“Oh, dear,” the woman said. She had curly red hair, a snub nose with freckles on it, and a round face. She was all over circles, in fact. “Here, let me help you.” She picked up the apples and made a face. “They’re terribly bruised, I’m afraid. Were they important?”
“Well,” I said, “we were going to have them for dinner, but I suppose we could have an orange instead?”
“An orange instead of, what, baked apples? Is that what you’re asking me? Don’t you know, though?”
“Oh.” I knew I was blushing. “Pardon me. No, I—”
“Wait.” She peered at me, then snapped her fingers. “You’re the war bride! Joe’s wife, right? Marguerite?”
“Well, yes. I am.” I wished I could shake hands, but I was holding the paper sack.
Oh. I put the sack down on the stoop and put out my hand. “How do you do. I’m Marguerite Glucks— ah, Marguerite Stark.”
She shook my hand firmly—two pumps—but her green eyes were dancing. “How very formal we are. I’m Susie. Susie O’Brien. Hence the red hair.”
I blinked at her, and she said, “Red hair? Irish?”
“Oh!” I laughed, startled. “I see. I haven’t met many Irish people, though there were a few on the ship. I didn’t know that was what red hair signified.”
A wrinkle in her brow now, for her face expressed everything she felt.
She would have been mincemeat under Gestapo questioning.
“But aren’t you British? And don’t all British know about the Irish?
They joke about the Irish plenty. Red hair?
Freckles? Poverty? Too many kids? None of this is ringing a bell? ”
I blinked. “But that would be very rude. Who would say such things?”
“You’re not British,” she said. “You can’t be. ‘Marguerite’ sounds French, but your accent is English. Isn’t it? That very upper-class kind? But you’re French? A French Jew?”
I’m afraid I must have looked very surprised. “Ah … no,” I said. “Not French, and not a Jew. I’m German.”
“Oh.” Some dimming of the brightness, and then the smile was back, if not as full. “Won’t that put the cat among the pigeons.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You don’t realize that the Germans are a bit unpopular right now?”
“Oh. Yes. Of course. Yes, I know. I could say that my family didn’t …
didn’t go along with Hitler, my father especially, but every German says that now, I realize.
” Nothing for it but to say, “I’m very pleased to have met you,” in my most proper tones, and to pick up my grocery bag again. It was rather heavy. It was the tins.
“Hey,” Susie said. “Wait. I didn’t mean I don’t want to know you.
Also, I’m desperately curious.” She looked at her watch.
“I have a class at three, but I don’t have to leave for a few minutes yet.
How about if I come in and you give me a cup of coffee?
I’m your upstairs neighbor, and neighbors ought to get to know each other. ”
“Oh. Yes. Of course.” Wait, I’d said that before.
But she’d startled me. Was this how Americans were?
I didn’t really know any yet, other than my in-laws, and Mrs. Stark certainly hadn’t amazed with her frankness.
Well, except when she’d been trying to give me the check.
But Joe had always been open, so maybe …
I had to give up thinking about it, because Susie was saying, “Here, let me take that. It looks heavy,” and grabbing the grocery bag from me.
“Gee, you’re little, aren’t you? About the size of the average twelve-year-old.
No milk for strong bones over there lately, I guess.
” I didn’t answer—how did one respond to such a statement?
—but opened the door, and she went straight to our flat, where I used the key and led the way inside.
She set the bag on the kitchen table, dusted her hands, looked around, and said, “It’s not quite the Ritz, is it?
Needs some prettying up. Bachelor Joe. Was Myrna ever disappointed when she found out he wasn’t! ”
“That he wasn’t what?”
“A bachelor. He’s not exactly handsome, but he’s got something. Sort of a man of the world quality. And that wavy hair! He seems strong, doesn’t he? And a little reserved, too. Mmm.”
Joe was reserved? I said, “Well, I like him very much, of course.”
Susie laughed. “I’ll bet you do.” She was taking food out of the bag as if she were in her own kitchen. “I’ll do this, and you can make the coffee.”
“Oh. All right.” I did it very carefully—it was only my second time, and there were many steps—and said, “I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you with it. Well, bread and jam perhaps, but this bread is rather odd. We have an automatic toaster, though. Would toast and jam do?”
“Sure.” Susie had been opening cupboards, but now she found the right one and began slotting in the tins I’d purchased.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what are you making for dinner tonight?
Your cupboard’s mighty bare, and Joe looks like a hungry man to me.
You do have enough money, don’t you? Or is that it?
Most kids at Stanford have some dough—well, their parents do—or they wouldn’t be here, but with the GIs, who knows?
They get that twenty dollars a week for the first year after they’re out, so he’s probably getting that, and then there’s the GI Bill, since he’s going to college, but that’s not much, is it? ”
“Really,” I said, “your conversational style is quite extraordinary.” I smiled when I said it, though.
How could one help it? “We have enough money, I believe. We have an automatic toaster and an iron—I don’t know how to use it yet, but Joe has one—and a cooker and refrigerator, as you see, and bicycles. ”
“And you’re wearing a dress that screams ‘New York City,’ Susie agreed. “So what’s the story with the food?”
I said, “Is it wrong, then? The food? Joe seemed a bit disappointed last night, but I thought—” I broke off.
“Uh-huh.” Susie was leaning back against the table now, her arms folded. “What did you give him to eat?”
“Oxtail soup,” I said, “because he liked it on the train. Though it didn’t taste the same.”
“From one of those cans?”
“Well, yes.”
“OK,” she said. “And?”
“And what?”
“What else besides oxtail soup?”
“Well,” I said, “vegetables are important, for vitamins, so I cooked some carrots, as you can get them here even in November, which is very lucky. I’ve seen that done, the scraping and then the cutting so they look like coins, and then I cooked them in a pan.
They burned a bit on the outside but were still rather crunchy, so perhaps the pan wasn’t correct? ”
“You gave your husband,” Susie said slowly, “canned soup and carrots for dinner.”
“And a potato,” I said. “He likes the kind that are baked in their jackets, so I prepared one of those, but it was a bit … lumpy, I think. A bit hard. Perhaps it was the wrong type of potato?”
“Oh, dear,” Susie said. “And my mother says I’ll never find a husband, what with my tragic lack of the soft soap and not being what you’d call ‘willowy.’ Nobody’s ever going to delight in having his hands span my waist the way I’ll bet Joe does with you.”
“The soft soap?”
“I’m too frank. You’re supposed to butter men up.”
“But this is not good for them,” I said, “too much flattery. One must speak one’s mind, although politely, of course. Otherwise, what happens when he does marry you, and your true self emerges?”
“A quick trip to Nevada, that’s what.” Susie’s very freckles seemed to dance. “How are we coming on that coffee?”
“Oh!” I jumped. “Has it been eight minutes? It must have been. I’m sorry, I forgot about the toast. I’ll just—”
“I’ll pour it,” Susie said, jumping up and turning off the fire. “Forget about the toast and go find a pencil and a piece of paper.”
“Of course, if you need them.”
She sighed. “I don’t need them. You need them.
If you give Joe another dinner like that, he’s going to be heading to Nevada, and I can’t let that happen to a sister-in-arms. I’m going to dictate a grocery list, and you’re going to go right back to the supermarket and buy everything on it.
And then I’m going to come home from class and show you how to make a dinner that a man might want to eat. ”
Joe came home at fifteen minutes after five and stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Well, hello,” he said, with that smile that went all the way to his eyes. “Something sure smells good. I smelled it all the way out on the sidewalk, but …”
“But you thought,” I said, flying to him with a laugh for my kiss, “that it—” I had to stop, because he was kissing me.
Joe kissed like men do in the movies, with his arms behind my back and with me bent a little backwards.
It’s a very satisfactory way to be kissed.
A very thorough way to be kissed. When I was upright again, I said, somewhat breathlessly, “You thought that it couldn’t possibly be so, for you have a wife who cannot cook. But you see? I’m learning.”
“Right now,” Susie said, grabbing the wooden spoon that stuck out from the pan, “you’re burning. You need to watch your pan better. Hi, Joe. It’s Sloppy Joes. Oh, wait. That’s awkward, isn’t it?”
“Hi, Susie.” Joe still had an arm around me, and he was still grinning, too. “You took my bride in hand, huh?”
“Somebody had to,” she said. “Once I heard about last night’s menu.”
Joe laughed and kept hugging me. “I thought maybe a cookbook. Trouble is, what cookbook?”
“I’ll ask my mom,” Susie said. “What she doesn’t know about housekeeping isn’t worth knowing. I’m one of six.”
“Ah,” Joe said. “Catholic?”
“Yep.”
“But I’m Catholic as well!” I said, delighted.
Susie stared at me, then turned down the fire.
“Before I respond to that, we need to toast those hamburger buns. I’m going to show you, but I’m also going to supervise, because you’re too easily distracted by your husband.
Who I thought was Jewish, and I said it, too.
‘Your mouth runs away with you before you’re brain’s engaged,’ my dad says. Alas, too true.”
“Joe is Jewish,” I said. “That’s why I didn’t buy any bacon. I do know how to cook bacon. More or less.”
Susie’s red eyebrows rose. “How do your folks feel about that, Joe?’
“Oh,” I said, “they’re perhaps homicidal.
” And giggled, because I couldn’t help it.
“But Joe, Susie is going to take me shopping for clothes, and to buy more pots and pans and other kitchen things, too, because she says you don’t have enough for proper cooking, only one skillet and a small saucepan.
There’s a department store—this is the word for a Kaufhaus, because it has many departments.
So practical a name. We’ll go there on the bus, so we can bring all the heavy things home.
And before you remind me not to spend too much money, I still have some of mine, remember?
I’ll use that to outfit our apartment. Isn’t that a lovely thought? ”
“Uh-oh,” Susie said. “Now, if this were my house, tempers would be rising, and we kids would be ducking. Never get between a husband and wife talking about money.”
“No ducking necessary,” Joe said, but he had a line between his brows. “We can talk about this later, Marguerite.”
“No,” I said, “I’d much rather talk about it now, for it’s really very simple. This is our apartment together, our life together, and I intend to build it along with you. On Saturday, when you don’t have school, we can sit down together and you can show me all about the … the money, the …”
“The finances,” Joe said.
“Yes,” I said. “The finances. My mother, you know, had a great many money matters to oversee for our household, which was large. She looked as fragile as a flower, but she had quite an efficient nature and kept very good records. She was from Schleswig-Holstein, and the people there are most industrious and reliable. So I think you must not hesitate to share with me, so we can make a plan together of how best to manage. And Susie has promised to show me how to make many inexpensive dishes that men like. This meat is called “hamburger,” which is very funny, as that is of course a person from Hamburg, but it’s from a cow, naturally.
She says that men like it very much, and that it’s easy to cook and not expensive.
And there are ways to make chicken go a long way, too—this is what it’s called when you divide the meat up among many servings—for she says men must have meat. ”
“That’s fine by me,” Joe said. He’d already hung up his hat and was loosening his tie. “I think I may owe you a debt, Susie.”
“You can pay it off if you know any nice young men,” Susie said.
“Maybe not Jewish ones; I don’t want my future mother-in-law dreaming of ways to murder me.
A Stanford man, though, back from the wars and all grown up?
One who strangely admires girls with red hair and freckles? That would suit me fine.”
“Absolutely we must do that, Joe,” I said.
“We’ll have a dinner-party, as your mother said, once I learn to cook a bit better, and not leave the men over Cognac and cigars, but roll up the carpet and dance to the radio instead.
I’ll have Susie to help me with the menu and make sure I don’t burn things, and we can invite Myrna, too, who Susie says is very witty in a dry sort of way, like you, and you must find two nice men to join us so we can be a proper married couple hosting our guests.
But I’m afraid we will have to borrow some chairs.
And I think I must buy some things for baking, too, because I really cannot—no, absolutely not—eat this terrible bread with the dots on the package, or the strange cheese in a box.
Nor will I feed it to you. Steak, I most definitely do not need, and Cognac only tastes nice when it’s very old, but good bread and cheese, we must have in our home. Absolutely.”