Isabel’s War Read Free Page B

and explains that she lived in a medium-sized city in northern Germany before she was spirited away to England with other children of endangered or broken families. Nobody, of course, asks what happened to Helga’s parents and the rest of her family in Germany. They may by now be in a prison camp or even dead. Probably no one really knows, not even the Frankfurters.
    All this time, Helga has hardly eaten a thing. A few spoonfuls of soup, a chicken wing, some peas and carrots.“You have no appetite?” another hovering Moskin guest wants to know. “No wonder you’re thin as a rail.”
    To my surprise, Helga stares back at the woman almost angrily. “We don’t eat like this in England, and not in Germany either before leaving. Here in America....”
    Helga’s Aunt Harriette breaks in apologetically. “What Helga’s trying to say is that we haven’t felt the brunt of the war here yet. Our food is much too rich for her after the wartime diet she’s accustomed to.”
    Helga just lowers her eyes. “Thank you, Aunt Hattie,” she says, after the nosy-body leaves the table, only to make way for others.
    I suppose it is hard to be the center of attention, although of course I wouldn’t know. The one thing that’s on my mind at the moment is how late it’s getting and what if Roy has already arrived at the Shady Pines social hall with nobody there to greet him.
    â€œYou’ll all have to excuse me,” I blurt out suddenly. “I just remembered something terribly important.”
    â€œIsabel,” my mother says in a warning tone, “I hope you’re not being rude.”
    â€œNo, no,” I assure her. “I’d be rude if I didn’t take care of this...um, problem, right now.”
    I dash out into the lobby of the main building and look around quickly for a glimpse of Roy in his sailor garb. A few guests have already set up card games and others are sitting and talking in groups, the men smokingtheir after-dinner cigars. It’s already dusk as I make my way across the bumpy lawns of Shady Pines, out past the Annex, and beyond it to the squat wooden building that was the scene of so much fun last summer. By this time in the evening, the band at Moskin’s would have begun playing catchy tunes from the Hit Parade of 1941 and even earlier...peppy songs like “Boo Hoo” and “The Love Bug Will Bite You (If You Don’t Watch Out).”
    I race up the wooden steps of the casino, which is dimly lit and not very inviting from the outside. Would Roy even know that this was the fun palace with all the “action” that I described to him this afternoon? Nobody is here, nobody, that is, except a handful of little kids, mainly the eight- and ten-year-olds from the lake. Some of them are fooling with the jukebox, trying to get it to play without putting money in. Others are jumping off the stage, scrambling back up, and jumping off again.
    â€œQuels stupides!” I mutter under my breath. I grab one of the little boys. “Listen,” I say, “did you see a sailor come in here, a young fellow in a white Navy uniform?”
    â€œNah,” says the kid, with a snide grin. “Whaddya think, the fleet’s in? Don’tcha know the whole U.S. Navy’s in the Pacific fightin’ the Japs?”
    I turn away in disgust and go sit in the dark on the casino steps until Ruthie finally turns up a good half-hourlater. She sits down beside me. “He didn’t show, huh?”
    â€œYou’re sure you didn’t see him anywhere around the main building?”
    â€œNo, I looked everywhere on my way over here. He was probably too shy. Or he couldn’t find his way in the dark.”
    â€œOr,” I say, in quiet despair, “who’s going to bother keeping a promise to a twelve-year-old girl with a chest that’s too small and a nose that’s too big?”

Three
    Early the