As Ronnie tugged at first one cuff, then the other, Alice rested one hand—manicured fingernails with a diamond solitaire, gold bracelets gently clinking together on an unmarked wrist—atop Ronnie’s short stories. “These are fine, and you’re definitely a writer. Your prose is very clear. Workmanlike. In a good way,” she’d added, even though her lip had curled—unconsciously, Ronnie was sure—as she spoke that word “workmanlike.” “But I don’t feel like any of these have your heart in them.” She’d looked at Ronnie, her expression not especially hopeful. “Lee mentioned a novel? Why don’t you tell me about that?”
Looking back, Ronnie would never know what gave her the nerve to hand over the notebook. Maybe it was the compliment, the words “you’re definitely a writer,” from someone who could say so with authority. The praise, even following so closely on the heels of criticism, left her feeling like she was flying.
“It’s a first draft. It’s really rough,” she said, almost stammering, as Alice leafed through the pages.
“Tell me about it. Give me the pitch in a sentence or two.”
Ronnie felt whatever courage she’d briefly conjured slipping away. The notebook looked like something a sixth-grade girl would scribble on in the cafeteria, not something the almost-graduate of a prestigious academic program would produce. It wasn’t even typed! The longer Ronnie stared at it, the more she began to feel like a fraud. Worse: a fraud who’d handed over some essential part of herself—a piece of her heart, a chunk of her liver—and needed to get it back if she was going to survive.
With a great effort, she stilled her fidgeting hands and started to speak. “It’s about two sisters, how they grow up, their marriages, and the different paths their lives take. It’s the story of two Jewish girls becoming American women.” There was more to the book than that—readers would meet their parents, in flashbacks, as they made their way out of their respective shtetls, toward Berlin and one another, in addition to the sisters’ daughters, the generation to inhabit the new world—but the part readers would remember （assuming, someday, there’d be readers） was the two young women, the men they loved, the lives they built.
Alice gave her a polite smile, slipping the notebook into a gorgeous leather satchel that Ronnie knew probably cost more than a month’s rent back home. Ronnie thanked her for her time and made a hasty retreat. A week later, Ronnie was blow-drying her hair when Alice called. Wrapped in a towel, her hair hanging damp on her shoulders, Ronnie clutched the receiver, hardly believing what she was hearing.
“No, really, Veronica. I loved it. I couldn’t put it down! I have some notes, of course. But that’s totally normal. I’d like you to do a polish and then I’ll read it again, but bottom line I think what you have here is extremely commercial, and…” She paused. Ronnie held her breath. “I really think I can sell it.”
“Okay,” Ronnie had said. She had no idea what, exactly, she was agreeing to. The only thing she knew for sure was the way her classmates and her professors would sneer at the word “commercial.” Oh well, she thought. Maybe she’d get an advance, and that would insulate her from their scorn.
Two weeks later, she was once again on a train to New York City, this time in business class instead of coach. Her agent—two words Ronnie had been slipping into every sentence she could—had paid for the ticket. Alice was that confident that she’d be able to sell the book Ronnie had agreed to call The Summer Sisters （Summer being the surname that Rosie, the fictional matriarch, uses to replace Shulevitz when she reaches New York City）。
Lee had come to the station to see her off. He looked her over, in the new clothes she’d bought for the occasion: a gray fedora, a pair of lavender-colored suede boots, impractical and lovely; high-waisted, men’s-style trousers, a button-down white blouse with a patterned vest on top. “This is a new look,” he said, in a tone that was mostly approving, and slightly puzzled.
Ronnie didn’t tell him that the clothes were less an outfit and more of a costume, a disguise. Which felt appropriate, insofar as she felt herself disguised as a novelist, pretending to be a thing that she really was not. She leaned forward to kiss Lee goodbye. She could feel him holding her; wanting to keep her there, lingering on the platform; hoping she’d kiss him again. All the while, the percolating, buzzing excitement inside of her was propelling her forward; urging her to hurry onto the train, to get moving, to get to New York City as quickly as she could before someone else claimed her prize.