She's Up to No Good(84)

When no one replied, she looked left into the drawing room, where Miriam sat sedately knitting in an armchair.

“Oh, hello,” Miriam said.

Evelyn rolled her eyes as Fred walked in behind her. “You can quit the charade. I saw you at the window.”

Miriam put her knitting down, prepared to argue, when Vivie came bounding down the stairs, throwing herself at her older sister. “You’re home, you’re home, you’re finally home!”

“Did you think I wouldn’t be for your last summer before college?”

Vivie tilted her head toward Fred. “I didn’t know what you two had planned.” Evelyn held her at arm’s length to look at her sister, a baby no longer. She had lost the last of the chubbiness that lingered around her cheeks and had bobbed her hair, framing her face elegantly.

“You look so grown up!”

“Well, I am eighteen.”

“That’s true.” Evelyn pursed her lips, then turned to Fred. “Who do we know to set her up with? We’ll have to go on a double date.”

“No dates,” Miriam said, coming to the hall where her daughters stood. “We don’t break that rule anymore.” The air hung heavy with the unspoken remainder of her sentence, all four of them knowing what Miriam meant.

Fred dissolved the tension as Evelyn glowered at her mother. “Mrs. Bergman, thank you so much for having me this weekend.”

Miriam’s countenance changed. Evelyn always brought out the worst in her. “Of course.” She patted his arm fondly. “You’ll stay in the boys’ room. And Evelyn, you’ll stay with Vivie.”

Evelyn laughed finally. “Mama, you can trust me to sleep in my own room.” Fred blushed.

“Vivie’s room,” she repeated. “Vivie, call down to the store and see if one of the stock boys can help carry Evelyn’s trunk in.”

“Yes, Mama,” Vivie said as Miriam retreated to the kitchen.

“I wonder if she’ll still make me sleep with you after we’re married,” Evelyn said once Miriam was gone.

Vivie’s eyes lit up. “Are you—?”

“Fred is asking Papa tonight. Darling, let her see the ring.”

“You aren’t supposed to have seen it yet.”

Both girls looked at him from a shared pair of eyes, practically blinking in unison until he sighed and pulled the box from his pocket. “Heaven help the man who ever tries to stand up to a Bergman woman,” he said. “It certainly won’t be me.”

After Vivie admired it, Fred concealed the ring again, and Evelyn asked where their father was. “At the store. He’ll be home for supper though.”

“Good.” Evelyn looked at her watch. They still had several hours to go. She turned to Fred. “Go get settled in Sam and Bernie’s room. I’ll freshen up, and then we can go to the drugstore for an ice cream. Vivie, you’ll come too.” She brushed her lips lightly against Fred’s, then picked up her hatbox and climbed the staircase, bypassing Vivie’s room for her own.





After supper, Fred asked Joseph quietly for a private word. The women watched them walk toward Joseph’s study as they cleared the table.

“I’ll be right back,” Miriam said, putting down the plates she was holding and going into the kitchen.

The second she was out of the room, Evelyn bolted from the dining room and tiptoed down the hall, only to find her mother had gone the other way through the kitchen and was already listening at the study door. Miriam made a shooing motion with her hand.

“Absolutely not,” Evelyn whispered, leaning against the door next to her mother. “This concerns me more than you.”

Miriam was too busy trying to make out the conversation to argue. The heavy wood door muffled the voices, so neither was able to decipher much until there was a loud clink, and Joseph’s voice raised in the traditional toast of L’chaim.

Evelyn and Miriam looked at each other, their eyes wide, then both turned and fled back to the dining room, colliding with Vivie at the doorway, which knocked all three of them to the ground, where Joseph and Fred found them.

“What happened here?” Joseph asked, taking his wife under the arms and helping her to her feet. Evelyn started to laugh, followed by Vivie and eventually even Miriam, who answered her husband in Yiddish, calling the three of them a grupe fun yentas, or bunch of meddlers.

Joseph looked confused, but he kissed Evelyn’s cheek and told her that it was a nice night to go sit on the porch with Fred. She opened her mouth, ready to tell her parents that she had already accepted, when Fred took her arm and propelled her out the door.

“What’s the big idea?”

“We’re going to pretend I’m asking you for the first time now.”

“Why?”

“Out of respect to your father.”

“Why does everyone care so much about respecting my father? Worry about respecting me.”

Fred chuckled and, taking her hand, got down on one knee. “Evelyn Bergman. I’ve loved—and respected—you from the day I met you. Will you marry me?”

“Aren’t you going to hold the ring out?”

“No. I’m afraid you’d snatch it and run. You have to say yes first.”

She smiled, then knelt in front of him. “Yes. Just like I said the first time you asked.”