know that necklace,” I say.
“I wore it to my very first dance. My dress was peach crepe de chine,” she muses, looking out the window, twisting the ruby ring on her finger. It’s her engagement ring from my father.
The sun is streaming through the green gauzy curtains, and my mother looks so beautiful standing there. She is the most beautiful woman I know when she smiles, which isn’t nearly often enough.
“Did you kiss him?” I ask. “The boy you went to the dance with?”
“Penny!”
“Well, did you?”
“Now, what would you know about kissing, Bunny?”
Not much. I can’t imagine kissing any boy, certainly none of the ones I go to school with. How can you kiss a boy who you watched pick his nose in kindergarten?
My mother shakes herself and looks down at the watch on her wrist.
“Just look at the time! I’m going to be late for work at this rate,” she says, and gives me a quick hug, her perfume swirling around me, lily of the valley.
Long after she’s gone, I imagine my mother—young, beautiful, and wearing a peach crepe de chine dress—twirling under the moon in my father’s arms as Bing Crosby croons “Dancing in the Dark.”
Me-me’s cleaning up the breakfast dishes when Pop-pop says, “Thought I’d take Penny for a stroll into town. Need me to pick up anything?”
Me-me smiles and says, “Let me get my list.”
Across the table Pop-pop winks and I roll my eyes.
I’m just his excuse to go to the tobacco shop to buy cigars. He’s not supposed to smoke cigars anymore because Me-me doesn’t like the way they smell up the house, but he still buys them every chance he gets and smokes them secretly. There’s a pile of cigar stubs behind the azalea bush in the backyard that’s been growing for a while now.
Me-me hands me the list. She knows better than to give it to Pop-pop.
“Ready to tear up the pea patch, old girl?” Pop-pop asks me as he slaps on his hat.
“Ready,” I say.
We start down the block. Pop-pop’s walking pretty good with his cane. I’ve noticed lately that he doesn’t have too much trouble walking when he wants to get cigars. It’s only when Me-me wants him to take out the trash that his old war wound starts acting up.
“Hello, Mrs. Farro,” Pop-pop calls.
Pop-pop was the block captain during World War II, so he knows everyone. During air-raid drills he had to go around the neighborhood making sure that people had their curtains drawn and their lights off; otherwise, the Germans and Japanese would know where to bomb us. Mrs. Dubrowski, who lives next door and is kind of eccentric, would never turn her lights off during the drills, no matter how many times Pop-pop tried to reason with her. Pop-pop said he thought that we were going to be bombed to kingdom come because of “that woman.”
“Your tomatoes are looking well,” he says.
“It’s all this sun,” Mrs. Farro says. “I think it’s our best harvest since the war.”
Pop-pop says that during the war food was rationed, and near the end there wasn’t much meat, so people started making burger patties using mashed baked beans and called them Truman-burgers after President Truman. Me-me says that there were butter shortages, so we used margarine. She said it came in white slabs, and to make it look better, you would knead in the yellow-orange coloring it came with. I still don’t know what Germany and Japan had to do with us not having meat and butter. It’s just one more thing I’ll probably never understand, like why my mother doesn’t like my father’s family.
My father’s family doesn’t talk about the war, but Pop-pop sure does, every chance he gets. Pop-pop’s favorite story is about a friend of his who was a translator. This fella was in college, at Harvard, and the government drafted him and taught him Japanese, and it was his job to interrogate the Japanese prisoners of war in California. The information he got from the prisoners helped the government decide to drop the
“I wore it to my very first dance. My dress was peach crepe de chine,” she muses, looking out the window, twisting the ruby ring on her finger. It’s her engagement ring from my father.
The sun is streaming through the green gauzy curtains, and my mother looks so beautiful standing there. She is the most beautiful woman I know when she smiles, which isn’t nearly often enough.
“Did you kiss him?” I ask. “The boy you went to the dance with?”
“Penny!”
“Well, did you?”
“Now, what would you know about kissing, Bunny?”
Not much. I can’t imagine kissing any boy, certainly none of the ones I go to school with. How can you kiss a boy who you watched pick his nose in kindergarten?
My mother shakes herself and looks down at the watch on her wrist.
“Just look at the time! I’m going to be late for work at this rate,” she says, and gives me a quick hug, her perfume swirling around me, lily of the valley.
Long after she’s gone, I imagine my mother—young, beautiful, and wearing a peach crepe de chine dress—twirling under the moon in my father’s arms as Bing Crosby croons “Dancing in the Dark.”
Me-me’s cleaning up the breakfast dishes when Pop-pop says, “Thought I’d take Penny for a stroll into town. Need me to pick up anything?”
Me-me smiles and says, “Let me get my list.”
Across the table Pop-pop winks and I roll my eyes.
I’m just his excuse to go to the tobacco shop to buy cigars. He’s not supposed to smoke cigars anymore because Me-me doesn’t like the way they smell up the house, but he still buys them every chance he gets and smokes them secretly. There’s a pile of cigar stubs behind the azalea bush in the backyard that’s been growing for a while now.
Me-me hands me the list. She knows better than to give it to Pop-pop.
“Ready to tear up the pea patch, old girl?” Pop-pop asks me as he slaps on his hat.
“Ready,” I say.
We start down the block. Pop-pop’s walking pretty good with his cane. I’ve noticed lately that he doesn’t have too much trouble walking when he wants to get cigars. It’s only when Me-me wants him to take out the trash that his old war wound starts acting up.
“Hello, Mrs. Farro,” Pop-pop calls.
Pop-pop was the block captain during World War II, so he knows everyone. During air-raid drills he had to go around the neighborhood making sure that people had their curtains drawn and their lights off; otherwise, the Germans and Japanese would know where to bomb us. Mrs. Dubrowski, who lives next door and is kind of eccentric, would never turn her lights off during the drills, no matter how many times Pop-pop tried to reason with her. Pop-pop said he thought that we were going to be bombed to kingdom come because of “that woman.”
“Your tomatoes are looking well,” he says.
“It’s all this sun,” Mrs. Farro says. “I think it’s our best harvest since the war.”
Pop-pop says that during the war food was rationed, and near the end there wasn’t much meat, so people started making burger patties using mashed baked beans and called them Truman-burgers after President Truman. Me-me says that there were butter shortages, so we used margarine. She said it came in white slabs, and to make it look better, you would knead in the yellow-orange coloring it came with. I still don’t know what Germany and Japan had to do with us not having meat and butter. It’s just one more thing I’ll probably never understand, like why my mother doesn’t like my father’s family.
My father’s family doesn’t talk about the war, but Pop-pop sure does, every chance he gets. Pop-pop’s favorite story is about a friend of his who was a translator. This fella was in college, at Harvard, and the government drafted him and taught him Japanese, and it was his job to interrogate the Japanese prisoners of war in California. The information he got from the prisoners helped the government decide to drop the
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