The Echo of Old Books(82)



Cee-Cee pushes in, grim-faced and out of breath. “The Japanese have bombed the naval base at Pearl Harbor. They just broke in on the radio with a reporter who’s there. You could hear the bombs going off in the background, things exploding. It sounds bad.”

It takes a moment for my brain to shift gears. Not you. Not my father. The Japanese. “How could it happen?”

“A sneak attack, they say. Planes downed. Ships on fire. God knows how many killed. They think Manila’s been hit too. Roosevelt will get his war now. They’re probably popping the champagne corks as we speak.”

I stare at her, horrified. That’s what she’s thinking at this moment. No outrage over men dying, no anguish for widowed wives and orphaned children. Just resentment that my father’s precious cause—the gift to Hitler of a neutral United States—is almost certainly lost.

“Has the president spoken?”

“No. But he will. This is exactly what he’s been praying for.”

“You think the president of the United States has been praying that we’d be attacked and hundreds of people would be killed?”

“You still don’t understand, do you, who’s pulling the strings and why? This wasn’t a random attack. It was orchestrated to drag us into their war. The Jews and the communists want us to use our money and our resources to fight their war for them. Why should we? Let them raise their own army and fend for themselves.”

Cee-Cee’s words stun me. “The people you’re talking about . . . our mother was one of them. Her blood—Jewish blood—runs through your veins the same as mine. They . . . are us.”

“Never say that again. Not in this house. Not anywhere.”

Her eyes glitter coldly as she regards me, reminding me of the night of my mother’s breakdown. I flash back to that moment on the stairs, her queer little smile and inexplicable words. Now we’ll see. And afterward, how she slid into my mother’s place and systematically removed every trace of her from our lives.

“He’s done this to you,” I say, seeing her clearly. Seeing it all clearly. “He poisoned you against her, little by little, and then he rewarded you for it. He taught you to be ashamed of her, ashamed of yourself. Because you’re like her. We’re both like her.”

“I’m not like her!” Cee-Cee shrieks. “I’m an American. A real American. And so are my children. I have a duty to protect our name and our way of life, to keep it unpolluted.”

Suddenly my father is staring back at me. The hardness, the hatred, the steely superiority. I see it all in my sister. “Hemi was right about you. About both of you. He had you pegged from the start.”

“Ah yes, the paperboy.” She flashes a chilly smile. “Come to think of it, why aren’t you with him now, having lunch in his squalid little walk-up?” The smile hardens. “Or have you miscalculated again?”

Her words hit me like a dash of cold water. I want to deny it, but how can I when I’ve been such a fool about everything?

She tips her head to one side and feigns a little pout. “Poor thing. Has he finished with you? If I were you, I’d count myself lucky that I managed to escape relatively unscathed.” Her eyebrows lift ever so slightly. “Assuming you have, of course.”

“Get out.”

She turns, then glances back at me. “I’m not sure when Father will be home, but it won’t be long now, and he isn’t likely to be in a very good mood when he arrives. I’d think long and hard before mentioning Helene. Or the paperboy. I can promise it won’t end well.”





Forever, and Other Lies

(pgs. 77–80)

December 10, 1941

New York, New York

I’ve spent three days in a kind of twilight. Three days believing I’ve been hurt as deeply as it’s possible to be hurt. But I’m wrong. There’s more to come.

Shall I tell you how it was? How it felt? It only seems fair.

I’m still avoiding my sister, keeping to my room when I know she’s home. I have nothing to say to her, though I suspect at some point she and my father will have a great deal to say to me. About you. About Teddy. About my duty to the family. Because in the end, it always comes back to duty. They have no idea what I’ve already given up, the scandal they were spared for my sake.

I despise Cee-Cee for being right about you, and myself for being so completely taken in. I find myself reliving every moment you and I spent together, every word, every kiss, every touch, looking for something I should have seen but didn’t. Perhaps she’s right, though. Perhaps I have dodged a bullet. And perhaps in a few years—a hundred or so—I may even believe it. But it doesn’t feel that way just now.

I wait every day for the mail to arrive, hoping there will be something from you. A letter telling me where you are, asking me to come to you. Or at least explaining why you did what you did. There hasn’t been, of course. And there won’t be. Some part of me knows that.

But there has been a telegram from my father. Cee-Cee made sure it was on this morning’s breakfast tray. It seems the Boston rally has been canceled, though my father plans to remain for another week. Since the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh’s beloved America First committee has begun to fray and my father and his friends are hoping to hold it together. The last line is about me: a directive to keep an eye on me until he can come home and deal with me properly.

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