Two of a Kind

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  Afterward, she’d been sent to a DP camp in Belgium where she’d met a man who, like her, had lost everyone. They had married ten days later, and gone first to Cuba and eventually New York. He’d been a bitter, haunted soul, though who in those years was not? Ida thought that a baby would change things. But year after year went by and no baby came. It was because she gave the other one away, she told herself. She was being punished. Then, when she had all but given up, it happened. She was not young anymore; she was almost forty, with gray-threaded hair and little creases pinching her mouth. When the baby came, she felt like she got it all back—her youth, her hope, her belief in a future that did not include the past. Her husband—he didn’t see it that way. He resented the baby. Resented the crying, the diapers, the broken sleep, but more than that too. He resented that Ida loved the baby so much. More than she loved him; she could admit it now. Much more. They fought, and then they didn’t even care enough to fight. When he left, she was almost glad. Now she would have her boy all to herself.

  Ida looked at the slip of paper she carried. Here was the house. It was made of brick, and very handsome, though she could see that the steps leading to the double doors were not in good repair. But the window boxes, like miniature gardens, were the prettiest on the block and the Japanese maple in front was as graceful as a girl. This is it. She had to compose herself before she rang the bell; so much depended on this meeting. A door opened and she froze: she did not want to be caught on the street this way. But the lithe young person that skittered down the stairs and up the street did not even notice her. Her hair was pulled into a tight bun and she carried a big, bulging bag over her shoulder. She climbed the hill that Ida had just descended in what seemed like seconds. That must have been the daughter Andy had mentioned. A shayne maidele too. But here she was procrastinating when she had important work to do. The house, she saw, had two entrances. One was the pair of doors from which the girl had just emerged. The other was below the steps. Up or down? she asked herself. The girl had come from above, so she decided she would try there first. Grasping the black iron railing, Ida mounted the stairs.

  • • •

  Christina was on the parlor floor, in her showroom—though not for much longer—when the bell sounded. She rarely had visitors at this entrance; her clients and friends, along with UPS, FedEx, and the mailmen, knew to ring the downstairs bell. “Excuse me,” she said to the two men whose loft in Red Hook she was redoing. “I’ll be right back.” She left the couple to inspect the pair of Eames chairs they were considering to answer the door.

  “Can I help you?” Christina was sure that the small, older woman, dressed in a China blue linen suit, had the wrong house.

  “I’m Ida Stern,” the woman said. In her hand she clutched a taupe leather handbag made in a style that had been popular at least forty years ago. “Andy’s mother.”

  “Oh!” Christina had not recognized her at first. “Please come in.” She stepped back to allow Ida to enter. “I’m with some clients right now, but will you wait for me? I won’t be long.” Ida followed her down the stairs and allowed herself to be seated at the kitchen table. She refused offers of iced tea, coffee, juice, or lemonade, though she finally did accept the glass of club soda—she called it seltzer—that Christina put in front of her.

  “You go back upstairs,” she said, taking a small, demure sip. “I’m perfectly fine right here.”

  Christina was rattled when she returned to her clients. Rob, the more effusive half of the couple, was enthusiastic about the chairs; his partner, Greg, less so. “It’s the color,” he said, rubbing the leather as if the pressure of his fingers could somehow change it. Ordinarily, Christina would have done a little pitch for the chairs, explaining their significance in terms of midcentury design, their relatively reasonable price, and their undeniably excellent condition.

  Today, she only nodded and said, “Why don’t you two talk it over and get back to me in a few days? Maybe I’ll have some other options to show you by then.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Greg said. Rob looked disappointed, but he followed his partner out. Christina abstained from expelling the huge sigh she had been holding in her lungs until the door closed behind them.

  Now she had to deal with Andy’s mother. For a change, she wasn’t nauseated, but her face felt sticky and she was sure her hair was a mess, so she ducked into the bathroom to freshen up. What she would say to the older woman was an utter mystery to her. After the weeks of pining for Andy in the wake of their breakup, Christina’s refusal of his proposal was as surprising to her as it was to Stephen when she’d told him. “But, girl, this is the answer to all your troubles. Marriage, baby, new life with the doctor hubby.” He ticked them all off on his fingers. “Looks good from where I sit.”

  “We’ll make each other miserable,” she had said. “We’ll fight all the time. Or, if not, I’ll be walking on eggshells, always anticipating the next explosion. Like my father.”

  “So that’s what’s behind this,” Stephen said. “Well, I think you’re wrong. Andy Stern is not your dad. And you’re not your mother. When he gets out of line, you’ll tell him. That’s what couples—strong couples anyway—do for each other.”

  “I don’t want to have to police him,” she said.

  “Think of it as being a guide and a partner. You’ll be his better half and all that.”

  “Stephen, who knew you were so old-fashioned?” She had not told him about her secret plan, her safety net; she just couldn’t bear to yet and she fervently hoped he would not feel betrayed when she did.

  The zoning board had given her a little grace period to wrap up her business in the house and she was taking it. Today’s two clients might be the last ones she would see here. The money from the sale would pay the fine, the relocation, the apartment—everything wrapped up in one tidy, neat package. Now all she had to do was tell everyone in her life about it.

  • • •

  While she waited, Ida looked around. With its blue and white plates hung on the walls and sizable collection of yellow mixing bowls, the kitchen was an orderly, welcoming place. Through the window she saw a sliver of the garden; Andy had told her Christina liked to grow things. She would make a good wife for him, this shiksa with her bowls and her flowers. A good wife and a good stepmother for Oliver. And as for the baby she carried . . . Ida had to tamp down the elation she felt about that; it would not help her case if she appeared too emotional or desperate. She finished her seltzer and got up to put her glass in the sink. She noticed a collection of tarnished candlesticks sitting alongside it. Next to them sat a pile of rags and various kinds of polish. The candlesticks were mostly brass, but a lone silver example caught her attention and she picked it up to examine it more closely. It was fairly short, and had two rounded sections, so that it looked like the body of a woman. A pattern of incised lines, some like semicircles, covered much of it. Ida’s mother had owned a similar pair of candlesticks; Ida remembered them from her girlhood. They had been a wedding gift to her parents, and unlike the brass candlesticks that her mother used every Shabbas, the silver ones were only brought out on the most special occasions. “They’ll be for you one day, tochter,” her mother used to say, one hand gripping the candlestick and the other busily polishing until the surface gleamed, moon-bright. “When you get married.” Well, her mother had not given them to her when she married Jurgi, but Ida had understood, even without being told, why. That wedding was not the joyful union of two souls, sanctioned by their community and their faith. Her marriage to Jurgi was a desperate act; survival, not happiness, had been its goal.

  Funny how familiar the weight and shape of this candlestick felt in her hands; she could have been back in her parents’ house, setting the table for a holiday dinner, her mother’s cross-stitched tablecloth starched as crisp as paper laid on the table. Look, here was a little nick at the base. One of her mother’s candlesticks had had such a nick;
it happened when her mother had dropped it on the stone floor in the kitchen. She’d never forgiven herself for that and always said she was going to take it to a silversmith in the city to have it fixed. Ida turned the candlestick over. There was something engraved on the bottom, but she could not make it out because of the tarnish. Curious, she took one of the rags, soaked it with a bit of the silver polish, and began to rub.

  When she’d rubbed the spot clean, she peered down to read the engraving: too small—she would need her glasses. She brought the candlestick back to the table and fished them from her pocketbook. Now she could see. The words were in Lithuanian, a language she had not read in decades. But that did not matter: she knew them by heart.

  For Chana and Yossel on the occasion of their wedding

  25 September 1926

  The candlestick, her mother’s candlestick, dropped with a clatter and rolled across the floor. Christina came hurrying into the room and picked it up. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “That candlestick,” Ida croaked. “Where did you get it?”

  • • •

  Christina looked down at the candlestick in her hand, and then back at Ida’s face. Under the two spots of blush on her cheeks, she had gone alarmingly pale. “Let me get you some water,” Christina said, setting the candlestick down.

  “No, I’m fine,” said Ida. “I just had a jolt, that’s all.”

  “From this?” Christina gestured to the candlestick.

  Ida nodded. “May I?” she asked.

  Christina handed it back to her.

  Ida turned it over and pointed to the engraved letters and what appeared to be a date. “You see?”

  “I see, but I don’t understand,” Christina said.

  “This candlestick. It’s one of a pair that belonged to my mother. I thought it looked familiar, but when I saw the engraving, I was sure.”

  “That’s astonishing.” Christina went to the drawer for a magnifying glass so she could see more clearly.

  “Where did you get it?” Ida asked again.

  “In an auction. With the rest of those.” She gestured to the group by the sink. “I think they threw it in because it had lost its mate; that compromises the value, at least for some people.”

  “Not for me,” Ida said, fingers reverently following the curves of the thing.

  Christina was silent. She had always understood the secret language of objects—they could be totems, evidence, idols, or talismans. This candlestick was something else, though; it was a witness to the past. “I want you to have it,” she said when they were both seated at the table. “It’s yours.” She nudged the candlestick in Ida’s direction.

  Ida shook her head. “No. Keep it and marry my son. I would have given it to him anyway.” When Christina didn’t reply, Ida continued. “He’s heartbroken that you turned him down.”

  “I still love him,” said Christina when she finally spoke. “But we wouldn’t be happy. And didn’t you tell Andy to break up with me? Because I’m not Jewish?”

  “I did.” Ida folded her hands in front of her on the table. Her nails were lacquered crimson. “But that was before I knew about the baby.” She paused. “A baby changed everything for me. And it will for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Christina asked.

  “Years and years ago, I had a baby, a baby that was supposed to save me. His father was my best friend and playmate; our parents were told that people with children weren’t being deported, so they saw to it that we had . . . a child.”

  “And you did?”

  “Yes,” said Ida. “We did. But that was a lie. We were deported anyway.”

  “What about the baby?” Christina asked. She didn’t know if she could stand to hear the answer.

  “No, not the baby. He was . . . killed. There. I’ve never said it out loud. For so many years I believed he was somewhere else, somewhere safe. But there was nowhere that was safe—at least not for him.”

  “Andy doesn’t know this, does he?”

  Ida looked deep into her eyes. “No. Why should he?” When Christina didn’t reply, she added, “He was my miracle baby, not the other one. God gave him to me when I had abandoned hope; he saved me. Now you have a chance for a miracle too, don’t you see? Have this baby; it will give you a new life: a husband, a family.”

  “I’m going to keep the baby,” said Christina. She’d known that all along but hadn’t been brave enough to admit it to herself.

  “And what about Andy?”

  Christina shook her head no. “But he can see the baby if he wants. And you too. I won’t shut you out.”

  “Thank you,” Ida said. “Thank you very much.” She stood, clutching her pocketbook to her chest.

  If Christina had thought Ida would cajole or beg, she was wrong. “Take the candlestick.” She stood as well. “Please.”

  “No,” Ida said. “It’s for the baby. Something you can give him or her after I’m gone.”

  After Ida left, Christina polished the remainder of the candlestick. What an extraordinary coincidence that it had come all the way from Lithuania to her kitchen in Brooklyn, only to be recognized by its original owner—an owner who then refused to take it back. She would never sell it, not at auction and not to the client whose mantelpiece she was looking to adorn. No, she would do what Ida said, and keep it for the baby. The baby. Her heart clattered. It would be hard raising a child by herself. But she’d have the money from the sale of the house, though her throat burned at the thought of it. Jordan would be here to help. Stephen and Misha too—at least she hoped so.

  The rest of the brass candlesticks still stood by the sink. Christina polished every last one of them, wiping away the years of dirt and neglect. But after that, her sense of purpose dissolved. She had no appointments for the rest of the day, though there were plenty of things she had to do: call Amy, check in with the Realtor, call the lawyer who was handling the sale, and begin the monumental task of packing. She did none of them.

  Instead, she slipped into her inventory mode, moving around her house as if looking at it from the outside. She had said she did not want the kind of life she’d have with Andy. Then what kind of life did she want? She walked around the home that she’d created to see whether it held the answer. Here were the things she loved, the velvet love seat, the small but exquisite Persian rug that lay in front of it. In the dining room, her pine sideboard, her ample table, her assortment of mismatched but, to her eye, perfectly coordinated chairs. Her prints, her plates, her odd bits of silver, of crystal, porcelain, wood, and brass. Totems, idols, talismans, evidence, fossils. What would become of all these things when she had to leave? Some she would take, but others she would have to leave behind. How to choose? The thought was crushing, as if all those things she had accumulated, restored, and loved suddenly began to rise up, and start swirling—crazily, dangerously—around her. She had to lie down. Immediately. Retreating to her bedroom, she stretched out and closed her eyes. Sleep, like a drug, came almost at once.

  When she woke, her panic subsided. She had made her decision to sell; wallowing in regret would get her nowhere. She picked up the phone to call the lawyer. The sooner the sale was completed, the better off she would be. Christina then spent the remainder of the afternoon in the basement, bundling back issues of the many shelter magazines to which she’d subscribed; it was still light when she hauled two of the bundles outside to the curb. Her neighbor Charlotte Bickford was on her stoop. Charlotte scowled when she caught sight of Christina and, just like the last time, practically slammed the door in her hurry to get back inside. There’s one good thing that will come out of this, Christina reflected. When I move, I will never, ever have to see Charlotte Bickford’s miserable face again.

  FORTY

  Jordan noticed the woman first. She wore a beautiful sari in a deep shade of greenish blue; the edges were trimmed in gol
d. She was so busy looking at her—she moved like a dancer, really she did—that Jordan did not notice the people she was with right away. But as soon as she did, she remembered the guy with the slicked-back hair and the other one with the turban—she had seen them here before. There was another guy with them too. He was short, with nerdy-cool black glasses and sandy hair that spilled over his forehead into his eyes. He was waving his hands as he talked; the other two men were just nodding. Only the woman seemed apart from them all, lost in a strange kind of trance as she stared at the house. Jordan’s house. What was she doing here? What were all of them doing here? Hitching her bag up more securely on her shoulder, she marched over to find out.

  “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “Hello,” said the guy with the slicked-back hair. “Do you live here?”

  “I do.” Did her mom know about these people? They didn’t look dangerous, but you never could tell.

  “Ah, you must be the daughter. Your mother spoke of you.” He had an English accent, all snobby and proper sounding.

  “You mean you talked to my mom? She knows you’re here?” Jordan decided she did not like him.

  “Oh yes,” said the man. “She knows all of us.” He gestured toward the little group.

  “Well, anyway, if she knows you’re here, I guess it’s okay.” She shifted her bag again.

  “Considering she’s in the process of selling the house to my clients—”

  “Selling!” The word was a slap. “What do you mean selling?”

  The man looked uncomfortable. “Oh, excuse me. I assumed she would have discussed her plans with you; so sorry.” He was backing away now; they all were.

  Jordan didn’t answer. Instead, she ran up the stairs and burst into the house. She had to run up and down before she found her mother sitting in the garden. She was alone, and she did not appear to be doing anything—not weeding, pruning, planting, or any one of the million other things she did when she was out here.