Free The Great Husband Hunt by Laurie Graham

right away.”
    “How industrious you've been,” Ma said. “And Israel, too. And how convenient, for it so happens I've decided to answer my country's call, too. We shall both be modern working women, and in the evening we shall eat sandwiches.”
    I said, “Ma, what ever kind of work can you do?”
    It seemed most capricious of her to rise from her sickbed and become modern on the very day of my own triumph.
    “I shall make jam,” she said. “I have joined,” she announced, “the National Campaign for the Elimination of Waste. Let me see no more crusts left on the side of your plate, Poppy. Let me see no more cake toyed with, on account of dryness.”
    I am sure I had never toyed with cake in my life.
    Still, suddenly Ma and I had full and important lives. We talked all evening about household economies we might make as part of our war effort. I even steered our conversation around to the expedience of riding in public trolley-cars.
    “Only be sure to wear your gloves,” Ma said, “and to wash your hands at the very first opportunity. Minnie Schwab rode on the elevated railway, you may remember, and immediately became ill with a hacking cough.”
    “What a pity,” I crowed, “that Honey can manage nothing more demanding than her Widows and Orphans Bazaar.”
    “Now, Poppy,” Ma said. “Honey doesn't have your sturdiness. As long as she remembers to take her elixir, though, she manages very well. And she can hardly be reproached for finding wars difficult. She's a married woman. She has a husband to fear for.”
    But Harry was having an awfully good war. A patchy lung kept him away from any military engagements. His steel investments were doing well. Also his holdings in oil and rubber. He had bought a house in Palm Beach, Florida, and parcels of land bordering on three of Long Island's most up-and-coming golf courses. He had even been elected to the Wall Street Racquet Club.
    “If he has any sense,” Uncle Israel had said when he heard that news, “he'll be polite enough not to insist on playing.”
    We dined on sardines on toast and after dinner I tried to show Ma how to turn a heel. We had, after all, baskets full of yarn, and we were in a fever of thrift and industry. But I made an awkward teacher. Within an hour Ma had abandoned knitting and was thinking of embroidering handkerchiefs.
    I said, “I think our boys may do well enough with plain ones. How can you be sure of embroidering the right initials?”
    “Why, I shall do a selection, of course,” Ma said. “As long as my eyesight holds up.”
    Emptied of staff our house seemed suddenly vast and vulnerable. With Reilly gone it now fell to me to protect the Minkel fortress and I was doing the rounds, securing all the doors and windows for the night, when I heard the telephone ring. It was the hour for Aunt Fish's daily report on her committees.
    I raced upstairs to take the call but arrived in the parlor to discover that Ma had picked up the hated gadget and answered it herself. “I am quite well, thank you Zillah,” she said. “Answering the telephone is now part of my war work. To spare poor Poppy. She's practically running the Red Cross bandage effort, you know? They had her there till half past four this afternoon and us without so much as an Irish. But we are determined to manage. One must do what one can for the duration. And I shall fill the solitary hours with needlework. I am embroidering for victory!”

11
    My new friends at the Red Cross took me for younger than twenty, especially as I didn't have a beau as yet. As I explained to them, I hadn't even had my debut, what with Pa's passing and my being needed as a companion and helpmeet to Ma. I didn't feel deprived. I remembered Honey's debut. Her head had filled up with names of dance partners and designs of gowns, and ever after that she hadn't been much company anymore. It had all cost a mountain of money and the result of it was she married Harry Glaser, so it seemed to me we