Never Love a Stranger by Harold Robbins Page A

almost isn’t a boy’s mouth at all.” He went over to it, picked it up, looked at it, and then put it down. “Would you like
    to hear about her?” he asked.
    I nodded.
    “Supposing you undress,” he said, “and we’ll talk while you’re changing.”
    Aunt Bertha came into the room and, opening one of the drawers in the dresser, took out a new pair or pyjamas and gave them to me. “We thought you could use some new things,” she said and smiled.
    “Thank you,” I said, taking them from her, feeling strangely about it. I had yet to learn how to accept a gift. I began to unbutton my shirt.
    “You need never feel ashamed of your mother, Frankie,” my uncle began. “She was an unusual girl. You see, a long time ago we all lived in Chicago. That’s where we came from. Your mother was the pride of the family. When she was twenty she had already graduated from college and was going to work. That was about when that picture was taken, a few months after she had graduated. Fran was a high-strung girl, an active one. She used to be a suffragette and always spoke about equal rights. The family took an odd pride in her. At that time women didn’t have the right to vote they have today, and she was always going about and making speeches about it. She was a very good book- keeper, and once at Marshall Field’s (that’s a big department store in Chicago where she used to work) she was the only one that could find a mistake in the inventory that they used to take every month. About that time I came to New York. A little while after that she fell in love with a man who used to work down there. She wanted to marry him but my mother and father would not consent. You see, he wasn’t Jewish and our family was very strict. To make the story short, she ran away with him. I got a letter from her saying she was going to look me up in New York as soon as she got here. That was the last anyone ever heard from her. We tried to find her but couldn’t. There wasn’t a trace of her anywhere. Shortly after that my mother died and my father came to New York to live with us. He always used to say to me: ‘If we hadn’t been such fools and tried to make Faigele do what we wanted, we all still would be together.’ He died soon after my mother. He was never very happy when she had gone.”
    He picked up the picture again and held it in his hand.
    “But that was what happened yesterday,” Aunt Bertha said. “Today is what matters most. I feel somehow they all know that you are with us and they are happy—just as happy as we are to have you here. We want you to love us as we love you, Frankie.” She took the picture from my uncle’s hand and put it back on the dresser.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said putting on the bottom part of my pyjamas and laying my pants on the chair. I sat down on the edge of the bed, took off my shoes and stockings, and slid between the sheets.
    “Good night,” they said. Aunt Bertha bent over me and kissed my cheek. “Good night,” I said.
    They went out the door. Aunt Bertha paused with her hand on the light switch before she turned it out. “Frankie,” she said.
    “Yes, ma’am?” I answered.
    “Don’t say ‘Yes ma’am’ to me. Call me Aunt Bertha.” She flicked the light and went out.
    “Yes—Aunt Bertha,” I half-whispered to myself, putting my hand on my cheek. It was still warm where she kissed me. I fell asleep with the moonlight on my mother’s picture, and it seemed to me in the dark that she was smiling.
    Chapter Two

    I AWOKE early the next morning. The apartment was quiet and everyone seemed to be still asleep. I got out of bed and walked over to the dresser and looked at my watch. It was half past six. I walked over to the window and looked out.
    The morning was still greyish; the sun hadn’t come up yet. My room faced a courtyard and around it were two other houses Through the open windows came an occasional ring of an alarm clock and the smell of early-morning coffee. The sides