by Betsy Carter
Even before he nodded yes, he saw Liesl whisper in Carola’s ear, and Carola shake her head and whisper back. Carola, in her gentle mocking way, probably said something like “You naughty girl, you’re at it again.” He also saw Meyer watching it all and knew that come tomorrow, there’d be hell to pay.
Sure enough, Egon’s phone was ringing when he came home the next evening. “So that’s why you steered me away from her! Too young, my foot. Greedy Egon wanted little Liesl Kessler all to himself, so he played holier-than-thou and warned his friend away.” Meyer spoke in the singsong cadence he used when he was being sarcastic. “Tell me this, does she taste like money? When she cries out in ecstasy, which she no doubt does with the Cheese Man performing his remarkable feats of lovemaking, does she yell, ‘Ooh, Camembert!’ or ‘More Roquefort, please, more Roquefort!’” His voice got serious. “Honestly, Egon, the least you can do is give me details.”
Egon tried to explain how this had caught him by surprise, how spontaneously it had happened. “I am sure the music had something to do with it,” he said, which piqued Meyer even more.
“Really? Do you think if I’d been sitting next to Liesl Kessler during ‘Moonlight Sonata’ or one of the Brandenburgs, she’d have started nibbling on my ear and ended up back in my love nest? Details, Egon, that’s the least you can serve up to your starving friend.”
“Okay,” said Egon. “The details are sweet and simple. As you may imagine, she is athletic and experienced in that department. Let me say this: She knows her way around men. Her physique, or how you call it, is a fine one. When I told her she was beautiful, she took the compliment like it is one she is used to getting. She does not demand conversation, so it was easy. It was lovely and fun, if you must know.”
“What I must know,” said Meyer, “is what you’re not telling me.”
“Ah, always the writer. I’m not not telling you anything, I swear it.”
That was a lie. What Egon didn’t tell Meyer was this: Liesl kept her pearls on while making love. When he suggested that she might remove them for fear of their getting damaged, she told him she never took them off. They looked luminous against her bare skin. More than once he let his lips glide over them as he kissed her neck and stroked her back. Once inside her, he was seized with the thought that those pearls held the memory of the brass plate and cherrywood rolltop desk in his old office, and in his passion, he grabbed both strands and shoved as many pearls as he could fit into his mouth. They were soft against his tongue, like chocolate before it melts. He cried as he came, then hid his head in her neck so she wouldn’t see his tears.
Meyer’s questioning became relentless. “Tell me about her breasts,” he demanded two weeks later. “Is her red lipstick all over your schwanz?” he asked on the phone one evening. Egon fended him off as best he could, until one Sunday in Nash’s, Meyer whispered, “Really, what does she taste like?”
Egon put down the fork he was holding. “Enough. These questions of yours are perverse. Find your own romantic life and get your nose out of mine.”
“Fair enough,” said Meyer. “Only one more question: When I expressed interest in Miss Kessler, you told me it was a bad idea, she was too young and Carola’s best friend. Yet none of these matters seem to concern you, which leads me to think one of two things: that because you are the better-looking one of us, what applies to me in this area does not apply to you, or, more simply, that you have betrayed me.”
“This is nonsense,” said Egon.
“Then you admit it’s a betrayal.”
“You never had Liesl.”
“But you knew I wanted her, and that makes it a betrayal.”
“No such thing,” said Egon. “It is more what I would call a moment of weakness.”
“Once would be a moment of weakness; now it’s been nearly a month of Liesl and Egon. I call this a betrayal.”
“I am sorry you feel that way. I did not purposely mislead you.”
“Then we call it a small betrayal?”
“Maybe a very small betrayal,” said Egon.
“Small betrayals add up,” said Meyer.
Egon bought himself a phonograph, and Liesl brought him records: “Rhapsody in Blue,” the Dorsey Brothers, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, anything that was new. She was sweet that way, always bringing presents for the group: a comb for Carola; colored pencils for Max; New York City maps for the Schnabels; the shirts and glasses for him and Meyer. Egon worried that she spent too much money on these gifts. When he told her this, she made light of it and pointed to the double strand of pearls. “Does this look like the jewelry of a girl who is broke?” But in her awkward English, the sentence came out: “Does this look like the jewelry of a girl who is broken?”
In fact, Egon thought she was quite the opposite. She always seemed to have something new: a bottle of nail polish; fanciful barrettes; a smart scarf tied around her neck. Certainly she was not broken in the bedroom, and never tired of pleasing him every way she could. She was an attentive listener, and her own conversation was mostly small talk, except when she spoke of her parents: “I am tearing my hair out with frustration. My father promises he will get papers, but nothing happens. They come for all the wealthy Jews. They will come for him.”
Egon didn’t know how to comfort her, other than by saying, “You must not give up trying.”
In public, Liesl laid claim to Egon by keeping her eyes on him in a way that Meyer said was embarrassingly possessive. Egon didn’t tell Meyer that he enjoyed her attention. When they went out in a group, she stayed by his side. On July 4, the seven of them packed up sandwiches, fruit, cake, and thermoses of coffee and took the two-hour subway ride to Brighton Beach. On the train, the men stood over the women and held on to the straps. Liesl wore a pair of shorts and a halter top with a palm tree pattern. When Meyer unabashedly tried to look down Liesl’s halter, Egon shot him a glare of angry recognition. Meyer shot back one of defiance, then continued to search for Liesl’s breasts.
Meyer hated the beach. The sun made his pale skin itchy and blotchy. He hated his body, which he felt was as thick and squishy as a marzipan pig, and nothing he wanted to parade in front of his friends. Once, when he was a boy, one of his brothers had stuck Meyer’s head in the trough long enough for him to think he was going to die. Since then, water terrified him. He thought about the one time he had ventured into a lake. It had been at Helenesee, outside of Frankfurt. He and Carola had been visiting Egon and he took them to the lake. In a burst of bravado, Meyer had dared Carola to stand on his shoulders and jump off. She’d said: “Okay, but I’ll kill you if you flip me backwards.” He’d promised he wouldn’t, then ducked underwater as she took his hands and climbed on. He’d stood up slowly. His arms shook as they both tried to steady themselves. He knew he’d never forgive himself if he let her fall, so he’d fixed his eyes on the tips of her toes, which were painted tomato red. Before then, he’d only waded in the shallow end of the lake up to his waist. But on that day, the thought of his Schneewittchen climbing up his back made the possibility of drowning seem a fair price to pay. Even now, he could feel her slender feet on his naked shoulders.
When they finally got to Brighton Beach, his little group stood shyly around the perimeter of their blankets, none of them willing to be the first to strip down. Finally, Egon sat on the blanket, pulled off his shirt and pants, and stretched out in the sun. Of course it would be him, thought Meyer. That body, still a harmony of fine lines and angles. The rest of them wore their winter pallor. Not him. His skin never paled. And now he would tan. The tan would play well against those blue eyes. He’d look exotic and romantic, like a Moroccan sheikh. “Look at him,” Meyer said, gesturing to Egon. “The man is fucking Dorian Gray.”
Liesl smiled provocatively as she studied Egon’s body. The others laughed uneasily, unsure of who this Dorian Gray was. But no matter, it broke the ice, and they all slipped off their clothes and lay in the sun. All except for Carola, who sat shaded by an umbrella.
&nb
sp; Meyer took in the sight of her, glimpse by glimpse. During the week, Carola scrubbed floors at a fancy midtown hotel. Her job required her to pull her blond hair back into a bun and wear a net over it, but today it fell softly around her shoulders. Her body, slim and graceful, filled out all the right places in her black knit bathing suit. Meyer poured himself a cup of coffee before allowing himself another look. Without their tomato-red polish, her toes seemed old and discarded, though her legs were pale and young as ever. But wait, what were those blue and purple stains on her knees, like smashed fruit on white linen? Meyer breathed out “Ach, du lieber,” and waited until he could make his voice normal before asking, “Did you take a fall?”
“Oh, them.” Carola laughed, looking down at her legs. “No, they come with the job.”
Max covered her legs with a towel and suggested they all take a swim. Meyer waded waist-deep into the ocean and watched with the Schnabels as Egon and Max dove headfirst into the waves and Liesl swam out until they could barely see her. Carola stayed under the umbrella. After they dried off and ate lunch, Meyer announced it was time to play their favorite game: The Worst Job of the Week.
“Today there is no contest,” he said triumphantly. “No one can beat me. Even on normal days, it’s exhausting to walk up and down Seventh Avenue wearing a sandwich board, but when the humidity is high and the temperature gets into the nineties like it did this week, I schvitz like nobody’s business. So, on Monday, my sign says ‘Kallen’s Shirts: The Best There Are.’ The letters are hand-painted in black except for the word Kallen’s, which is red. At lunchtime, I begin to notice that people are smiling at me. This never happens. Mostly people turn away from me. Then I am aware that some are laughing. One man even nudges his wife and points at me. She puts her hand over her mouth like he’s told her a dirty joke. That’s when I think I’d better see what this is all about. The next time I pass the store window I stop and look at myself in the glass. Oh brother, what do I notice? I have so much sweat pouring out from me that it’s soaked through to the sign. Some letters are smudged and others have dripped away. Now the sign reads ‘allen’s Shi ts: The Best There Are.’”
Meyer related this with shrugs and raised eyebrows in all the right places, until the others were laughing so hard they were crying. Only Kaethe and Georg were not amused. “So, now that we are in America, are we to become vulgar?” asked Kaethe.
When Georg nodded in agreement, Meyer leaned in to them until their faces were almost touching. “But of course,” he said with exaggerated formality. “I forgot I was talking to the first family of Frankfurt.”
That’s when Egon stood up and put his hand on Meyer’s shoulder and said, “Come, walk with me on the beach.”
“Gladly,” said Meyer. He stood up, still staring at Georg. “Don’t tell any dirty stories while we’re gone.”
Egon nudged Meyer along. “Those people,” said Meyer as they walked. “Why did they bother to come here? They’re not even trying.”
Egon shook his head. “They cannot help it. They have to cling to who they were; otherwise it is unbearable for them. He folds and irons shirts at a dry cleaner’s, and she mends other people’s clothes in their living room, for God’s sake. Their little apartment on Dongan Place is a far cry from his law office and their mansion in Frankfurt. They are older. They do not have everything ahead of them. Surely you can be a little compassionate, yes?”
Meyer stopped walking and used his hands to shade his eyes. “I don’t give a shit if they’re ninety-seven. They’re deluded fools. Carola’s on her hands and knees all day. You sell salami and cheese. I walk around with a sandwich board on my shoulders. We do what we have to do and don’t act so high and mighty. We don’t kid ourselves.”
“You are wrong,” said Egon, turning to look at a young girl in a low-cut suit. “We all kid ourselves, but about different things. This is how we go on.”
“God, I’m sick of us,” said Meyer, staring at the same girl. “We’ve become exactly what they wanted: insular, separate, our own little ghetto. We kiss everyone’s ass all week, and by the weekend we hate ourselves so much that we turn on each other because we’re all we’ve got.”
Egon used the back of his hand to wipe sweat from his brow. “Meyer, you are the one always telling me to look on the bright side, remember? ‘We are in America. We have our lives ahead of us.’ Blah blah blah. Have you forgotten your own spiel?”
Meyer studied his friend’s silhouette backlit by the sun. “The less you wear, the more cocky you get. I suppose if I looked like you do in a bathing suit and I had a sexy young girlfriend, I’d be cocky too. So okay, we will look on the bright side. Did you see the way Carola threw back her head and laughed at my story? How do you know that she isn’t fed up with that dough-faced husband of hers and is finally ready to take up with a real man?” Meyer sucked in his gut and flexed his muscles like the he-men on matchbook covers.
Egon laughed. “I know because you tell me everything.”
“I tell you everything I think you should know. And you, do you tell me everything?”
Egon hesitated. “Sure I do.”
That was another lie. He still hadn’t told Meyer about Catrina, but really—what was there to tell?
15.
Of all of them, Meyer battled most ferociously to learn the language and customs of America. Each night he would copy a story from Life magazine until he covered three pages of writing tablet. He would read the comic pages aloud, assuming the voice of Buck Rogers or Popeye. Often, at the Saturday gatherings, he’d entertain the group by acting out one of the strips. After one of these readings, Egon asked him when he thought he might start writing again. Meyer puffed out one cheek, then the other, as if swishing water between them, and answered, “I suppose when I have something to say.”
“Do you ever not have something to say?”
“You can make fun as much as you like,” said Meyer. “But one of us gets paid for our opinions, and it isn’t you.”
Egon understood what Meyer meant when he picked up the September 22, 1939, issue of the Aufbau, the five-year-old German Jewish weekly newspaper. There, under the byline Meyer Leavitt, was a column called In the Free Country.
In Germany, we lived as Germans first, assimilating easily with our neighbors. Until the unpleasantness began several years ago, our Jewishness was mostly not the point. Here, in the free country, we have ghettoized ourselves. Where we were once citizens of a continent, we now live within a fifty-block neighborhood that we might as well call “Frankfurt on the Hudson.” Because we have neither the money nor the time, few of us have strayed from our territory. Nobody I know has been to the Statue of Liberty, for example, but we all look to the stately George Washington Bridge, with its steel cables and painted aluminum beams, as our Reichstag. There is almost no place in Washington Heights where the reverse arches of this mighty bridge can’t be seen floating like clouds over the Hudson River. So central is it in our lives that I recently heard one person, when talking about the first president of the United States, refer to him as President George Washington Bridge.
Right now ours are small lives. We are mired in our work and our survival, and it is on these things we must focus. But let us never lose sight of the fact that someday, we will have children, and our legacy and duty to them is to break out of our mental and physical ghettos, let in fresh air, and once again become citizens of the world.
Egon shook his head, remembering how, weeks earlier, at Carola and Max’s house, Kaethe had let slip something about how she and Georg walked over the President George Washington Bridge. She’d said it softly enough that Egon hoped Meyer hadn’t heard, but here it lay, coiled in the one newspaper he knew all of them read.
That night, he phoned Meyer. “So, the Aufbau? When were you going to tell me this?”
“You mean to say, how dare I keep a secret from you, or is this your backhanded way of congratulating me?”
“A little of both, I suppose.”
“Yes
, well, we each have our little secrets, don’t we?”
“Maybe. And we each have our small betrayals, do we not?”
“I don’t know how you mean that,” said Meyer.
“The President George Washington Bridge. Kaethe said that.”
“She did,” said Meyer. “I wasn’t sure you heard her.”
“Are you so ambitious that you will make fun of your friends in public?”
“Egon, I’m a writer. I use everything, and make fun of whomever I have to. This conversation, for example. Perhaps it too is a good column.”
“And do you not think there is something wrong with that?”
“I think there’s something wrong with so many things: that you sleep with Liesl, for starters; that Carola works on her hands and knees… Shall I go on?”
“You have made your point.”
“Good. Now that we’ve finished with my shortcomings, let’s discuss yours. Who is ‘this woman,’ whose name you never give?”
“I am not sure I know what you mean.”
“Pfft, this is so much bullshit, I smell it from here. For the past two months, you keep mentioning ‘this woman’ who comes into the store. You talk with her. She has a dog. Who is she? You betrayed me to get Liesl. Are you now betraying Liesl too?”
Egon put Johnny on his lap and took a deep breath. “Okay, her name is Catrina Harty. The truth is, there is nothing going on other than she comes into the store now and then. We talk. Once we went for coffee and cake.”