The bungalow was at the top of the unpaved Lane L, which had three other houses on it, off Cedar Valley Lane. It was a simple, unheated wooden structure, thrown up by a developer who could hardly produce them fast enough to meet the demand. When Maurice bought theirs for $2,000, in 1939, they were already considered good investments, though Perle worried about the cost.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said breezily. ‘I’ll pay it off.’ He would never have said ‘we’. She acceded with her own version of good grace: silence, a shrug, acquiescence. Paying wasn’t her problem. Morrie would provide, he always did, almost always.
A screened-in front room led into the kitchen, through which was a modest living room, three bedrooms and two simple bathrooms. At the back was a porch, with a gate that led to a small lawn, and a couple of mature crab apple trees between which Poppa could hang the orange striped hammock. The children had to be taught that a gate was not also a swing, except that it was if you wanted it to be. One day the hinges broke and Becca fell over and skinned her knee. She didn’t do that again.
From the very first day, Perle adored the heavenly expanse after the cramped two-room apartment on the fourth floor of the Hotel Brewster, kitchen, dining room and living room together as you came through the door, with a double bedroom and bath. And in Huntington, six rooms! A porch, a yard! She loved furnishing it, choosing fabrics and furniture from the current Sears Catalog, a bedroom suite for only $37.75. That was very reasonable! A red lacquered rocking chair, a few throw carpets, a sofa, some occasional tables: only another $32.40, for them all. She had a few bits and pieces she could spare from the apartment – it was too cluttered anyway – and from the local goodwill shop she bought a dining table and six chairs – eight bucks! – and three sets of used curtains at fifty cents a pair. The empty space soon became a home, if only for the summers. She loved it! A summer was a long time, you could stretch it at both ends as the developers recommended. Residents went to Harbor Heights in the early spring and didn’t leave until after Labor Day (for those with children at city schools) or October (for those fortunate enough to stay on for the beautiful fall).
It was a happy period, the two of them in unusual harmony, proud of what they were creating, Perle on the inside, Maurice, the out, members of a professional community of gregarious city residents. They made friends quickly: Momshe and Popshe Livermore (he was the boss of a fancy department store), further up the road Sam and Martha Lowry, and across from them the Cohens (he was named Edwin, but she seemed only to be called Honey). The women became friends, which was a brocheh, because it left the men to their baseball, cigarettes and beer, their pinochle games in the evening, while the women schmoozed in the living room.
Maurice had no idea what they talked about. The children, obviously. Clothes, recipes, matters of housekeeping? TV programmes? Who cared, as long as they were happy, and quiet? He would have been surprised by the range of their conversations, would have forgotten to add the topic ‘husbands’, about whom they were sometimes amused and frequently exasperated. But to a woman they were loyal, occasionally indiscreet, but anxious never to overstep that unspoken line that would make them emotionally unfaithful. They all knew about men, what they were like. No need to say everything, was there?
Sometimes, when the right four could be arranged (which was surprisingly difficult), they would play canasta. Perle was a student of the game, as adept as Maurice at his, but her aggression was not channelled into bonhomie, teasing and patronising instruction. No, hers was the untrammelled thing: she played to win, and when she snapped down her melds, taking the cards from her hand and twisting her wrist as ferociously as if she were trying to remove the recalcitrant lid of a jar of pickles, you could hear the snap as they hit the table, which wobbled under the impact. As did the other players. It was daunting, imperious. No one wished to play with her, no fun in that. Better to schmooze – safer, more relaxing.
And while they talked, they knitted. It was a skill required of the girls of their generation, and during the war they had formed a local group, knitting socks, sweaters and mufflers for the poor freezing soldiers. Afterwards Perle carried on knitting and (a new passion) crocheting, revelling in the freedom to choose her own patterns and colours, to brighten things up with oranges and greens, make sweaters less bulky, socks for more delicate feet, ladies’ mufflers to look smart on a winter’s night. She knitted at such a rate that the family were swathed in warming garments, begging for less.
The overflow was placed in the cedar chest in the front room, opposite the freezer, which was Becca’s favourite spot in the bungalow. When she arrived she’d run up the steps, pull back the lid, put her head right in and take a deep smell. It was heavenly; she couldn’t get enough of it, would return several times a day and sniff away happily, like some sort of juvenile junky. Opposite her, Jake would make several trips to the freezer to sneak a Good Humor ice cream. Becca liked them, too. Sometimes he’d share. But he thought the cedar chest was stupid.
When it got just past eleven, the cigarette packs and beer bottles empty, one or another of the pinochle players would suggest that enough was enough, they should settle up. Maurice always won, but the stakes were low, less than five dollars would change hands. He hated having to stop, loved the niceties of play, frequently pointing out the errors of his fellow players, to their intense annoyance. One more round, he’d insist.
‘Let’s wait till the enemy squawks!’ he’d say, shuffling the cards, starting to deal, the air still and blessedly cooler as the night wore on. ‘Last round up!’
It had gone quiet in the car, the smoke yellowing and humid. Addie was resting her head against the window, a small floral cushion propping her up. Becca had gone back to sleep in the back seat. Though admonished to shut up, Ben was humming operatic arias, conducting with one hand and steering with the other. Jake was neither reading nor looking out the window, had jellybeans aplenty but was not eating them, had taken out a pad and pencil and was doing some figures. After a time he looked up to see if he could locate an audience.
‘Ben?’ he said, looking down at his pad.
‘What, honey?’
‘I am trying to figure it out. Today is July 6th, isn’t it?’
‘Yup.’
‘And Addie says we are going to the bungalow until after my birthday. That’s August 25th. So . . .’ He paused to count, dividing the number of days by seven. ‘So, that’s over seven weeks, isn’t it?’
‘Sure enough,’ said Ben lightly. ‘It is.’
‘How come? We usually only go for a month, right? In August. Why are we going so early this time?’
There was a slight pause. Addie raised her head from her cushion.
‘I already explained this,’ she said. ‘I thought you would remember? This year we get the whole summer at the bungalow. That’s an extra treat, isn’t it? Who’d want to be in sweaty old Alexandria when they could be with Poppa and Granny and go to the beach?’
He remembered, but he hadn’t done the sums. ‘A little longer this summer’, that was how she’d explained it. It wasn’t an entirely appealing prospect. He shared the fiction that he loved it at the bungalow, though he was bored there most of the time, particularly when Ben and Poppa were away. Too many girls! Becca, and cousins Jenny, Naomi and baby Charlotte, with their silly games, dolls and dressing-up outfits. Of course he lorded it over them, got to be conductor of the swinging seats, had first call on the hammock, was the only one allowed on the roof or near the septic tank. He needed boys to talk to about baseball, but even if he found some at the beach they would be stupid Yankee fans. Or maybe the Dodgers or Giants. That was pretty bad too. None of them had even heard of Mickey Vernon! And what was worse, no one to play baseball with. Not like in Alexandria, where he could play softball three mornings a week in the summer.
But at least there was plenty of time to read, to nosh fruit and jellied candies and ice cream, to go swimming at the beach, or into Huntington for a hotdog at Wolfie’s, with sauerkraut and mustard, and a Dr Pepper straight out of the bottle.
The more he thought about it, the better it