A Cup of Tea - Amy Ephron [28]
Joe the doorman would say to Josie tipping his hat as she walked in carrying a bag of groceries, “Afternoon, Miss Kennedy. How’s your sister doing today?”
“She’s fine, Joe, thanks,” Josie said smiling which wasn’t really the truth.
Eleanor never left the apartment. Josie did the shopping and delivered the hats for her to Dora’s taking a certain pleasure in flouncing into the hat shop looking as bohemian and actressy as possible. It was all Dora could do to get her out the door as quickly as possible. She kept cash on hand, sealed in an envelope, because Josie made her plainly uncomfortable.
Eleanor would sit in the chair in the living room by the window most of the day sewing hats, occasionally reading or leafing through magazines and studying the fashions. She was so pregnant that the only way she could stitch was to balance the hat on her stomach. “I wish I could go out on the street for a walk,” she said mournfully.
Josie offered to go with her but Eleanor declined. “I hardly know four people in this part of the city,” she said, “but I’m sure the second I go out, I’ll run into one of them. Do you think our mail’s being forwarded from Wetzel’s?” That was what she was really upset about, that she hadn’t heard from Philip.
“I’m sure it is,” said Josie. “I got some today.”
“I haven’t had a letter from him for a month.”
Josie didn’t say anything.
“Oh you think he’s just forgotten me?”
“I didn’t say that,” said Josie. “It must be—it must be hard to send mail. The paper says they’re on the move.”
“The paper that you keep hiding from me,” said Eleanor accusingly. “The paper that says that there are heavy casualties…”
“In the North,” said Josie trying to calm her. “I didn’t think that he was in the North. I think that you should eat something.”
“I don’t want to eat anything.” She made a face and pushed herself out of the chair. “I’ll make you a sandwich, Josie. You’ve got a show tonight.” She hesitated in the doorway of the kitchen. “It’s the waiting that’s hard,” she said. “And not knowing whether you’re waiting for anything at all. You think that I’m a fool for waiting.”
Josie shook her head because she knew that nothing she could say would change Eleanor’s mind.
Eleanor had always figured the angles, but when she figured the angles here, they didn’t add up. Her mother used to tell her, “Don’t fall in love, Leni. When you fall in love, you lose your sense.” This was what it was then. She’d fallen in love. And she knew in her heart, even though the odds weren’t in her favor, there wasn’t anything else worth waiting for.
It was a Catholic Hospital. St. Mary’s. There was a large wooden cross on the wall behind Eleanor’s bed. All of the nurses wore nuns’ habits and, she imagined, would be fairly unforgiving if they knew her true circumstances—but it was the middle of a war and no one thought that it was odd that the baby’s father wasn’t at her side.
Her labor was quick and forgotten as soon as they put the baby in her arms. She was beautiful, perfectly formed, long legs and feet that arched like a ballerina’s, milk-white skin and little wisps of brown hair that Eleanor thought felt like silk.
“I will never let you know the things that I know,” she promised, the first time she took her to her breast. “I will never let you be cold or hungry or frightened in the middle of the night.”
She named her Tess. The last name was more of an issue. “Kennedy,” Josie insisted. “You have to make it all seem aboveboard.” It was an overt fabrication to put on the baby’s birth certificate: Father: Frank Kennedy. But she had no right to use the name Alsop. And it was, Josie convinced her, a necessary lie.
Josie and Jimmy Donohue rented a carriage for the morning so they could take the baby home in style. Josie had never seen Eleanor happier, unaware as they were that as their carriage passed