Miriam’s countenance changed. Evelyn always brought out the worst in her. “Of course.” She patted his arm fondly. “You’ll stay in the boys’ room. And Evelyn, you’ll stay with Vivie.”
Evelyn laughed finally. “Mama, you can trust me to sleep in my own room.” Fred blushed.
“Vivie’s room,” she repeated. “Vivie, call down to the store and see if one of the stock boys can help carry Evelyn’s trunk in.”
“Yes, Mama,” Vivie said as Miriam retreated to the kitchen.
“I wonder if she’ll still make me sleep with you after we’re married,” Evelyn said once Miriam was gone.
Vivie’s eyes lit up. “Are you—？”
“Fred is asking Papa tonight. Darling, let her see the ring.”
“You aren’t supposed to have seen it yet.”
Both girls looked at him from a shared pair of eyes, practically blinking in unison until he sighed and pulled the box from his pocket. “Heaven help the man who ever tries to stand up to a Bergman woman,” he said. “It certainly won’t be me.”
After Vivie admired it, Fred concealed the ring again, and Evelyn asked where their father was. “At the store. He’ll be home for supper though.”
“Good.” Evelyn looked at her watch. They still had several hours to go. She turned to Fred. “Go get settled in Sam and Bernie’s room. I’ll freshen up, and then we can go to the drugstore for an ice cream. Vivie, you’ll come too.” She brushed her lips lightly against Fred’s, then picked up her hatbox and climbed the staircase, bypassing Vivie’s room for her own.
After supper, Fred asked Joseph quietly for a private word. The women watched them walk toward Joseph’s study as they cleared the table.
“I’ll be right back,” Miriam said, putting down the plates she was holding and going into the kitchen.
The second she was out of the room, Evelyn bolted from the dining room and tiptoed down the hall, only to find her mother had gone the other way through the kitchen and was already listening at the study door. Miriam made a shooing motion with her hand.
“Absolutely not,” Evelyn whispered, leaning against the door next to her mother. “This concerns me more than you.”
Miriam was too busy trying to make out the conversation to argue. The heavy wood door muffled the voices, so neither was able to decipher much until there was a loud clink, and Joseph’s voice raised in the traditional toast of L’chaim.
Evelyn and Miriam looked at each other, their eyes wide, then both turned and fled back to the dining room, colliding with Vivie at the doorway, which knocked all three of them to the ground, where Joseph and Fred found them.
“What happened here?” Joseph asked, taking his wife under the arms and helping her to her feet. Evelyn started to laugh, followed by Vivie and eventually even Miriam, who answered her husband in Yiddish, calling the three of them a grupe fun yentas, or bunch of meddlers.
Joseph looked confused, but he kissed Evelyn’s cheek and told her that it was a nice night to go sit on the porch with Fred. She opened her mouth, ready to tell her parents that she had already accepted, when Fred took her arm and propelled her out the door.
“What’s the big idea?”
“We’re going to pretend I’m asking you for the first time now.”
“Why?”
“Out of respect to your father.”
“Why does everyone care so much about respecting my father? Worry about respecting me.”
Fred chuckled and, taking her hand, got down on one knee. “Evelyn Bergman. I’ve loved—and respected—you from the day I met you. Will you marry me?”
“Aren’t you going to hold the ring out?”
“No. I’m afraid you’d snatch it and run. You have to say yes first.”
She smiled, then knelt in front of him. “Yes. Just like I said the first time you asked.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the box, then opened it and put the ring on her extended finger. “Then you get this. For real this time.”
Evelyn leaned in and kissed him, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. “I do love you, Fred Gold.”
Half-drunk on the champagne that Joseph had produced—he’d purchased it just in case, he claimed, though Vivie said it had been in the icebox since Christmas break—Evelyn went back to her own bedroom.
She sat at the vanity and smiled at her reflection before looking down at her hand again. Sighing happily, she picked up her hairbrush. But when it was halfway to her head, she set it down and went to the bookshelf in the corner. She pulled out the copy of Shakespeare’s works and turned to Romeo and Juliet, where she had used a razor to cut a small hole in the pages. And there, right where she had left it, was the ring from Tony.