Free Nothing Is Quite Forgotten in Brooklyn by Alice Mattison

you’d probably left the baby in a foundling home, if they still have such things, and taken off with an attractive sailor like—what was his name? The room sounds small. I know, you’ll cope. How far are you from the beach?
    I know Eleanor is your sweetheart [it took Con a moment to think of Eleanor Roosevelt] but it says in the paper she agrees with La Guardia that women air raid wardens should not wear slacks. I’d like to know how she’d feel walking in the cold, night after night, with the wind going up her legs. I might wear slacks under my dress, that will show her.
    I’ve had my own adventures, nothing like what you’reup to. To make a long story short I met a Catholic man at a bar. I went there with Sherman but he was tired so I said I’d take the subway home alone, and then I went back and got into a conversation with the man, Mike. He had a cross around his neck believe it or not. He asked me to marry him. Turned out he promised his mother when he went to New York he wouldn’t kiss any girl he wasn’t engaged to, so he gets engaged to all his dates. Very funny.
    We had a few laughs but that was all. I saw him again when I went back with Sherman, but we both pretended we didn’t know each other. Or maybe I pretended and he forgot.
    What do you think of calling the baby Babs? Someone in my office has a sister Babs. You’ll tell me Jewish Barbaras aren’t called Babs but since when was Barbara a Jewish name? Then you’ll say you named her after your Aunt Basha and I guess you did. I know you don’t hear from your aunt these days, but that could mean any number of things, not just Hitler.
    Got to go, if I don’t get some sleep I’ll start laughing at the jokers in my office and you know where that would get me.
    Your friend,
Marlene
    Dear Gert,
    I didn’t get an answer to last week’s letter but I’ll write and tell you the news from here. First of all I looked upwhere you are on the map, and I guess Starke isn’t too near the beach. Do you get to see Abe? Maybe they’ll end up using him at the base and he won’t have to go overseas. There must be a need for people like him with moderate-sized brains in their heads instead of noodles. As you know I have never considered Abe a genius (not since the alphabet incident) but he is no dope either.
    We won’t tell the army about the alphabet incident.
    Anyhow, I’m still wearing out my shoes and my feet walking the streets of Brooklyn at night. Imagine how we would have felt in peacetime, just a few years ago, if somebody said it was her job to walk up and down the street and make sure you couldn’t see any light through the window curtains. I have gotten to know a very nice fellow, also a warden. He wasn’t drafted because of something he doesn’t like to talk about. I think he had an operation. He showed me pictures of his daughter. I can’t guess how old—maybe four, maybe seven. As you know I don’t know anything about kids.
    Better go. Write soon.
    Love from your friend,
Marlene
    P.S. I miss you. Maybe there will be a letter tomorrow.
    In Gert’s apartment, the doorbell rang.
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    When cell phones were invented Con was not interested, and when she finally bought one she often left it turned off. Aloneat home on Sunday afternoon (in November, 2003), she left it on. She didn’t like to use it except away from home—she hated the thought that two phones could ring simultaneously—but Joanna rarely called on the apartment phone, as if she preferred to talk to her mother when Con was distracted, elsewhere. She checked her e-mail again, then opened a memo she’d been writing. She read what she’d written—she’d been studying interviews with potential clients—and changed a few words. It felt good to do this work. Then she made herself a cup of coffee and cleaned the kitchen. When she checked her e-mail again, she had