Don't Forget to Write: A Novel(77)

“No. But I always loved taking pictures. I got a Brownie box camera when I was eight.” He smiled. “Actually—maybe I did and just didn’t know the word for it yet. My father took a group of boys from the synagogue to a Yankees game that year. And I didn’t care at all about the score—I brought that camera, and I still have the pictures I got of Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra. I caught DiMaggio just as he connected with the ball. It’s one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever taken to this day.”

I knew nothing about baseball and would have been more excited about a photograph of Mr. DiMaggio’s ex-wife, but I could have listened to Dan describe the whole game in detail. “You’ll have to show it to me sometime.”

He smiled. “What about you? How long have you wanted to write?”

No one had ever asked me that. And I thought for a while before I answered. “I think—I think it’s the same kind of thing. I used to make up stories. My bedroom was a tower that I was trapped in. But I didn’t want a prince to come rescue me. I wanted to rescue myself. And somewhere along the line, those stories became the way to do just that.”

“Two peas in a pod,” Dan said, taking my hand.

I stiffened slightly at the use of Ada’s expression to describe me and my mother. But he was right. I didn’t know how either of us would manage the dream-shattering disappointments we were about to lob at our families, but there was a sense of comfort in knowing I wasn’t the only one.





We stopped at the bakery for sticky buns and coffee on the way back to the house. Ada and Lillian were out when we returned, and the sky had turned gray and menacing, so we sat on the wicker sofa on the porch with our respective books. Dan was reading Ada’s copy of Hawaii, and I had turned my attention to Exodus, by Leon Uris, at Ada’s suggestion. By the time Ada and Lillian returned, just before the rain started to fall in huge drops that pelted the rocks and flowers, I was stretched out, my head pillowed on Dan’s legs as he read above me, a hand wandering down from time to time to wind itself in a lock of my hair.

“Well, don’t you two look cozy,” Ada said.

“Let them be,” Lillian warned.

“Who’s not letting them be?”

Ada craned her neck to look up at the sky. “This’ll blow through quickly. You should be fine to go home this afternoon. Though you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

“Does that go for me as well?” I asked.

She pointed a finger at me. “Don’t get your hopes up.” The rain began to fall in earnest as the two women went inside. “I sent Frannie home so she wouldn’t get caught in all this—we’ll have to muddle through lunch ourselves.”

“We’ve done as much before,” Lillian said.

The windows were open so we could still hear them as they continued into the house. “Yes, but we have company.”

“He may be family soon enough by the looks of them out there.”

“We can hear you,” I called through the open window.

“Don’t yell room to room,” Ada replied.

I laughed, but Dan folded down the corner of his page and shut his book. “What’s wrong?” I asked, looking up at him.

“Absolutely nothing. I just want to soak in the moment.”

“Quite literally if the wind changes.”

He shook his head. “Shush. You’re ruining the mood.”

I placed my book facedown on my chest. “Will you come back next weekend?”

His face spread in a smile. “I would love to.”

Marking the page and closing the book, I sat up, nestling into the crook of his arm as we silently watched the rain fall together.





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT


Dan went home for the week. He was clerking at a newspaper, trying to get a break in photojournalism, though his father still believed it was a lark and that he was going to rabbinical school in the fall. I had no idea what I would be doing in three weeks when Labor Day came around. I hadn’t officially received word from my parents about whether I would be welcomed back into the fold, but with each passing day, I hoped more and more that they would allow me to stay where I was.

I broached the subject once more with Ada, who mumbled something about wayward girls, but I paid her no mind, especially when Lillian winked at me. Ada might have been the figurehead of our little family, but what Lillian wanted went.

And it was a family now. I felt more at home with them than I had in the first twenty years of my life. Yes, the pattern and routine would change again once we returned to the duplex in Oxford Circle. But there would always be next summer at the shore. And the summer after that. And I was certain I would settle into my own place in Philadelphia as well. Maybe I would even enroll in some writing classes, though I wasn’t worried about earning a degree. Daddy had only sent me to college to find a husband after all. And as much as I enjoyed school, it was the freedom I loved. I had found that here, and much more of it.

August was a little faster paced for matchmaking at the shore than June and July had been, largely because more young men joined their families for their two weeks of vacation. A couple of handsome ones came through our door, frog-marched by determined mothers. A few weeks earlier, I might have found a reason to pop into the living room. But now I was content to mind my own business as I sorted through the photographs of Ada’s life. I had a system and moved much quicker, watching as first her father, then her mother disappeared.