Dream When You're Feeling Blue Read Online Free

said. “Must
everything
have to do with your
social
life? Oh, poor Edith. I can’t imagine. Two sons. Poor woman.”
    “Pete ain’t dead!” Billy said. “He’s joining the
Navy
!”
    “I shall visit her tomorrow. And girls, I want each of you to write her a note tonight. Oh, right from our own neighborhood, God help us.”
    Kitty thought of an incident in fifth grade, a time on the playground when she had enlisted other boys to tie Alan Betterman to a tree using the ribbons from her hair. It was because she was angry at him for trying to pull up her skirt. At the time, having Alan tied to the tree for the whole of recess seemed fitting—even mild—punishment. Now Kitty was sorry. Alan Betterman, with his brown eyes and high coloring. She wasn’t close friends with him—she’d seen him around, she’d always waved and said hello, but she’d known nothing about him, really. Only now she felt she’d lost a friend. And when she wrote the condolence card, she would mean it most sincerely. Last time she saw Alan, he’d been in line at the Majestic, his arm around a girl. Who? And did that girl know? And
…Julian.
She swallowed hard, then moved to take her place at the table.
    She sat unmoving, the voices of her family distant things. Alan Betterman was dead, her sister was getting married, and all the world was such a tender place. It was impossible to be careful enough.
    “I’ll bring her a spiritual bouquet,” Tommy said. “Shall I?”
    “‘
Shall
I.’” Billy snickered at the proper usage and reached across Binks for the red cabbage.
    “Mind your manners!” his mother told him.
    “’Bout what?” he asked, honestly confused.
    “A spiritual bouquet would be lovely, Tommy,” said their mother, looking away from all of them, out the window toward the Bettermans’ house.
             
    “FINE WAY TO SPEND A SATURDAY NIGHT,” Tish grumbled. The sisters were sitting at the kitchen table dressed in their flannel pajamas and woolen robes, all of them with mugs of hot water and lemon. It was unseasonably cold out tonight, the famous Chicago wind howling. Kitty and Louise had put their hair up in rag rollers; Tish had combed out her beautiful blond hair and complained that all the wonderful waves were going to waste. “You’ll look very nice for Father Fleishmann at mass tomorrow,” Margaret told her, and Tish rolled her eyes. She’d been planning on going to a USO dance that night, but her mother had decided she should stay home and write letters instead. “Enough is enough,” Margaret said. “You’re only seventeen years old. You don’t need to be gallivanting all over town every night.”
    “It’s not every night,” Tish said. “And it isn’t all over town. And I’m doing it for the war effort, Ma. Knitting isn’t the only thing to do, you know. It helps the boys’ morale to dance with beautiful girls.”
    “Ah, so it’s
beautiful
we are now. And never mind leaving it to someone else to offer the compliment! Should it be warranted in the first place!”
    Tish made a show out of opening the letter she would answer first. She shook the page and put it down on the table to press out the creases. “Well, well,” she said. “
‘Dear Beautiful,’
Sam Wischow writes.”
    “Beauty is as beauty does,” Margaret said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to learn to knit as well as dance, Tish. God forbid those boys are still fighting in Europe this winter, they’ll need scarves and mittens and socks. Peg Bennett knit a vest for her son last winter and he very much appreciated it, ’twas a wonderful gift. Now, you write your letters, and I don’t want to hear another word about where you’d rather be.”
    She went into the parlor to sit with her husband and listen to the radio. Edward R. Murrow was a must for both of them. Frank liked
I Love a Mystery,
with its A-1 Detective Agency, whereas Margaret preferred Fred Allen and Jack Benny, or Amos ’n’ Andy and their Fresh Air Taxi,