Gladys was one of the unspoken minuses of being an old maid. Forget about your face shriveling into a prune, about not having children, about having to support yourself; the real bad news was that you got stuck with other old maids for friends. I know that sounds hard-hearted, but frankly, 99.99999 percent of them were walking around ringless not because of a receding chin or a polka-dot complexion but because of some tragic flaw in the personality department—no humor, or too much, or they were whiny or pathetically eager to please. All my friends from high school, bright, lively girls,
74
SHINING THROUGH / 75
had gotten grabbed up, and right from the start they were too busy keeping their husbands captivated to have any spare nights for girls like me: the Unfortunate Unmarried. And so, sure, maybe I did spend most of my time longing for John, but part of that yearning was pure: a prayer for someone to talk to who had something to say.
Gladys continued to squint out at the bay. A slight breeze ruffled her bangs, and she clapped them tight against her forehead as if her head had been hit by a hurricane. “So anyway, he had this house on the water,” she went on. “And then his wife dies. Well! Linda, there were days at a time when he didn’t show up at work. He didn’t even call in or anything. You know what he did? He’d leave little Nan with her nanny—isn’t that funny?
Nan, nanny—and drive up to Connecticut and take out his sailboat and just sail for four or five days, all alone . Not that anyone ever said anything.” She looked away from the bay, right at me. “They wouldn’t have dared. I mean, even way back then, Mr. Leland had that way about him, and being a war hero and all that, he could pretty much do what he wanted. But you know what the most fascinating thing is? He chose classiness. It was what he automatically wanted, even in grief. I mean, sailing is very stylish.”
“Why does going out in a sailboat make him classy? Is puking on a starboard or whatever it’s called an upper-class mourning practice?”
“You just talk like that to get attention,” Gladys said. “‘Puking.’
And sex things.”
“Never in the same sentence.”
“I’m serious, Linda. And if you don’t mind, while I’m on the subject of your talking: You kept forcing everybody at lunch Friday to listen while you went on about the war, like you were a man or a college professor and it was really interesting. You’ve got to stop it. I mean, name me one single person in the law firm—not counting lawyers—who wants to hear about troop movements. I’ll bet you anything the lawyers don’t even care.”
I looked across the dazzling sunlit water. “Listen to me, 76 / SUSAN ISAACS
Gladys. Don’t you understand that it’s not just Europe—or Asia?
It’s the whole world. It’s you .”
“Stop it.”
“I’m telling you, France will be next.”
“Here it comes: Miss Linda Voss with her ever-popular ‘The Big, Bad Nazis’ song and dance.”
“Gladys, don’t you get what people are letting Hitler do to them? They’re giving up because they’re terrified—of a bully.
What do they think he’s going to do next? Send them roses?
No, he’s going to hit them again, harder and harder.”
Unlike Gladys, the part of the world that read beyond the society news and the comics was actually surprised. That was what was so hard for me to believe: that all the military geniuses and hotshot politicians couldn’t have figured out what was going to happen.
In Brooklyn it was a beautiful spring Sunday. People were smiling as if they didn’t have a care in the world. But the Germans were on the march again. Holland was gone, Belgium was going.
“You always expect the worst from them,” Gladys said.
“They always do the worst.”
“But you’re German, Linda.”
“I am not.”
“I don’t mean you go around drinking beer from those funny glasses. It’s just that…you are very interested in
74
SHINING THROUGH / 75
had gotten grabbed up, and right from the start they were too busy keeping their husbands captivated to have any spare nights for girls like me: the Unfortunate Unmarried. And so, sure, maybe I did spend most of my time longing for John, but part of that yearning was pure: a prayer for someone to talk to who had something to say.
Gladys continued to squint out at the bay. A slight breeze ruffled her bangs, and she clapped them tight against her forehead as if her head had been hit by a hurricane. “So anyway, he had this house on the water,” she went on. “And then his wife dies. Well! Linda, there were days at a time when he didn’t show up at work. He didn’t even call in or anything. You know what he did? He’d leave little Nan with her nanny—isn’t that funny?
Nan, nanny—and drive up to Connecticut and take out his sailboat and just sail for four or five days, all alone . Not that anyone ever said anything.” She looked away from the bay, right at me. “They wouldn’t have dared. I mean, even way back then, Mr. Leland had that way about him, and being a war hero and all that, he could pretty much do what he wanted. But you know what the most fascinating thing is? He chose classiness. It was what he automatically wanted, even in grief. I mean, sailing is very stylish.”
“Why does going out in a sailboat make him classy? Is puking on a starboard or whatever it’s called an upper-class mourning practice?”
“You just talk like that to get attention,” Gladys said. “‘Puking.’
And sex things.”
“Never in the same sentence.”
“I’m serious, Linda. And if you don’t mind, while I’m on the subject of your talking: You kept forcing everybody at lunch Friday to listen while you went on about the war, like you were a man or a college professor and it was really interesting. You’ve got to stop it. I mean, name me one single person in the law firm—not counting lawyers—who wants to hear about troop movements. I’ll bet you anything the lawyers don’t even care.”
I looked across the dazzling sunlit water. “Listen to me, 76 / SUSAN ISAACS
Gladys. Don’t you understand that it’s not just Europe—or Asia?
It’s the whole world. It’s you .”
“Stop it.”
“I’m telling you, France will be next.”
“Here it comes: Miss Linda Voss with her ever-popular ‘The Big, Bad Nazis’ song and dance.”
“Gladys, don’t you get what people are letting Hitler do to them? They’re giving up because they’re terrified—of a bully.
What do they think he’s going to do next? Send them roses?
No, he’s going to hit them again, harder and harder.”
Unlike Gladys, the part of the world that read beyond the society news and the comics was actually surprised. That was what was so hard for me to believe: that all the military geniuses and hotshot politicians couldn’t have figured out what was going to happen.
In Brooklyn it was a beautiful spring Sunday. People were smiling as if they didn’t have a care in the world. But the Germans were on the march again. Holland was gone, Belgium was going.
“You always expect the worst from them,” Gladys said.
“They always do the worst.”
“But you’re German, Linda.”
“I am not.”
“I don’t mean you go around drinking beer from those funny glasses. It’s just that…you are very interested in
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