Dream When You're Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg Read Free Book Online Page B

stranger.”
    “Go ahead,” Kitty said. “I can never think what to say to him, anyway.”
    Louise looked over at her, frowning. “Really?”
    The streetcar came then, and Kitty, grateful for the distraction, positioned herself to board. “Window seat, I called it first,” she said. But there were no window seats. The car was packed, as usual. Servicemen were all over Chicago, all the time. There were sailors in training at Great Lakes Naval Training Center, pilots from the Glenview Naval Air Station, inductees going through basic training at the newly enlarged Fort Sheridan, naval midshipmen training at Northwestern. Other area universities trained for specialty jobs: language, electronics, weather forecasting—even spying, it was rumored. Tish sat down next to a smiling sailor. Kitty and Louise squeezed into a bench seat at the back. “Did you see the dimples on that guy Tish sat by?” Kitty whispered. Louise nodded gravely, then whispered back, “Did you see his muscles?”
    “Not on my watch, baby!” one of the sailors yelled to a woman riding with him. She giggled loudly, then kissed him, one hand around his neck, one holding on to her hat. Those sailors. They were the ones. They had the worst reputations. Kitty leaned forward, trying to see what the boy looked like. But then a thought of Julian came to her, and she felt how much she missed him. It was as though the center of herself suddenly became a cavernous, empty place, full of whistling wind. She tightened her grip on her pocketbook. Oh, Julian. Tonight, at least, she’d have something to write about. She’d tell him about the dance, about how Louise’s friend Dorothy had sung so beautifully and in fact had told them later that she was on her way to New York City to audition for a Broadway play in which Jeanette MacDonald had practically guaranteed her a part. Although that might make him feel bad, to say she’d been to a dance. Better not mention that. She’d tell him Tommy had given away his Lionel trains for the metal drive and Frank had wanted to get mad at him but then couldn’t. She’d say that her mother had made stuffed green peppers using SPAM and her father hadn’t even known. And…what else? What else?
             
    KITTY SAT CHEWING HER LIPS at the kitchen table while Tish rushed through letters to her now four men, and Louise filled page after page (front and back!) with her small, exceptionally neat script—in school, Louise always won awards for penmanship.
    Kitty looked down at her paper, where thus far she had written three paragraphs. Oh, she had the guidelines beside her—“What the Boys Want to Know,” the pamphlet was called. You were supposed to talk about them first, then say the family was fine and very busy with everyone trying to help with the war effort. If you had children, you were supposed to talk about them; then you gave a report on relatives and friends. (“Anyone get married?” the pamphlet helpfully suggested, and Kitty stared blackly at the question.) “Pets always make good reading,” the pamphlet said, but her family didn’t have any pets. “What’s doing in town?” Well, obviously whoever wrote the pamphlet didn’t live in Chicago—how would she even begin to answer such a question? Finally, the pamphlet suggested that she end her letter with a “personal message.” How personal could a girl get when she didn’t really know where she stood?
    Kitty stared at her pen, checked the level in the Skrip black ink bottle, tightened a pin curl at the base of her neck. She stared out the window, then at the wall. She tried to see what Louise was writing, but her sister caught her and moved her pages away. Kitty watched her, writing and writing and writing with a little smile on her face. What was there to go
on
about this way?
    “What are you saying right now?” Kitty asked, and Louise looked up at her. “It’s personal.”
    “What about you, Tish?” Kitty said.
    “Mine’s personal,