She could not sustain her anger at Solomon the way she could not help but remain angry at her sister. She did not debate if it was wrong for her to tell Solomon what her husband did each night. Vladimir needed the money to make his invention come to life. And she with it. Before the Kinescope, before Vladimir, she had been merely the vehicle to anyone else’s voice.
Besides, Frances rationalized, Solomon and Joseph had also known Vladimir and his family.
“From Russia, Sol!” she told him, bending in to whisper when she entered Egypt for the second time in her life. “He’s just like your brother.” The thought of Joseph pleased Frances, and she stood up for effect. “Now where’s this nephew of mine?” she asked. She hadn’t ever seen him, and he was already two years old. This was part of why she had gone all the way up to Egypt to see Solomon on Pauline’s shopping day, he assured Frances, who had been opposed to meeting him where he currently held court, at the Knickerbocker Hotel on Forty-second Street.
“He’s around somewhere,” Solomon said of his son. Then he scoffed at Frances. “My brother? No: my brothers are the boys I met here, in New York, the ones who schlammy the maggots who have wronged me, the boys who, just when I look at ’em funny, do what I tell ’em.”
“Come on, Sol.” Frances tried to joke her brother-in-law out of what she willed herself to think was only a bad mood.
“No, Frances, my brothers are not pathetic salesmen traveling New England peddling their pathetic little wares. They are the opposite of this, the opposite of our fathers.”
“Vladimir is doing something exceptional,” she told Solomon, flushed from the thought of her husband being brilliant, as brilliant as her unrecognized father had been. Her nephew came running into the room, as if from nowhere, and Frances pulled him up onto her lap. “Look at you!” she said. “Hullo, Wesley!” Frances leaned down to rub her considerable nose with his growing one. “I’m Auntie Frances.”
Wesley looked like a miniature version of Solomon, down to the hooked nose and fleshy cheeks, which shocked Frances. She thought her sister would surely have tired of Sol and moved on to some Westchester dish, someone who could take care of her when the Terrier was off doing whatever it was the Terrier did when he left, oftentimes for days. Rumor was the Mob was expanding upstate and into the Midwest—the Mafia was not just a New York City problem anymore—and Frances imagined the Terrier barking and humping his way through little towns and coffee shops across America. She thought perhaps Wesley was from the seed of another man, but there was no mistaking this baby as anyone’s but the Terrier’s.
Wesley grabbed at her nose. “Ouch!” Frances peeled his little fingers out of her nostrils. “He’s making a picture tube!” she said to Solomon, rubbing her nose. “Honest to God.”
Solomon imagined one of his son’s drawings mounted on construction paper and rolled up tight, but he didn’t let on. “A who?” he said.
“A picture tube—it’s gonna put images on a little screen!” she said. “Pictures and sound at the same time!” she said.
“Really?” The Terrier tilted his head.
Frances punched him in the stomach with the arm that was not holding Wesley.
“Ooof,” he said, deflecting her.
She had to laugh. How, she thought, can a man kill countless other men and still be hurt by a woman’s touch?
“What?” he said, rubbing his stomach. “What!”
“What are ya going to do, put a number out on me? You know, Sol, it wouldn’t hurt you to do something honest.” Frances sat back, becoming serious. “You’ve got a kid now.” She folded her arms and looked down at Wesley, propped up next to her on the couch like a tiny man. “Let me tell you, you could invest in worse things,” she said. “Believe you me.”
“You need money, Franny-goil? You just tell me.” Solomon was already getting up to go to one of his many stashes of ready cash.
“Stupid man!” she said. “You never heard to invest? Just sell sell sell, shoot shoot? Listen to me. You should put your money in this. For him.” She pointed to Wesley. “It’s gonna make you more than any of this stuff.” She waved her arm around the gilded room. “And then you can walk away.”
Frances could read her old friend, and she watched the thoughts flicker over his face. She knew from that face exactly what Solomon was thinking. He was thinking that he could not walk away, not only because the bosses wouldn’t let him now but because he could never live the life of a straight man. Nine to five, not for him. Even those boys in racketeering, offices in the factories, the ones Frances had read were in “garments,” boys with their own secretaries—not for him. Maybe, she thought now, some folks just have the criminal in their bones.
That face! thought Frances. A nose bashed in from God knows what, those sad, drooping eyes, more spaniel, she noted, than terrier.
She sighed. “Don’t you have dreams, Solomon?”
He tilted his head as if he’d never considered such a question. “I do,” he said. “No, I did,” he said. “My dreams, if that’s what you wanna call ’em, they’ve all come true already. I mean, I’d like more territory, I’d like to off the competition, but, basically, look at all I got.” For what seemed like the fifteenth time, the Terrier swung his arm around the room.
“That’s sad,” Frances said. She wondered what it would be like to be done yearning for something more. “Me, I’m dreaming all the time. Dreaming for Vladimir, also for myself. Dreaming I can be an actress.”
“A who?”
“I want to be an actress,” Frances said. “On the stage. That all right with you?”
“Fine with me,” Solomon said. “What do I care? Pauline said she’d heard you were in the writing business! What happened to that?”
Frances’s ears reddened at the thought of her sister hearing news of her. How had she known? To whom had she been speaking? “Yeah, well, now I wanna be an actress, okay?”
“Sure,” Solomon said.
“Thank you.” Frances shook her head. “Listen to me, Solomon Brodsky.” Her wide bottom settled deeper into the velvet sofa. She took Wesley’s little hand in hers and began to tell Solomon the real reason she had come. “So not for you? Fine. Do me a favor. Tell your brother,” she said.
She would have done it herself, but she knew Joseph didn’t have the money. It was heartbreaking to think of him all the nights on the road, bent over the trunk of his car, pulling out those old, scratched-up valises. Or dragging them on the train. She saw his face and imagined it was falling toward the street. Even though Joseph had been married for years, it still hurt her to think of him arm in arm with another girl, someone fancy and from New England, she’d heard. How long since she’d seen Joseph? An image of a young boy carrying a very large yellow dish to the baker for his mother rose into her consciousness. What are you doing, Joe? she’d asked him, always following. He never shooed her away, like so many of the boys in the neighborhood. Our stove is too small, he’d told her, balancing the heavy pottery dish with one hand as he pressed a nickel in Frances’s clammy hand. Do you want to come with me to Mr. Stretsky’s? he’d said. You can give him the nickel so we can use his oven.
Frances smiled to herself at the thought of that little boy. She couldn’t believe how fast the years had flown by, but at least, she thought now, at least Joseph was in love, like she was.
“Be sure you tell him,” Frances said, rising from the couch. She leaned down and patted Wesley’s backside.
How she wanted Joseph to have what he wanted, which she knew in part had to do with making his mother happy in all the ways the Terrier had not. Frances remembered Selma Brodsky walking the neighborhood in a daze when Solomon left, and how Joseph always brought her home, his hand at the small of her back, guiding her. If Frances could not be in his dreams, she knew she could at least help make some of those dreams come true.
“You’re serious?” the Terrier said. “Not a chance, Fran. I haven’t spoken to him in years. He won’t talk to me. I sent him a wedding gif
t, you know. A set of Baccarat tumblers, beeaaut-ee-ful, straight from France. You know that damn package was sent back without so much as a note?” He shook his head.
“Hey!” Frances said. “That’s what you sent me! What am I gonna do with four glasses from France?”
The Terrier smiled sheepishly. “Listen, toots, I don’t need my brother and his big fat morality. Between him and my father, how am I going to get through the day? Why don’t you tell him?” he said.
Frances had learned drama from Summer Lebrau, who always looked away as she told a story, her eyes filling with clouds. I want them to know my life was elegant, she would tell Franny. Now Frances looked at her brother-in-law and revealed to him a face she had practiced on many occasions alone in her room, the click-clicking of her father’s peppermints and labored breathing emanating from the room next door.
“I just can’t call him,” she told Solomon. She thought of her new husband. Vladimir was the right one, the right investment, the one who would set the world on fire. She loved him. And the thought of making love to him made her shiver. So why, why? why! was she still broken over Joseph? She could not ask Vladimir for the scientific explanation, though she knew there had to be one, some chemical reason that she would never stop wanting Joseph Brodsky. Her blood craved his blood. She could taste it, and still the thought of him made her mouth water.
Frances stood up to increase the drama of the moment. “I must leave, Sol,” she said.
Just then Pauline walked into the foyer. “Hulloooo?” Her voice echoed through the house.
Frances froze as she watched her sister enter the living room. Just seeing her in this ridiculous house, all her packages and hatboxes knocking against one another, enraged Frances. I am a closed door, she thought. I will not let this person through.
The Terrier fidgeted, as if the thought of these two women running into each other under his own roof terrified him. He stood up. “Okay then, Fran,” he said.
“Oh!” Pauline forced a smile. “Frances. What are you doing here?” She set down all her bags and boxes. Pauline looked stunning in her blue cloche hat and georgette dress, tied with a midnight blue sash. Pauline shone, scrubbed cleaner than Rose’s wooden floors. Wesley ran to his mother, and she scooped him up in her thin arms, jangling with bangle bracelets.
“Hullo!” she said to Wesley, covering the boy with kisses. He laughed and wiped his face.
Frances looked around as if to place a faraway sound. “Did you hear something?” she asked Solomon.
He groaned. “Come on, Fran,” he said. “Let me take you to the train.”
Frances ignored him. “You listen to me now. Vladimir will be doing an expo of sorts in town next month.” She looked at Solomon and took her wrap from the maid, who had miraculously appeared, holding it out for Frances to climb into.
Pauline put Wesley down and then tried to stand in front of her sister. “Frances,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t understand, but I couldn’t—”
“There will be a demonstration,” Frances said to Solomon, who looked around nervously. “Think about what I’ve said,” she told him. “I’ll be waiting outside,” she told him, furious that she could not make the dramatic exit the scene called for.
Frances managed to look kindly at Wesley while nearly knocking her sister over as she marched out. She could hear Solomon calling after her.
“An actress, huh? I’ll be right out,” he said.
“A who?” Frances heard her sister ask.
“An actress!” the Terrier said. “Franny wants to be in pictures!”
When Frances stepped outside the door, she took in massive gulps of breath and leaned against the house. I said the stage, she thought. Then she thought of her father’s funeral, of waiting for her sister to walk in and keep her company in her grief. Frances would never forget that moment, night filling up that stinking, grieving room, when she realized Pauline would not be coming. It was the first time she had understood she’d lost her sister. She realized that day she was to walk the world alone.
But that isn’t what happened, Frances thought now. I have a companion in my loneliness, she thought.
She could hear her sister’s voice. “Well, don’t just sit there, Sol. Get up off your fat arse and take her to the train, why don’t you!”
“What was that all about anyway?” Pauline said again when her husband didn’t answer.
Frances could hear the loud sound of her sister’s heels clicking against the marble floor. Peering in through the window, she watched as Solomon walked toward the foyer and her sister went to the bar to pour herself some of the Terrier’s illegal liquor. She watched her sister toss back her drink, her long chandelier earrings tilting, poised to slice open her perfect cheeks.
Chapter 10
Currency, Investing, 1929
FRANCES WAS THE ONE who called to tell her old neighbor about her husband’s about-to-be invention. Maybe the years of travel, and the struggle to make enough to keep that Yankee wife of his in the style, had changed him. Maybe now he would listen to her and take some money from his brother to make an easier life for himself up there.
Frances took a deep breath and lifted the receiver. “Operator,” she said. “Long distance, please. Joseph Brodsky, Roxbury, M-A.”
Long distance, she thought, as she waited on the line for the operator to place the call. Here I am calling long distance to reach someone who once lived only next door. She remembered his face, always a little sad as he gathered himself up to walk into his parents’ house. After Joseph left, he was sure to check and see if Frances was on her stoop, and he always had a nice word for her when he visited. It touched her to think of him then, fingers on the brim of his hat and leaning his head in her direction. Frances’s heart would always stop for sad men.
What was Joseph doing today? she wondered. Each day she had seen him leave and come home, but now it was years since she had spoken to him.
“Hello?” she heard on the line when the connection was made. Joseph sounded startled.
“Joe,” she said. “It’s me.” Frances was silent. Me, she thought. She saw herself as a girl running away from the neighborhood bullies. Monkey! they screamed. Not her, she thought. Me. “Frances,” she said.
“Vhat happened?” he asked. Why would she be calling him? Was anyone left from the village? Had they all been sent to Siberia? Did Brooklyn finally fall into the sea?
Frances laughed. This call was not cheap, and so she got quickly to her point. “Everything’s fine, Joe,” she said. “But I have this idea for you,” she began and then told him about her husband’s invention and what it could mean if he invested in it.
“Vhaat?” he said. “You call me on zhe long distance for zhis malarkey?” Money she wants? Joseph was amazed. All this time has passed and she calls for money? Black Tuesday had made things even worse for Joseph. No one wanted to buy from him anymore, and Procter & Gamble was cutting back on the entire sales force. Sending all those men, tiny ants, to march across New England was prohibitively expensive, and you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that Joseph wasn’t going to be the last one standing. Esther was still convinced that opening the dry cleaner was the answer, but Joseph had come to despise the idea. Then he remembered his wife’s story about her appendix, buried there beneath her childhood home, and the thought of childhood made him soften toward his old friend. “Where you zhink I have this money to give you, Frances?” he asked her.
Frances hesitated. “It’s not for me, Joe,” she said. “It’s for you. You have to trust me. This will make you rich.”
Rich, thought Joseph. How? He was already thinking of trying to save enough money to buy real estate in Florida, the state where the sun always shines, where all the money is. Joseph had pictured oranges growing as large and heavy as planets, the noon light catching the sea as distinctly as silver knives turning. He imagined that the moment he stepped over the line from Georgia, the street would be lined with money. It wasn’t
so different from how he had imagined all of America when he was coming over, only he hadn’t known then what U.S. currency looked like and instead had pictured the streets sparkling with huge chunks of yellow gold. Real estate would get him off the road. That old man had dandruff snowing on the shoulders of his ill-fitting blue suit. But Joseph could never get that kind of cash together. Not now. “Rich,” he said. “What makes you think I vant to be rich anyway, Fran?”
“You want to be comfortable, no?” she said. “For your future children, no?”
Joseph thought of children. He saw blank faces on little bundled-up bodies running toward him in the snow. Were these Maine children? “Of course,” he said.
“You could always ask Solomon,” she said quietly. “I know for a fact he would give you the cash interest free.”
“Interest free? Zhis is vhat you sink is zhe problem, Fran? Do not even mention his name to me!” Joseph said.
Frances had never heard him raise his voice. Never. She sniffed loudly.
“He’s dead to me,” Joseph said softly. “Dead.”
“Joe,” she’d said. “Come on, he’s your—”
“Gone already,” Joseph told Frances. He remembered Solomon hanging around on the corner, waiting for some wiseguy to come by and ask him for a favor. Scram! he’d order Joseph when he came out of the candy store. “End of conversation,” Joseph told her. “But, Frances,” he said, “it’s lovely to hear your voice.”
On the other end of the line, all the way in New York, Frances quietly set down the receiver. She knew Vladimir would find his money. She knew he would be unhappy to hear she had called to try to get money for him. And yet, Frances had done it for Joseph. She had! Poor Joe. If only he would listen, she thought. Life could be so much easier if only he would listen.
Golden Country Page 14