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upontherisers · 5 months ago

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a/n: this was supposed to be all epistolary, no prose but then. but then.

Dear Mr. Rosenthal,

I had dinner with your mother last night. It was wonderful to catch up with her; I hadn’t seen her since the day we packed up your office and you left for Alabama. We ran into each other at Putnam Central last week (you missed a swinging show!) and she invited me for a meal. What a cook she is! Soup and cabbage and those little flaky pastries with nuts and spices for dessert (I hope I’m not making you jealous.) And of course she wouldn’t let me lift a finger to help, both out of host-liness and care that the food would be edible. Jeanette joined us for the meal but stepped out with some friends for the rest of the night, so it was just me and Rose (you don’t mind if I call her Rose, do you? She insists) in your lovely home.

You were the main topic of conversation, of course, but I found my knowledge of you fell short of what your mother hoped. She misses you terribly. I had the sense that she was looking for commiseration for the space you’ve left in our lives, but I was only your legal secretary and I work for another man now. (As much as I despise it. Please do come back to the firm when this is all over. Sidney isn’t half the lawyer you are and twice the hassle.)

I suppose you’re wondering why I’m writing. Your mother mentioned that besides Jeanette, you ain’t got a gal to write to ya and I don’t think that’s right. Every fella should have a gal to write to that’s not their mother or their sister, whether it’s a friend or a cousin or their dame. It’s hard to say certain things to family or you might have a story that they’d find appalling and anyone else would think is a hoot. I’d also like to keep visiting your mother for dinner and have something of substance to say (but all your secrets are safe with me, I promise). Jeannette’s gone during the day and I know how lonely a quiet house can get.

I hope Texas is treating you well. Keep safe and keep warm! I just read the most shocking piece in the Times about how cold it gets in the air. I’ve sent a scarf along just in case. Write when you can (if not me then your mother, please.)

Yours,

Isadora C. Montgomery

Burnham whistles as Rosie pulls a swath of textured pale cream fabric from the package. Lacy’s hand reaches out to trace over the cloth lovingly, her dressmaker’s daughter heart moving her body before her head could catch up. He doesn’t mind.

“Who’s that from?” Elton asks.

“My secretary,” Rosie replies as he scans over the long scarf and brings it to his nose. There it is, the faint citrusy spice that comes to linger on all of Isadora’s things. “She’s worried about the cold.”

Lacy snorts.

“Tell her it’s hot,” says Burnham.

“Tell her about the eggs,” adds Elton.

Rosie waves them off, tosses the scarf on the hook next to his hat above his bed, and picks up the letter again as he sits back down. It’s easy to get lost in the inky slashes and swells of Isadora’s handwriting, the practiced rows and roving, squat words as unique as their writer. She brings him back home in an instant with the sounds of Putnam Central on a Saturday night, horns blowing, bass rumbling around the room, and the keys lighting up his spine like his were the bones being played. It might be her up there, nimble fingers dazzling across the ivory and black or his mother and her clarinet, or Nettie and her double bass. All three of their voices eventually combine as they put their spin on the Andrews Sisters or Ella, and he’s the happiest man in the room to have a night of good music from good people.

He’ll have to ask who played, if Fat Bertie bellowed over his saxophone and demanded that his Dora get up and play that piana’, or if they had an out-of-towner. Were they any good? Any singers? Anyone who could remind him that there’s a world outside of Texas, one that’s free from the heat and the dust and the sour-tasting food. He’s pulled back into the letter, to the little flaky pastries with nuts and spices and despite the humid press of air in the barracks, his mouth waters for the warm, sweet dough that still steams when you break it apart. Rugelach, he thinks. They’re called rugelach, Dora.

She’ll know that before long if she keeps having dinner with his mother. She’ll know rugelach and blintzes, matzo ball soup and the good bagels from Schuman’s on Avenue T and Ocean. It makes him smile to think of her in his neck of the woods, her face soaking up the sun of southern Brooklyn’s wide streets not yet shaded by the tall buildings that are stacking up all around the rest of the borough, like in her Crown Heights. He wonders what it looks like now, if the drive to her apartment is more crowded, if she still chuckles at every errant ball that rolls into the street and waves at every older brother dragging their kid sister out of the way.

Then he’ll watch her climb the stairs and smile over her shoulder at him as she unlocks her door, and then she’s inside and he wishes she would’ve lingered on the steps a moment longer.

I know how lonely a quiet house can get. He wishes he could go back home, even for just a day, and take Dora to a show on Broadway or pick up Delilah and Daniel for a day with their sister at Brighton Beach. She’ll spend all her time in her apartment when she’s not at work, waiting and hoping, unless someone drags her out, someone like Ma.

While he hadn’t considered it before, it’s important to him now, this bond between Ma and Dora. He’s glad they have time for it, he’s sad to miss the raucous conversation that always arises from two jazz musicians in the same room. Hopefully they didn’t spend too long on him; there’s too much he wants them to share—music, movies, their love of fashion—for Ma to keep the conversation on him. The vibrant life that thrums through the both of them will spark, surely, and he can finally put aside some of his guilt.

“Are you gonna do it?” Lacy asks as he stows the letter away in his foot locker. His confusion must be obvious because she smiles softly. “Are you gonna write her? It’s such a beautiful gift. You really oughta.”

Her blue eyes turn to the fabric hanging on the wall and the way it catches the light streaming in from the window, gold and shimmering, reminds him of the Flatbush apartment, the flutter of the curtains in their small kitchen on an evening when they’re all home.

He’s not like other cadets; there are no weekly care packages or pages and pages of letters coming in daily. His mother and sister write when they can and send what they can, but something like this, a genuine piece of home, is a rare find. He’s grateful and as soon as he can wear it without sweating to death, it’ll be airborne and he can take a piece of the ground to the sky with him, and from Dora of all people.

There’s no way he’ll wear it as well as she does, in elegant loops piled around her neck to protect from the snow or draped over her head and tossed over her shoulder as she gets in the car on their way to lunch in Midtown, but he’ll try. He’ll try for her and her insistence on maintaining his ‘lawyerly appearance,’ never afraid to fix his hair or reknot his tie with a tsk when he’s not up to standard.

The memory makes him laugh.

He thought of her often since he left New York. Going from having one friend at work to none left him missing the former greatly, and he’d started a letter to her in Florida but never got around to finishing it. He’s scared, maybe, not of the propriety or the scandal any letter from someone who doesn’t share your last name causes in an Army barrack, but of what she’d think. It might be for the best that he didn’t write—he’s out of her hair for the time being, and she’s busy enough with the firm without him obligating her into correspondence. But as he thinks of her words, every fella should have a gal to write to, I know how quiet a lonely house can get, he’s resolved to do them both a service and write. It won’t be any too prosaic as he doesn’t have much to talk about now, but it’s a place to start for when he might really need a friend in the future.

Elton barks a laugh. “Of course he’s gonna write her. Not writing is how you get a Dear John letter.”

Burnham smacks his co-pilot in the chest. “It ain’t like that! She’s his secretary.”

And suddenly, three pairs of eyes are staring at him expectantly.

“I–I will write her,” he starts, but doesn’t let Elton gloat yet. “She’s a friend, a good friend, not just my secretary.”

That seems to appease the men as they get up and procure baseball gloves. Burnham tosses him a ball. “You pitching?”

Rosie shakes his head and tosses it back. “Not today, boys.”

“Yeah,” says Elton like it’s obvious, “he’s caught up on a girl.”

Burnham cackles and they chase each other outside, shoving through the group of pilots who just came in from the last practice flights of the afternoon.

The afternoon break before chow is not to be taken for granted so while the lowering sun of early evening lulls the brashest of personalities to some sort of peace, he starts to write after pulling out some stationery, paper braced on a book Jeannie had sent when he was still in Alabama.

Lacy speaks up after a while. “It means somethin’ when a gal gives you a scarf, y’know, ‘specially when there ain’t enough scarves to go around.”

That gives him pause and he pictures Dora coming in from the cold with a red nose and hunched shoulders. He’s stuck for a moment before Lacy laughs aloud. “Don’t send it back. Just let her know you’re thankful.”

She sits back in her bed and returns to her needlepoint, which her mother had just sent her, and Rosie blinks at her for a few moments. He hadn’t known what to make of her when they got the order to integrate officer barracks. She’s a quiet soul but surprisingly humorous, and steady, always right as rain. Anyone would be lucky to have her in the seat next to them—hell, he’d volunteer if they’d let girls and guys fly together—and he much prefers her company over the boisterous, posturing pilots that fill in the rest of the beds around them. Betty Lacy is good people. Dora would like her, he thinks.

Dear Ms. Montgomery,

I just received your letter and your gift. Texas winters are too hot for scarves, but I’ll put it to good use eventually. I’m sure you’re getting snow in New York and I’m green with envy. I’d do anything for a nice blizzard right about now. We fried eggs on our instrument panels last week (and sometimes we fly in our skivvies. Don’t tell Ma.) There’s no sea air here, not even in the sky, so the heat just sits on you like a wet blanket. Forgive me if I sweat through this letter.

I am jealous, not only of your delicious dinner with my mother (the food isn’t as dire as Alabama, but it’s still bad (again, don’t tell Ma, she’ll have a fit)) but a swinging night at Putnam Central. That’ll be my first stop when they let me out of here. Who played? I hope you got up there and if you didn’t, I got a request for next time. God Bless The Child. They played it in the PX the other day, a brief reprieve from the twangy warbles they like down here, and Billie doesn’t do it quite like you. It shouldn’t surprise you that I’ve been banned from humming in the barracks—all my love of music and I can’t make a note of it. No one in my bunk has a decent voice, so we’re a musicless bunch until we can get away.

Still, it’s a good time. I find myself the fourth in a small group of similarly-minded pilots. John Burnham is from Connecticut, Claybourne Elton is from California, and Betty Lacy is a schoolteacher from Georgia. We bonded over our restlessness and have all passed certification on the B-17, so we should be assigned to crews soon. There’s practice and lots of card games in the meantime.

I hope you're well and warm. I’ll send the scarf back if you need it. There’s no reason to go without for my sake; the Army has taken enough of your silk, coffee, and gas already. And don’t let Sid run you ragged, either—he may have the experience but you’re the senior member of the firm. Go to Mr. Freidin if he keeps bothering you and I’m sure he’ll set him straight.

They just called us for chow. It’ll be sandwiches or spaghetti—mealy, bitter noodles with tomato paste as sauce. I’ll pass and think of lunches at Rosetti’s fondly.

Be safe and write back.

Yours,

Robert Rosenthal

“P.S. God Bless The Child, if not for me then for my mother. Well,” Gertie Simmons-Montgomery says as she sets her granddaughter’s letter down, “you gotta play it.”

Isadora sighs. “I don’t know when I’ll be back there. Mr. Wacker’s got a big case coming up and he’s working me until I’m the last one in the office. I can barely keep my eyes open on the bus.”

“Go to this Mr. Weeden—”

“Freiden.”

“Go to Mr. Freidin. Robert seems confident that—”

“Robert is a brilliant litigator who keeps clients coming back. I’m a secretary,” she says and leans down to kiss her grandmother on the forehead before moving onto her brother and sister and taking her seat at the dinner table.

“Are you gonna write back?” Daniel asks.

“Of course she is,” Delilah snaps, “Mr. Rosenthal is very handsome.”

“Mr. Rosenthal is my friend,” Isadora corrects with a warning eye to the teenager, “and my boss.”

Delilah scoffs. “Not right now, he ain’t.”

“Alright,” Delrose Montgomery claps his hands as he enters from the kitchen and moves to the head of the table, “enough of this letter talk. I have my grandchildren all together for the first time in a month. I’d like to revel in family.”

Isadora smiles and Delilah kicks her twin under the table and gets chastised by their grandma, but it’s warm and cozy despite the snow outside. As they take each other’s hands and bow their heads to pray over dinner, Dora feels a playful twinge of guilt as she begins to compose her next letter in her head.

Dear Mr. Rosenthal,

I wouldn’t have sent the scarf if I wanted you to send it back. And yes, I’ll play Billie Holliday for you...

#rosie rosenthal x oc #masters of the air x oc #my writing #isadora montgomery #isadora x rosie #honey you got a big storm coming etc etc #why is it rosie and speirs and gale that are so hard to write #straighten up and fly right

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