Yvonne had said only yesterday that it was time for Eva to shed the weight of her old, sad life. Eva wasn’t getting any younger, Yvonne had said. Eva was still pretty, still had a lot to offer—whatever that meant. Yvonne was newly single, in her late forties, with a plump figure, and had raised two sons. And while she’d inherited a great-aunt’s tiny Los Angeles house, she didn’t see herself anymore as desirable. Eva, however, was still a catch.
“Let me fix you up with my friend’s little brother,” Yvonne had said. They’d been outside in Yvonne’s postage stamp backyard, and Eva was taking her freshly dried laundry off a clothesline. “He’s nice and about your age. And he needs to come back from a heartbreak, too. Just like you.”
“I doubt he is just like me,” Eva had said, reaching up to unpin a washcloth.
“I mean,” the woman had continued, “he’s been dealt a difficult hand, too. The gal he was engaged to suddenly decided she was in love with someone else. He was devastated. I’m just saying he knows the loss you’re feeling.”
Does he really?Eva had wanted to say.Does he know what it’s like to watch the one you love and who loves you be led onto a transport truck at gunpoint? Does he know what it’s like to watch your father and brother and the man you love be taken from you and sent to the gulag while all you can do is drop to your knees in anguish, helpless? Does he know what it’s like to be told you will never see them again and to have those who told you this be absolutely right? Does he know what that’s like?
But Eva hadn’t said any of this to Yvonne. She had no plans to tell anyone any of that, ever. All Yvonne knew was that Eva had lost her home and family in the war, as well as Sascha, the man she loved. That was all Yvonne knew. That was all Yvonne would ever know.
So Eva had placed a folded pair of slacks in her laundry basket and said she wasn’t sure she was ready.
“C’mon, Eva,” Yvonne had pressed. “Didn’t all that happen a long time ago? The war has been over for a decade. And you had to have been only a teenager when you lost this fellow you cared for, right?”
Eva had instantly remembered a conversation she’d had with the woman who’d slept across from her at the third DP camp, and this woman saying something along the same lines but with far less compassion—as though when she’d pledged her love to Sascha at fifteen she’d known nothing about love or the world.
She’d already known quite a bit about the world at fifteen. Too much, her father had once said. And Sascha had not been some fleeting childhood crush. She had loved him with every fiber of her being. He, though only seventeen, had loved her. And Sascha hadn’t left her for someone else. He had been taken forever from her. This heartbroken friend of Yvonne’s was not like her in the least.
“I’ll think about it,” Eva had said. But she’d not thought about it at all.
When she was ready to leave Melanie’s for the day and head next door, she found the actress standing by the front room picture window, staring at the Blankenship house.
Melanie had been moody since returning from June and Elwood’s. She’d changed out of her nice skirt and blouse into everyday clothes—pedal pushers and a lemon-yellow twin set—but she didn’t relax. If anything, she was more on edge since her chat with June, more so than even after she’d hung up with the government man.
Something was bothering her; that was clear.
When Eva reached the front door, Melanie turned from the window and reached out to stop her from opening it.
“I need you to do something when you’re over there.” Melanie looked to the Blankenship house and then back to Eva. “I want you to make sure Elwood is okay.”
“Okay?” Eva echoed.
“I want you to find a way to talk to him.”
Melanie’s tone was solemn. Anxious. As though she was afraid for the man.
“About what?” Eva asked.
“Just make sure he’s not being, I don’t know, kept away from people.”
“What…what do you mean?”
“I mean I want you to make sure he’s not being held in his bedroom against his will.”
A chill swept through Eva. “Why do you—” she began, but Melanie interrupted her.
“Because I haven’t seen him in a few days, that’s why. I haven’t heard his voice. I haven’t seen his shadow cross in front of the window in his room. I haven’t heard him cough or sneeze or call June’sname and we’ve all had our windows open because it’s been so warm.”
“But…she brought over that note he wrote this morning,” Eva said, the chill intensifying.
“Yes, but how do I knowshedidn’t write it?”
Was Melanie being serious? A sudden image of June coming at Eva with that garden shovel filled her mind, and, despite the absurdity of it, she felt the color drain from her face.
Melanie must have seen her pale.
“Look. It’s probably nothing,” Melanie said quickly. “Probably just my imagination. But I want to make sure, okay? I seriously doubt you’ll be in any danger. Just open his bedroom door and peek inside. I’m positive June can’t make it upstairs right now. She’ll never know you’ve done it.”
