by Jenna Blum
“Again!” she said when she bobbed up.
“Beautiful,” said Sol, clicking away with his camera. “Beautiful. Just look at that beautiful, beautiful girl.”
He took off his glasses to wipe his eyes, and June saw he was crying, as he sometimes did when he’d started with the highballs at breakfast. He had wept during their wedding brunch, too, and June had known what Ida was thinking without her having to whisper it: Goodness, Jews are a sentimental race. June thought in Sol’s case it was less sentiment than Scotch, but he did have a soft spot for Elsbeth. “Beautiful,” he said again, honking his nose in a big handkerchief, and aimed his camera.
The maid came with drinks, and she must have misunderstood Ruth’s instructions, for June’s mint tea had bourbon in it; it was more of a julep. June wasn’t much of a daytime drinker—it made her sleepy—but the afternoon was hot, and she drank gratefully. Sol took more photos and Ruth fanned herself and Peter spun Elsbeth in the pool; the alcohol started working on June, turning her languid, and the smell of chlorine made her think of Gregg. That first day by the adult pool when they’d emerged from the shed: “Where’d you get that?” June had asked, reaching toward but not quite daring to touch the curious dent above Gregg’s brow, “from Vietnam?” “Nope,” he’d said briefly, “my pop.” They had both been soaking wet, the sun amplifying the smell of their sweat from their exertions in the shed, a sweet musk. Quit it, June told herself now. Forget him. She lit a cigarette and looked at her husband, who was balancing Elsbeth with one hand under her belly while she practiced her butterfly; Peter’s shirt, soaked, was transparent, his hair dark as honey from the water. Peter must have felt June studying him, because he glanced up and smiled over Elsbeth’s head; he’d had exactly this same expression, June remembered, in the maternity ward when Elsbeth was born. It was the only time June had ever seen him look truly content. She toasted him with her julep, then tipped her head back to watch the sun filter white through the trees.
* * *
The Websters arrived shortly after two, whereupon lunch was served in the solarium. This was a room June coveted, not because of Ruth’s indoor garden, which June found a little creepy—all those cacti with their needles and fur—but because of its contemporary design. Ruth had recently had it redecorated, her gift from Sol for her sixty-fifth birthday, and although June was hurt Ruth hadn’t consulted her, instead hiring a designer recommended by one of the other wives from Sol’s law firm, she admired the result. The black ceramic floor tiles! The wet bar and hi-fi covered in grass cloth to make them blend in; the couch and matching chaise upholstered in orange leather. June took her seat alongside Peter and Elsbeth, across from the Websters, Sol at one end of the table and Ruth at the other, and brushed at a cattail tickling her bare neck. If not for the plants, the room, in June’s opinion, would have been perfect.
The Websters made amiable small talk as Maria, creaking around the table in her putty-colored orthopedic shoes, set out the food: deli meats; baskets of challah bread Peter had baked; a tomato and cucumber salad; cold brisket; and the pièce de résistance, a bluefish from the Sound with accompanying dill sauce and its head still on. Elsbeth wailed at the sight of it and buried her face in Peter’s side. I’m with you, kid, June thought. In the ten years she’d been coming here, she still hadn’t quite gotten used to the food. She’d been raised on peanut butter, canned peas, and Wonder Bread, and her palate hadn’t adjusted to dishes like borscht, lox, or the cow tongue the Rashkins favored, with bumps on it. Luckily, she barely ate anything anyway.
“How are you, my dear?” said Lionel Webster. “You look ravishing, as always.”
“Thank you, Lionel,” said June. She liked the Websters; unlike Sol’s art crowd or his buddies with the strange nicknames and mah-jongg-obsessed wives, the Websters were small, civilized people, neat as garden gnomes, with matching gray hair and sandals made from recycled tires.
“How are you?” June asked, touching her own throat to indicate the bandage wrapped around Mary Webster’s. “Did you have surgery?”
Mary nodded. “Polyps,” she rasped.
Lionel smiled at Elsbeth, the expression stretching his pointy white wizard beard. “My, haven’t you grown since we last saw you. How old are you now, forty-seven?”
Elsbeth giggled, then scowled. “No,” she said. She held up her hand.
“Four fingers and a thumb old?” said Lionel.
“No,” Elsbeth said, “I’m five!”
“Ellie, sweet pea,” said June, “use your lady voice inside, please.”
“Of course she’ll use her lady voice,” croaked Mary, “she’s a real grown-up lady now, aren’t you, honey?”
“No,” shouted Elsbeth. “I’m a princess!”
“For God’s sake,” said Sol irritably. “Pipe down over there.”
“Sorry,” said Peter to the Websters. He whispered to Elsbeth and she kicked her chair legs, but then she started eating a heel of challah Peter had buttered. Peter stroked her curls. “She’s had quite a day already,” he said. “I think somebody needs a N-A-P.”
“I do not,” said Elsbeth. She reached for the sugar bowl and poured a pyramid on her tomatoes.
Ruth gasped. “Bubbie, no, what are you doing?”
“It’s okay, Ruth, it’s a Minnesota custom,” said June. “That’s how I ate all my tomatoes growing up.”
“Isn’t that unusual?” said Lionel. “I might try it myself!” He dabbed his tomato in some sugar and proclaimed, “Delicious.”
Sol made a gagging noise and picked something out of his mouth. He held it up to the light. “Maria,” he bellowed, and the maid came in from the hall. “Fish bone,” said Sol, handing it to her. She palmed it without a change of expression and tucked it into her apron pocket.
“So sorry, Mr. Sol,” she said. “I can bring you something else?”
“More ice,” said Sol, indicating the bucket in the wet bar over his shoulder. Maria picked it up and departed.
“Goddamned woman,” said Sol, “in ten years she hasn’t learned to debone a fish.”
“I have offered over and over to show her how,” Peter said.
“In my house men don’t do women’s work,” Sol said.
He bent over his plate again, scooping bluefish flesh onto his fork. June wished she were brave enough to say something—What exactly is women’s work, Sol?—but she knew it would only cause trouble and upset Peter, so she remained quiet.
“It’s so hard to find good help these days,” Mary whispered.
“Maria’s a good girl,” said Ruth. “She’s just getting a little forgetful.”
Lionel ate some fish, chewing rapidly. “Delicious fish. One of your victims, Sol?”
Sol grunted. “Caught off the Point yesterday. Twelve-pound blue.”
“Excellent. And the brisket . . .” He kissed his fingertips. “I believe I recognize one of your signature dishes, sir,” he said to Peter, “from your former establishment?”
“Indeed. We served it at Masha’s, and we serve it at the Claremont, too.”
“Yes, yes. The Claremont. How is life in suburbia treating you?”
“Very well, thank you.”
“And business? Still brisk?”
“More or less,” said Peter. Napkin tucked into his collar, he was cutting a slice of brisket for Elsbeth. “Summers are typically slow. But we have been doing fine, and we are looking forward to things picking up in the fall.”
“Bullshit,” said Sol.
They all turned to look at him. “Excuse me?” said Peter.
“I said, bullshit.” Sol leveled his knife at Peter. “The books have been off for months now. Somebody’s stealing you blind, buddy boy.”
Peter took a swallow of iced coffee. “Let’s discuss business later.”
“Let’s discuss it now. It’s that schwartze manager of yours, isn’t it?”
Peter sighed. “Maurice is Greek, not colored,” he said. “And I am not sure that—”
“Yo
u’d better get sure,” said Sol. “You’d better get sure in a hurry. Because I’m not sinking any more money into a failing business just so some schwartze can line his pockets, understand?”
He glared at Peter, who cut his fish into smaller and smaller triangles. Elsbeth was squirming in her chair, rubbing her eyes and grizzling. Ruth stood.
“I think it’s time the princess had her nap,” she said.
“I’ll take her,” said June, starting to get up, but Peter lifted Elsbeth out of her chair. “Go with Nana. Thank you,” he said to Ruth.
“My pleasure. Come, Bubbie,” and Ruth coaxed Elsbeth from the room.
June had a terrible fish taste in her mouth, although she hadn’t eaten any. She was so angry with Sol she couldn’t look at him. What right did he have to treat Peter that way? Sol would say he had every right; that because he was Peter’s patron, Peter’s business was his business. Peter had tried to get out from under Sol’s thumb; he attempted to run Masha’s on his own when he and June were newly married, but the restaurant had suffered without Sol’s cash infusion, and it had never recovered. June knew that without Sol they would be living in Newark, and Elsbeth would be playing amid needles and condoms. Still, just once June wish Peter would tell Sol to shove it.
“What are you up to these days, dear?” Mary rasped. “Besides staying beautiful?”
June forced herself to smile. “A little of this, a little of that.”
“Playing tennis at that schmancy club I pay for,” said Sol.
“Actually,” said June, “I was thinking about going back to work.”
She felt Peter’s foot press hers beneath the table. She drew hers away.
“How nice,” said Mary. “Doing what? Something volunteer?”
“No,” said June, “real work. Something that makes money. Like interior design.”
“You already have real work,” said Sol, “staying home and taking care of my grandchild.”
“Right, you mean my daughter. And I want to set a better example for her than a mom who’s just some Suzy Homemaker.”
“Euh,” said Sol, “typical women’s-lib bullshit.” He turned his red-eyed glare on Peter. “What wrong with you? First you can’t control your business, and now you can’t control your wife?”
“Hey,” said June, and Mary said, “Oh dear, I didn’t mean to start a ruckus.” Peter himself said nothing; he kept eating, as if he hadn’t heard. Maybe June should be grateful for her husband’s restraint; “I just ignore him,” Peter had told June when they were first married, “Sol’s bark is far worse than his bite.” Peter’s greatest strength was his endurance, and God knew he had outlasted worse bullies than Sol. Still, June silently implored him to say something. Get up and walk out, she thought; I will if you will.
But it was Lionel who stood, folding his napkin. “I for one am stuffed,” he announced. “Anyone care to join me for a walk?”
* * *
June did not want to go for a stroll; she wanted to leave. But since this was out of the question for the time being, she went in search of her daughter. While Sol showed the Websters his new darkroom and Peter helped Maria in the kitchen, June checked the guest room, where Elsbeth usually napped when they were here. It was empty but for its single bed and, a recent addition, the big loom on which Ruth was learning to weave her own cloth; June foresaw many beautiful but unwearably itchy sweaters in her future. Next she glanced into Sol’s study and then the maid’s quarters; finally she came to the end of the hall and the master suite.
If Peter had certain rooms in the house he avoided—he was not a fan of the loom room, for some reason, although June liked its view of the Sound and hunting-scene toile wallpaper—June was not fond of Sol and Ruth’s bedroom, with its adjoining bath, which was where June had first learned about the existence of Peter’s little girls. Of course, the way this day was going, that was exactly where Ruth and Elsbeth were now; Ruth must have given Elsbeth a bath, to get the chlorine out of her hair. June walked through the bedroom, with its peony-covered walls and twin beds, and was about to tap on the door when she heard her daughter say, “Tell me, Nana, tell me about the little girls.”
“What little girls?” said Ruth, but her voice had a singsong that hinted at a ritual, and sure enough Elsbeth chanted, “My sisters, my half sisters, the ones who got deaded.”
“Well,” said Ruth, and then—“Hold still, Bubbie, Nana can’t get your snarls out when you’re fidgeting like that.”
“Nannnnnnnaaaa,” said Elsbeth. “Tell, tell, tell.”
“All right, darling,” said Ruth. “Once upon a time—”
“—my daddy lived in a faraway place called Germany and was married to a lady named Masha. Right?”
“Right, Bubbie, but who’s telling this story?”
“Me,” said Elsbeth and giggled. “No, you, Nana, you.”
“Very well. Your daddy lived in Germany with a lady named Masha, and they had two beautiful daughters—”
“—who looked like princesses,” said Elsbeth. “Let me see, Nana, I want to see.”
There was the sound of a drawer sliding open, and Elsbeth breathed, “Ooohhhh.”
“Yes, weren’t they pretty?”
“Yessssss,” said Elsbeth. “Go on, Nana.”
“Well, for a while, they all lived together in peace and harmony, but then a very bad man came to power. And his name was—”
“Hitler. Puh puh puh.”
“That’s right, Bubbie, we always spit when we say his name. Puh puh puh.” More energetic spitting. “So this Hitler, who wasn’t really a man at all but a kind of dybbuk, a demon, took over the land, and he said very bad things about your daddy and his family, about the Jews. He said that they had horns and tails and that they ate little gentile children—can you imagine your daddy doing such a thing?”
“No,” said Elsbeth. She sounded awed.
“Of course not,” said Ruth. “For a while, your daddy and his wife and your sisters went into hiding like little mice and they survived that way. But one day Hitler’s men, the Nazis, found them, and they—”
“—I know, I know,” cried Elsbeth. “They took them away. They said ‘Come with us, little girls, and you’ll go to a special camp with nice showers.’ But when they got there, the showers didn’t have water in them but gas, and the Nazis put them in there and they got deaded. All except my daddy, because he got away. Right, Nana?”
There was a pause, and then Ruth said, her voice watery, “Yes, Bubbie.”
“And then the bad men putted them in special ovens and baked them and eated them all up!”
June flinched. She hadn’t realized she had sunk onto the chair next to the bathroom door, nor that she’d been holding her breath—but enough was enough. She rapped firmly on the door.
“Ruth,” she said, “it’s time for Elsbeth’s nap now.”
She opened the door. Since June was last in this room, it had been redecorated as well; the walls were all mirrored, so dozens of Junes and Elsbeths and guilty-looking Ruths dwindled into infinity. Elsbeth was sitting on the counter, in the little pink satin robe Ruth kept for her here. She was clutching a silver-framed photo.
“Mommy,” she said, “Nana was telling me a story.”
“I heard, sweetie pie, but it’s time for your nap now.”
“Noooo,” Elsbeth cried, but she let Ruth help her climb down off the counter, with the aid of her step stool in the shape of a duck.
“I thought she should have a bath,” Ruth said, “after being in the pool earlier. Come, Bubbie, Nana will give you a cookie.”
She started to lead Elsbeth from the room, but June said, “Ruth. I heard what you were telling her. I don’t want you to talk about that anymore with her, you understand?”
Ruth had been avoiding looking at June since she’d come in, but now she said, “She has a right to know about her family.”
“We are her family,” said June, “Peter and I.”
“And Sol and myself.”
“Well, of course,” said June. “And she knows that. But I don’t want you talking about them, or I won’t B-R-I-N-G her here anymore. It’ll give her nightmares, and you know how Peter feels about it. He refuses to discuss it at all. If he knew what you’d said, he’d be so upset.”
Ruth evaded June’s eyes and mumbled something.
“Pardon?”
“I said fine.”
“Fine, then,” said June. “Thank you.”
She looked into the bedroom, where Elsbeth was sitting on the carpet, playing with a bowlful of Ruth’s beaded necklaces. “Nana,” she said, “can I have these?”
“Maybe when you’re older,” said Ruth. “Let’s go get a cookie, shall we?”
When they were gone, June ran cold water on one of Ruth’s washcloths and pressed it to her neck, her chest and cheeks. The bathroom was such a luxurious little nest, with its rosy carpet, its mirrored walls, and Ruth’s vanity tray of perfume bottles. One would never imagine it to be a place of terrifying revelation. June was about to turn out the light when she noticed, half hidden beneath a hand towel where Elsbeth must have set it, the photo. The only surviving picture of Masha and the girls.
June picked it up, cool and heavy in its ornate frame. She hadn’t seen it in years, since Ruth first showed it to her, but she remembered it all too well—sometimes, when she was half-asleep, she saw it still. Peter had had the portrait made and sent to Sol and Ruth in 1941, right before he and Masha and the twins went into hiding; the photographer’s name was C. Alsop, and the shoot must have been in a studio, for there were no furnishings, only the velvet chair on which Masha sat. She had a toddler on each knee; in their dirndls, with their spun-sugar hair in looped braids, their light eyes, they might as well have been dolls. Masha was in profile, though whether by her own inclination or the photographer’s, June couldn’t say; she was gazing up at Peter, her pale hair in a chignon, her equine face alight. And Peter—he stood behind her with a hand possessively on her shoulder, wearing a suit and pencil-line mustache; he stared straight at the camera, handsome and proud and so achingly young.
June traced the photographer’s stenciled signature with her fingernail, not daring to touch Peter or Masha or the girls. What courage this young woman—barely out of her teens—had had! To die trying to save her daughters. To have married a Jewish man in the first place, when she knew, she must have known, what the penalty could be. The danger to herself and her girls. Had Masha been horrified to learn she was pregnant? Or had she been ecstatic despite the abysmal timing, the terrible times? Had she been thrilled to bear Peter’s children, to produce life at any cost? June stared at Masha’s face, permanently turned up to Peter’s, telling June nothing—until she heard footsteps coming along the corridor and Maria calling, “Mrs. June, you in there? Mr. Sol wants everyone outside.” June slid the photo into a drawer.