The Unfortunates

by Laurie Graham

  ‘I think,’ said Ma, ‘he might like a nice glass of buttermilk. Poppy? And a cookie?’ But Sherman was smart enough to know I was not his friend. He clung to Ma’s skirts and I fumed within, refusing to coax him. A grandchild, no matter how unlovely, was apparently to be fussed and petted and fed on buttermilk and cookies, but I had never enjoyed any of these privileges. My grandparents had lingered in Iowa, stubbornly declining ever to come to New York City and adore me. They had given me nothing, except a tourmaline ring and a pile of money.

  Ma took Sherman down to the kitchen herself and I remained in the parlor with Harry and Honey, until I grew tired of the way Harry prowled around, picking up vases and bowls, examining them as though he were in a shop. I went in search of a little soothing buttermilk for myself and found Sherman and Ma in the top stairhall, standing in front of the twin oil paintings of Pa and Ma.

  ‘And this is your Grandpa Abraham,’ Ma was whispering. ‘Shouldn’t you like to be named Abraham, same as your grandpa? Isn’t it a very fine name?’ And Sherman Ulysses was nodding solemnly, chipping away with his pointed little teeth at one of my favorite brown sugar cookies.

  So Honey began her convalescence, in my bedroom, and we dropped into a new regime. She slept till eleven and then a breakfast tray was taken in to her. Every afternoon, Sherman was brought by his nurse for an hour of caresses. And twice a week Harry came to dine. A perfunctory affair, this. As soon as the savory was cleared he always had to rush away to a card game.

  ‘Just as well,’ Ma would say. ‘I believe Honey may have overreached herself today.’

  I was hardly at home. There was still work to be done at the Red Cross.

  ‘The guns are silent, but the battle goes on,’ Mrs Brickner had said. ‘So many devastated lives. So many orphans and widows and poor crippled heroes.’

  There were victory parades, too, with bands playing and our soldier boys marching up Fifth Avenue. At Madison Square there was a victory arch, made of plaster, and further uptown a curtain of sparkling glass beads suspended from two white pillars. I always looked out for Irish Nellie, having in mind to quiz her on certain things, such as her travels in Europe, and the habits of married men. But I never saw her.

  Honey was still with us in January, although beginning to dress a little earlier in the day. I petitioned Uncle Israel for enough money to buy an automobile, and while he hesitated I made short work of my monthly allowance, buying quantities of fabric which I turned into experimental gowns.

  I had let slide Aunt Fish’s offer of a set of bespoke support garments, and created for myself a system of layered tubes that fell loosely from the shoulder seams and made me feel tall and strong and rather beautiful. Ma referred to them as my robes, and hoped aloud that the craze would soon pass. Honey judged the line interesting but the colors too shrill. I enjoyed this compliment and repaid it by making her a three-layer muslin in matronly shades of gray, blue and indigo. She loved it. She declared all her set would want one, though I wasn’t aware she had a set anymore, and I began to feel that at least my sister no longer saw me as a child.

  Then I came home one day to find her pink and agitated and ready for a quarrel. Whiling away the long hours, she had been rooting around in my drawers and unearthed John Willard Strunck. She was waiting for me, swinging the locket on its chain, trying to look more injured than triumphant.

  ‘What can you have been thinking of?’ she began.

  Having no explanation I cared to share with her, I remained silent. She reeled at the damage I had done to a treasured photograph, shed crocodile tears over a departed one-time cotillion partner, and scorned my need of someone else’s beau. All the while I stared her out. It was only her threat to bring the matter to Ma that roused me to defend myself.

  ‘He was never your beau,’ I said. ‘He danced with you because Pa knew Dr Strunck and you quite despised him. I remember it, Honey. You found his chin weak. And since he is dead don’t you think he deserves to have his picture in someone’s locket, instead of moldering in albums you had quite forgotten? I did it first because I’ve been so pursued by boys this last year and needed to fend them off …’

  Honey snorted.

  ‘… but now I’m rather proud to have it. I’m sure even a person with a weak chin would like to be remembered and carried in a locket.’

  ‘You were so proud of it,’ she said, ‘you dropped it amongst your hair pins and tangled ribbons. How slovenly you are, Poppy. Sly and slovenly.’

  ‘You should go home,’ I said, evenly. ‘You should go and attend to your own affairs. Before Harry spends any more of your fortune taking showgirls to supper.’

  ‘How dare you,’ she said. ‘Harry does no such thing!’

  But she telephoned for the car to fetch her, packed away her sleeping powders, her Tilden’s Extract and her tonic wine, and was gone within the hour.

  Ma was quite put out when she returned from a bazaar and found her gone.

  ‘I fail to account for her urgency,’ she said. ‘Can you account for it, Poppy?’

  I reclaimed my room that night and flushed John Willard Strunck down the water closet, may he rest in peace.

  SEVENTEEN

  It took a crisis to reconcile me with my sister. One afternoon early in the New Year Uncle Israel returned to his office and suffered a seizure.

  It occurred to me that he might die, and then that any of us might die. In a funk over the fragility of life, I went to 74th Street and begged Honey that we be friends again.

  ‘Of course we’re friends, you noodle,’ she said. ‘How could we not be?’

  I apologized for what I had hinted about Harry.

  ‘Well,’ Honey said, ‘let’s say no more about it. What matters now is Uncle Israel.’

  He blamed the episode on a rogue clam in his lunchtime chowder, his doctor blamed it on his having eaten too many good, sweet clams and the attack left him with a strangely lopsided face. It also temporarily loosened his grip on my money. Weakened by bed rest and health lectures from Aunt Fish he agreed to transfer to my personal account enough funds for the purchase of a Pierce-Arrow cloth-top roadster. This brought me more pleasure than I had believed possible. Driving Harry’s Packard had been all very well and good, but behind the steering wheel of my own car anything seemed possible.

  I had in mind to visit Duluth, Minnesota, and see whether Cousin Addie was home from the war, also Blue Grass, Iowa, to inspect my mustard roots. I had in mind to drive sheer across the United States of America till I came to the end of the road, but I figured to do it with a companion of some kind. A dog perhaps, or a beau. And until that was settled I contented myself with driving around the city.

  ‘How restless you are,’ Ma observed. A fine remark from a person who was out playing canasta at least four times a week. And I came home one day to find her in a fever of excitement.

  ‘The most wonderful thing,’ she said. ‘Oscar Jacoby’s regiment will be home in time for Passover. There’s to be a Seder, Poppy. Dear Yetta is making a Seder, and we are invited.’

  Oscar’s name was the only thing in this announcement that signified anything to me. Though I had decided I wouldn’t marry him, I was theoretically willing to be pursued and courted, and I was certainly curious to see him. Of Passovers and Seders, I knew nothing.

  Ma brushed aside my queries.

  ‘Passover!’ she insisted. ‘You know! Passover! The Bible. Egypt. Dinner. Good gracious, Poppy, you exhaust me with your questions. Well, ask your uncle. He will explain it to you, and be sure to pay close attention. A Seder is a most particular dinner.’

  This became more and more evident as Ma and Aunt Fish went for fittings for their new gowns, and I was put under pressure to order something for myself.

  I already had one of my own new designs under construction, a loose calf-length skirt in black and crimson surah and a matching Slav shirt fastened across one shoulder with a line of frogging and Chinese balls.

  ‘We have seen such a suitable pink voile
, haven’t we Dora?’ Aunt Fish began.

  But I resisted. If Oscar Jacoby chose to fall in love with me he would do so understanding that I was a girl who wore crimson. And the fact that I had recommenced secret applications of Gomper’s Patent Skin Whitener was neither here nor there. I was doing it for myself.

  Simeon visited Uncle Israel for an hour every day, Monday to Friday, with a digest of who was buying and who was selling, what was up and what was down. He also, I learned, on a day when our visits coincided, brought certain items into the house under cover of papers for signing. Knishes. And cheesecake. Aunt Fish had imposed a strict regime on Uncle after his seizure, but as I had heard her say to Ma, she was baffled.

  ‘Nothing seems to help,’ she said. ‘He has nothing but clear broth and a cigarette for luncheon yet he doesn’t reduce an inch.’

  I saw a difference in him, though. His body might not have shrunk, but his spirit had, and the palsy on one side of his face made him look sad even when he was smiling.

  ‘I have to learn about Passover,’ I told him. ‘Ma seems to think I’ll let her down in front of the Jacobys.’

  He said, ‘I haven’t been to a Seder since I was …’

  He wasn’t coming to this one either. Aunt Fish had overridden the doctor’s verdict that it would do him good to go out and circulate.

  ‘It’s the dribbling,’ I’d heard my aunt confiding to Ma. ‘At home I can remind him to mop, but how should we go on at a party?’

  ‘We used to have such Seders,’ Uncle said. ‘When I was a boy. Such … We were slaves, in the land of … And the Angel of Death passed over us. Smote the … and passed over us. My mother. Oh, we used to have such Seders.’

  I said, ‘Uncle, does this mean we’ve decided to be Jewish again?’

  He smiled.

  ‘There was always a …’ he began, and then stopped, looking around him for the missing word. This happened a lot after the seizure. His speech was slower than before and often, by the time he was ready to use a word, it seemed to have fluttered out of reach.

  I said, ‘What was there always?’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of it.’

  I peeled him an apple and quartered it.

  ‘A stranger,’ he said, ‘that’s what there always was. You had to have a stranger at your table, to share your blessings. Because if you don’t share them, they’re not really blessings. It was a good time to be a stranger. You could have had ten dinners.’

  I couldn’t imagine such a thing. You might get a murderer or a robber in your house, or a smelly unfortunate. Unless it was someone who came with a letter of introduction, in which case I suppose he might not count as a stranger. When Ma and Pa gave dinners there had always been people like Mr and Mrs Teller and Dr and Mrs Strunck, so you knew where you stood. You knew what you would talk about. I could see that a stranger might make things more interesting.

  I said, ‘We’ll be the strangers at the Jacobys’. I guess that’s why we were asked.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think so. I think you’re asked because …’

  He never did remember why.

  ‘My mother,’ he said, ‘used to make such … Such knaidlach.’

  I wiped the dribble from his chin. I had noticed that Uncle Israel remembered things from long ago much better than things from right now.

  ‘Dear Yetta has quite advanced ideas, you know?’ Ma warned me proudly, as we climbed to the Jacobys’ front door. ‘She has introduced some very modern furnishing trends.’

  Aunt Fish puffed and panted behind us. I had noticed, that very afternoon, how Ma and her sister appeared to have changed places. Ma was now the one who had energy and took the lead.

  I attributed Ma’s particular friskiness that day to my presence. She was excited at the prospect of showing me off to her new friends, and with good reason. I had topped off my crimson Slav outfit with a Cossack hat in black astrakhan, and on the recommendation of the beautician at Elizabeth Arden I was wearing scarlet lip color. Oscar Jacoby was going to be stunned, and she knew it.

  The Jacobys lived in a dull row house on East 69th Street. It wasn’t pretty like ours, with patterns in the brickwork or limestone tracery. Outside it had nothing to distinguish it from its neighbor. Inside, though, it was quite different from anything I’d ever seen. There were no rugs or tassels or doodads. There was very little furniture and the few chairs and couches they did have were covered in pale slipcovers. And everything was painted ivory. It was a house that seemed full of light and air and the thought crossed my mind that if Oscar’s wooing should turn out to be irresistible I should be very happy to be mistress of it some day.

  Mr Jacoby and Miss Landau were waiting for us in the parlor, with an elderly couple called Roth, both deaf, and a young Landau cousin from St Louis who wore eyeglasses and a little silk cap, just like the one in Pa’s vitrine. Of Oscar and his brother there was no sign.

  Mrs Roth examined me with a hatchet face and remarked loudly to her husband that there was an undressed person in the room and he should avert his eyes. I saw Aunt Fish give Ma one of her didn’t-I-say-as-much looks, until Yetta Landau stepped forward to defend me.

  ‘Young women have earned themselves a new style,’ she declared, ‘and a wonderful style it is too. So free and healthy.’

  ‘Well said, Yetta.’ Judah Jacoby added his seal of approval to the length of my skirt.

  ‘And Poppy makes up her own designs,’ Miss Landau continued, chastening my aunt still more. ‘If I were a few years younger I might be commissioning her new look for myself.’

  Mr Jacoby laughed and said she should do it anyway. They made a very jolly pair. I wondered why he had never married her, since she had famously been such a mother to his children.

  Suddenly, something bumped against the outside of the parlor door, there was the sound of a scuffle and then the high clear voice of a child.

  ‘But you have to,’ it cried. ‘You have to. We made it specially for you and now you’re being beastly. I’m telling. I’m telling Auntsie.’

  The door burst open and a thin boy stood before us.

  ‘Auntsie,’ he said, ‘Oscar’s being beastly about the Seder. He says he won’t come. He says he doesn’t have to. But he does have to, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Murray,’ Miss Landau sighed, ‘first you must say how-de-do and gut yomtov to our company. To Mr and Mrs Roth, and Mrs Fish, and Mrs Minton and Miss Minton, and Cousin Landau.’

  ‘How-de-do and gut yomtov,’ he gabbled, not looking at any of us. ‘Now will you please tell Oscar?’

  But Miss Landau allowed no cutting of corners. He was made to shake each of us by the hand.

  ‘My name’s Poppy Minkel,’ I said, when he reached me. ‘Minkel. Not Minton.’

  I took Murray Jacoby for about nine years old, but he was twelve and just a slow developer. He still is.

  Miss Landau went in search of Oscar, with Murray close at her side eager to see justice done, while the rest of us went in to dinner.

  The table was set with a fine white cloth and candles. In the center was a dish, exactly as Uncle Israel had said there would be, with a bone and an egg and parsley and other things. Mr Roth brought out a silk cap from his pocket, too, and clapped it to the back of his head and Mrs Roth made him change seats twice, so that he’d have to sit neither next to nor opposite an undressed person.

  Aunt Fish was admiring the stemware and Ma was nervously eyeing the little back-to-front book left in front of each placement, like a child’s picture book, but with strange Hebrew writing facing the English words. We Jewish people must be very clever indeed it seemed to me, if we could make any sense of such an unusual way of writing.

  ‘Aha!’ said Mr Jacoby, ‘here he is.’

  Yetta Landau came into the dining room, and behind her, allowing himself to be pushed along by the boy Murray, who was beaming from ear to ear, came Oscar. Not tall, not husky. He had the same darkness around the eyes that his father had, and the same smooth sk
in. He bowed inattentively and took the seat next to mine, Murray sat opposite, Miss Landau went to the place at Judah Jacoby’s right hand. Ma was at his left hand, in a seat of honor, smiling inanely at everything and nothing. She always did this when her composure was threatened and I knew, from the way she kept fingering it, that the little Hebrew book was troubling her.

  One seat remained empty, next to the boy Murray.

  ‘Well now,’ said Mr Jacoby, and he got to his feet.

  ‘But are we all here?’ Ma asked. I believe she hoped that if she spoke out with a confident air on inconsequential matters, she would be saved from anything more onerous, like knowing what to do with the ceremonial parsley, or how to say the squiggly foreign words. If ever Ma saw a difficult subject advancing on her, she would divert it with a remark about the weather, and this was a technique that had served her well. But that evening I sensed her nervous twittering might be the undoing of her.

  I decided, mainly out of benevolence, to keep watch over her. I knew I was looking astonishingly good and I was sitting right beside a most satisfactory suitor. I was at peace with the world, but in particular I was at peace with my mother, who had dragged herself back into society and taxed herself with lectures and even reopened the difficult subject of Jewishness all in the interests of my future happiness.

  ‘I think, Ma,’ I said pleasantly, ‘the empty chair is for Elijah.’

  She promptly grabbed the rope I had thrown her and hanged herself with it.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Elijah. Well, there was a great deal of traffic on Park Avenue. We were almost delayed ourselves. Does he have far to come?’

  The boy Murray guffawed into his hand, Mr Jacoby chewed the inside of his cheek and I blushed, for Ma, for myself, and for poor Uncle Israel who had taught me what he could about Seders and then had to stay home lest he dribble and disgrace us all.

  Miss Landau lit the candles.

  ‘Well now,’ Mr Jacoby said again. He poured wine into the cup in front of him and then I heard, for the first time in my life, the sound of those strange Hebrew letters.