Her
maid
!
MAYOR KELLY’S SERVICEMEN’S CENTER was at Washington and Wells, one block from city hall, in a fourteen-story building that had been an Elks Club. But nearly two years ago, the building had been vacated and offered free of charge for the center’s use. It had been renovated, then decorated by artists. Individuals and businesses had donated everything from furniture and board games to a pipe organ. The top three floors were dormitories with showers, a pressing room, and 150 beds, where men who signed up early enough could sleep. There was a library, a games room, and a music room with more than twelve thousand phonograph albums to listen to. There were rooms where men could dictate letters to “private secretaries” or make recordings of their voices to send home. Chicago artists offered to do men’s portraits. There was space for jewelry making, pottery making, wood carving, and leatherwork. There were two dining rooms, where servicemen could have a floor show and music with their dinner. The mayor himself visited often, and his wife served cake. But the most popular thing had to be this very ballroom, throbbing so hard with the sound of music and voices that Kitty could feel it in her chest.
She stood still, trying to take everything in. The walls were draped with American flags, and the place was packed with servicemen in uniforms—all kinds of men, tall and short, handsome and not so. They were on the dance floor moving to the sounds of the live orchestra playing “Moonlight Serenade,” and they were all along the sides of the room, sipping from punch cups and talking to one another or to girls or, sometimes, simply standing alone and staring. When the boys talked among themselves, it was bold and jocular, full of jabs to ribs and slaps on the back; when they talked to girls, it was different. Some of them looked painfully shy, standing far away and looking more at the floor than at the young women they were addressing. Others, in the dark corners of the room, leaned in close, one hand against the wall. They were saying things into the girls’ ears, and the girls were laughing. Kitty saw one man reach out and caress a girl’s throat, and the girl leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Well! If Margaret Heaney saw that, she’d escort all three of her daughters right out of the hall and never permit them to come to a dance again.
Mostly, though, people were just dancing. Madly. And Tish was wrong: lots of girls wore fancy dresses. When they’d arrived, Kitty hadn’t been able to get out of her cardigan quickly enough. She’d had a thought to toss it right into the trash, but then she’d have to add wastefulness to her list of sins for next week’s confession, so she stashed the sweater under a metal folding chair. And anyway, she’d need to wear the sweater home: Frank Heaney would be waiting up for them—asleep beside the radio, perhaps, but he’d wake up when his daughters came in and pretend he’d not been sleeping at all. He’d greet them and inspect them and kiss their foreheads before he climbed the creaky stairs to bed. And their mother, cold-creamed and hairnetted and in bed already, reading from one of the fat novels she’d checked out of the library, she’d be wide awake, and she’d know the precise second her girls crossed the threshold. No doubt she’d come down into the kitchen to make sure they did what they were supposed to.
After supper, Margaret had laid out writing paper and pens on the kitchen table for her daughters: they could go to the dance, all right, but they’d tend to their letter-writing duties as soon as they got home. So they’d better not stay out too late and get too tired. They’d better come home at a decent hour from that dance. A lot of girls were getting a reputation for being fast, going to those dances and staying out late, Margaret said. And a lot of them seemed to deserve that reputation, if the truth be told. Bad