All She Ever Wanted (16 page)

A shudder passed through Kathleen at the mention of her brother. She wondered what crime he’d committed this time to get his name in the paper. She could barely answer Mrs. Hayworth’s question as she fought the urge to leap into her car and flee home to Maryland.

“Um… good. I’m good. I’m here in town, actually. Well, in Bensenville.”

“Wonderful! Why don’t you come over for a visit?”

“I’d hate to bother you if you’re busy…”

“Nonsense. I’m a seventy-nine-year-old widow. How busy do you imagine I could be? I’d love to see you.” Kathleen didn’t feel right about accepting Cynthia’s invitation to dinner, but she finally agreed to stop by afterward for coffee.

“Isn’t Mrs. Hayworth your friend May Elizabeth’s mother?” Joelle asked when Kathleen told her where she was going.

“Yes. She invited me to come over later. You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to. I won’t stay long. The hotel pool looks nice.”

Joelle shrugged. “I’ll come.” She punched the TV remote lazily, flipping through the channels, then suddenly sat up. “Hey, do you suppose they still have their bomb shelter? It would be awesome to see it!”

Cynthia Hayworth met them at the front door, struggling to quiet a yapping little dog named Fluff. Kathleen thought of the break-in fortyodd years ago and wondered if it would have happened if the Hayworths had owned Fluff back then.

The Hayworth house, which had once seemed so huge and modern and glamorous to Kathleen, now looked small and outdated, like something from a 1960s museum. The sunken living room looked unchanged after all this time and even had the same brocade sofa she remembered. The pastel bathroom fixtures hadn’t been updated, either, but the little doll that once hid the roll of toilet paper had disappeared, replaced by a bowl of potpourri. Kathleen glanced at the floor as she entered the front foyer, looking for the spot on the carpet where Poke and JT had thrown up, but the shag carpeting had been replaced.

Kathleen never would have recognized Cynthia if they had passed each other on the street. But when she looked closely, she could still see the glamorous woman she remembered underneath the aging exterior. Cynthia was still elegant—a classy lady—wearing a dress and jewelry and nylons, even on a warm summer evening. Her silvery hair looked freshly done. Kathleen felt a jolt of surprise to realize that her own mother would be in her late seventies, too, if she had lived. In Kathleen’s mind, her mother would always look the way she had the last time she had seen her, remaining forty-four forever.

They chatted comfortably as they sipped coffee and lemonade, catching up on each other’s lives. Kathleen was touched by the kind way that Cynthia drew Joelle into the conversation.

“How are May Elizabeth and Ron?” Kathleen asked after awhile.

“May is on her third husband, I’m sorry to say. She has three children, one from each, and lives in Atlanta. Ron went into his father’s business, of course. He runs the factory now. He married Debbie Harris—remember her? They have three children, too, and their second grandchild is on the way.” The idea of Ron Hayworth as a grandfather made Kathleen feel very old.

“I was telling Joelle on the way here what it was like growing up in Riverside, and I realized that I’ve never thanked you for helping me. You always made me feel welcome in your home, and you took an interest in our family and helped us out with clothes and things. You put your faith into action. And it’s thanks to you that I’m a Christian today.”

“Oh, dear,” Cynthia said with a worried look. “I have a confession to make. I’m afraid that my motives weren’t entirely unselfish, years ago. You see, I knew your mother before you were born, before she married your father. We were once best friends.”

Kathleen couldn’t reply. She couldn’t picture it. How could classy Cynthia Hayworth be best friends with frumpy Eleanor Gallagher? No. Cynthia might as well have told Kathleen that her mother had once been best friends with the Queen of England. But then, hadn’t Kathleen and May Elizabeth once been unlikely friends, too?

“I always felt guilty about how differently things turned out for your mother and me,” Cynthia continued, nervously stroking the dog’s fur. “So I decided to help Eleanor and her family—behind the scenes, so to speak.

Then I grew very fond of you, of course. I felt so bad when you stopped coming to church. I know it was partly because May Elizabeth treated you so badly once you girls got to junior high and high school, and I still feel so sorry about it all.”

Kathleen barely heard Cynthia’s apology as a hundred questions swirled through her mind. “When did you know my mother?” she asked. “Where did you meet her? I know Mom left Deer Falls and came here, but do you know when or why? We were just wondering about that, weren’t we, Joelle? My mother never talked much about herself.”

“I wish now that I would have told you about my friendship with your mother when you were growing up. Maybe it would have helped you understand her better if you’d known a little bit more of her story. But then again, May Elizabeth knew all about me, and it didn’t seem to help our relationship.”

“How did you and Mom meet?”

“Eleanor and I both came to town after Pearl Harbor to work in my husband’s factory. Of course, it wasn’t his factory back then, and he wasn’t my husband. It was called Riverside Electronics, not Hayworth Industries. They had converted it into a defense plant during the war to manufacture electrical components and things like that. Eleanor and I were very, very different—yet we also had a lot in common. We were both born during the Roaring Twenties, spent our childhood under the cloud of the Great Depression, and came of age during the worst war the world had ever seen. And then we both applied for a job on the very same day. …

Chapter
13

R
IVERSIDE
, N
EW
Y
ORK—
1942

Cynthia Weaver waited in the crowded front office at Riverside Electronics, wondering where she could go and what she would do if they didn’t hire her. It hadn’t taken very long to fill out the employment form since her only work experience had been on her family’s farm. She hoped it would count for something. Women filled the tiny office: most of them older than Cynthia, many of them housewives in calico shifts and no-nonsense shoes, all of them looking for work. She felt out of place dressed in her Sunday best, but compared to the young woman sitting in the chair across from her, Cynthia felt like she’d just fallen off the turnip truck.

The girl looked Cynthia’s age, but her obvious poise and confidence as she flipped through an old copy of
Life
magazine made her appear more mature. She wore her dark glossy hair perfectly styled in a pageboy, her lipstick and nail polish were the same shade of red as the stripe in her blouse, and she was the only woman in the office wearing slacks. She looked like she’d just stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. And in a town as small as Riverside, that meant she looked out of place.

The door leading into the factory opened suddenly, and a portly man in a drab, ill-fitting suit emerged, clutching a sheaf of papers. “Eleanor Bartlett?” he called. The stylish girl stood. “And Cynthia Weaver?” She scrambled to her feet. “I’m Ralph Jackson. This way, please, girls.”

He led them down a cramped hallway, past piles of boxes and wooden pallets, and into the factory itself. The building hummed with the drone of machines and the buzz of fluorescent lighting, while in the background pounding hammers and screeching power saws added to the clamor. Cynthia glimpsed rows of workers intent on their labor and wondered how they could concentrate with such a racket.

“Pardon the noise,” Mr. Jackson said as he steered them into his cubicle. “We’re expanding the plant, retooling for war production.” The tiny office had a wall of glass so he could see out onto the factory floor when he sat behind his desk. He shut the door, reducing the noise somewhat, and gestured to two chairs. “Have a seat, girls.”

Cynthia sat stiffly on the edge of her chair, wondering what to do with her purse and with her fluttering hands, hoping she didn’t look too fidgety as she straightened her skirt. The girl named Eleanor made herself comfortable almost effortlessly, managing to look ladylike, even in trousers, as she crossed her legs.

“What sort of electronics do you manufacture here?” she asked.

“Various gauges, switches for bombs.”

Cynthia knew that her shock must have shown on her face when Mr. Jackson laughed. Hadn’t her mother always warned her not to wear her heart on her sleeve for the whole world to see? She wished she could mask her emotions better.

“Don’t worry, Miss Weaver,” he said. “There aren’t any explosives here. We assemble the switches, but they’re wired to the actual bombs someplace else.” He cleared his throat, as if to signal that the time had come to get down to business, and scanned the pile of papers in front of him. “Now, then, girls. First of all, I appreciate your willingness to do your patriotic duty by applying for a job in the defense industry. You’ve both listed your ages as eighteen and stated that you’re high school graduates. Is that correct? Did you bring proof of that?”

Cynthia dug her birth certificate and high school diploma from her purse and passed them across the desk to him. The other girl’s purse wasn’t any larger than Cynthia’s, but her papers looked remarkably crisp and unwrinkled as she pulled them out.

“Very good,” he said when he’d finished examining them. “Congratulations, girls. You’re hired. You can both start tomorrow. Training will take about two weeks, depending on how quickly you catch on. You’ll be paid thirty-five dollars a week.”

Cynthia broke into a wide grin, then squelched her enthusiasm when she saw Eleanor nodding calmly.

“Now I also see on your applications that neither of you has listed a local address as your place of residence.”

“That’s right,” Eleanor said. “I planned to look for housing once I was certain that I had a position here. Perhaps I’ll start searching this afternoon.” She seemed so confident and poised. Cynthia would have stammered an inadequate apology. When she realized that she was nodding in agreement like a trained horse, she spoke up.

“Yes… me, too. I’ll look today, too.”

“Housing is scarce near almost all of the defense plants, as you’ve probably heard,” Mr. Jackson said. “But I’m a lifelong resident of Riverside, and I could suggest a few places, if you want.”

Eleanor smiled. “That would be very kind of you, Mr. Jackson.”

“Yes. Yes, it would, Mr. Jackson.” Cynthia hated the way she sounded. She wouldn’t have remembered Mr. Jackson’s name if Eleanor hadn’t addressed him by it. She wondered if everyone could tell what a hick she was.

Mr. Jackson pulled out a list from a desk drawer and looked it over. “The most economical housing is a modest bed/sitting room above Montgomery’s Funeral Home for twelve dollars a month. It so happens that Ada Montgomery is my sister-in-law, and I’ve seen the place. It’s very nice. You would share a bath with two other boarders, and—”

“I’ll take it,” they both said simultaneously. Cynthia looked at Eleanor in alarm, but Eleanor laughed.

“No need to fight over it,” Mr. Jackson said jovially. “Ada says it’s large enough to accommodate two girls. I was about to add that whoever takes it will need to find a roommate.”

“I’m game if you are,” Eleanor said.

“Sure.” Cynthia couldn’t believe her good luck—she had landed a job and a roommate on the same day.

“You girls aren’t squeamish about living above all the caskets and dead bodies and so forth, are you?” Mr. Jackson asked.

“I grew up on a farm,” Cynthia said, then could have kicked herself. What a stupid thing to say. It made no sense. Should she explain what she’d meant? That she was accustomed to the sight of slaughtered hogs and chickens—or would that make matters worse?

“The funeral home isn’t hard to find,” he continued. “Did you see the stainless steel diner on Main Street as you came into town? The funeral home is right across the road from it. It sits back from the street a ways, behind some trees, so you might have missed it.”

“Thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Jackson,” Eleanor said smoothly.

“I’m sure we’ll have no trouble finding it.”

He took them on a brief tour of the factory floor, and Cynthia had to resist the urge to shade her eyes from the glare of the thrumming fluorescent lights. The laborers stood in long rows behind workstations, assembling a complicated collage of wires and gadgets. Cynthia knew absolutely nothing about wiring and electricity, and she felt a ripple of anxiety, wondering how she could possibly get the hang of constructing such intricate devices. Mr. Jackson introduced them to their supervisor, Mr. Tomacek, a swarthy man in his sixties who smelled like cooked cabbage and looked as though he’d immigrated to America onboard a pirate ship. He glowered at them suspiciously, giving Cynthia the feeling that he disliked women in the workplace—especially brazen women like Eleanor who wore slacks.

“You’ll need to wear a kerchief to cover your hair,” Tomacek growled. “Keep your fingernails short, no polish. No jewelry allowed, either. And you’ll be standing all day, so wear sturdy shoes.”