It took me an hour to come back downstairs. Dan was in the den with Ada and Lillian, each of them with a drink. Ada and Lillian both excused themselves, rising to leave when they saw me. I nodded to them as they walked out but said nothing.
“I’m sorry,” Dan said, standing. “I didn’t mean it like that—I assumed someone was dead from your face. I know you don’t want to go back to New York.”
I sighed. “It’s okay.”
“Ada filled me in some—but let’s talk about it. Or not, if you don’t want to.”
I came and sat on the sofa, and he sank back down next to me. “I don’t think I’m going to be much fun this weekend. Are you sure you don’t want to just go home?”
He shook his head. “I’m not here for the beach and the boardwalk rides, Marilyn. I’m here for you.” I smiled weakly. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk. We’ll get ice cream.”
“But we haven’t had dinner.”
“Since when do you follow rules?”
He had a point.
“I’m not saying we’d have to get married—but if you were in New York, we’d see a lot more of each other.”
“I think we’d see less of each other if they knew marriage wasn’t the plan,” I said over our cones. “And they would harass us nonstop until we caved.” I didn’t think he fully understood my aversion, but I appreciated him not pushing.
“What if we just didn’t tell them we were seeing each other?”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t trust me to live on campus. I’ll have no freedom at all if I go back. I’m not leaving that house unless you come to the door and sit with my father first.”
He reached out and touched my hair. “And I suppose this is too short for me to climb up to get to your window.”
“Hah.”
“Okay, here’s the next idea—we run away together.”
I looked at him warily. “And do what, exactly?”
“Whatever we want. We’ll be bohemians. Live on a beach somewhere. Drink out of coconuts to survive.”
“The world doesn’t actually work like that.”
“What if I work for a year and save up as much as I can, and then we leave?”
A year. A year in that house. I couldn’t do it. Now that I had been free, I couldn’t go back into a cage and sing and pretend I was happy.
He took my hand. “Then actually marry me. It won’t be like your parents. I’ll support you while you write. There are ways to not have kids—we won’t until you want to—if you ever want to. And if I can’t make enough money doing photography, well, I’ll do whatever I need to.”
I looked at him curiously. “Do you actually want to marry me?”
His eyes widened. “I don’t know the right answer here.”
“The truth is the right answer.”
He took a moment before he responded. “The truth is, you’re not like anyone I’ve ever known. I’m alive when I’m with you. And I want to be with you—in whatever way you’ll have me. If that involves rings and a ketubah, yes. If it’s coconuts and sleeping in a shack on the beach, that’s great too. But I’m just trying to find a solution that helps you right now.”
It was the right answer.
“Let me talk to my father,” I said, aware that my heart was racing. “And we’ll save all that as a very last resort.”
“Okay,” Dan said. “But the offer stands.”
We spent much of the next day working out what I was going to say, flip-flopping between the idea of a letter, a telegram, and a phone call. Dan even role-played my father. But when he thundered that I was to come back that instant, I knew it had to be a letter. I was a writer, after all, and a phone call would likely end in a screaming match. I drafted it, then showed it to Dan, Ada, and Lillian, all of whom agreed it was the best I was likely to be able to do. I outlined my desire to write and my plan to enroll in writing classes, and implied that I was seeing someone Jewish and appropriate down here.
“He can’t refuse that,” Dan said.
Lillian agreed, but Ada looked less certain. “Add that my eyesight is failing,” Ada said.
I looked at her in confusion. Her eyes were sharper than mine.
“Tell him you read to me and are helping me run the business. Tell him I’ll rewrite my will if you stay.”
I felt a chill, as if the temperature of my blood had dropped suddenly. It was the first time Ada had hinted at death being a real possibility for her.
“Ada—”
“Don’t ‘Ada’ me. I’m not going anywhere. But we need to throw everything we’ve got at this and see what sticks.”
I revised the letter.
It wouldn’t go out until Monday’s post, but Dan and I dropped it in the mailbox near the center of town on Sunday before he left.
“Call me when you hear,” he said and kissed my forehead. “And I meant what I said. I’ll do whatever you need.”
“Least romantic proposal ever.”
He pulled me back by the shoulders. “Marilyn Kleinman,” he said. “The day you let me know you would be open to accepting that, believe me, I’ll make the show you want of it. Until then, this will have to do.” And he pulled me in to him, kissing me deeply until the world spun.
“Where did a rabbi’s son learn to kiss like that?”
“Do you really want to know the answer to that question?”
“No,” I laughed. “But do it again.”
He obliged. And for a moment, I believed that the letter would do its job and things could continue exactly as they were.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
I jumped when the phone rang on Monday afternoon. Ada pursed her lips in annoyance. “You can’t expect to hear from your father before Wednesday, you goose,” she said.
I knew she was right, but I was too on edge to be much good to anyone. I tried to focus on the final scrapbook, but there were huge time jumps. Either Ada had years where she didn’t take many pictures—which did make sense, once she was older and alone in Philadelphia—or I was just too scatterbrained to put the pieces together.
When I finally gave up in annoyance, I sat at my typewriter, but the words weren’t flowing. Instead, I picked up my stack of pages, realizing it had grown far thicker in the last couple weeks, and sat downstairs with them and a pencil, hunting for typos and plot holes.
That provided the distraction I needed, and I quickly found myself immersed in the story I had told. It was closer to finished than I realized, but I didn’t quite know how it ended. My idea of a happy ending wasn’t the same as most people’s after all. And I still wasn’t sure if the aunt character lived or dramatically died at the end. It would propel the story along if she died, but it felt like too much of a jinx for my own irascible aunt.
No, she would live. There wasn’t a way to write a happy ending if she didn’t.
“What’s got you so wrapped up?” Ada asked, coming to sit opposite me.
“Debating whether to kill your character off or not,” I said tartly.
Ada shrugged good-naturedly. “You wouldn’t be the first to try.”