I tell you, that singing went right under my skin and raised goose bumps. The one-of-a-kind beautiful voice, the words every schoolchild—every parent, even—knew by heart. And here I was, the lucky audience to this performance by the most famous singer in America, maybe in the world. This settled it. I absolutely had to ask for the treasured autograph as soon as the song was over. It was bound to please the performer in the kitchen as well as me. Out of the bathroom in a flash, I sped to where my jacket was piled atop my suitcase, grabbed out the album, and darted back to the kitchen.
Herman had reappeared, sitting at the table, paging through a book and not even particularly listening, he evidently was so used to the glorious sound. Rocking ever so slightly side to side to the rhythm, Aunt Kate stood at the stove with her back turned to us, as if it were nothing to be pouring out the best-known song since “Happy Birthday” while cooking kraut and weinies. I stood entranced there at the other end of the kitchen, listening to her sing just for me. Then as the most soaring part rolled around again, the beautiful voice reaching its height—
To the prairies,
To the oceans white with foam,
God bless America,
My home sweet home.
—she turned around, her mouth full of the half-cooked wienie she was munching.
For a moment I was only confused. But then when I saw her take another bite, eyes half-closed in pleasure, the inside of me felt like it fell to the floor. Meanwhile the song played on a bit more, until there came a burst of applause in the living room and a man’s silky voice doing a commercial for La Palina cigars.
When I recovered the ability to speak, I stammered, “You’re—you’re not Kate Smith? On the radio?”
She swallowed the last of the wienie, fast. “Good grief, that,” she groaned, frowning all the way down to her double chins.
“I telled you, too many sweets,” said Herman, licking his finger to keep on turning pages.
Ignoring him, she scrutinized me. “Where in the world did you get that notion?” she asked suspiciously, although I didn’t yet know about what. “Didn’t Dorie tell you anything about us?” I shook my head. “Heaven help us,” she let out this time, shutting her eyes as if that would make this—and maybe me—go away.
Herman spoke up. “The boy made a notcheral mistake. It could happen to Einstein.”
“Another country heard from,” she snapped at him. Worry written large on her—there was plenty of space for it—she studied me again but not for long, her mind made up. Whirling to the stove, she set the pot off the burner and turned back to me, with a deep, deep breath that expanded her even more into Kate Smith dimension, in my opinion. “Sweetiekins, come.” She marched into the living room, killed the radio, planted herself on the davenport on an entire cushion, and patted the one beside her. I went and sat.
She looking down and me looking up, we gazed at each other in something like mutual incomprehension. I squirmed a little, and not just from the clammy touch of the davenport through the seat of my pants. Dismayed as I was, she too appeared to be thrown by the situation, until with a nod of resolve she sucked in her cheeks, as much as they would go, and compressed her lips to address the matter of me.
“Now then, lambie pie, there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” her tone became quite hushed, “but has your grandmother or anyone, a teacher maybe, ever said to you there might be a little bit something”—she searched for the word—“different about you?” Another breath from her very depths. “Just for example, do you get along all right in school?”
“Sure,” I replied defensively, thinking she had figured out the shirt-shredding battle royal with the campers. “I’m friends with kids in more schools than you can shake a stick at, back home.”
“No, no.” Her bosom heaved as she gathered for another try at me. “What I mean is, have you ever been set back in school? Failed a grade, or maybe even just had teensy-weensy trouble”—she pincered her thumb and first finger close together to make sure I understood how little it would be my fault—“catching on to things in class?”
I understood, all right, shocked speechless. She figured I had a wire down. Aghast at being classified as some kind of what Letty termed a mo-ron, I sucked air like a fish out of water, until my voice came back.
“Me? No! I get straight A’s! In deportment, even!” I babbled further, “I heard Miss Ciardi, that’s my teacher, say to Gram I’m bright enough to read by at night.”
My frantic blurts eliciting the throaty response “I see,” although she didn’t seem to, Aunt Kate tapped her hand on her thigh the jittery way she’d done in the car when I assumed singing to all of America was upmost on her mind.
Before she could say anything more, Herman stuck up for me from the kitchen doorway.
“Notcheral, like I telled you.” His guttural assertion made us both jump a little. “Donny is not first to find the resemblance, yah? If it bothers you so great to look like the other Kate, why do you dress up so much like you could be her?”