The evening meal at Moskin’s goes on much longer than usual tonight. People from other tables come over to talk to the Frankfurters and to question Helga with curious, pitying expressions on their faces. “Did you ever see Hitler, that bum?” one of the guests inquires.
Helga shakes her head, mouthing a silent no and explains that she lived in a medium-sized city in northern Germany before she was spirited away to England with other children of endangered or broken families. Nobody, of course, asks what happened to Helga’s parents and the rest of her family in Germany. They may by now be in a prison camp or even dead. Probably no one really knows, not even the Frankfurters.
All this time, Helga has hardly eaten a thing. A few spoonfuls of soup, a chicken wing, some peas and carrots. “You have no appetite?” another hovering Moskin guest wants to know. “No wonder you’re thin as a rail.”
To my surprise, Helga stares back at the woman almost angrily. “We don’t eat like this in England, and not in Germany either before leaving. Here in America....”
Helga’s Aunt Harriette breaks in apologetically. “What Helga’s trying to say is that we haven’t felt the brunt of the war here yet. Our food is much too rich for her after the wartime diet she’s accustomed to.”
Helga just lowers her eyes. “Thank you, Aunt Hattie,” she says, after the nosy-body leaves the table, only to make way for others.
I suppose it is hard to be the center of attention, although of course I wouldn’t know. The one thing that’s on my mind at the moment is how late it’s getting and what if Roy has already arrived at the Shady Pines social hall with nobody there to greet him.
“You’ll all have to excuse me,” I blurt out suddenly. “I just remembered something terribly important.”
“Isabel,” my mother says in a warning tone, “I hope you’re not being rude.”
“No, no,” I assure her. “I’d be rude if I didn’t take care of this...um, problem, right now.”
I dash out into the lobby of the main building and look around quickly for a glimpse of Roy in his sailor garb. A few guests have already set up card games and others are sitting and talking in groups, the men smoking their after-dinner cigars. It’s already dusk as I make my way across the bumpy lawns of Shady Pines, out past the Annex, and beyond it to the squat wooden building that was the scene of so much fun last summer. By this time in the evening, the band at Moskin’s would have begun playing catchy tunes from the Hit Parade of 1941 and even earlier...peppy songs like “Boo Hoo” and “The Love Bug Will Bite You (If You Don’t Watch Out).”
I race up the wooden steps of the casino, which is dimly lit and not very inviting from the outside. Would Roy even know that this was the fun palace with all the “action” that I described to him this afternoon? Nobody is here, nobody, that is, except a handful of little kids, mainly the eight- and ten-year-olds from the lake. Some of them are fooling with the jukebox, trying to get it to play without putting money in. Others are jumping off the stage, scrambling back up, and jumping off again.
“Quels stupides!” I mutter under my breath. I grab one of the little boys. “Listen,” I say, “did you see a sailor come in here, a young fellow in a white Navy uniform?”
“Nah,” says the kid, with a snide grin. “Whaddya think, the fleet’s in? Don’tcha know the whole U.S. Navy’s in the Pacific fightin’ the Japs?”
I turn away in disgust and go sit in the dark on the casino steps until Ruthie finally turns up a good half-hour later. She sits down beside me. “He didn’t show, huh?”
“You’re sure you didn’t see him anywhere around the main building?”
“No, I looked everywhere on my way over here. He was probably too shy. Or he couldn’t find his way in the dark.”
“Or,” I say, in quiet despair, “who’s going to bother keeping a promise to a twelve-year-old girl with a chest that’s too small and a nose that’s too big?”
Early the next morning I’m awakened by the sound of stealthy but distinct movement coming from Helga’s side of the room. I open one eye and glare at her. She’s sitting on her bed fully dressed in very short khaki shorts, a heavy dark green sweater, and is pulling on a pair of leather lace-up hiking boots.
Her legs are entirely bare and, as she gets to her feet, I can’t help noticing how long, slender and yet well-developed they are. “Ach. I’m sorry, Isabel, if I woke you.”
Ach. This is the first expression in German that I’ve heard from Helga.
“Where are you going?” I ask suspiciously. “It’s barely light out.”
“To make a morning walk,” she says, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to go tramping across the countryside two hours before breakfast. “You should come. It’s very healthy. Shall I wait for you to dress?”
I turn over and fling the covers across my head. “No thanks,” I wave at her with one hand. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”
But somehow Helga has wrecked my early morning sleep pattern. I toss around in bed for half an hour or so. Then I’m wide awake, so I get up and start wandering around our room. I know it’s wrong of me, but I can’t help poking through Helga’s half of the closet and in the drawers of our shared bureau. From the way Helga looked last night in her flowered chiffon dress, I had no idea she was such an outdoorsy type.
Just as I suspected, she doesn’t have much in the way of dress-up clothing. But she has lots of drab brown shirts, with military-looking epaulets on the shoulders, and short boxy skirts to match. She has several pairs of mud-colored socks and another pair of boots. It’s almost as though Helga’s been living in some kind of uniform.
And then there’s the sturdy cardboard box in her top drawer that says Schokoladen on it. That’s got to be German for chocolates. But it feels like it’s packed with something much heavier. It would be easy to slip the cover off and take just one peek inside. But I know that would really be going too far. And yet...one peek... How bad would that be?
I open the door of my room and look out. The Annex porch is empty; the grounds of Shady Pines appear to be deserted. Hardly anyone is up yet. I tiptoe back to the mysterious chocolate box and gently lift up the deep-fitting cover.
There is an old photo right on top of a family, parents and very young children. Could one of them be Helga when she was little? Other pictures, too. And there are letters, still in their neatly slit-open envelopes, with canceled stamps and with addresses in foreign-looking penmanship. Carefully, carefully, I slide one of the letters out of its envelope. But I can’t make out a word. It must be in German, and so must all the others.
I’m just sliding the letter back into its envelope when I hear a step on the annex porch followed by a soft knock at the door. I jam the cover back onto the chocolate box, slam the bureau drawer shut much too noisily, jump back into bed, and call out in the sleepiest voice I can muster, “Who’s there?”
Whoever it is doesn’t seem to have heard me, knocks again, and softly calls out in a woman’s voice, “Helga, are you there?” This time, I get out of bed, go to the door, and open it to find Helga’s aunt, Harriette Frankfurter, standing there with an apologetic smile on her face.
“Ooh, sorry if I woke you, Isabel. I need to speak to Helga.”
Harriette Frankfurter is a bosomy redhead, a sort of little pouter