by Sharon Potts
“Oh, we’ll come along now,” Betty said. “It feels like the temperature just dropped. No reason to freeze to death when we can enjoy some nice conversation and warm ourselves by the fire.”
Mari walked with Betty a few feet behind Aaron and Yitzy on the narrow snow-crusted road. The two men seemed to have engaged easily in conversation. She was unable to hear what they were talking about as Betty chatted about her wedding, their apartment in a Lower East Side tenement that looked like it could come crumbling down around them, and how sad she was to be away from her family in Boston.
“You’re from Boston?” As much as Mari wanted to distance herself from Yitzy and his wife, curiosity got the better of her. “How did you and Isaac meet?”
“Oh, it’s very romantic,” Betty said, holding her mittened hands against her heart. “Isaac was convalescing at a military hospital in Boston where I volunteered. He’d been injured during the landings in Sicily, but he was a real hero. Got a Purple Heart and the Soldier’s Medal for rescuing a drowning soldier. When I first saw him, he was trying to walk with his new crutches and he looked so frustrated that I couldn’t help myself and I started to laugh. He looked at me, angry at first. Then he laughed, too, and my heart just melted.”
The snow had seeped into Mari’s oxfords, freezing her toes. A war hero. Soldier’s Medal. Purple Heart. Injured in combat. So much had happened since her Yitzy had gone off to California to recruit Okies for the communist cause. He wasn’t the same man. Certainly not the man she’d once loved. He was Isaac Goldstein now.
“What about your Aaron?” Betty asked in a quiet voice, glancing ahead at the men. “Did he also get a medical discharge?”
Mari’s face got warm, as it did when people questioned why her seemingly able-bodied husband wasn’t off fighting. “He wasn’t drafted,” she said. “Too old. He tried to enlist anyway, but they rejected him because he has flat feet. He’s a professor,” she added, not sure why she felt it important that this stranger think well of her husband. “Does what he can to support the war effort.”
“Well, lucky for you,” Betty said. “I can only imagine how hard it is for women whose husbands are overseas. I don’t think I’d be able to bear it if Isaac had to go away.” Betty stopped walking and looked at her husband with an intensity that surprised Mari. “I love him more than anything.”
The words stung Mari like a slap. Yitzy was Betty’s husband. She loved him. He probably loved her, too.
“But tell me about you.” Betty slipped her arm through Mari’s, and continued trudging down the snowy path toward the rambling Tudor-style main building. “You’re so gorgeous. Are you a model or an actress?”
“Gosh, no.” Mari shook her head, hoping to toss out any remnants of what might have been with Yitzy. “I’m a high-school French teacher.”
“French? Ooh la la!” Betty’s face got a dreamy look. “I’ve always wanted to go to Paris. Maybe Isaac will take me after the war.”
The four of them sat on cushy chairs in front of the fireplace and sipped hot chocolates. The large, paneled common room was practically empty except for a group of older men playing cards, a foursome of middle-age women engaged in mahjong, and two young boys playing table tennis in the far corner that overlooked the lake.
Mari stole glances at Yitzy, who was talking to Aaron passionately about the U.S.’s responsibility in the war. It seemed ironic to her that Yitzy, once ardently anti-war, had changed his views so diametrically. Of course, different circumstances could easily flip your attitudes. In matters of war…and love.
“It took the U.S. a while to come around,” Yitzy said. “I was in California in thirty-nine trying to recruit new blood for the Party when the Soviets signed the non-aggression pact with Germany. As you can imagine, when that happened, no one was interested in jumping aboard the Red Train.”
“That’s for sure,” Aaron said. The two men had apparently learned during their walk that they shared beliefs as communist sympathizers. “Most everyone I knew who’d been a Party supporter was jumping off that train. It felt like a huge deception that the communists would join forces with the Fascists.”
“No one would listen to me,” Yitzy said. “I told them it was a ploy by the Soviets to buy time while they built up their military strength. They also were far better situated to defend themselves against Germany when they annexed half of Poland. The Soviets never trusted the Germans. They knew it was only a matter of time before the Nazis would invade and they wanted to be in the best possible position.”
The sound of a ping-pong ball echoed in the room.
“Maybe,” Aaron said, sipping his chocolate.
“Not maybe,” Yitzy said. “History has proven me right. But even after the Axis powers invaded Russia with four million troops back in forty-one, still the U.S. stayed out of the war.”
“The Soviets were able to withstand Operation Barbarossa without our help,” Aaron said.
“Only just,” Yitzy said. “And it was at a huge cost to the Soviets. Over three million soldiers dead or taken as POWs.” He rubbed his leg that was extended uselessly in front of the glowing stone hearth. “I spent the next six months agitating for the U.S. to get into the war.”
“Mahjong,” a woman across the room called out.
“Isaac enlisted on December 8, right after Pearl Harbor,” Betty said. “He went straight into officer training.”
“Very commendable,” Aaron said, though Mari could hear the discomfort in his voice.
“The point is,” Yitzy said, “the U.S. finally committed to get those Fascist bastards and I was determined to be on the first deployment out of here.”
“Isaac was a big hero, you know,” Betty said.
“I’m sure.” Aaron gave a little smile.
Yitzy frowned and glanced around the room. “Oh look, Betty,” he said. “Those boys have finished their game. Didn’t you want to play table tennis?”
“Oh I did.” Betty clapped her hands together and looked from Mari to Aaron. “Do either of you play? I’m not very good.”
Aaron set his mug of chocolate of the coffee table and stood up. “Then we should be evenly matched.” He caught Mari’s eye. “You’ll excuse us for a game or two, darling?”
Mari nodded and watched her new husband cross the room with Yitzy’s new wife.
“I hope you’re not angry with me,” Yitzy said in a soft voice.
“About what?” Her heart sped up, though she willed it not to.
“That I acted like I didn’t know you.”
She shrugged and looked into the bottom of her mug. The dregs of the chocolate had settled like mud. She had once loved him. He had left her when she needed him most. Now he was married to another.
“I’m hoping the four of us can be friends,” Yitzy said. “Aaron told me you’ll be living on Ridge Street, a few blocks from us. We’ll be neighbors and it will be nice for Betty to know someone.”
“And you didn’t want her to know our history?”
Mahjong tiles chinked against each other making sharp little sounds. “I was afraid she’d be jealous of you if she knew.”
“Jealous?” Mari looked up. “She’s the one who married you.”
Their eyes held each other’s, until Yitzy turned away. “She’s not beautiful like you. She doesn’t have your strength.”
“Yet you married her.”
“She’s good for me. Her gentleness grounds me.” Yitzy leaned forward in his chair, his bad leg stiff, like rigor mortis had set in. “Will you be her friend?”
“I don’t like lying to Aaron,” she said.
The ping-pong ball went back and forth. Betty let out a squeal of delight. Mari and Yitzy both turned to look at her.
“Please, Mariasha,” he said. “For my sake.”
Mari took in a breath that burned her lungs. “I can only promise to try.”
CHAPTER 26
Washington Square Park was practically deserted. It was just before noon on Tuesday, so where were a
ll the NYU students? This was the university’s urban-campus equivalent of a gathering place, and Julian was accustomed to seeing kids swarming through the park even in frigid weather like today. But this morning, the benches along the paths were covered with an inch of icy snow and the only inhabitants were a couple of people with dogs and an old woman pushing a shopping cart filled with rags.
And then it hit him. It was still winter break. His sister might not be here after all, despite her posted office hours, which showed her in today between twelve and two pm.
He walked through the park, hands buried deep in his pockets, the wool hat he’d picked up at a thrift store this morning pulled low over his ears. The temperatures were again in the single digits, making this one of the coldest winters on record. Those global-warming-mongers might do well to recheck their calculations.
He hurried under the modern archway and through the courtyard into Vanderbilt Hall, relieved to get out of the freeze into the heated lobby.
A gray-haired uniformed guard was seated at a desk.
So much for the surprise-his-sister approach. “I’m here to see Professor Rhonda Berkowitz,” Julian said.
“ID, please,” the guard said.
Julian pulled out his rarely used driver’s license with cold, stiff fingers. “I’m not a student here, will this be okay?”
The guard turned it over in his wrinkled hands, then dialed a number on his phone and waited. “Hello, Professor. I have a Julian Sandman to see you.”
She must have said something unexpected to the guard because he looked up at Julian and scowled. “Well he looks like the photo on the driver’s license. Not a bit like you, though. What’s that?” he said into the phone. “Wait. Let me write that down.” He turned to Julian and chuckled. “How much is 8763 times 3529 times 1753?”
“Are you kidding me?” This was a game Rhonda used to play with him when they were kids. Accelerating mathematical challenges to see just how far he could go with mental math. “I have no idea.”
Julian thought he heard low laughter coming through the phone, then his sister’s speaking voice.
“Okay,” the guard said. “She wants to know how much they add up to.”
So Rhonda decided to give him an easy one. Julian thought for a second. 8763, 3529, 1753. “14045,” he said.
His sister must have heard him, because Julian could hear her voice coming through the phone.
“I guess you passed the test,” the old man said with a wink. “Professor Berkowitz said you can go on up.” He gave Julian a pass and her room number. “End of the hall, on the left.”
Julian took the elevator up to the third floor and walked down the empty hallway. All of the office doors were closed except for his sister’s. He stepped inside. It was a large room with a view of the park, not surprising considering Rhonda’s reputation as a brilliant constitutional lawyer, but with all the piles of books and files, it looked more like a storage room than an office. There was a conference table with six chairs, also loaded with files. His sister was nowhere to be seen.
Then, on the other side of a tower of law books, he saw something move. A head popped up, covered with frizzy graying black hair, then a pair of piercing pale blue eyes, small pursed lips, and finally a dumpy body wearing a ratty brown sweater over a black wool jumper. His sister had never been a fashion-plate, but it seemed she’d deteriorated even further in the year since he’d last seen her.
She stood up with an effort, brushed off her jumper and trundled over to her desk carrying a book.
“Stop looking shell-shocked, Julian, and sit down.” Her voice hadn’t changed. Soft, languid and quivering, like a very old person, not a forty-year old. It was remarkable to him that Rhonda Berkowitz had once been a formidable presence in a courtroom, though she’d stopped trying cases four years ago to dedicate herself to research and teaching full-time.
The two mahogany guest chairs were both covered with files. Julian picked up a stack and looked for a place to put them.
“Anywhere,” his sister said.
He set them on the floor, then sat down, leaving his jacket on.
She watched him with alert crane-eyes, her hands folded on the desk, a thumb and pointer finger worrying each other. It was a nervous habit she’d had, even as a kid. There was one photo on her desk, of Rhonda and her husband Gary, another well-known attorney who was always spearheading high-profile liberal causes.
Finally, Rhonda released a deep sigh. “I assume our mother and grandmother are fine, or you would have called rather than taken a chance that I wouldn’t be in my office over winter break.”
Her condescending, indifferent tone irked him. “Yeah. They’re okay. Though it would probably be nice if you visited Nana once in a while since your office is only about a mile from her apartment.”
“Jewish guilt doesn’t become you, Julian.” She sighed again, as though the burden of this conversation was wearing her down. “I have issues with our grandmother,” she said in her unhurried shaky voice.
“Duh.”
“Don’t be cute, Julian. You’re thirty years old, not a child.”
“And Nana’s ninety-five. Are you going to wait until she’s dead to confront her about your issues?”
“Is that why you’re here? To play family peacemaker?”
“This is pointless.” He stood up to leave.
“Ahh, Jules.” Another tormented breath. “My poor little Jules.”
“I’m no one’s poor anything.”
“I’m sorry. I spend so much time arguing and debating with my students that I think I’ve forgotten how to be civil.”
He rested his hands on the arms of the chair. The wood was deeply scratched. “I saw Essie the other night,” he said. “She’s still angry with Nana, too.”
“Can’t blame her. Our grandmother wasn’t the warmest of mothers.”
“Oh, like our mother was?”
Her lips twitched in a little half-smile. “Touché. You would have made a good lawyer, Jules.”
“You already have that covered, Ronnie.”
“Fair enough,” she said, still smiling. “Now please tell me why you’re here.”
“I know you stay in touch with Essie, so I’m guessing she told you I quit my job.”
“Even if she hadn’t I could have deduced it looking at you. It’s a Tuesday and you’re not wearing one of your snazzy suits.”
“I also broke up with my girlfriend.”
“No great loss there,” she said. “But I understand you’re walking away from two advanced degrees to take up finger painting.”
“Really, Ronnie? Are you still fourteen?”
“Sorry.”
“Between your abuse and Essie mostly ignoring me, it was a real pain in the ass growing up.”
“I can believe that.”
He took a deep breath. Being with his sister always set him on edge, but he needed to find out what he’d come here for. “Did you know that Nana’s brother made the painting in our living room?”
She pulled on a loose thread in her sweater. “I remember Mom mentioning that.”
“Not to me,” he said. “Friday was the first time I learned that someone else in the family had been an artist.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. “Mom’s always been very proud of you, Julian. I have, too.”
“Right. I’ve heard that refrain from Nana.”
“It’s true.”
“You could have been a great physician.” She sighed. “You could have been a great anything.”
“You’re changing the subject,” he said. “What’s the deal with Saul? Was Essie afraid if I knew he’d made the painting, I wouldn’t have pursued my higher education?”
“I don’t think that was it.”
“Something happened with Essie, Nana and Saul. I think it’s the reason Essie’s the way she is. Why she’s so angry at Nana.”
Rhonda stood up and began to pace.
“Tell me, Ronnie. You know somethin
g.”
She went over to the credenza behind her desk and began digging through papers and files. Finally, she pulled out a large, brown folder, held closed by a string. “This is something you might want.” She handed him the folder.
It looked like it might disintegrate in his hands, so he opened it carefully. He slid out a stack of papers. Sketches done in pencil. He recognized the style. “Saul made these?”
“That’s right.” She took the files off the other guest chair, dropped them on the floor, then pulled the chair close to Julian’s and sat down.
The paper was yellowed and fragile. The first few drawings were of comic-strip characters—Dick Tracy, Popeye, and Buck Rogers—the heroes of Saul’s day. He noted the three-dimensional aspect, which wouldn’t have been in the original comics, but was very similar to Julian’s own work.
He set each paper down on Rhonda’s desk after he studied it. There were several of the Buck Rogers character wearing a strange spacesuit, surrounded by objects that appeared to be glowing. They reminded him of something.
“Do you know the character?” his sister asked.
“Buck Rogers? Just that he travelled to the future. Early sci-fi.”
“Very early. He first appeared in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in 1928.”
“Saul got rheumatic fever when he was ten, so these sketches are probably from around 1932 or ‘33.”
“Well, he chose an interesting subject,” she said. “As the story goes, Buck was exposed to radioactive gas when a coal mine caved in around him. He fell into a state of suspended animation and awakened in the twenty-fifth century. That’s where he has all his adventures.”
“Very cool,” Julian said. “I forget that radiation made it into popular culture in the early 1900s.” He looked again at the glowing objects. “So Saul was probably trying to convey radioactive rays here. It’s a lot like in the painting in the living room. I guess there’s a bit of Buck Rogers in that painting.”
He put the Buck Rogers sketches on the desk with the others, and looked at the next one. It was a study of a woman with her hair pulled into a loose bun. She had large eyes and a sad expression on her face and looked like the Madonna.