Supper was a plate left in the hall outside my bedroom. But around eight, my mother knocked on my door.
I opened it, plate in hand, assuming she was cleaning up and remembered she was missing one. She looked at it blankly for a moment. “Your father wants to speak with you,” she said.
“Mama, you have to calm him down. It was just some kissing—even you had to have kissed someone before Daddy—”
She held up a hand. “Downstairs.”
My mother had always been on my side. I was a daddy’s girl when I was younger—what little girl wasn’t? But he didn’t have a lot of tolerance for my rebellious streak. And she always smoothed him down when I broke the rules.
Steeling myself for the lecture, I sighed and followed her down the stairs.
But this wasn’t a living-room-white-sofas conversation. Instead, he was in his office, seated behind the mahogany desk that he swore once belonged to one of the lesser Rockefellers. He inclined his head toward the chair opposite him, and I took it, my mother going behind the desk and perching on the arm of his chair. He hated when she did that, but he didn’t comment on it or shoo her away.
“You’ve gone too far this time,” he said. “And now I’m forced to issue an ultimatum. If he’ll still have you, you’ll marry the Schwartz boy.”
If he’d still have me. Hah! But no. That wasn’t happening.
“Or?”
The brows closed in again. “Pack your things,” he said darkly. “You leave in the morning.”
“Leave? Daddy, I just got home. School doesn’t start for more than three months.”
He waggled a finger at me. “You’re not going back to that school. I’m not paying another penny for you to learn to be promiscuous. I told your mother it was pointless to send girls to college, but she thought you’d meet a better husband there. You won’t find someone better than a rabbi’s son.”
“You’re a doctor,” I shot back. “Are you saying Mama could have done better than you?”
The purple hue began creeping up his neck again, but Mama put a calming hand on his arm as he began to sputter. “You’re going to your great-aunt Ada in Philadelphia.”
“My—who?”
“My aunt,” my mother said.
“I’ve never heard of her.”
“You have. And you met her at . . .” She thought. “Walter, was she at Harold’s bar mitzvah?”
“I was eight at Harold’s bar mitzvah.” My brother was five years older than me and could do no wrong, despite having followed in my father’s footsteps as a doctor instead of joining the clergy, which was apparently now the preferred profession—at least when it came to my prospects.
“Either way, you’re going.”
“You can’t send me to Philadelphia to go spend the whole summer with someone I don’t even know. Mama, please.”
“You won’t be in Philadelphia all summer. She goes to the shore for most of it.”
“The Hamptons?” Okay, this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Yes, I would have to dodge an elderly chaperone, but I could do that in my sleep.
“No, New Jersey.”
“Mama!” I looked to her pleadingly. “You can’t banish me to New Jersey of all places! I won’t go!”
“You will go,” my father said. “Or you will not return to this house.”
I eyed him cautiously, looking for any sign of weakness. But there was none. “What am I supposed to do there all summer?”
“Straighten out,” my mother said. “Ada is tough. She won’t tolerate poor behavior.”
“Mama—I’ll behave. I shouldn’t have done that today. You can’t send me away like this.”
“It’s already decided,” my father said. “And Ada agreed to take you in. Her assistant has to be away for the summer.”
“Assistant?”
My mother nodded. “She’s a matchmaker. The assistant, Lillian—she’s more of a companion, really. Ada isn’t as young as she used to be and needs help sometimes. Lillian’s mother is sick.”
“A matchmaker?”
My father’s eyes gleamed with the first hint of amusement I had seen all day. “We told her she’ll have her hands full finding someone for you, but she’s up for the challenge.”
My mother was pulling clothes from my drawers and placing them into my trunk while I paced my room again. “Mama, I mean it, I’ll never do anything like that again. Cross my heart.” I made the gesture across my chest.
“Don’t let your father see you doing that,” she said distractedly. “It’ll be much cooler at the shore. Philadelphia is even hotter than the city in summer though.”
“I won’t get on the train.”
She turned to me. “You will. And I’ll spend the summer working on your father to get you back to college. But that means you need to be on your best behavior. Ada is . . . strict. If you don’t mind her, she’s going to send you right back. And if that happens, you can kiss college goodbye.”
Great. A mean old woman. Who was going to try to marry me off to someone named Herbert with a bald spot and a lisp.
“I’m not letting her play matchmaker with me.”
My mother smiled grimly. “Ada doesn’t play.” Then she shook her head. “Besides, she might find you someone good. She’s the premier matchmaker in all of Philadelphia.”
“That’s like being the safest taxi driver in New York.”
“Perhaps. But it’s better than being the worst taxi driver. And you’ll like the shore. I spent a summer there as a girl.”
“If you liked it that much, you’d have gone back,” I grumbled.
But the reality was, however strict my mother thought this Ada was, I would be able to get around her. And at least it would get me out of the house and away from a forced marriage to Daniel Schwartz.
I cursed that flimsy stained-glass panel as I grudgingly pulled a pile of undergarments out of my drawer.
CHAPTER FOUR
My first impression of Philadelphia was that it was hot. My second was that I had just stepped back in time. This wasn’t a city; it was a time capsule. Trolleys, which had stopped running in New York City three years earlier, outnumbered the cars. Few of the buildings required craning my neck up toward the sky, unlike at home. Except for the clothes and handful of modern cars, it was much more how I would have pictured New York decades earlier.
I tapped my foot impatiently as I waited for a porter to bring my trunk, counting silently in my head to see when this mysterious Ada would arrive, hoping desperately that we weren’t about to try to wrangle my belongings into a trolley car.
A young man walked up to me and removed his hat, his brown face shining in the warm sun. “Miss Kleinman?”
I eyed him suspiciously, as any New Yorker does when a stranger knows their name. “Maybe.”
He smiled. “You look just like your aunt Ada.” He held out a hand. “Thomas.”
I shook his hand—and my head—at the same time. “I should hope not. Isn’t she ancient?”
“Best not let her hear you saying that,” he said as the porter brought my trunk and hatbox. He thanked the porter and took control of the dolly, taking my valise from my hand and placing it carefully on top of the other luggage. “Glad I brought rope. Otherwise we’d have to send these along later.”