Deleted Chapter

The Spy with the Red Balloon

By Katherine Locke

“Will I be able to write you?” asked Joan as she sat on my bed, kicking her legs as I

stuffed shirts and trousers into my suitcase. I didn’t know how long I’d be in—well,

wherever I was going—but I hadn’t any idea of the laundry facilities there, or if it

was cold, or warm, or anything. A brooding sense of foreboding crawled up my back

but I shoved away the feeling as quickly as I could. I’d already accepted. I couldn’t

back out now.

Besides, this would help Wolf. Part of me knew that Colonel Mann had

mentioned that only to sway me, because somehow he knew that I’d do anything to

keep my brother alive. But part of me was grateful for the reminder that there was

always something I could be doing that was more important than whatever I was

doing at the moment. I didn’t want to become stuck or complacent at the lab. And if

someone did push me out of the lab in a few years, if no one would hire me when I

was of marrying age, then I wanted to do as much work now as I could.

When I started university two years ago, I’d cried on the first day because I

was terrified I’d be dismissed without a chance. Wolf had grabbed me by both of my

shoulders and said, “Ilse. You’ll be so good they won’t be able to ignore you.”

I’d been so good the Army couldn’t ignore me.

“Of course,” I told my best friend, realizing I hadn’t answered her question. I

didn’t even know if it was true, what I said. It’d sound suspicious if I said no so it
was easier to lie right now and say yes. “I’ll write you as soon as I arrive so you’ll

have my address.”

“I can’t believe you’re going to California,” Joan groaned. “You’re going to see

movie stars.”

“Not all of California is Hollywood,” I laughed. I’d told her California just to

explain why she couldn’t come visit. For all I knew, I was going to California.

“The good parts are,” Joan insisted. “Just like I don’t understand why anyone

would go upstate but never visit the city.”

I had never left New York. There hadn’t been any need. My father’s factories

were here, my schools were here, my entire extended family lived here…the farthest

I’d gone had been Fire Island and I occasionally went into the other boroughs, or to

Coney Island. For all my family’s wealth, I had never traveled. My mother was losing

her mind over the thought of me alone on the train, and Colonel Mann had flatly

refused her request to accompany me.

Secretly, I was thrilled by that. Being recruited by the Army felt like a

particularly grown-up adventure, and my mother at my side would have ruined that

illusion. And the more fear that trembled underneath my ribs, the more I forced

myself to think only of my own bravery, my own courage, and my own strength. It

was, as Wolf liked to say, an attempt to convince myself until I believed myself.

I always told him that it wasn’t true, that I couldn’t do that because that’s not

how science worked. But he’d laughed and said, “Oh, Illy,” which was the name he

used for me that drove Mama and Papa crazy, “emotions aren’t science.”

He wasn’t wrong.
 But he also wasn’t right.

I tried to think about what he’d think about me helping the Army. I hoped he

was proud wherever he was. I’d posted a letter yesterday telling him that the Army

was asking me to join them on a special project and that’s all I could said, but I had

hopes that he’d be home soon. I told him he owed me ice cream for not writing for

so long.

When I sent it, Papa walked with me to the post office. He was silent the

entire way, except on the way back when he said, “I hope you know how proud your

mother and I are of you and your brother. This is tikkun olam.”

A bunched up pair of stockings hit me in the side of the head and I yelped.

Joan sat up on my bed, laughing. “You were daydreaming.”

I threw the stockings back at her. “I was thinking.”

“You know they’re the same thing, right?” She teased me. She slid off my bed

and sat down at my vanity. “Oh, I love this color!”

She held up a new tube of lipstick Mama had bought me for my journey. It

was an orchid red, a little more purple and a little deeper than I normally wore but

she told me it complemented my olive skin and dark hair. I thought it made me look

too…noticeable.

I’d become too used to hiding my femininity in hopes that the men in the

university lab would forget I was just a sixteen year old girl.

Joan turned the lipstick and lean close to my mirror to run it over her lips. I

had to look away when she pressed and rolled her lips together, smacking them

loudly as she admired the color. “It looks better on you. Keep it.”
 She squealed. “Oh my God, are you serious? I love it. Where did you get it?”

I shrugged and stood to pull my black dress for Shabbos off the hanger in my

closet. “I’m not sure. Mama got it.”

“Are you nervous?” Joan asked, spinning on the stool.

I folded the dress carefully. “A little. Wouldn’t you be?”

I said it casually, but I wanted her answer more than I wanted to want the

answer.

She leaned back and slid my sunglasses onto her face. With her light brown

hair and full red lips and the sunglasses, she looked like she could be a model, one of

the girls on the billboards in Times Square. “I think you’re going to meet a young

man on your train. He’s going to be dashing, home from the war with a mild injury

that certainly doesn’t change his manhood.”

“Joan,” I hissed, giggling and covering my mouth. My bedroom door was shut

but it didn’t mean Myrtle or my mother wasn’t in the hallway and couldn’t hear her.

Joan grinned but didn’t stop. Of course she didn’t. “First, he’ll see you reading

one of your fancy smart scientific papers and he’ll say, “Oh is your husband a

scientist?” and you’ll say, “No, I’m a goddamn prodigy.””

“You are terrible,” I groaned, but I felt myself relaxing as I flopped back down

on the floor. “Please stop. My mother will send you home if she hears that language.”

She slid the sunglasses down her nose. “He’ll doubt you at first, but then

you’ll start talking science with him and he’ll be so impressed. By the time you roll

into Hollywood--,”
 “San Francisco,” I reminded her, though it was as much of a lie now as it had

been yesterday.

“Same place,” she said, waving her hand. “He’ll be too smitten to let you go.

He’ll walk you to your boardinghouse and then lean against a streetlamp

dramatically, watching you at your window. Do they have streetlamps in

Hollywood? They do now. In the morning, he’ll still be there and you’ll greet him in

the window with your dressing gown on. Or maybe he’ll be dead from exhaustion

and lust because you kept him up all night.”

“You are terrible,” I declared, trying not to laugh as she grinned at me

wickedly. “And the worst at helping me pack.”

“What’s the point?” She asked, her voice lofty. “He’ll be having you on a train

back here as soon as you arrive to ask your father’s permission to marry you.”

I snorted. “My father will say ‘Not until she’s twenty eight, at least.’”

“You’ll be seventeen soon enough,” Joan said. “It’s close enough.”

“I don’t want to marry,” I said. “I want to do science. That’s why I’m leaving.”

“You say that now,” she said.

I stopped and glared at her. “I hate when people say that.”

“Why? Because it’s the truth.” She took off my sunglasses and set them on my

vanity. “You’re not going to be able to do just science, you know. You’ll need to get

married at some point.”

I wanted to say no, wanted to say I didn’t want to, just by the way my heart

pounded in my chest and everything in me screamed at the idea of being married,

harnessed to someone and his whims. What if my husband said I couldn’t get a job
in science? What if I had a child and no one would hire me? I was too young to think

about all these things, but I’d have a doctorate by the time I was eighteen, by the

time this war was over if Colonel Mann held up to his side of the promise, and I’d

have to start thinking about this eventually.

“Fine,” Joan said, rolling her eyes. “It doesn’t happen on the train. Gosh, you

should have seen your face. You’re the only one I know who is so nervous about

getting married, you know.”

“I just want to do science,” I repeated. And then after a pause, I added, “for as

long as I am able.”

Joan’s gaze was too pitying for me to bear. “I know. I’m sorry for bringing it

up.”

For a moment, we were very quiet, sitting there in a small room with nothing

but the city outside my window. I will miss this, I thought to myself. This familiarity

of a city rising around me, being surrounded by thousands and hundreds of

thousands and maybe millions of people whose lives did not intersect with my own,

for whom I was background noise, the same way a car honking on the street now

was to me. I wanted to be anonymous, and famous, all in the same fell swoop. I

wanted to be known but not seen. Respected, but ignored. My very being warred

with itself every day, and nothing about the coming days, weeks, or months would

make that any easier.

“You aren’t coming back, are you?” Joan’s voice broke softly through my

reverie.
 I couldn’t look at her. I looked out the window and said, “I don’t know. Is that

strange? Shouldn’t I know? It is science and universities. I am not going off to war. I

am not even leaving the country.”

I wasn’t sure which of those words were lies and which of them were truths

anymore.

“I always knew you were smarter than the rest of us, but now you’re going to

put that big brain of yours to work, and I just—you’re very brave, Ilse.” The chair

squeaked back and forth as Joan spun it slowly. It’d been my mother’s sewing chair

from when she was a little girl. “I’m jealous. But don’t forget to take a break from

science. If you see Gary Cooper, you best be getting his autograph for me.”

I laughed despite the tightness in my throat. “I promise.”

She smiled. “Good. Now. How much more packing do you have to do? Let’s go

down to the soda shop. I’m bored and there will be boys to flirt with.”