“Yes, I’ve met them at the Club.”
“So while the Osner girl and her friend were trying on sneakers I told them they looked so cute together I just had to snap their picture with my new Polaroid camera.” She fished a photo out of her pocketbook and passed it to Frekki.
Frekki was surprised, but tried not to show it.
“What do you think?” Sherry asked.
“Makes me wish I had a daughter,” Frekki told her.
“About the resemblance, I mean.”
“I don’t see any resemblance.”
“Really? I’ve always thought your brother had the most unusual eyes, almond-shaped and hazel. And so does she. Of course I haven’t seen Mike in ages, not since he left town in a hurry.”
“He didn’t leave in a hurry. He enlisted.”
“Either way. We went to all the same parties that spring. He and Rusty Ammerman were crazy for each other. She was in my class at Battin.”
“I don’t remember that name.” The redhead. She hoped her face wasn’t giving anything away. Mike had brought her to the house in Weequahic a couple of times. And Frekki had been to the Ammermans’ house, too. Had enjoyed Mrs. Ammerman’s delicious chocolate cake.
“She’s still around.” Sherry said. “And this is her daughter, Miri.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Do I have to spell it out?”
“What you’re suggesting isn’t possible.”
“Are you sure? There was a story going around back then that Rusty had run off and married a boy that summer, a boy who was going overseas.”
“She didn’t marry my brother.”
“Well, she’s never married anyone else that I know of.”
“I think you should forget about this, Sherry. There’s no truth to it and all you can do is make trouble for both families.” Frekki glanced at the photo again. “She looks like a nice girl.”
“She is. The Osners love her like a daughter.”
Frekki dabbed at her mouth with the napkin, applied fresh lipstick and pushed back her chair. “I have to get back to the boys. Thanks for the lunch. Next time it’s on me.” Before she put on her jacket she said, “Oh, do you mind if I keep the picture?”
“Of course,” Sherry said. Was that a smirk on her face?
Frekki called her brother that night, made sure he could talk privately, then told him the story. “I just want to know one thing. Is it possible, yes or no?”
“No,” her brother said, convincingly.
She probably would have let it go if it hadn’t been for the plane crash. She didn’t need any more tsoris in her life. But by then she knew where Rusty lived, and how close the plane had come to her house and that beautiful young girl with Mike’s eyes, that girl who very likely was her niece. She couldn’t sleep that night thinking about it, or the night after that. Which is how she came to ring Rusty’s doorbell on Sunday morning.
Miri
Rusty and Irene were masters of cleaning up, putting everything away, keeping things in order—things they didn’t want to think about, as if they had a box in the closet and they could open it, shove in Frekki and her yellow Cadillac, close the lid, lock the box, put it back on the top shelf and be done with it. Sometimes Miri tried to imagine she, too, had a secret box on the top shelf of her closet, covered in burgundy velvet, a place to hide every hurt, every bad thought, every worry that she couldn’t do anything about—but it didn’t work as well for her as it did for Rusty and Irene. Still, she was good at pretending, good at putting on a happy face. She’d learned that much from her mother and grandmother. So she dressed in her best skirt and the sweater her friends had given her for her birthday, and went off to The Tavern restaurant in Ben Sapphire’s black Packard with Irene seated up front and she and Rusty sharing the back.
A few hours after Frekki Strasser came to their door, you would never have guessed anything unusual had happened that day. Neither Rusty nor Irene said a word to her about the unexpected visit. And Miri knew better than to ask them any questions today, a day they were celebrating the engagement of Henry and Leah.
Elizabeth Daily Post
POLIO CHAIRMAN NAMED
JAN. 20—Mr. Ronald T. Stein was today named chairman of the Union County division of the Annual March of Dimes Polio Drive. Mr. Stein is Chief Executive of Steinmack Trucking, a company he founded in 1938. With headquarters in Elizabeth, the firm has branches throughout the state. He resides in the Westminster section of Elizabeth with his wife, Sarah, and two children, a son, Philip, a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School, and a daughter, Deborah, a sophomore at the University of Michigan.