Who She Was by Samuel G. Freedman

Author:Samuel G. Freedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Carrying his sea bag and a hula outfit he had bought on liberty in Honolulu, Hy Keltz stepped stiff-legged off the three-day sleeper that had carried him from the West Coast to Grand Central Terminal. He had a twenty-day leave, and almost a third of it would be used up by the cross-country trains. That left him barely two weeks to visit with his mother and his sister, take out Eleanor Hatkin on a few dates, and put the war far out of his mind. He didn’t want to talk about the Japanese plane that was bearing down on the Nehenta Bay until the Donnelly brothers nailed it. He didn’t want to talk about the typhoon that knocked off 15 feet of the flight deck. Most of all, he didn’t want to talk about the day Ensign Fischer died, catching his left wing on the ship’s catwalk trying to land and running out of fuel while circling for another chance. “Get out, get out,” Hy had been screaming, as Fischer popped open the cockpit, beat his hand against the metal skin, then stopped moving. No, if anybody asked any questions about the war, all Hy planned to say was that he was serving in the South Pacific and change the subject.

New York was cooperating in his desire to escape. As Hy arrived on March 16, 1945, officially the last week of winter, the balm of spring soothed the city, temperatures rising into the seventies, the crocuses already opening. Defying presidential orders for a continuing midnight curfew, Mayor La Guardia was urging nightclubs to stay open until one, neighborhood taverns until four. Even as the war bond sales and scrap drives proceeded, even as the newspapers printed lengthy daily lists of the dead and wounded and imprisoned, people dared at last to talk about what would come after—expressways, housing projects, modular furniture, silk stockings.

On one of those glorious warm days, Hy took Ellie with him to Poe Park, a band of greenery and benches alongside the Grand Concourse. It was the first time they had seen one another in four years. Hy was, if anything, more handsome than before the war, his skin leathery from the months of salt air, his torso taut after all those calisthenics on the flight deck, curls of chest hair pushing up from the neck of his uniform. Eleanor wore a pleated skirt and matching coat, and in the afternoon sun she shed it for a short-sleeve blouse. By then, Hy had his arm around her shoulder and she was resting hers on his thigh. They held hands while leaning against a parked sedan, locked elbows like a couple of square dancers in mid-swing.

Over the next week or so, they spent more time together. Hy introduced Ellie to his mother and his sister, a declaration of sorts that they were a couple with serious prospects. Like old times, they had ice cream at Krum’s and saw a picture at the Paradise. How perfect that it was Meet Me in St.

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