The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street: A Novel

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “I’m so sorry, Judge,” I say in my frailest, most biscuity voice. “It must be my new blood-pressure medication that makes me so woozy.”

  Mr. Tottle practically spits when he hears this. “Oh, please! C’mon, Your Honor. Look at her! Her pupils alone—”

  “Mr. Tottle,” the judge admonishes, raising his hand. “Mrs. Dunkle?”

  Yet Mr. Tottle cannot help himself. “Your Honor, please. You cannot possibly trust a single word the defendant says.” Holding up a manila folder, he flips through it as if it were a magazine, displaying the contents to the judge. Clippings from the New York Post, Newsweek, the Times. “It’s documented everywhere that Mrs. Dunkle has been lying to the public about virtually everything.”

  “Your Honor!” my lawyers object.

  Ever since my arrest at NBC and my conviction for tax evasion, it has become open season on Lillian Dunkle. Never mind that the U.S. embassy was bombed in Beirut. Or that President Reagan has announced he’s deploying a missile shield in outer space. Some weasel-faced journalists have nothing more important to do, it seems, than to dig up dirt about me.

  Oh, the headlines! The outrageous misrepresentations they print:

  Newsday: Declassified files show that Lillian Dunkle secretly supported Senator Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunts.

  The Daily News: Lillian Dunkle lived in splendor in a Palm Beach mansion while her elderly, diabetic father died alone and penniless in an old-age home in Paterson, New Jersey! (This accompanied by a photo that looks like security footage of a wizened old man on a respirator and an “exclusive” interview with one Samuel Pratt)

  The National Enquirer: For years Lillian Dunkle has lied to the American public about being Italian! A priest, one Father Anthony Dinello, of St. Francis Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn recently told the Enquirer that his great-grandparents, two emigrants from Naples, took Lillian in and raised her as their own after she was abandoned in a street accident in the Jewish area of New York’s Lower East Side.

  The New York Times: Archived records from the former Beth Israel Dispensary confirm that Dunkle’s birth name was Malka Bialystoker and that she never, in fact, suffered from polio. Dunkle apparently faked the disease to generate sympathy for herself and nationwide publicity for her husband’s ice cream company.

  The New York Post runs a picture of me entering the courthouse with MALKA! printed above it in huge block letters. As if changing your name is a crime? It is the schoolyard on the Lower East Side all over again.

  Its reporters have even tracked down several disgruntled former secretaries. “The worst boss ever,” these piddling women call me. “A total nightmare to work for.” The myriad of “abuses” I am apparently guilty of? Yelling. Not giving Christmas bonuses. Banning everyone from wearing Charlie perfume in the office. Well, excuse me, darlings, but the only reason I yell is if people are not listening to me. So whose fault is that? And why the hell should I have to play Santa?

  There is that dreadful interview with Harvey Ballentine, of course. And in the newly revived version of Vanity Fair magazine, one of my domestics reveals how every time I returned from a business trip, my pocketbooks were filled with silverware and miniature saltshakers from the airlines. How, when I used to swim laps in Bedford in the mornings, I made her run from one end of the pool to the other with a silver tray of herring snacks. Each time I finished one length, she said, I barked “Feed the fishie!” and opened my mouth, waiting for her to bend down and pop a treat into it.

  For Chrissakes, it was a game! Besides, I was probably drunk.

  Then, just last week, that famous, ghastly Joan Crawford–like photograph of me appeared splashed across the cover of Time magazine above the headline I’M MELTING!

  Suddenly everybody—everybody, darlings—is tucking napkins into their collars, sharpening their knives, bellying up to the carving board.

  Here in court, Mr. Tottle is doing the same.

  Yet Judge Kuklinsky waves away the articles. “Mr. Tottle,” he says dryly, “if stories in the New York Post were admissible as evidence here in this courtroom, half of the Tri-State Area would be under indictment.”

  Turning back to me, he demands, “So, the truth, Mrs. Dunkle. Please. Right now. Are you high, or in any manner mentally impaired?”

  The way his eyes pin me, I know better than to try to be a wisenheimer. “Well,” I say apologetically, “this new medicine I’m taking for my blood pressure has made me feel awfully dizzy, Your Honor.”

  “And do you have this prescription here with you?”

  Before I can respond, a piteous little voice calls out, “Mommy?”

  We all turn to glance at the plaintiffs’ table.

  Little Tara Newhouse is pressing her hands together between her legs and bouncing anxiously in her chair in her fluffy party dress. “I have to make,” she announces.

  “Uh, Your Honor?” says Mr. Tottle. “May we—”

  Judge Kuklinsky motions wearily to the court officer. “Officer Kendriks, do you mind?”

  “I can take her myself, Your Honor.” Mrs. Newhouse smiles nervously.

  “I think it’s best if the officer—”

  “I can go by myself,” Tara declares, nodding vigorously. “I’m seven now.” Pushing herself down off her chair, she slithers under the table before her mother can stop her, crab-walks beneath it in her fancy little patent-leather shoes, then stands up triumphantly on the other side and tugs at the hem of her party dress, righting it. “Mommy?” She turns back to the table. “Can I bring my book with me?”

  “Tara? That’s your name?” Judge Kuklinsky says gently, glancing down at the deposition before him.

  Tara nods shyly.

  The judge smiles. “Well, Tara, we all know that you are old enough to go to the bathroom by yourself. But Officer Kendriks here is going to escort you so you don’t get lost, okay?”

  “Okay!” Tara nods. Turning with a little twirl, she suddenly dashes ahead to the door. Officer Kendriks, who waddles along behind her, shoots Judge Kuklinsky a look.

  “Blind in one eye and permanently disabled, hm?” Judge Kuklinsky says to Mr. Tottle, thumbing through the deposition.

  There is an uneasy silence. Finally the judge sighs, sets aside the papers, and folds his hands. “Look, folks,” he says with exasperation. “From the behavior I’m already seeing on display here, this case strikes me as a likely waste of this court’s time and resources. This is not Madison Square Garden. I have half a mind to dismiss this lawsuit altogether as being frivolous and in bad faith, except, Mrs. Dunkle, that even I have seen the tapes on the news of you striking this little girl on your television program. Though it may have been unintentional, you created an atmosphere of recklessness, and you endangered a child in the process. I believe that this little girl deserves to see justice served. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m setting a status hearing for three days from now. That’s fast-track. Either both parties settle out of court by then, which I strongly urge you to do—and I assume, Mrs. Dunkle, you will be sufficiently sobered up and able to think clearly by then?—or, if not, then come Thursday I’ll be assigning you a trial date. Believe me, this is in nobody’s best interests. If you are all hankering to put on a show—and it seems to me that you are—be forewarned, a trial will come at great cost to each and every one of you, and with little indulgence from this court. Understood?”

  With a bang of the gavel, we are dismissed for the day.

  All the lawyers are furious. “The possibility of going to prison for one crime isn’t enough for you? When we come back here, you need to be completely lucid, do you understand?” Beecham whispers as he hustles me out of the building. “The only lucky break we caught this morning is that the judge was equally pissed at the plaintiffs.”

  Yet me, I feel like liquid. I feel like a chiffon scarf tossed in the air. As I slide into the backseat of my car with Jason, I close my eyes and say, “Mm, doesn’t a big corned beef sandwich at the Carnegie Deli sound marvelous right now
?”

  “Oh, my God!” Jason laughs. “Grandma, you are so baked.”

  I blink at him over the rims of my glasses. “I was nervous, tateleh.”

  “Yeah.” He exhales. “Me, too.”

  I slap him playfully on the knee. “Don’t you go telling anyone, you hear?”

  Grinning, he cracks his knuckles. “Of course not.”

  The rain-slicked streets jiggle by in a riot of speckled colors. After Hector picks up our Reubens and cream sodas, I have him drop off Jason and continue on with me to Park Avenue. Since the lawyers are trying to settle, I have been instructed to remain nearby. I have not lived in our Park Avenue apartment for several months now. Not even Petunia is with me. As I open the door, the jangle of my keys echoes over the parquet. It feels like an abandoned church. Whatever giddiness I had felt at the courthouse ebbs.

  Hanging up my coat, I pick up the package of mail that Isaac has sent over from the office. The correspondences I receive have shrunk in the past year. I fix myself a drink. Except for the muffled bleating of car horns from the avenue below, the house is unnervingly quiet. As I go to put the hi-fi on, the phone rings. Almost nobody ever calls me at home.

  “Hello, is this Mrs. Lillian Dunkle?” a man’s voice says when I answer.

  “Who is speaking?”

  “This is Trevor Marks with Page Six of the New York Post—”

  “Excuse me? How did you get this number? This is a private—”

  “I was just wondering if you cared to comment, Mrs. Dunkle? A source at the courthouse today says that you were high when you appeared before the judge and appeared to have been smoking marijuana—”

  I slam down the receiver, yet my hands are shaking. Who the hell would have told the press about what transpired in the courtroom? That Officer Kendriks. She had it in for me. Then I realize: the Newhouses’ lawyer, that prick Tottle, is trying to further discredit me in the press.

  After leaving a message at Beecham, Mather & Greene, I sit down on my settee and finish my scotch. Frankly, I don’t know what the hell to do with myself. I refuse to think of all the ruckus I’ve caused, of how badly Dunkle’s is now doing. All the money we’ve lost. Everything coming apart in my fingers like wet cardboard.

  Perhaps in the wake of Bert’s death I acted rashly. Perhaps I did not pay the taxes I was supposed to on the sale of Bella Flora. And yes, I perhaps charged some of my extravagant shopping trips to London and Paris directly to the Dunkle’s Ice Cream Corporation. Is it my fault that I believed these were legitimate business expenses? In my capacity as the public face of Dunkle’s, was it not my job to remain well groomed? As for all the renovations and redecorating of my “private” residences that I might also have charged to the company—so okay, Edgar may have fudged a few invoices for me here and there simply to help with the bookkeeping. Yet what difference did that really make, darlings, when I was the president and founder of the whole goddamn operation to begin with? What line is there to blur? Sue me: I fail to see it.

  Slowly, I sift through the mail. Junk, all of it. All sorts of organizations soliciting me for money. Yet as I’m tossing one envelope aside, I notice something odd. It has been addressed by hand.

  To “Malka Treynovsky.”

  Inside, on a single piece of stationery beneath a green insignia reading PERFORMING ARTISTS HOME & HOSPITAL FOR THE AGED. RYE BROOK, NEW YORK is a letter in careful, loopy script.

  Dear Malka (Mrs. Lillian Dunkle),

  I am a nurse’s aide here at the PAHHA. Last week I was reading aloud an article about you to one of our residents, a lovely retired dancer named Florence Halloway. When the article mentioned that your name used to be Malka Bialystoker, she gave a little cry. She said that was the name of her sister whom she had lost many years ago. Florence Halloway is her stage name. She said she was originally born “Flora Treynovsky” in Russia.

  I have taken it upon myself to reach out to you on her behalf. Miss Halloway has recently suffered a stroke. While she is unable to read or write anymore, she is often lucid and in good spirits. She is afraid that you do not remember her and says that she does not want to be any bother. However, I believe it would mean a lot to her to hear from you, if you are so inclined.

  Please do not hesitate to contact me regarding this matter. We would welcome you here at the home for a visit at any time.

  Yours truly,

  Tricia Knox

  For a long time, I sit staring at the letter. Flora? Three private detective agencies I had employed over the years. That last one, Nick, had located state records for a “Millie Bialy,” age “approx. 45,” who had died in a mental asylum in Rochester, New York, in 1921. This was the closest to anyone with my mother’s name, and I had resigned myself to the fact that it had, in all probability, been Mama. Yet my two sisters?

  “I found their names on the ship manifest for the SS Amerika arriving out of Hamburg,” he had said, “but nothing else. No school records. No marriage licenses. No death certificates. Nada. But back then, though? People just vanished.”

  Of course I had assumed Flora had died. She had been starving. Tubercular.

  I reread the letter. “Is this some sort of joke?” I say aloud. In the emptiness of my apartment, my voice echoes. For all I know, some wisenheimer read New York magazine and conjured up long-lost sister “Florence Halloway” as a way to con me—to set me up for further humiliation. Someone shrewd enough, with enough chutzpah and malice. The Dinellos perhaps? My alleged stepsiblings?

  I picture a greasy-faced young woman in hospital scrubs, eating ravioli from a can in an apartment by the railroad tracks. On the sagging couch beside her, her out-of-work boyfriend watches pirated cable and cooks up mail-fraud schemes with friends who are not that dissimilar to the crowd Papa used to run with. The PAHHA letterhead is a fake. As soon as I telephone, there will be some sob story. Oh, Florence has just died, and there’s no money for the funeral. This “Tricia Knox,” she will ask for a check.

  I pour myself another drink and wander around the apartment. Yet I cannot stop my thoughts from spinning like a centrifuge. If Flora had changed her name, that would explain why I had never been able to find her. And, of course, why she had never been able to find me either. I had grown up, after all, as Lillian. And had all my little cosmetic surgeries, of course. And my peroxided hair. Even before going on television. How I had transformed myself, all across America!

  With trembling hands, I dial the number on the letterhead. When the operator puts me through to Florence Halloway’s room—which I am not quite expecting—the phone rings and rings. Well, this is all a waste of time, I think. I am surprised how dejected I feel. Just before I hang up, however, someone answers. I hear only fumbling, a knocking of plastic on plastic, a dull, cochlear roar.

  “Hello?” I call out.

  After a moment, over a rasp of labored breathing, a creaky voice says, “Yes?”

  “Hello? Is this Florence Halloway?”

  “Yes?”

  I feel a sharp whoosh of vertigo. “Are you also Flora Treynovsky?” I say.

  There is nothing on the other end but wheezing.

  “Malka?” the bewildered voice finally rasps. “Is that you?” She adds with astonishment, “You remember me?”

  A shudder ripples through me. “Is this a joke?” I cry. “Please, please don’t be a smart aleck. Is that really you?”

  “Of c-c-course,” the voice stammers.

  I cannot help myself. “Then prove it,” I say.

  For a time, there is only silence. Then the voice begins in slow, crinkly Yiddish: “Oh, is this not the most delicious chicken we have ever eaten in our lives? And these potatoes. With the parsley.”

  Just as I am struggling into my coat, my lawyer, Mr. Beecham, calls.

  “I’ve got good news and bad,” he says. “The Newhouses are willing to settle.”

  “Let me guess. Those shysters want more money than God.”

  “They refuse to accept anything under seven figures. They
keep insisting their daughter will have to go to ‘special’ schools now and can never be gainfully employed and how there’s a possibility no one will ever marry her when she grows up because she’s ‘half blind’ and ‘disabled’ and blah-blah-blah.”

  “Oh, they think that, now, do they?” I say acidly. Those dimwits. How little they know. “Well. Guess what, darling? I don’t settle either. That’s it. Tell them we’re going to court.”

  Mr. Beecham swallows, as if he has perhaps been sipping a glass of water and it has gone down the wrong pipe. “Mrs. Dunkle, I have to tell you. I really do not advise this,” he says. “We’re lucky enough to have gotten all the criminal charges in this case dropped—”

  “I want my day in court,” I say. “I’ve had enough of this nonsense. It’s my turn to speak.”

  I hang up the phone. I am finished, darlings. Now all of you, everyone in the whole world, will finally hear from me. My side of the story.

  I take a legal pad and begin to compose these thoughts on the drive up. Everything that I am confessing to you right here and now. All that I have to say.

  The Performing Artists Home & Hospital for the Aged is housed in a redbrick Colonial plantation-style house; according to the sign, it was established by SAG and Actors’ Equity as a retirement community for forgotten actors, actresses, dancers, singers, old vaudevillians. Its gracious lawn is dotted with oak trees and flaking white Adirondack chairs. An oval drive leads up from the access road. In the distance you can hear the constant thwick-thwick-thwick of cars speeding by on the expressway beyond a thatch of woods. A little grove to the left camouflages a strip mall with an A&P, a notions shop, a dog groomer, and a Sub Hub, but not—to my dismay—a Dunkle’s. Eighty-two franchises we have left now across the country.