She leaned over and switched on a light above my head. It was too bright and it blinded me momentarily. Then I could see she was smiling. “He’s fine. He’s beautiful.”
“He?” I asked.
“Yes, Mills. Another boy.”
“Where’s David?” I struggled to sit up, to stand, to look around the room for him.
“Calm down.” Susan put her hand on my shoulder. “David is fine, too. He’s with your neighbor, Mrs. Rosenberg.”
“Ethel took him.” I sighed, grateful for Ethel and her kindness. I knew David would be safe with her. “And the baby? He really is all right?”
“He’s in the nursery,” she said, “and he’s perfect. Ten fingers and ten toes, I promise.” She squeezed my hand. “It was you we were worried about. You lost a lot of blood.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“There was a problem with the placenta,” Susan said. “And they had to take the baby out quickly—surgically.”
But I didn’t care about any of that. “I want to see him,” I said. “I need to see the baby. Henry,” I added.
“Henry?” Susan wrinkled her tiny nose. “Who is he named after? Someone in Ed’s family?”
“Ed’s family? No . . . not exactly,” I said slowly, remembering the way I felt that night in the cabin with Jake, everything we had shared about ourselves, of ourselves.
“You did lose a lot of blood . . . I’ll go get the nurse.” She stood and put her hand on my shoulder. She hesitated for a moment, and then she said, “Mills, there’s one more thing I need to tell you.”
“What is it?” I asked, not liking her serious tone.
“It’s Ed,” she said. “We haven’t been able to find him.”
“What do you mean find him?” I asked. “He’s probably just not home from work yet.” Work—that mysterious job he went to each day on East Sixty-first Street.
“Mills, you’ve been here a week.”
“A week?” David had been without me for a whole week? I’d never even left him for longer than a few hours since he’d been born, and the thought suddenly made me feel panicky. “That can’t possibly be right.”
“It is,” she said. “Like I said, you lost a lot of blood.” A week? “Mother and I haven’t been able to get ahold of Ed to let him know that the baby has been born. That you’re here. Mrs. Stein doesn’t know where he is either. We even called and checked with Leo in California. But no one seems to know . . .” She paused. “Was he going on a trip for work maybe? Or to see some friends . . . somewhere?” Her voice floundered as if she’d been going over the possibilities in her head for days and hadn’t yet come up with a reasonable explanation.
I shook my head, and I remembered the events of that last afternoon in my apartment. Ethel left and then she came back. A man named Harry Gold was arrested—we saw it on the television. But he was in Philadelphia. Jake sent a telegram. Await further instructions, I remembered. Take care of my baby.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know where Ed is.”
Susan smiled. “Well, I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll find him.”
But maybe we wouldn’t. Maybe Ed was gone. Truly gone. Maybe he had left me before I’d had the chance to leave him. But even as I thought it, it didn’t sit right with me. Ed might leave me and David, but he wouldn’t leave this baby.
HENRY WAS A CALM BABY, and beautiful. I’d been right about the eyes: they were purely Jake’s, and each time I looked at him, I thought about the hopeful future that surely awaited us, so soon now.
It was June by the time we left the hospital weeks later, and Ed was still nowhere to be found. Susan had to leave to go back to her children in New Jersey, but my mother took a taxi with me from the hospital to Knickerbocker Village and she promised to stay and help out as much as she could while I recovered. I appreciated the offer of help so much that I was able to tune out her constant chatter in the taxicab and to feel only grateful as she helped me and Henry get out of the car.
The weather was damp and much too cold for June, and I shivered and held tiny Henry tight to me as we walked into the building.
“The Dodgers had to cancel their games . . . This weather,” my mother was saying as we walked toward the elevator.
I hadn’t seen David in weeks, and as we rode up to the eleventh floor, I felt anxious to see him again, to hold on to him. When the elevator stopped, I handed Henry and the key to my apartment to my mother and I ran down the hallway to Ethel’s door, which I quickly realized was too much activity for me. I put one hand to my aching stomach, as if I could hold myself together, and I knocked with the other hand—softly, at first, then harder when no one answered.
At last the door swung open and Ethel stood there in front of me, her face red and splotchy. She’d been crying. “Ethel, what is it?”
“David—” she said, and my heart began to beat quickly. I pushed past her into the apartment. Julie was talking on the telephone, frowning, but I ran past him to the back bedroom, where all three boys were sitting on the floor, racing cars.
“Darling!” I rushed to David and leaned down and grabbed him. Too hard, and it hurt to hold him so tight like that against the long incision down my stomach. David didn’t say anything, but I felt his finger clutch at my dress. I kissed his head. “Oh, darling, it’s so good to see you again. I’ve missed you so much.” I stood up and held on to his hand, and I noticed Ethel, standing in the doorway, still crying.
“I’m sorry.” She blew her nose. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, Millie. It’s David, my brother. He’s just been arrested.”
“Arrested? Why?”
“For espionage.”
“Espionage? David? But that other man, Harry Gold, was the one who did it . . . We saw it on the television.”
She blew her nose again. “Well, Harry Gold said David was involved, and now they’ve taken him in, too.” She held her hands up in the air. “Ruth’s back in the hospital with an infection, and their poor babies have no one to take care of them. Oh, it’s all such a mess.”
“Oh, Ethel.” I walked to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry. That’s awful. Poor Ruth.” She shrugged and bit her lip a little to keep from crying more. “This is all my fault of course, according to my mother. Julie and I got him involved with the Party to begin with. She might as well have said that we’re the ones who arrested him, too.”
“Do you think your brother really is a . . . spy?” I asked, lowering my voice. Did David have secrets about the bomb from his time in New Mexico, secrets that he gave to Russia? Could David Greenglass have been the man Jake had been looking for in Ed’s circle all along?
“No, of course not,” Ethel said quickly, and she blew her nose one more time. But I couldn’t tell if she really believed in him or if she just had trouble comprehending that her brother, a man she had grown up with, could be capable of such a thing. “I don’t know,” Ethel added softly. “I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“Do you know where Ed is?” I asked.
She hesitated, and then said, “I don’t know where he is. But he’ll be back for you soon.”
“How do you know?”
She walked out of the room and then walked back in. “Here.” She handed me a crumpled piece of paper and I looked at it and realized it was the telegram I’d gotten the day Henry was born. “I took this, like you asked me to, and I thought you were telling me to read it, so I did. But, don’t worry, I didn’t mention it to your sister . . . I didn’t know what you’d want to tell her. Anyway, according to this, Ed will be back very soon. The middle of June.”
“Oh, no,” I heard myself saying, “the telegram isn’t from . . .” Take care of my baby. But I took the telegram from Ethel, looked at it, and read it again, and that wasn’t what it said. Be good to my baby. Who wrote that? Jake? It had to be Jake, but n
ow that I was looking at it again the words didn’t sound like him. What if Ethel was right? “Ethel, do you understand what’s going on with Ed? Did Ed do . . . something? Is that why he has disappeared now?” I asked. “He’s friends with David. If David was involved in . . . well, maybe Ed was, too?”
“I don’t know what Ed did.” Ethel lowered her voice. “But I know Julie doesn’t trust him.”
“Doesn’t trust him how?” I asked, and Ethel shrugged a little. “Is Julie involved in all this mess, too?”
“Of course not,” Ethel snapped so quickly that I instantly felt bad for asking. “Julie’s just trying to help. That’s all he ever tries to do, and a lot of good that’s gotten him.” She folded her arms tightly and slumped over.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .”
“I know,” Ethel said. “I know you didn’t. Everything’s becoming such a mess. I don’t think we’ll even get to Mexico this summer now. Julie’s loaning David money for his legal defense, and, after that, we won’t have much left.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, though, inwardly and selfishly, I felt relieved that Ethel would be here in Knickerbocker Village with me until I left. “David and I should go. I left my mother with Henry.”
Ethel’s face softened, and she put her hand on my arm. “Henry. How lovely, Millie. I’d love to come meet him . . . soon. After we get all of this nonsense ironed out.”
“Thank you so much for taking care of David while I was in the hospital. You’ll let me know if I can do anything to help you. Anytime, okay?”
We hugged, and then with David holding tightly to my hand, I walked back down the hallway toward our apartment.
LATER THAT NIGHT, with my mother having gone back to Delancey Street to care for Bubbe Kasha and with David and Henry both asleep, I walked into the bathroom to search for the hidden scrap of paper with the number Jake gave me.
In case of an emergency, he’d said. Was this an emergency, really? His son’s birth. Ed’s bizarre disappearance. The arrest of Ethel’s brother. Any one of those things could be considered an emergency, could it not? Or most certainly a necessity to speak to him. I wanted so badly to tell him about the soft feel of Henry’s beautiful plump cheeks, the way his tiny fingers reached for mine as I gave him a bottle earlier.
I took the scrap of paper into the living room and dialed the number, my finger trembling in the rotary. And then I listened to the ringing and ringing and ringing until finally a woman’s voice came on the line.
“This is Millie,” I whispered, not sure why I was whispering though it felt I should be. I cleared my throat, and spoke a bit louder. “Millie Stein,” I said.
“Mrs. Stein, what is the message?” she said curtly as if hundreds of other women had called and left messages for Jake. Had they?
“Can I speak with him?” I asked, holding my breath, longing to hear his voice, to have him tell me that everything would be okay, that we would be together soon, before Ed even came back from wherever he was. Or that Jake would tell me that he was the one who sent the telegram. That he was going to come and help with his newborn son.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the woman said. “But I can take a message and get it to him.”
A message. I wasn’t sure who this woman was or what I could say to her. “Tell him I have his baby. His son,” I finally said.
“His baby,” she repeated, and I could hear the sounds of typewriter keys in the background.
“Yes,” I said. “And I’ll bring him to Mr. Bergman’s butcher shop, Kauffman’s Meats, on Friday morning. Ten a.m.”
“Is that all?” she asked. The noise of the typewriter keys had stopped, and now I could only hear the sound of her breathing on the other end of the line.
“Yes,” I said. “I think it is.”
23
On Friday I woke up before dawn, my breath suspended in my chest, as if in the few hours of sleep I’d gotten between Henry’s feedings I’d forgotten how to breathe. My incision ached and made it hard to get out of bed, though Henry’s small cries, and the thought of Jake meeting us at Mr. Bergman’s shop in just a few hours, all pushed me to stand.
I brought Henry into the living room and smoked a cigarette while he sucked on a bottle. David still slept, and the world outside turned slowly from black to pink to orange. And then David kicked the wall, and Henry dirtied his diaper and began to cry, and I didn’t know which way to go first.
I’d asked my mother not to come today. Yesterday, she’d brought Bubbe Kasha with her and Bubbe Kasha had spent the day on my couch, asking me every twenty minutes or so who the children were, why David wasn’t speaking. “She’s gotten so much worse,” I said in a hushed voice to my mother in the kitchen as she prepared Henry a bottle.
“You haven’t visited us much this year,” my mother said, shaking her head and tsking as if it were my fault for not noticing sooner. Maybe it was. The lines of my mother’s face were ragged, her double chin heavier than it once was, and she, too, was beginning to look and sound older to me. “I don’t feel right leaving you all on your own tomorrow,” she said, “with your husband off to god-knows-where.”
“I’m doing better,” I told her. “I’ll be fine on my own tomorrow. And I’ll bring the children to your apartment for the Sabbath, all right? I’ll bring a brisket. I’ll stop by Mr. Bergman’s in the morning. You need to take care of yourself, too.” I put my hand on her arm, and for a moment she stopped fiddling with the bottle and stared at me.
Then she frowned. “That will be a lot for you, Mildred.”
“It’ll do me good. Keep me busy,” I said. And finally she agreed.
She was right, though. It would be difficult on my own today, with my incision still aching as if it were on fire and two tiny people with me. But it would be worth it to see Jake again. I hoped he’d gotten my message, and I hoped to god he would come.
I changed Henry’s diaper and got David cereal for breakfast, and then I tried to find something suitable to wear. Nothing fit me still. I was so much bigger than usual, and none of my nicer dresses would button. I ran my finger down the dress I’d worn that day in the Catskills so many months earlier. The buttons Jake had unbuttoned. I shivered a little, remembering that night. And then I reached for the large-flowered housedress I’d been wearing all week. I wished I could wear something nicer today, but it couldn’t be helped.
After I dressed, I put Henry in the carriage. I was leaving early, but I wanted to give myself plenty of time to manage both the boys and my aching body.
Just outside the apartment door, I realized again how difficult this would be, as it was impossible to push the carriage and hold David’s hand at the same time.
“Darling, hold on to the carriage handle,” I implored David, but he’d already run off, toward the elevator. The possibility of getting out of the apartment was overexciting him. David had seemed not at all interested in Henry and had been quite discontented with our new life trapped inside the apartment all day long these past few days. Now that we’d left the apartment, David was full of pent-up energy, and I worried I couldn’t contain him and keep track of Henry.
“Darling, wait for Mother,” I called as David rushed onto the elevator without me. I ran down the hallway with the carriage, and when I reached the elevator door, I saw that Julie was inside, holding on to David with one hand, the elevator door with the other.
I exhaled. “Oh, Julie. Thank you.”
He nodded, and I noticed that his face seemed strained today—new lines of worry creased around his spectacled eyes, and his thin mustache matched the shape of his frown. Another unfamiliar, suited man stood in the elevator next to Julie and he frowned, too, as he watched me struggle to pull the carriage onto the elevator and then grab David’s hand. “Sorry,” I said to both of them.
The stranger ignored me, and Julie said, “No need to apologize.” Julie reach
ed across us for the ground-floor button, and I shot him a grateful smile.
“Is everything all right?” I asked him. “Has all the nonsense with—”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s not talk about any unpleasantness now.” The unfamiliar man leaned in closer, and I suspected he was a business associate of Julie’s.
We began to ride down, and the strange man put a hand on Julie’s shoulder and said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Mr. Rosenberg?”
Julie pulled out of the man’s grasp, opened his mouth a little, tugged on his mustache as if considering what to do, and then he looked me straight in the eye and shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t think I will.”
He must be embarrassed to introduce me, looking the way I did in this terrible large dress, and David already clearly acting up. And I looked down at my feet, unwilling to meet his eyes for the rest of what seemed like an extra-long ride.
At last the elevator door opened on the ground floor and David immediately yanked away from my hand and ran toward the front door and the street. “David,” I cried, and tried to manage the carriage. “Wait.”
Julie stepped off the elevator and ran after him. The other man ran close behind Julie, and as Julie caught David, he turned to the man and said, more gruffly than I’d ever heard him speak, “Give me a minute, would you?” The man hesitated, but then he walked out to the street and stood just on the other side of the door.
Julie leaned down to David’s level and held on to him while I got off the elevator with the carriage as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all. “David,” I heard Julie say. “You’re a big brother now. You have to help Mother out. You have to listen, son. You have to stay close to her.” Son. He spoke to David so kindly, the way he would speak to Richie or John. He reminded me of Jake. I smiled at him.
“Thank you,” I said, and I took David back from his grip. “Sorry if I embarrassed you back there in the elevator in front of your associate.”
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