She seemed interested enough. “Knowledge of everything in one place,” she said as she peered through the door. “How convenient. That’s something my husband will really love.” Pauline invited Seymour through the golden doors and into Egypt.
As he stood in the threshold, his back to the closed front doors, Seymour, not realizing he was in the desert, watched Pauline look at him the way one who has been trapped in the desert for a long time looks at a tall, cold glass of water. He sensed her thirst as she slowly led him into the living room.
“What brings you so far up here?” she asked, coyly placing her hair behind her ears.
“I find that people like to read in Westchester,” Seymour said. “There are not a lot of people around, and they have the time and also the space to store all the volumes. Books take room,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You sure have lots of room up here.”
Pauline nodded. “That is true,” she said. “Plenty of room.”
She brought Seymour into the parlor and sat him on the velvet chaise. He took out the A volume, the first in the set, and turned the pages to show her the fine paper, the beautiful type, the wealth of information that could be obtained in such a short period of time, such a condensed amount of space. Pauline leaned into him. Looking slyly over at the glossy pages that held so many things—aardvark, abacus, abalone—Seymour watched her.
“I like the destinations.” Pauline flipped through to Argentina, then Australia. She sighed as she ran her hand over the yellow and green map, her finger tracing the picture of the large continent.
“Never been?” Seymour asked her.
Pauline laughed. “To Australia? I can’t say I have.” She shook her head. “You?”
“Not exactly,” he said.
“But anyway, the Terrier—that’s my husband, at least that’s what people call him—he never takes me anywhere. ‘I like you here, Toots,’ he says, ‘so I know where you are and what I’m comin’ home to.’ More like ‘so I can shtup my mistress in peace,’” Pauline said.
Seymour sat upright and cleared his throat. The Terrier. He wondered if he was the gangster who kept getting written up in the papers for illegal liquor distribution, who had been linked to all those shootings (including that of the infamous gangster Monkey Mars, who had turned up riddled with bullets in front of the Crossroads Cafe on Ninth Street), but no one had been able to prove a thing.
How many Terriers could there be, and living like this? thought Seymour.
Pauline got up warily, and, as Seymour lined the heavy books up on the glass coffee table, she stood in front of him and leaned in. “Some iced tea?” she asked. She pushed her tits up with the blue-white insides of her arms and placed her hands between her knees.
Seymour could not have known what it had been like for Pauline, a woman so clearly not from these parts, to live up here alone. He could not have known that Pauline, who had by now spent more than enough time in the desert, had been with the Terrier for nearly three years and had only just gotten used to having sex with a man three-quarters of her size, that to compensate for their imperfect fit, the two had grown accustomed to kissing on the stairs, Pauline three steps below, the Terrier bending down, his plump fingers reaching for the heart-shaped ass he’d seen the day Frances beheaded the swan and he had met his future business partners. And Pauline had accepted their way of adapting to the outsides of each other. Dripping in jewels and topped by a feather hat, mother-of-pearl pins poking out from the brim, she actually took it quite well. Seymour had no idea that her favorite way to make love to her husband was naked but for her long chocolate brown mink, one of the three furs the Terrier had purchased for her for their first anniversary. How could Seymour know the way Pauline enjoyed standing in high heels, feet planted firmly on the floor, the silk lining of the mink cold against her skin, the collar tickling her neck and breasts, as the Terrier made love to her while parked on a low stool? Never did she feel more powerful or more loved.
Seymour noticed Pauline’s feet first because he had been looking down to avoid looking at her tantalizing breasts. Her feet were small and gorgeous, attached to the slimmest of ankles, which led, in turn, to an extremely fine pair of legs. He willed himself not to think of Sarah’s monstrous boats, a steel sledgehammer attached to each of the legs she pulled into bed, one after the other, night after night. In his mind, Seymour climbed the ladder of Pauline’s well-built body, entirely unlike the upright coffin of his wife’s figure, and landed on the final rung of Pauline’s pretty face. Her hair was as fine as black spun silk—Sleeping Beauty, Seymour thought, resisting the urge to reach up and run his fingers through the smooth, dark fibers, the back of his hand along her white, porcelain cheeks.
For a brief and perverse moment, one that he would try to shake away for years, Seymour had an urge to enter her, as if to split her open from top to bottom and wear her like a coat, slide into her skin one arm after the other and become her. And he wondered if this was not why his wife wanted a mink coat so desperately, to have the feeling of slipping into another’s pelt and thus becoming someone else.
As Seymour was imagining trying Pauline on, the Terrier walked into the house.
“Pauline Paw-Paw?” he screamed from the foyer. “Whose crummy ride is out front, Paw? A Model T?” he said. “Ha ha!”
Now he stood in the archway leading into the parlor, and Seymour glanced at him, a short, thick man, with an angry red face, a collapsed nose, and fleshy, sagging cheeks. Seymour looked hard at the Terrier. What must he be seeing? Seymour thought. Here his wife was, leaning over a man. And if he did say so himself, Seymour was not as squat and squishy as the Terrier. What was this Sleeping Beauty doing with a man like that? Seymour had no idea that it was his very body that would make Pauline’s husband, who hated athletes nearly as much as rats and snitches, pull a gun on him.
“Uh, hellooo?” the Terrier said, pointing his gun slightly at Seymour but more at the encyclopedias.
There was a moment of silence as Seymour looked up from the couch, the image of this lovely girl he would have loved to wear just about anywhere already only a memory replaced by violence. He stared straight at the gun and began to laugh. His whole fit body shook, not with the knee-slapping laugh of Pauline and the Terrier’s old neighborhood, where the women on their stoops seemed to shake the street, but with a delicate suggestion that seemed in opposition to his large body.
“You don’t cares I kill ya?” the Terrier said. “I’ve seen men shit their trousers when I’ve held this at them.” He walked closer to Seymour, pointing the gun at his head. Seymour felt the irrevocability of the cold steel. “I’ve seen ’em try and run away too. Or beg me for their life. But never this. You laughin’ at me? You think something’s funny?”
Seymour wiped his eyes and held out his hand to the Terrier. “No,” he said, straightening. “Not laughing at you at all. Hello,” he said. “I’m Seymour Bloom,” he said. “Your wife was kind enough to invite me in. I have been talking to her about this lovely line of encyclopedias.” He saw her legs again, one foot tapping the floor gently as she rocked back and forth, her large, firm breasts shaking with her generous hips.
Pauline, who had not breathed since the gun was drawn, let out a deep breath and began to cough. “Terry,” she said. “Really.” She shook her head at her husband, trying not to look at Seymour.
The Terrier lowered his gun when he saw the leather books, embossed in gold. “Pretty,” he said. With his free hand, he ran his hands over the covers. “Nice. Bloom,” he said. “You mean Blume? You in disguise?”
“Not really,” Seymour said.
“I see,” he said. “You’re the quiet type.”
Seymour shrugged.
“Seymour,” the Terrier said. “You speak Jewish?”
Seymour nodded slowly, eyeing the little man before him, saliva foaming at each side of his mouth. “I do,” Seymour said. “I prefer English though.”
Now the Terrier began to laugh. He turned to Pauline.
“I can just see it, Paw-Paw. Can you see Rothstein’s and Greenberg’s faces when I show up with this one? Like a goddamn gentile. None of the Sicilians can tell me I’m loadin’ ’em down with a bunch of Hebes, can they? But let me tell you something.” He looked straight at Seymour. “I never got down on my knees for any Christian. Seymour the Goy! Laughs down the barrel of any gun.”
“I dunno, Sol.” Pauline shifted her feet. “It’s really up to him, isn’t it?”
“Seymour the Goy!” the Terrier said again. “Here.” He threw the gun at Seymour, who, after a split second of fear, caught it surely and swiftly. “How about we move you into a more profitable line of sales?”
Seymour thought for a moment. What exactly did he have to lose? After all, anything could be a more profitable line of sales. He thought of the photos of gangsters turning up on weedy Long Island beaches. Would that be him? Or would he be powerful, respected, feared, the things he admired about these guys when he read about their exploits in the papers? He pictured Rothstein, elegant in his suits and cuffed sleeves, his gold watches. That could be me, Seymour thought. I could be him.
Seymour scratched his chin. He looked at Pauline, who smiled encouragingly. He thought of his father-in-law. “Prospects?” Fritz Rosen asked him over and over in the same nightmares he lost his teeth in, as he did in so many of his dreams.
For now, it would work, a beginning, finally a beginning. He thought of Sarah, happy in a new fur coat. He thought of the pearls, how they would sit perfectly at the base of her long neck, resting like drops of dew in that dip at the bottom of her throat. Here, he would say to his wife. These are from me! Me!
Seymour thought of going to the theater every night and one day—he let himself think it now for the first time—one day having enough money to put on a Broadway show of his very own. Broadway! His name listed in Playbill for everyone to see. For now, it might be okay. Seymour could begin to dream. For now, he had nothing to lose.
The Terrier was already pouring the brandy. He handed the glass to Seymour, who held the snifter high in the air and then took a long, slow sip without saying a word.
Chapter 7
Peppermints:
Frances Gold, 1925
FRANCES DID TAKE THAT RIDE home with the Terrier after visiting her sister in Egypt. How could she refuse it? The Terrier had removed the top, and they had driven down to Manhattan in open air.
“Whoopee!” she screamed, so overcome by the wind ripping through her hair and over her face that she didn’t have time to worry about showing up on her street with the Terrier until they hit the Bronx River Parkway.
“What?” he asked when Frances tilted her head back to earth and got uncharacteristically quiet.
“I can get out here,” she said a few blocks from South Fifth. If only it had been a Sunday, she thought, preparing for the street, the women walking around the corner to the carts on Broadway for black bread, holding hands with their children. “This is fine,” said Frances. “Thanks!”
“Don’t be silly,” the Terrier said. “You ashamed of your brother-in-law, Fran?” he asked.
Women were already coming out onto the stoops, wiping their hands on their housedresses, to watch the Terrier pass in his fancy car. Frances thought, He’s showing off. He wants everyone to see his car. Why do I have to be in it? But what she said was, “No, Sol, I’m not ashamed.”
“I didn’t think so,” he said, driving painfully slowly. “Don’t want to hit any kids playing in the street!” The Terrier laughed.
“Please don’t drop me off in front of my house.” Frances began to panic. “It will kill my parents.” But they were already turning the corner. “It’s not enough you sent my father to his bed,” she said suddenly.
The Terrier was silent. “Okay, Fran,” he said, stopping the car.
But it was too late. Frances’s mother was already running toward her, arms flailing wildly. Before Frances could say a word, before she had walked fifteen feet from the Terrier’s car, hitting the trunk with the heel of her hand as she walked away, which the Terrier read as the final signal for him to go, Rose Verdonik had descended on her in a rage.
“What are you doing?” Rose screamed in Yiddish as she delivered blow after blow to Frances’s back. “How could you?” she screamed, punching at the air, at Frances’s shoulders, until she collapsed into the arms of her daughter in a fit of tears.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” Frances said, stroking the hair that had sprung loose from her mother’s taut bun. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Frances watched the Terrier drive away, his yellow car a little spot of sun shining through the grime of the street.
A crowd had gathered around, and, when they saw that Rose had calmed down, the women began to disperse, shaking their heads and leaning in to one another to whisper how the Brodsky boy had taken both those girls to pleasure him upstate.
“I’m not leaving.” Frances tried to comfort her mother. “I just wanted to visit Pauline. I missed her,” she said, holding back tears.
Perhaps there were reserves of strength in Rose’s stomach, in the depth of her gut, or in the wrinkles of her worn heart, because she managed to gather herself up and turn to her daughter with the kind of fury a mother saves only for her children. “I hope you’re happy,” she hissed at Frances as they walked toward their brownstone and toward Abraham, who waited in bed, with no idea what had happened outside his bedroom. “You will kill your father,” Rose said. “Believe me, I will not tell him, but he will know what you have done and soon he will be dead. Then what will we do, Frances? Then what will we do?”
But living on South Fifth Street had not trained Rose in keeping secrets, and she was unable to hide from her husband what her daughter had done. In an act more cruel than even her daughter had suspected her capable of, she let it slip to Abraham—the very moment they walked through the door from the street—about Frances’s behavior.
“How could you?” Frances said when her mother came into the kichen.
“What?” she asked her daughter as she opened and closed the cabinets, rearranging her jars of pickles and beets. “All of a sudden, the fault is mine?” she said to her daughter in Yiddish.
Rose had decreed it, and so it was: the very morning after hearing that his younger daughter had trespassed through the house of his elder daughter, a house built of lies and dirt and affronts to God and humanity, Abraham began his descent in earnest. When Frances brought her father his Cream of Wheat, he said to his younger daughter, “Ucch, zhe taste zhis leaves in my moutss. It is zhe taste of zhe copper. Death!” he said. “I’m dyink!”
Jeesum Crow, thought Frances. It can’t be true. This is a ruse to teach me a lesson.
She felt her father’s forehead: not so much as a flush of fever.
“I tell you, my daughter,” he said. “I taste zhe taste of death!”
Frances had no choice but to believe her father, and so she set out to find a way to remove the taste from his mouth, thus removing the possibility of her father’s death.
She thought first of stuffed cabbage, Abraham’s favorite meal. After three dinners straight, though, Rose tired of both the taste and the toil. She told her daughter, “Look what you’ve done. I can’t make the cabbage day in and day out for this man. This is your fault. You do it. You cook and clean and cook and clean and cook. Or are you trying to kill me as well?” The smell of the boiled leaves was thick throughout the house and was moving into the porous walls, joining the cockroaches.
And still her father tasted death. Frances thought, Perhaps he is only thirsty? She brought him a cup of milk and slipped in some Bayer powder. Though her father refused to take any medicine and was suspicious even of having it in the apartment, Rose loved Bayer (from Europe!), insisting on the aspirin powder for all household emergencies. Frances occasionally saw her mother smiling over the bottle as she tapped the powder into her tea on days when she was not ill. And twice she saw her mother spooning the powder into the wash.
Frances brought the glass to Abraham. Though he gulped down the milk, and though Frances waited for the aspirin to work, her second attempt at curing him was also unsuccessful.
Then she thought of peppermints. Perhaps that flavor, the cool menthol, could wipe away the taste, and thus the prospect, of death.
Two days after Frances came back from visiting her sister in Westchester County, she went to Mr. Berkowitz’s for some penny candy. Frances had never bought from him before because of her mother’s insistence that the two girls eat only at home. Food outside the home, from off zhe street, was always suspect. In fact nothing American—except the flavored seltzer, which for some reason was acceptable—was to be trusted. And candy? Why, it was ludicrous to eat such emptiness, to throw money away on something that doesn’t fill you up in zhe stomachs and make you strrrong, Rose would say, gathering up her fists, ready to fight.
Many kids hung out on the corner by the candy store, waiting for someone like the Terrier to drive up and give them a chance to make their names. When Frances reached the store, the boys loitering outside taunted her. They scratched their armpits like chimpanzees and screamed insults about her sister. Pauline had once been the buffer between Frances’s body and the body of the world, but now there was no beautiful girl to divert attention.
Holding her head down as she walked into the store that first day, Frances looked at the melting fudge through the smudged glass that Mrs. Berkowitz, or sometimes their daughter, rubbed with a towel each hour.
It was a small store, with huge tubs of American-style candies like jelly beans, orange candy corns, and scarlet cherry mash, but also halvah and soggy sesame sticks. Three dull brass spigots with cracked black handles lined the soda fountain, where Mr. Berkowitz mixed Coca-Cola and egg creams. By the register were stacked papers that went back weeks: the Daily News and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and also dated, yellowing newspapers from Europe, which were what the old people stopped in for, no matter how many weeks had passed since the headlines had been news. Across from the counter there were two tables, each with three chairs, and in one of these chairs sat an old woman with a pad of paper, pen, envelopes, and a roll of stamps.
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