Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!

Plain Manila

New York City

1978

Barbara Zofko wandered down the hall in a lump and went back to her office. She sat down and pulled the sleeves of her gray cable-knit sweater up on her plump forearms, kicked off her shoes, and rolled a sheet of paper into her typewriter. She reached into the drawer and pulled out a chocolate chip cookie.

Dear Ms. Nordstrom,

I could lose my job for doing this but I can no longer stand by without warning you … Sidney Capello is a dangerous man. Please do not cross him. He will destroy you. I know what I am talking about. He is an evil man and he will print this information! I beg you to reconsider your decision.

A Friend

She picked up a plain manila envelope and put a copy of the Dena Nordstrom file in it. She searched for her shoes under her desk, found them, and went back to Sidney’s office. He nodded his approval.

That Friday night, her doorman handed her the envelope. “Miss Nordstrom, a lady dropped this by for you earlier.” She took it, with thanks.

As she rode up the sixteen floors she wiped a few raindrops off the sleeve of her coat and opened the envelope.

All her life she had lived with some low-grade dread, a fear of something unknown, and now here it was. That elusive shadow that had been chasing her like a big black dog had finally caught up with her. When the elevator doors opened on her floor she was almost unable to move. Terrified, her heart was pounding so hard she almost fell. When she somehow reached her door, her hand was shaking badly and she could hardly get the key in the lock. The door open, she walked in and slid down to the floor, leaning back against the wall. She could not believe it. Maybe this was someone’s bad idea of a joke. Surely this could not be true. But there it was in black-and-white and with Capello’s name attached to it.

As she sat there and the more she thought about it, she slowly began to realize this might not be a joke.

Maybe it was true. Maybe it was the reason her mother had been so frightened, had kept moving so much. Then Dena remembered what Aunt Elner had told her, about her mother speaking German. She felt sick and she was soaked with sweat. It was as if someone had opened a trapdoor and she was falling into space.

NORDSTROM … MARION CHAPMAN

MOTHER OF AMERICAN BROADCASTER DENA (GENE)

NORDSTROM,

1939 NEW YORK CITY

SUSPECTED OF HAVING NAZI TIES

EMPLOYEE AND CLOSE ASSOCIATE OF STEINER … LILI

CARLOTTA, HIGH-RANKING OFFICIAL, AMERICAN NAZI PARTY

CONVICTED OF SPYING DEC. 13, 1946

SERVED TEN YEARS, DIED IN 1962

CHAPMAN HAD CLOSE CONTACT WITH KNOWN MEMBERS OF THE

AMERICAN NAZI PARTY, SUSPECTED OF SPYING.

CHAPMAN/NORDSTROM REPORTED AS MISSING PERSON, JAN. 1960

WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.

It was happening to someone else. Nothing seemed real. After a moment she got up off the floor and called downstairs. She asked the doorman what the woman with the envelope looked like. He said, “I don’t remember, exactly, she was just a, well … nondescript-looking kind of person.” Dena sat down on the sofa, still in shock. She realized that even if this weren’t true about her mother, it didn’t matter. If the implications of this ever got printed, her career would be over. Just like that, everything she had worked for gone. She had seen it happen to a newscaster friend in Kentucky. A paper printed the fact that his father had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan and her friend’s career was ended the next day.

Dena knew what Capello could do to her and the awful power he had. With this information, saying no to him would be playing Russian roulette with her life.

All night she struggled with herself, wondering what to do, trying to figure out a way to somehow compromise, to save herself. Maybe she should take the job. Maybe she could work for him.

But she knew that however hard she tried, and as much as she wanted a career, or did not want her name or her mother’s dragged through the mud, she could not work for him. She could not let herself become a part of the garbage she knew that Sidney and Ira would be pushing on television to get ratings. Howard Kingsley had warned her, and he had been right. She couldn’t do it, not only for her sake, but for Howard’s sake. He had had too much faith in her. Besides, the real truth was, even if she were to take the job, Capello would never stop threatening her. He would own her for life. And she would rather be dead than have that happen.

When Sandy called again, on Capello’s orders, Dena was particularly brave. She was as terrified as she had ever been but she still said no.

As always, there was a price to pay.