Louise's Gamble Read online

  When I tossed a dime on the table for Jonesy’s tip I noticed that Alessa had left half of her burger uneaten.

  TWO

  As I turned into the tiny front yard of my boarding house, I reflexively checked the front window to see if both the stars taped on it were still blue. My landlady, Phoebe Holcombe, had two sons in the Navy in the Pacific fighting the Japs. We all dreaded coming home one day to find a gold star in her window.

  Inside I hung up my coat and stowed my galoshes under the coat tree. Instead of dropping my handbag on the hall chair I kept it over my arm, instinctively protecting Alessa’s note. I could hear my fellow boarders talking in the lounge with the radio playing quietly in the background, but I was too unnerved to make small talk with them. I slipped down the hall toward the kitchen, Dellaphine’s domain, where I found her ironing one of Phoebe’s housecoats.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Pearlie,’ Dellaphine said. ‘Did you have a nice lunch?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ I answered. ‘The diner had hamburgers.’ My voice cracked a bit, and Dellaphine looked at me curiously.

  ‘You all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t feel well,’ I said. An understatement, considering a foreign refugee I barely knew had figured out I worked for OSS and given me a message to take to my superiors. And there was not a damn thing I could do about it until I went to work on Monday morning.

  ‘You look like you seen a ghost.’

  ‘Dellaphine, could I have a shot of bourbon? Please?’

  ‘Sure. You do look peaked.’ Dellaphine winked at me, then pulled a key ring out of her apron pocket and unlocked the pantry cabinet that stored an impressive stash of the late Mr Holcombe’s favorite bourbons and Phoebe’s sherry. Phoebe wouldn’t permit her boarders to bring their own liquor into the house, but she allowed Dellaphine to dole out what alcohol she locked in the pantry.

  Dellaphine handed me an orange juice glass with about a jigger of Old Grand-Dad in it and then relocked the cabinet. She went back to ironing without asking me any more questions.

  I drained it in two swallows.

  ‘Better?’ Dellaphine asked.

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. I went over to the kitchen sink and washed the glass, leaving it on the drainboard to dry.

  ‘I’m going to my room to lie down,’ I said.

  ‘You get some rest. You work too hard.’

  Once in my room I sank on to my bed and rummaged through my handbag for the leaflet Alessa had given me. It was a knitting pattern, all right, but tucked inside was a small envelope. It wasn’t sealed, so I removed and unfolded a page torn from a pad of school-ruled paper. Tiny words in Italian, written in blue ink with one of those new ballpoint pens, crowded the page. No letterhead, no salutation, no signature, just sentences crammed on to the page from top to bottom and edge-to-edge. A few more sentences, also in Italian, written in pencil in a different hand, squeezed into the narrow margin at the bottom of the page. I couldn’t understand a word of it.

  My mind raced with curiosity. If I had any brains I’d be scared, I told myself. This Alessa woman knew who I was and where I lived, and that I worked for America’s spy agency.

  ‘Louise?’ Ada’s voice followed her tap on my door. ‘Dearie, are you all right?’

  Quickly, I refolded the paper, stuffed it into its envelope, and slid it back into my pocketbook.

  ‘Sure,’ I answered, ‘come on in.’

  Ada was on her way to work at the Willard Hotel where she played in the house band. She wore expertly applied make-up and a sea green silk dress. A snood glittering with rhinestones enclosed her shoulder length dyed platinum blonde hair. She carried an evening bag and her clarinet case.

  ‘Dellaphine said you didn’t feel well,’ Ada said.

  ‘I’m OK. A little under the weather.’

  ‘I was hoping you might come over to the hotel later on,’ she said. ‘I get a few hours off between the tea dance and our evening gig. We could have a couple of Martinis and dinner.’

  ‘Ada, you know how I feel about that.’

  ‘You’re so old-fashioned!’

  ‘Look, when women sit around in a bar without a date you know what men think.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I don’t like being propositioned by drunken soldiers and traveling salesmen.’

  ‘You’d rather scramble an egg and read some mystery book?’

  ‘Yes, I would.’ Especially if Joe was around.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘It’s your life.’

  Yes, it is, I thought to myself as I listened to Ada click down the stairs in her high heels. And I intended to live it my way. I liked Ada, but I didn’t want to be drawn into her life of cocktails and never-ending stream of boyfriends. Sometimes I wondered if she wanted me around so she could keep an eye on me for fear I’d blurt out her secret. In a moment of despair she’d confided in me that before the war she’d married a German commercial airline pilot who was now a Nazi officer in the Luftwaffe. She was terrified of being discovered and imprisoned in an internment camp. She didn’t dare even file for divorce.

  Hers wasn’t the only secret I kept. When we were alone, which was rare, I teased Joe that he was ‘undercover’. The others thought he was a language teacher – he made a big show of writing lectures and grading papers. By accident I’d found out that he worked for a humanitarian agency, raising money, scrounging for ship berths, and supplying safe houses, all to help European Jews escape the Nazis. He’d constructed an identity as a language teacher to protect his family still in Czechoslovakia. Prager wasn’t his real name. It was Czech for ‘Prague’.

  And, of course, I’d locked my memory tight shut on the foolish risks I’d taken to help Rachel Bloch and her children escape from Vichy France hours before the Gestapo entered Marseilles. If anyone at OSS knew what I’d done I’d have at least lost my job and possibly wound up in the federal women’s prison in West Virginia. Which I might actually prefer to going home and back to gutting bluefish and frying hush puppies at my parents’ fish camp on the Cape Fear River.

  Luckily, I’d always known how to keep my mouth shut.

  THREE

  Enzo kept the deepest secret of Alessa’s life: one that if revealed would ruin her and perhaps cost her brother his life. And all for only three dollars a week!

  Alessa had met Enzo when she’d come upon him on a cigarette break outside the hotel near the servants’ entrance. His hands were filthy, and he wore a hotel apron stiff with silver tarnish. Normally, she wouldn’t have spoken to him, but she was desperate for a cigarette herself. When she asked him for a light in Italian, he answered her in Sicilian. After he lit her cigarette they talked. He was an illiterate tradesman’s son from a tiny village near her home in Ficuzza. He’d immigrated to the United States almost ten years ago. With thousands of others he’d fled Sicily in the thirties, when Mussolini consolidated his power on the island. His uncle had found him a job in the hotel. Alessa realized immediately that Enzo was a man of honor, who valued the Tradition above all else, and because of that he would protect her secrets without hesitation. As long as he got his three dollars. So she told him what she needed from him.

  Enzo toiled in the vast sub-basement of the massive hotel in the silver room, where he polished hundreds of pieces of silverware and silver plate every day. He procured a key to the servants’ entrance and a secluded employee’s locker for her use.

  After lunch with Louise Alessa walked back to the hotel, ducked into the servants’ entrance and went to her secret locker. She changed out of her thrift shop disguise and into a tweed suit and pumps, slipped on her rings and bracelets, pulled on leather gloves, adjusted her hat, and applied a bit of make-up. She hung her old clothes neatly in the locker and locked it.

  Alessa waited outside the door to the street until no one was in sight, then slipped out of the servants’ entrance and on to the sidewalk. Quickly, she went around the corner on to De Sales Street and into the residents’ private entrance. The doorman opened the door for her,
and she approached the concierge’s desk.

  ‘Good afternoon, ma’am,’ he said, bowing his head slightly.

  ‘And to you, Hays,’ she said. ‘Can you tell me if my husband is in?’

  ‘Yes, I believe he is. But your mother-in-law has gone to the lounge for tea with friends, I believe.’ Alessa suspected sherry was more likely.

  Thank God, Alessa thought. Perhaps Orazio would be out on one of his many errands too. It was rare these days for Alessa to have time alone with her darling husband Sebastian.

  FOUR

  Aclang sounded from the cold water pipe that ran down a corner of my bedroom from the sink in Joe and Henry’s attic room all the way to the cellar. Since Phoebe would have evicted us if she ever found either me in the attic or Joe on our floor, he and I communicated through the water pipe. One clang meant: ‘Can you meet me downstairs?’ Two meant: ‘No.’ Three meant: ‘Good night, darling.’ The darling part was my own interpretation, you understand.

  Of course, we used our code only if Henry wasn’t upstairs with Joe in the bedroom they shared. He would have informed on us for sure. I tapped the pipe twice. I had too much on my mind to deal with Joe and my confused feelings for him tonight.

  I waited in my room until I heard Joe and Henry leave the house to find dinner. That left the house nearly empty. Phoebe and I ate scrambled eggs alone in the dining room while Dellaphine and her daughter, Madeleine, fixed themselves ham sandwiches and ate in the kitchen.

  On Saturday nights I had the lounge to myself to enjoy the Grand Ole Opry. I liked Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey and swing and crooning and all, but I was a country girl and I missed the Carter family, Patsy Cline, and Roy Acuff. While lying prone on Phoebe’s threadbare davenport, I closed my eyes and listened to Hank Williams sing ‘Lovesick Blues’. As I relaxed my head cleared and I was able to think calmly about my lunch with Alessa.

  Was it so awful that Alessa had found out I worked at OSS? We government girls were trained to answer ‘I’m a file clerk in a government office’ to any inquiries, but how hard could it be to find out what my office did? And like she said, most everyone knew that my branch of OSS occupied the huge old apartment building on ‘E’ street, and dozens of us walked openly through its doors every day. And that letter she gave me probably contained nothing of critical interest to anyone. Refugees mobbed the Washington bureaucracy daily, desperately trying to find out the fates of their families, their homes, and their friends. Alessa might have a scrap of information she wanted to trade for some favor. Don Murray, who headed my branch’s Europe/Africa desk, would accept Alessa’s missive from me and toss it in the in-box of one of his researchers who could read Italian. Nothing would come of it. When I next saw Alessa I could tell her I’d done as she asked, and that would be the end of it.

  I was ashamed of the thrill I’d felt when Alessa pressed her note into my hand. So silly of me! What did I think I was, a spy?

  Joe was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs when I came down Sunday morning. We were alone in the hall, so he slipped an arm around my waist and pulled me to him. Not for a kiss, but to show me the morning newspaper.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s started.’

  Every headline on the front page of The Washington Post trumpeted the beginning of Operation Torch. Finally, Britain and the United States, a year after the United States declared war on Germany, attacked the Nazis. Three Allied joint task forces landed at Casablanca, Oran, and Algeria. Their goal was to invade French North Africa, recruit the Vichy French forces to the Allied cause, and pin Rommel between the invading force and the British Eighth Army in Egypt, driving the Nazis out of North Africa. From there the Allies could stage an invasion of southern Europe.

  Through our work Joe and I were prepared for this. But still it was thrilling. As if the war to free Europe had finally begun.

  Joe led me into the empty dining room and pulled me into his arms. I let myself relax into his body, and we held each other tight as long as we dared. The sound of Henry whooping in the hall drove us apart.

  Henry charged into the dining room, pumping his arms in the air. ‘Finally! Finally!’ he said. ‘It’s about damn time! If the Republicans were in charge, this would have happened months ago!’

  Joe and I didn’t bother arguing with him. Instead we went into the kitchen for our allotted cup of coffee.

  Since Dellaphine didn’t fix breakfast on Sunday mornings the first person up made coffee and one of us who could cook threw something together for everyone to eat. Phoebe or I often fixed biscuits. Sometimes Henry prepared pancakes. We made do with honey instead of jam or syrup.

  In the kitchen I found Phoebe sobbing while she sifted flour into a mixing bowl. Ada had a hand on her arm, trying to calm her. Phoebe’s sons were in the Pacific, but talk of war anywhere reminded her of the danger they were in.

  ‘Let me do that,’ I said, taking the sifter from her and pulling the mixing bowl toward me. I finished sifting the flour and added lard, cutting the two ingredients together with a pastry mixer until they formed little crumbles. Ada measured the baking powder and salt, and then the milk and water for me. I mixed the batter with a wooden spoon and then kneaded it in the bowl. Phoebe dried her eyes on a tea towel while she watched us. Joe assumed the role of comforter, whispering quietly to her with an arm around her shoulder. She nodded, still with an occasional tear sliding down a cheek.

  Despite helping me with the biscuits Ada hadn’t said a word yet this morning and was as white as the flour she measured for me. I knew what she was thinking. She desperately wanted her husband to die. She had no idea where he was stationed, but I knew she prayed he would perish on some torrid airfield in Africa soon. If he died, she wouldn’t ever need to file for divorce, and she’d be spared the embarrassment and humiliation of revealing her marriage to a Nazi.

  The commotion in the kitchen brought Dellaphine and Madeleine upstairs. Dellaphine was dressed for church, wearing her Sunday suit, a black hat decorated with a blackbird wing, sensible shoes, and an enormous handbag. Madeleine wore jeans with the cuffs turned up, a baggy pink sweater, bobby socks, and sneakers. She was one of the first colored girls to find a government job, typing Social Security cards, and she enjoyed the benefits of a regular paycheck, just as I did.

  ‘Why, Miss Phoebe,’ Dellaphine said, patting Phoebe’s hand. ‘What’s wrong? Are the boys all right?’

  ‘Milt and Tom are fine,’ I said. ‘But we’ve invaded French North Africa.’

  ‘That’s no reason for you to be crying, Miss Phoebe,’ Dellaphine said. ‘That’s way on the other side of the world from where the boys are.’

  Phoebe dried her eyes again on the same kitchen towel, visibly damp from her tears. ‘Oh, I know,’ she said. ‘But other people’s sons are going to die. It’s all so terribly sad.’

  ‘Why are we invading Africa, anyway?’ Dellaphine said.

  ‘From there it’s not far to Italy, Mama,’ Madeleine said. ‘If you read the newspapers you’d know that.’

  ‘I don’t need to read no newspapers,’ Dellaphine said. ‘I trust God and President Roosevelt to win this war for us.’

  Madeleine glanced heavenward, and her mother saw it. She rested a hand on her hip. ‘Missy,’ she said, ‘I can’t make you go to church no more, but don’t you roll those eyes at me!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Momma,’ Madeleine said, deciding for once to avoid an argument.

  ‘Are you fixin’ enough biscuits for Sunday dinner, too?’ Dellaphine asked me.

  ‘Yes, General Dellaphine, I am,’ I answered. I dumped the dough out on the floured wooden pastry board, rolled it out and started cutting it into rounds with the lid of a Mason jar.

  ‘Do we have any real jam left, Dellaphine?’ Phoebe asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said, rooting around in the Hoosier cabinet. ‘Here, it’s peach. Half a jar.’

  ‘I think we will have some this morning.’

  Madeleine found a baking pan for me in the pantry, but no
t without a crash or two.

  ‘Every one of you is a mess,’ Dellaphine said. ‘It’s a good thing you got me to pray for you!’

  Shaking her head, Dellaphine went on out the back door and marched off to the Gethsemane Baptist Church. Church for her lasted a good two and a half hours, what with Sunday school, hymns, the sermon, and a social afterwards.

  ‘I should get dressed for church, too,’ Phoebe said. Phoebe was an Episcopalian. Her church didn’t start for another hour and would be finished promptly in fifty minutes.

  ‘By the time you come back downstairs these will be ready,’ I said, shoving the tray of biscuits in the oven.

  ‘I don’t think I could eat,’ Phoebe said. ‘I’ll take a cup of coffee upstairs with me.’

  When the biscuits came out of the oven, golden and hot, we smeared them with thin layers of butter and jam. Ada, Joe and I took ours into the lounge to eat while reading every page of The Washington Post. Henry subscribed to the Washington Herald, the conservative newspaper, so he had it all to himself. The rest of us, including Phoebe, were New Dealers. Madeleine carried her biscuits and coffee downstairs to her room, where she’d read the Baltimore Afro-American, the biggest colored newspaper on the east coast.

  When Phoebe got home from church she managed to eat half a biscuit, but she avoided the front pages of the Post, concentrating instead on the funny pages and the women’s section.

  As soon as Dellaphine got home she changed into a house dress and tied on her apron to fix Sunday dinner. Phoebe insisted that as long as she was alive there’d be Sunday dinner at her house. We boarders were so grateful to be living in luxury compared to most of the jam-packed boarding houses in the city that we were happy to pitch in and help with the chores. Ada set the table, and I helped Dellaphine cook. Joe dried the dishes, a sight that stunned us all when he first did it. I’d never seen a man near a kitchen sink before in my life. Women’s work was beneath Henry, but he did take care of Phoebe’s car and the yard.