The Unfortunates

by Laurie Graham

  But that required no great courage. Yetta Landau wouldn’t have known if President Eisenhower himself had paid her a call.

  I said, ‘Is there anything you’d like me to say to Ma? Anything to prepare the way?’

  ‘Yes. No,’ he said. ‘Well, no hurry. There’s no one left who’ll have missed me very much.’

  I said, ‘I’ve missed you very much.’

  ‘Tinkety Tonk,’ he said, and a teardrop rolled down his cheek and into his fresh glass of milk.

  ‘Tonkety Tink,’ I replied. Manhattans always did make me cry.

  He wouldn’t entertain coming home with me to 49th Street. Hotels suited him, he said, when he was between gardens, and he was between gardens just then. The best I could manage was to remove him from the Tenth Avenue fleapit he was staying in to the Algonquin. I went to the desk and arranged it right away.

  ‘I’m really quite all right where I am,’ he said. ‘Isn’t this place a bit steep?’

  I said, ‘You’re worth it. Shall we call up Em? We could drive across to Brooklyn, then get a late supper. I have to look in at the Blue Angel for five minutes. Pookie Callan’s giving a party for one of our unfortunates. But no more than five minutes, I promise. And then we can talk. Oh boy!’

  ‘Poppy,’ he said, ‘I take my evening meal early these days. I hope you’ll understand. A light supper and early to bed.’

  I said, ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just old.’

  But I was older. He would never catch up to me.

  I saw Murray installed into his suite. He looked like he just hatched from an egg, sitting on the edge of the bed gazing around him.

  I said, ‘And don’t try running away again. I’m having you watched.’

  I felt on top of the world. After the Blue Angel I went onto the Stork Club with Orfie and Jerome and stayed up till three. It was when I put my hand in my pocket to pay the coat-check girl that I found the scrap of paper Murray had written on.

  MISSING

  Missed you. Wished I were

  Nearer. Now I am does that

  Make me a near miss?

  FIFTY-TWO

  Ma received the news about Murray calmly. Old age and the watching of amusing television programs had brought her a new serenity.

  ‘It the calm before the storm,’ Coretta predicted. ‘You see. She be having a breathing hattack any minute now.’

  Sapphire wept. She said Murray had to be hiding some terrible tragedy that had kept him from us and robbed him of his health. The family curse had struck again.

  I said, ‘What family curse? Murray’s not blood.’

  ‘Any family connected with you,’ she said.

  Honey said he’d feel better the moment he found the kingdom of heaven within, and sent him some pamphlets.

  Emerald just screamed for joy.

  ‘I knew it!’ she kept saying. ‘I knew he’d turn up. Mortie, you’re going to love him. Bring him today. Bring him here right now.’

  But he wasn’t quite fit for company.

  I said, ‘Murray, about your appearance. We’re going to have to get you some dentures. And a shirt that fits. You look like a death’s head on a stick.’

  ‘I have dentures,’ he said. ‘I just can’t get along with them.’

  I said, ‘Well, you can’t go visiting looking like that. You’ll terrify Baby Alan.’

  So he put in his dentures, but they seemed like they didn’t really belong to him. They crowded out his mouth and shone unnaturally and because they pinched you were lucky to get a civil word out of him while he was wearing them. In the end he developed the habit of commencing a visit with his teeth in his mouth and ending it with them in his pocket.

  I said, ‘As long as you only do it in front of family. If you ever do that in the Zanzibar Club, I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘If I ever find myself in the Zanzibar Club I’ll save you the trouble.’

  Murray’s removable teeth seemed to endear him to Baby Alan, who smiled at him incessantly whereas he only ever peeped at me anxiously.

  I said, ‘Why does that child always look so worried?’

  Em said, ‘Because you make the room spin. Plus, your hair’s a different color every time he sees you.’

  It was most annoying to see how she fussed over Murray. Apparently a person can go away and leave his responsibilities for others to shoulder and then return, as cool as you like, and be found fascinating and adorable. I always took fabulous gifts when I visited my grandson, and yet when Murray turned up with nothing but a package of sunflower seeds and one of his stupid haiku verses you’d have thought he had bought every goddamned toy in Schwartz’s window.

  PROGRESS, he had written.

  It seems like only

  Yesterday I was a mere

  Uncle. Now I’m great.

  Ma came right to the point.

  ‘You realize you killed your father?’ was how she greeted him, but that was as bad as things got.

  Sapphire broke her rule about never crossing my threshold and came to visit him at 49th Street, where I was endeavoring to wean him off milk dinners and persuade him to move in.

  ‘I’m only here on account of Uncle Murray,’ she said. ‘So don’t get any big ideas.’

  Sapphire was never one to let go of a grudge.

  I suppose Murray had grown accustomed to people being shocked by the change in his appearance. Now it was his turn to be surprised. Sapphire had the tired, gray look of a person who attracts misfortune and never gets a facial.

  ‘Uncle Murray, Uncle Murray!’ she said, squeezing his hands. ‘I want you to tell me everything. Absolutely everything.’

  ‘Everything?’ he said, most alarmed.

  ‘About the camps,’ she said. ‘You’ll feel better if you talk.’

  He looked to me for help.

  I said, ‘Murray, were you in camps?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Sapphy said, starting the hand-squeezing routine again. ‘It doesn’t have to be now. Whenever you feel strong enough. I lost someone, you see. That’s why it’s so important you tell your story. You’re our witness.’

  ‘Sapphy,’ he said, ‘I’m so sorry you lost someone. That’s a terrible thing. But I don’t have a story, you know? I’ve just been … roaming around. That’s all. But why don’t you tell me your story? I’d like that.’

  ‘He’s very sick, you know?’ she whispered to me over the drinks tray. ‘It could take years.’

  ‘She’s crazy, of course,’ he said to me, after she had gone.

  I said, ‘You’re both crazy. She has roaches. You own one pair of pants. As far as I can see neither of you has done a damned thing with your lives except ruin your looks and live like unfortunates.’

  He was quiet.

  I said, ‘And just give me one good reason why you won’t move in here. It’s the best address in town. It’s the best view in town. Or let me buy you the Pearlsteins’ duplex, then at least we’ll be neighbors.’

  He said, ‘I’m going to live somewhere I can make a garden. That’s what I’d like. A garden by the sea.’

  I said, ‘If you live here I can introduce you to people who’d adore to have one of your gardens. The best people. I know everyone who’s anyone in this town. You’ll be the talk of the Hamptons.’

  ‘I don’t want to be the talk of anywhere,’ he said. ‘I want to live quietly and not have to wear my dentures.’

  I was so frustrated with him. I said, ‘Why won’t people be helped?’

  ‘Poppy,’ he said, ‘it’s the funniest thing. As far as I can see, Sapphire’s the one needing your help but you don’t seem interested in attending to that. I watched you, and you never even kissed her goodbye.’

  I said, ‘We don’t kiss. And anyway, she’s a hopeless case. She’s a Catchings through and through. She’ll never amount to anything.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And what’s your big success story?’
/>
  I said, ‘My galleries are in the absolute vanguard. I helped Humpy Choate when he didn’t have a pot to piss in, and Sokoloff and Yaff and all those other dreary little daubers. Who brought them here? Who fed and clothed them?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  I said, ‘I do my duty. I found Coretta for Ma. I found a mind doctor for Sapphire. I made a trust fund for Alan Mordecai and what thanks do I get? Emerald treats me like a stranger.’

  ‘She does not,’ he said. ‘You are ridiculous.’

  He didn’t know the half of it. How they insisted on living in the suburbs and having dinner with Mortie’s people all the time. How they never came to my openings.

  ‘I just think,’ he said, ‘Sapphire still needs you to be a mommy. That’s all.’

  I said, ‘She’s twenty-nine. I’ve been a mommy, now I’m a phenomenon.’

  ‘You certainly are,’ he said.

  I said, ‘And don’t preach to me. I get enough of that from Honey. I did a whole lot better than any of them said I would. How do you think I got where I am today?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s an interesting story,’ he said, ‘but not tonight, please. I want to go back to my hotel and sleep. I’m tired and I have gas pains.’

  I said, ‘You need a digestion doctor.’

  He said, ‘And you need to take a look at yourself.’

  I have often noticed how hard people find it to be gracious about one’s success.

  FIFTY-THREE

  By November of 1953 Emerald and Mortie had another child on the way and Murray was well advanced in his plans to run out on me for the second time.

  ‘I can’t take New York winters anymore,’ he said. ‘I’m going to Florida.’

  But he stayed on long enough to participate in a falling-out I had with my son-in-law. Mortie didn’t like it that I had ordered a Hornby train set for Baby Alan’s Christmas.

  ‘We don’t do Christmas,’ he said. ‘You know we don’t.’

  I said, ‘I don’t see why not.’

  He said, ‘Because we do Hanukkah.’

  I said, ‘Heaven’s sakes Mortie, the child’s two years old. He doesn’t care about all that.’

  ‘Well, he’s going to,’ he said, ‘if I have anything to do with it.’

  Murray said, ‘Maybe he could have the train set for Hanukkah?’

  ‘No,’ Mortie said. ‘It’s too much. You should just give him a little something at Hanukkah. A little candy. A little gelt. He can get the train for his birthday.’

  A little candy. A little gelt. This was the way Emerald lived since the Boons got her into their clutches. Always volunteering at the Temple Sisterhood and shining up her candlesticks and following Mrs Boon’s recipe for chopped liver. I hardly recognized my own child.

  I said to Murray, ‘Personally, I’m an open-minded kind of person.’

  ‘You are,’ he said. ‘Minds probably don’t come any opener.’

  So I had the train wrapped in reindeer paper anyway, plus an electric menorah for Mortie and Em, since they were so set on being Jewish. I’m sure I don’t know what the pair of them found so amusing about my gift.

  Early in the New Year Murray bought himself an ancient Buick and packed it with everything he owned in the world. He was going to Florida to live in a hovel. He had only ever had a small fortune compared to mine, and somewhere along the way he seemed to have lost even that.

  I said, ‘I suppose that was the communists’ doing.’

  Judah Jacoby had often said they’d be the death of him. There was the house though, with Ma and Coretta rattling around in it, barely using more than one room.

  I said, ‘Why don’t I tell Ma to sell 69th Street? She can go live with Honey. I’m sure that house ought to be yours by rights.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It belongs to the bank. And, I wouldn’t dream of it. It’s Dorabel’s home. And you can’t just move people around like they’re pieces on a chess board. Honey has had a hard enough life.’

  My sister was born with the ability to attract sympathy. She was pitied because Harry bankrupted her. She was pitied because her glands prevented her from reducing and keeping an attractive line. She was pitied because Sherman Ulysses had married such an uncongenial person.

  ‘I believe Vera thinks me rather silly,’ Honey confided in me one time, and Sherman himself confirmed it.

  ‘Vera finds Mother a little … light,’ he told me. ‘It makes me very sad.’

  The longer I lived the closer I came to agreeing with Ma and Aunt Fish on this point at least: education is a greatly overrated thing.

  I would have bought Murray a place myself. A nice apartment in a good building in Miami Beach, but he wouldn’t have it. He wanted to live on some kind of salt marsh and get tormented by bugs and murdered by the neighbors or blown out into the ocean and I was too tired and too busy to argue with him anymore. I was about to open Art As Gesture, with a Yugoslav unfortunate named Dragomar who ripped posters off walls. It was called Décollage and Jerome Sacks was predicting it would be very big indeed.

  I waved Murray off. He had put in his dentures, just to please me I suppose. I guarantee they were in his pocket before he was through the Holland Tunnel. His Roadmaster was a dingy shade of ivory and its radiator grille looked for all the world like a mouthful of nightmare teeth. They say dogs grow to look like their owners, and I believe the same may be true for automobiles.

  Baby Maxine Miriam was born in June. She had the Minkel ears but I saw a definite look of my darling Reggie flicker across her face which caused me a moment of sadness.

  I took Ma and Coretta and Honey to visit while Em was still lying-in at Mount Sinai.

  ‘You have all the luck,’ Honey said to me. She was monopolizing the cradling of her great-niece, burrowing her nose into the folds of Baby Maxine’s neck.

  I said, ‘Let me give her to Ma to hold.’

  ‘Now sit nice and steady, Miss Dora,’ Coretta said. ‘And I’ll stand with my arms at the ready in case you have an hattack and drap the child.’

  For help Coretta had grown very self-important.

  I placed Maxine Miriam in my mother’s arms.

  I said, ‘Don’t you think she favors her Grandpa Merrick a little, around the mouth?’

  ‘Grandpa Merrick?’ Ma said, playing at being old and forgetful.

  ‘Are they giving you milk puddings, Emerald? Are they feeding you well? Your Grandpa Jacoby did so much for this place, you know? He paupered us with his good works. You make sure they know that. And you’d best start binding her ears, too. Start it directly you get her home. Coretta will make you some bandages. We all know what happens if that gets neglected, don’t we Poppy?’

  Mortie came in with Baby Alan and Mrs Boon, followed by a nurse who said we were too many around the bed, too tiring for the mother.

  Em said she wasn’t a bit tired and Ma sat tight until Coretta whispered something in her ear, reminding her about one of the shows they liked to watch.

  ‘Poppy,’ Ma said. ‘I believe we have an appointment to keep.’

  Em said, ‘Mom, did you see what Uncle Murray sent?’

  MAXINE MIRIAM

  Hai can’t write haikus

  Hany more. Here’s an Israel

  Savings Bond hinstead.

  ‘Of course,’ Ma announced, as she swept past Mrs Boon, ‘we are able to visit at any hour we choose. My late husband practically built this hospital.’

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Ma passed away the day after Baby Maxine’s first birthday. If she ever suffered any of those hattacks Coretta alluded to I never witnessed them. She simply fell asleep in front of The Perry Como Show and never woke up.

  Emerald went with me to view her in the chapel of rest, and seeing her that way, so dwarfed by the casket Mortie had picked out, I felt regretful that the only time we had gotten along was when the Great War had given us common cause. In death she looked like quite an agreeable person, and her skin was still good. This was a consequence of
her easy life, I suppose. She had been doted on by two good husbands, and two good children, then grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She had started off a Plotz, become a Minkel, sidestepped to Minton and ended up a Jacoby. She had braved out two widowings, two wars and the financial ruin of Harry Glaser. She had learned to answer the telephone and overcome her fear of crossing Central Park. And the only other thing I might have wished for her was that she could have been born late enough to enjoy more fully that important dividend of television, the extinction of conversation.

  Murray had been correct about one thing. The house was mortgaged. Either the bank had to be paid or the house emptied and the vultures allowed to take possession. So I presided over the breaking up of the Jacoby home, but not before I had saved Ma’s bone amber pendant for Sapphy, a step-cut peridot ring for Em and the lavender pearls for Baby Maxine.

  Emerald said, ‘What about Uncle Murray? It was his home.’

  I said, ‘Help me go through Judah’s old stuff.’

  Em suggested sending him his pa’s prayer shawl, but what would a person want with that, living like a wild man on Merritt Island? I had in mind something I would like to find for him but it took us days, sifting through drawers and closets.

  Then Em said, ‘I think I found her.’ She had opened a package of brown photographs tied with string, and there she was, with Murray in her arms and Oscar kneeling beside her, and a young mustachioed Judah standing behind them all, with his hand on her shoulder. Rosa Jacoby. She had a little heart-shaped face and a fuzz of hair, not unlike my own, and a mouth I liked, wide but firm.

  I said, ‘Shall I send it? Do you think he’d like to have it?’

  She said, ‘I think anyone would like to own a picture of their parents. Don’t you, Mom?’

  She was using a tone of voice.

  I said, ‘Don’t start on that again. It’s been hard for me to keep pictures. I’ve moved around a lot in my life. I’ve been too busy for making up albums. If Sapphire’s so grieved about not having pictures let her go to Scranton, Pennsylvania, and plague the Catchings family. And if it’s yourself you’re hinting at, write to your Uncle Merrick. Or your Aunt Angelica. She’d be sure to have photographs.’