The maître d’ brought him his hat, and he stood to go.
“Miss Epstein, there is one other solution to your parents’ predicament.”
“What’s that?” Anna asked, sitting up at attention. She watched him put on his hat.
“Marry yourself an American,” he said as he straightened the brim.
Anna let out a little laugh.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Joseph,” Mr. Hirsch said with a wink. “It’s still the quickest way I know to get a visa.”
The drink, combined with the afternoon heat and Mr. Hirsch’s promises, had left Anna feeling light-headed. At the door of the Adlers’ apartment, she dug in her purse for a handkerchief and her compact, blotted the perspiration from her neck and the skin around her hairline, and assessed her overall appearance in the small mirror. She made a face at herself and probably would have made several more had the door not opened to reveal Gussie.
“I thought I heard you out here!”
Gussie extended her hand to offer the secret handshake, and Anna shut her compact with a snap, slipped it back into her purse alongside the handkerchief. Then she reached for the little girl’s wrist.
“Wharp-ere warp-ere yarp-ou?” Gussie asked
“Let’s speak in English for now, okay?”
For a moment Gussie looked crestfallen but then her face brightened. “I have a letter for you!”
“Oh?” Anna had received a letter from her mother, just a few days ago, but perhaps her father had written. In place of long letters, he usually sent articles or a short story he’d torn from the pages of the magazineKladderadatsch. Maybe it was all the years he’d spent studying and teaching English, but he seemed to understand that reading German, for Anna now, had become a kind of treat.
Gussie led her into the kitchen, where the table was covered in old newspapers, cut to bits.
“What are you working on?”
“Nana says Mother likes the Dionne quintlets.”
“Quintuplets.”
“That’s what I said.” Anna had clearly irritated the girl. She raised her eyebrows at Gussie, who was rooting through the paper scraps, looking for something. Hopefully Anna’s letter hadn’t been cut to shreds, too.
“So, you’re cutting out pictures of the babies?”
“Yes, see?” Gussie held up a piece of blue construction paper onto which she’d glued a half-dozen versions of the same photo Anna had seen plastered on every periodical at every newsstand in Atlantic City. In it, the quintuplets’ doctor loomed over a bassinet, in which all five babies, each in her own bunting, were packed like sardines. It was hard to make out their faces.
It seemed a little tactless to present a pregnant woman at risk for miscarrying with a collage of baby pictures, but Anna had to assume Esther had sanctioned the activity.
“Where’s your grandmother?”
“In her bedroom, lying down.”
“Ah.”
“Here it is!” Gussie said, removing a folded piece of paper from underneath a three-day-old section of theAtlantic City Press.
Anna’s heart sank. The note wasn’t in the light blue aerogram envelope she’d become accustomed to looking for on the dresser in the Adlers’ entryway. In fact, the note wasn’t in an envelope at all.
“Have you read it?”
Gussie nodded earnestly and handed the note over. Before Anna could unfold the piece of paper, Gussie blurted out, “It’s from Stuart!” and scurried around the table to read the note, once more, over Anna’s shoulder.
Anna,
Now is as good a time as any to learn to swim. Your first lesson is tomorrow evening at six. Meet me at the Kentucky Avenue beach tent?
