Isabel’s War Read online

  Copyright © 2014 by Lila Perl.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher.

  Please direct inquiries to:

  Lizzie Skurnick Books

  an imprint of Ig Publishing

  392 Clinton Avenue #1S

  Brooklyn, NY 11238

  www.igpub.com

  ISBN: 978-1-939601-37-7 (ebook)

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  One

  Here we are again at Shady Pines, which is really just a fancy name for this smallish summer hotel that everybody calls Moskin’s.

  We crunch into the gravel parking lot, my father at the wheel of the 1939 Packard and my mother beside him. She’s checking her hair and makeup in the windshield mirror because her female cronies are sure to be scattered around on the lawn. Or they might be seated at card tables on the broad wraparound porch of Moskin’s main house.

  Am I still talking to either one of my parents? It’s not clear. All I know is that I’ve been sitting here in the back seat in stubborn silence ever since we left the Bronx three hours ago.

  My mother breaks the stillness between us. “Here comes Ruthie. Act like a lady instead of a spoiled child. How composed and mature Ruthie looks. There’s a daughter that Minnie Moskin can be proud of.”

  Ruthie is a lot older-looking than last summer. She’s still pale and moonfaced, with a button nose and gray eyes. Her shortcut taffy-brown hair drapes her cheeks. But Ruthie has a “settled” air about her. I think she’ll probably look the same as this when she’s thirty-eight, forty-nine, even in her sixties. Right now, of course, Ruthie and I are the same age, twelve.

  “Isabel,” Ruthie says softly, putting her head through the open window of the back seat. She’s already said hello to my parents, greeting them politely as “Mr. Brandt” and “Mrs. Brandt.” The Moskin family has been getting Ruthie ready to play the part of the perfect hotel hostess since she was eight. In fact, this year Ruthie is officially known as “the governess.” She will be in charge of the younger children of the hotel guests, leading them in games and sports and even overseeing them at mealtimes in the children’s dining room.

  As soon as my father and one of the busboys from the grownups’ dining room have emptied the car trunk of our luggage, Ruthie and I stroll off toward the room I’m going to occupy this year. We walk with our arms around each other’s waists, heads together.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” I beg, “about not wanting to come to Moskin’s this year. It has nothing to do with you and me. It’s really about my being too old for this place. There’s not much for me to do here, with you working full time. But they refused to send me to camp. Every time I ask for anything my father gives me the same excuse. ‘This is 1942. There’s a war on!’”

  “Well,” Ruthie says philosophically, “there is. Everything’s changed since Pearl Harbor. We don’t even have a band this summer. A couple of the fellows from last year had such low draft numbers that they’re already in uniform. And the others have gotten much better jobs, at least until they get drafted.”

  “I know, I know. You wrote me.”

  I think longingly of the four young “college men” who were so tantalizing to me last summer when I was only eleven. Miltie on the piano, Pinkie on the drums, Lou on the trumpet, and Bob on the saxophone—tall, dark, handsome Bob—who would have been my choice if I hadn’t been nearly ten years too young for him.

  “Soon all the boys will be in the army serving overseas,” I lament. “Then what?”

  “Then we’ll just have to wait for them to come back,” Ruthie says resignedly.

  “They won’t all come back,” I reply darkly.

  We’ve reached the steps of the long, narrow wooden porch of the “Annex,” a row of eight guest rooms, one of which will be mine and one my parents’. Ruthie looks off into the distance. “I have to get back to work. I’m taking the littlest kids on a nature walk at two o’clock. Want to come along?”

  “Um, no thanks. Tonight, though, what’s on for tonight?”

  “Dancing in the social hall,” Ruthie says. “To the jukebox. We could practice the Lindy.”

  I nod, a little. Ruthie and I aren’t much good at the Lindy. We tried it last year and didn’t get very far. Besides, it won’t be much fun trying to jitterbug to the music from a machine. More and more, I’m at war with this war.

  There’s a knock at my door, which is instantly shoved open by my mother. She’s already changed into shorts and a knit polo shirt. This is her customary daytime outfit when we’re in the country. Also, she’s wearing ankle socks with white leather oxfords that have Cuban heels.

  “You haven’t changed yet, Isabel? Are you planning on returning to the city or what?”

  “I wish I could, and you know it.”

  My mother sits down on one of the twin beds, which is covered with a worn-looking white candlewick bedspread.

  “Isabel, I don’t want any trouble these next few weeks. Your father has just about had it and he’s ready to explode. Here you are at Moskin’s, away from the baking sidewalks and the stuffy apartment. You have Ruthie, one of your oldest friends. You’ve known her what—four, five years. Get into your bathing suit. Go down to the lake. I’ll be on the porch of the main house if you want me.”

  She’s gone.

  I stare critically into the mirror above the scarred wooden bureau. The furnishings at Shady Pines aren’t exactly new or fancy. After all, this isn’t the Plaza Hotel on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. And now, with the war on, goods for the home front are already beginning to get scarce. It’s hard to get everyday things like soap and matches, much less new furnishings, which the Moskins wouldn’t spring for in any case.

  In fact, they’ve already announced in their 1942 brochure that, as ration coupons will be required for sugar, coffee, and butter, they will no longer be able to serve unlimited quantities of these foods in the dining room. Everything, everything, is for the troops and is going for the war effort.

  My reflection is still staring back at me. Why, oh why, I ask myself, did I have to be born with my father’s nose? This is something that began to be noticeable during this past year. Especially since I was visited for the first time by the remarkable events outlined in that informative little booklet entitled “Marjorie May’s Twelfth Birthday”—otherwise known as “getting your period.”

  Is it possible that “becoming a woman” means that you can begin to grow a nose like a man? Why didn’t Arnold, my seventeen-year-old brother, inherit my father’s nose? But no, blond, blue-eyed, and baby-faced Arnold (who is back home in the city working at a summer job) is the very picture of a romantic pretty-boy. While I…oh, what’s the use?

  All I’ve been asking for these past few months is a bobbing—just the tip of my nose pushed up and back, something I can do with my index finger, hardly what you would call a nose job.

  But my parents have refused to listen to me, even forbidden me to bring up the subject. “There’s a war on,” says my father.

  “What’s that got to do with it?” I ask, falling right into the pit
.

  “Good heavens, Isabel,” he thunders, “don’t you think doctors have more to do than making your nose one-thirty-second of an inch shorter? Aren’t you hearing on the radio what’s been going on in the steaming jungles of the Philippines, Bataan, New Guinea? How can you be so thoughtless and selfish?”

  Steaming jungles, hmm. It’s plenty hot in this little wooden box of a room that’s supposed to save me from the baking sidewalks of Le Grand Concours. That’s French, in case you didn’t know it, for this big busy street in the Bronx, lined with apartment buildings, that’s known as The Grand Concourse. As Miss Le Vigne, my French teacher, would say, “Mon dieu, ouvrons les fenêtres. Comme il fait chaud!”

  But there are no windows to open. The only window is at the back of my little room, and it’s already open and looks out onto a barricade of dark pine forest heavy with trapped air. So I wriggle into my bathing suit, grab a coarse, pebbly towel, and wander down the path that leads across a dirt country road to the lake, better known as Moskin’s Mud Hole.

  Sure enough, there are a bunch of eight-and ten-year-olds, all boys, cavorting around the dinky wooden platform that is used as both a boat dock and a diving platform.

  If there’s anything I hate more than ten-year-old boys, it’s twelve-year-old boys. Short, fat, and boisterous; skinny, freckled, and buck-toothed; tall, gangly, and pimpled—all twelve-year-old boys make me feel like I want to vomit.

  The kids at the lake give me a passing but interested look as I glide by them. My breasts, along with my nose, have popped noticeably in these past couple of months, and I’m wearing a jersey two-piece bathing suit. Just one fresh remark, I think to myself, and I’ll punch the little smartass right in the nose.

  But Moskin’s young guests soon return to scrambling up onto the dock, holding their noses, and plunging back into the water like a pack of trained seals, while I take off and slip into the lake at a more distant point, swimming slowly to the far shore. There are footpaths there that trail off into the woods and lead to clusters of rented summer bungalows. Moskin’s, after all, doesn’t own the entire lake, and you can tell this from the fact that here, where I’m now sitting on my towel and drying off, there’s an old rubber swimming tube and a rowboat that’s been pulled up onto the muddy shore.

  It’s probably not a good idea to go exploring along one of the footpaths today because I’m barefoot and already my feet have been cut by sharp stones from when I crossed the dirt auto road at Moskin’s to get to the lake. Still, I’m sort of entranced by the path just to my left through the deep piney woods. It has to lead somewhere.

  So maybe I’ll wander just a little way in through the dimness, stepping softly on the pine needles that cover the dusty soil. It is dark in here, though. Not spooky, but not exactly friendly either.

  What if there are snakes? That curved branch over there, for example. It could be a snake. Simply because it’s lying so still doesn’t mean it isn’t a living slithery thing, just waiting to strike. I draw closer and peer down at it. How close do I dare get, and why am I being so dangerously nosy anyway?

  Suddenly there’s this strange rustling noise coming from somewhere nearby. It could have been a bird flying out of a tree. But when I look down I could swear that the “branch” on the ground has moved. Now, I really do have to satisfy my curiosity. Was that the warning rattler on a rattlesnake’s tail that I heard rustling? Could there actually be rattlesnakes in the nearby woods threatening Moskin’s juicy summer guests?

  Softly, softly, I approach the snake/tree-branch. Not a sound, nothing stirs. And, then, in a flash, something springs up at me. It has no mouth, no flicking tongue, no venom-filled fangs, but surely it’s alive.

  I jump back as far as I can, stumble on some tree roots, and go sprawling on my backside. My head bangs hard as I hit the ground, and for an instant, everything goes black.

  Then, slowly, the pain of a bruised elbow, a badly bumped shoulder, and a bonked head bring me to. I open my eyes to a startling whiteness and think instantly of the uniformed nurse who was standing over me when I had my tonsils out. But, no, I’m still in the woods. Only now I’m no longer alone.

  “Gosh,” says a soft male voice, “what happened to you, girl? Looks kinda like you dropped right outta the trees. Help you up?”

  I am so embarrassed. I’m not really a klutz—one of those kids who’s clumsy at everything and always falling down. And this, this person who’s peering at me from above is the cutest sailor in the U.S. Navy that you ever saw. He’s wearing his summer whites, middy and bellbottom trousers, no cap, and has earnest brown eyes and dark hair. He reminds me a little bit of Bob, last summer’s saxophone player in Moskin’s band. And, of course, he’s eighteen or so, and—just like Bob—probably too old for me.

  He pulls me up with one hand and I brush myself off and say, “Merci beaucoup,” trying to sound casual and not the least bit put out by my recent tumble.

  “Are you French?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.

  “Not really,” I confess. “My name’s Isabel.”

  We chat awhile as we walk back toward the lake. His name is Roy and he’s a recent enlistee in the Navy. Right now he’s visiting his family at one of the bungalow colonies and he’s awfully bored—and wondering what there is to do around here…

  A few minutes later I’m hurrying back to Moskin’s. I can’t wait to tell Ruthie that I met a sailor in the woods and that he’s coming to Moskin’s casino tonight to dance to the jukebox. (Oh, about that “snake”—it was just a weirdly curved greenish-black tree branch, after all.)

  Two

  Still in my slightly damp bathing suit, I’m looking all over Moskin’s for Ruthie. This sailor boy, Roy, really looks groovy to me. I’ll bet he can do the Lindy. And he doesn’t seem to have that supercilious attitude toward twelve-year-old girls that my brother Arnold has. So maybe, war or no war, the summer at Shady Pines won’t get off to such a dreary start after all.

  The best place to find Ruthie when she isn’t taking care of the guests’ kids is in the hotel kitchen. When I was younger, I have to admit, it was my favorite hangout, mainly because of the crock, always filled with big thick cookies topped with cinnamon and sugar or with chocolate sprinkles that were there for the taking.

  Sure enough, Mrs. Moskin, Ruthie’s mother, who’s in charge of the kitchen and does most of the hotel cooking, spots me with a nod of her chin toward the cookie jar. As usual, she’s wrapped in a white apron that looks like flour sacking and wears a head cloth that completely covers her hair. Even her pale eyebrows and her broad-featured face appear to be dusted with flour.

  Mrs. Moskin enfolds me in a warm, familiar hug. “About time you came in to say hello, Isabel. You were already at the lake? Take a cookie.”

  I guess I have been rude. It was always the custom in the past to greet Minnie Moskin the moment one arrived, and I’m sure my parents have already done so. It’s just that I’ve been in such a bad mood over all the arguing with my parents and the war suddenly being an excuse for everything.

  As to Ruthie, Mrs. Moskin tells me she’s now having a story hour in the children’s dining room. “Oh,” I say, “then I won’t bother her until after I change for supper. I have something interesting to tell her.”

  Mrs. Moskin smiles and nods approvingly, almost as if she knows about the sailor I met in the woods, who’s coming to Moskin’s this evening. But of course that’s silly. How could she?

  I trudge across the hotel grounds to the Annex. It’s already getting toward late afternoon and there aren’t many people around. Moskin’s guests, the older ones anyway, often take afternoon naps before dinner and then make an early rush for the showers before getting dressed for the evening meal.

  The door to my room is slightly ajar, which isn’t surprising since nobody locks their doors at Moskin’s and my mother may already have gone in and out several times. I just wish she’d shut the door, though, because Moskin’s is the main haunt around here of bees, wasps, hornets, horse f
lies, and even bats.

  I nudge the door wide open with my foot, already starting to undo my bathing suit top, when I’m struck by the presence of a tall young woman bending over a suitcase on the twin bed next to mine.

  “Excuse me!” I say indignantly. “You’re in the wrong room. This one is mine.”

  The figure across the tiny room turns. She’s not quite old enough to be called a young woman. She’s a girl, taller, skinnier, and older than I by maybe a couple of years. She has honey-brown hair that is long and wavy, a swan-like neck, and luminous gray-green eyes.

  “Oh,” she says, “you must be Isabel. I am Helga.”

  Her accent is a little strange, and automatically I say, “Pardonnez-moi?” French, as you can see, comes to me at the flick of an eye when I’m baffled.

  “Helga,” she repeats. “We will be roommates. You speak some French but I am sorry. I speak only German and the English I’ve learned living a few years now in the English countryside. I hope it will be good enough for us to have many conversations.”

  All this time I’m holding my detached bathing suit top up to my chest. Helga may be a girl close to my age, who even speaks my language, but she might as well be a menacing alien from Mars or even a Nazi storm trooper.

  “Excuse me,” I say, rapidly reattaching my bathing suit top. “I just remembered something.”

  Two seconds later I’m banging on the door of my parents’ room, a short distance from mine in the annex. My mother, in her cotton pique summer negligee, opens it and peers out suspiciously.

  “Oh, it’s you. Why are you making such a racket? Your father is napping. How come you’re still in your bathing suit?”

  She is asking me questions. What nerve. I brush them all aside. “Who is Helga?” I demand. “What is she doing in my room, unpacking a suitcase on the other bed? You told me I was going to have my own room this summer.” I know that I’m screeching out here on the annex porch. But I really don’t care.