Not Our Kind

by Kitty Zeldis

  “What’s all the trouble?” The officer—young, with a round, pink face—looked back and forth between the two cabbies.

  “This guy rammed—”

  “He forgot to signal—”

  “All right, all right,” said the officer. He pulled out a thick notebook from his pocket; its edges were bent and its cover creased. “One at a time.”

  Eleanor stood there, the rain quickly wetting her thin—and now bloodstained—blouse, so that it adhered to her skin. She was still clutching her jacket and umbrella but was too stunned to put on the first or open the second. The officer was busy with the cabbies. She was not going to be late to the interview; she was going to miss it entirely. Her eyes anxiously scanned the streets, looking for a telephone booth. If she could call now, she might be able to explain what had happened.

  “Officer, this woman has been hurt.”

  Eleanor turned to see that the passenger in the other cab had emerged. She looked to be in her thirties, and despite the rain, was flawless in her gray polished-cotton suit, with the kind of trim, fitted jacket and full, gathered skirt that Mr. Dior had introduced just months before.

  “Are you okay, miss?” the officer said, looking away from the two cabbies. “Do you need an ambulance?”

  “No ambulance,” Eleanor said. “Just a telephone, please. I’m late for an appointment.”

  “I’ll take you down to the station; you can use the phone there. But I have to finish up with these two guys first. And then I’ll have to take your statement too.”

  Eleanor just nodded, her eyes beginning to fill. The interview.

  “You’re getting soaked,” the woman said. Her gray mermaid hat, fitted close to her head and adorned with narrow white piping, was also a style endorsed by Mr. Dior. Eleanor’s mother would have loved it. “Why don’t you open that?”

  Eleanor looked dumbly at the umbrella in her hand.

  The woman regarded her indulgently. “Or, why don’t you come and stand with me?” Her hand in its net glove gestured for Eleanor to join her under her umbrella.

  Still clutching her own umbrella, Eleanor walked over and stood beside her as the two men continued to offer their conflicting versions of the story while the officer, who had clearly heard it all before, grunted softly, his pencil moving rapidly across the pad. Cars, backed up and idling, honked furiously at the delay.

  “Are you sure you don’t want an ambulance?” the woman said. “It couldn’t hurt to have a doctor look you over.” The hair that peeked out of the hat was blond, and her brows were unexpectedly dark, giving her a severe though admittedly dramatic look.

  “I just want a telephone,” Eleanor said.

  “You’re crying,” the woman observed.

  Was she? Eleanor touched her face as if it belonged to someone else; she had not even been aware of the tears. Her injured lip felt puffy and strange. “A telephone,” she repeated. “Please!” So the woman went over to the officer; he nodded and the woman returned.

  “There’s a phone booth on the next corner,” she said. “I told the officer you needed to make an urgent call and that we would be back as soon as you had finished.”

  And she took Eleanor’s arm and propelled her along Park Avenue, where doormen stood like sentries, gold buttons gleaming on their dark jackets. Close up, the woman smelled of Chanel No. 5, a heady scent Eleanor could not afford to buy but had sniffed, often, when she and her mother “did” the ground floor at Lord & Taylor.

  “I’ll wait here,” the woman said when they reached the phone booth. And she stood outside while Eleanor stepped in, dialed the number for the Markham School, and waited anxiously while the phone on the other end rang and rang. Finally someone picked up. No, the headmistress was not available now; she was in a meeting. Yes, the message would be delivered. The woman on the other end of the line seemed to doubt Eleanor’s story. It was no wonder, since Eleanor knew she sounded slightly hysterical.

  She hung up and looked at her watch. The crystal covering its brave little face was cracked and the hands were frozen in place. The watch had been a gift from her father, a year or so before he died. Its loss, heaped on top of the other losses of the day, seemed too much. She began to cry in earnest. And her lip started bleeding again. It hurt even more now, an awful, heat-laced throbbing. She pushed the door open, desperate for the air.

  There stood the woman in the Dior suit. She had been waiting patiently all this time. “Oh you poor, dear girl,” she said. “We’ll finish up with the police and then you’ll come straight home with me.”

  Two

  Sheltering the bedraggled young woman under her umbrella, Patricia Bellamy guided her the few short blocks to her apartment building. They had each given their statements to the officer and were now free to leave but Patricia had not wanted to let Eleanor go off by herself. Even though she had not been driving, she somehow felt responsible for the accident.

  Patricia’s own errand that morning—a trip to Bergdorf Goodman to pick up something for Margaux—could wait. Margaux didn’t really care if her mother came home with another big orchid-colored box that held a cashmere sweater or a lavish party dress; the walking stick she was now forced to use had caused her to lose interest in new clothes and just about everything else.

  As they entered the lobby, Patricia nodded to John, the doorman, and to Declan, the elevator operator. The girl, Eleanor, remained silently at her side. It was only when they reached the apartment and after Patricia had called out, “Henryka, can you get lunch started?” that she turned to her guest. “Did you want to use the telephone again?” she asked. Eleanor shook her head. “What about your interview?”

  “I’ve missed it.”

  Eleanor seemed quite upset and Patricia thought she might begin to cry again. “How about freshening up a bit then? Wash your face and all that?” There was still a bit of blood on Eleanor’s chin and her left cheek.

  “Thank you,” her guest said. “I’d appreciate it.” She led Eleanor through the foyer, past the demilune table and the gilt-framed mirror, and the living room with its matched Louis XVI sofas and dove gray drapes, to the guest bathroom, where a stack of folded, monogrammed towels and a basket of shell-shaped bars of soap primly waited.

  As the door closed quietly, Patricia realized that she had never entertained a Jew in her apartment before. At least not one that she had known about. She’d realized the girl was Jewish only after she’d already extended the invitation, when she’d heard her give her name to the police officer. The information came as a surprise. With her fine-boned face—her nose was narrow and small, her mouth delicate—Eleanor Moskowitz did not look Jewish. Of course there was the dark hair, but plenty of people of all backgrounds had dark hair. And, despite her understandable distress about missing her interview, she had a nice, even refined way of speaking. There was that suit, a cheap, skimpy thing, no doubt bought during the war when fabric—along with just about everything else—had been rationed. But it was a subdued color, and the cut wasn’t all that bad. And the girl’s hat was a little marvel—simple, but lovely. All these things added up to someone Patricia could not neatly categorize or pin down. This inability to precisely place Eleanor fell somewhere between unsettling and exciting; she was not sure which. Patricia wondered whether she would have invited the girl home if she’d known that she was a Jew. But once the invitation had been given, there was simply no way she could have rescinded it.

  Patricia walked into the kitchen. “Henryka, what can you bring out for lunch?” she asked her cook. “Isn’t there some ham?” Yesterday she’d hosted a luncheon and knew there were leftovers though she was vaguely aware that ham was a food a Jew might not eat. Should she ask, or would that be rude?

  “There’s ham. Sliced cheese too.” Henryka swiped at the counter with a rag. A stout Polish woman in her sixties with thick gray-blond braids pinned up on her head, she had worked for Patricia’s mother years ago. When Patricia married, Henryka had come to work for her. She was taciturn, and
often sulky, but for Patricia, she was family.

  As Henryka moved around the kitchen, Patricia ticked off the menu in her mind. She knew there was a fresh loaf of bread, a shredded carrot salad left over from the luncheon, and some petits fours one of the guests had brought.

  “Do we have lemons?” Patricia asked. “If we do, you could make lemonade.”

  “Two left,” said Henryka, her thick fingers wrapped around the chrome handle of the refrigerator.

  “Two should be enough,” Patricia said. “Can you squeeze them and prepare three glasses?”

  “Miss Margaux eat too?” Henryka asked.

  “I hope so,” said Patricia, the words coming out sounding more tart than she’d meant. “Henryka, would you please ask her? I think she’d rather it came from you.”

  “All right. She like my lemonade.” Henryka took the lemons out and put them on the counter. “Where I should set table, missus?” Even after decades in the United States, her English still suffered from many gaps.

  Patricia paused. Usually they had informal meals in the breakfast room, off the kitchen. But Henryka had just that morning embarked on the task of reorganizing the pantry, and the table was covered with bags of flour, oatmeal, sugar, and salt. “I guess we’ll eat in the dining room,” she said. “But we’ll only use one end of the table and place mats will be fine. Don’t bother with a cloth.”

  Patricia and Eleanor were already seated when Margaux lurched into the room. At least she had put on a clean dress and her hair was brushed, Patricia thought. She introduced her daughter and exhaled silently when Margaux had crossed the room with no mishaps—there was simply no way she could move with anything approaching grace—and took her place across from their guest.

  Eleanor helped herself to small portions of ham and carrots. “What are you studying in school?” she asked Margaux.

  Margaux was busy spearing a piece of ham with a fork and did not answer. Once she had impaled the ham, she gnawed on it briefly and then left it sitting, rejected, at the rim of her plate.

  “Miss Moskowitz asked you a question, Margaux,” Patricia said, trying not to show her displeasure. Ever since the polio, a horrid changeling had supplanted Patricia’s formerly charming daughter. The Margaux Patricia raised had lovely manners and could talk with considerable composure about school, summer vacations, and Clover, the strawberry roan they boarded at a barn near their country house in Connecticut.

  “I’m not in school now,” Margaux said sullenly.

  Patricia could see the mild surprise register on Eleanor’s face. “Since her illness, Margaux has had a tutor,” Patricia explained. “She didn’t feel comfortable—”

  “Would you?” Margaux said angrily.

  “Her father and I didn’t insist. So we hired Mr. Cobb.” She did not add that Margaux tormented the poor man; Patricia didn’t know how he summoned the will to keep returning. Of course when he didn’t come, Margaux was bored silly and spent her time navigating the apartment on her walking stick, bumping and knocking into things as she went. It was almost as if she did it on purpose.

  This cheerless train of thought was interrupted by the appearance of the petits fours on a Limoges plate. The tiny squares, iced in white, were decorated with whimsical touches: pink candy bows on one, blue flowers on another, minuscule yellow dots on a third. “Please help yourself,” she said to Eleanor, and when her guest seemed to have difficulty in choosing, Patricia urged her to take a second.

  “Thank you,” Eleanor said, passing the plate to Margaux, who ignored the silver serving knife and used her fingers to take the remaining four cakes.

  “That’s too many,” Patricia admonished. Not that she wanted one; she actually found their sweetness cloying, but what if their guest wanted another? Patricia recalled one of her mother’s many and oft-repeated lessons. “It’s not just your job to make your guests feel at home,” she had said, “it’s your obligation.”

  “I’m hungry,” Margaux said. There was a whine in her voice that would have been annoying in a child of five; in a girl of thirteen it was nearly intolerable. But Patricia ignored it, pouring herself a cup of coffee from the pot Henryka had brought in, and then passing the pot to Eleanor.

  Patricia had been sick with worry when Margaux contracted polio and she had devoted herself to finding the very best hospitals, the very finest doctors. The iron lung, which had helped Margaux to breathe and had saved her life, was excruciating to see; the big metal cylinder with its tangle of hanging tubes looked like a coffin and appeared regularly in Patricia’s dreams, even long after the need for it had ended.

  But all that was over, thank God. Margaux had recovered. She did have that awful leg though, now thin and useless, that mocked her still healthy, still shapely other limb. Thanks to the immediate treatment she’d received, her foot hadn’t curled under in the way that so many other victims’ feet had, and the affliction was only in one leg, not both. Look at President Roosevelt: though the press tried to downplay it, he’d been stricken too, and there were rumors that he had had to spend his days in a wheelchair, a situation far worse than Margaux’s. But was Margaux grateful? No, she slammed doors, uttered filthy words, and flung a crystal paperweight across the room. “Margaux, why don’t you tell Miss Moskowitz about what you’ve been reading with Mr. Cobb?”

  “What’s wrong with your lip?” asked Margaux, ignoring her mother’s prompting and looking up from her plate, where two of the petits fours had been mashed into a disgusting pink and white paste.

  “I was in an accident this morning. In a cab. I hit my face.”

  “There’s blood on your blouse. Did you have to go to the hospital?”

  Eleanor shook her head.

  “I was in the hospital for months,” Margaux continued. “I had polio.”

  “That must have been hard.”

  “I felt like I was breathing through a straw,” Margaux said, holding her hands around her throat to demonstrate. “It was horrible. So they put me in the iron lung. And I couldn’t eat because I was afraid I would choke; the nurses had to slather my food with mayonnaise to make it go down.” She stared at Eleanor. “I despise mayonnaise; I’ll never, ever eat it again.”

  “I can understand why you wouldn’t want to,” said Eleanor.

  “I was lucky. I survived. But my leg atrophied when I was sick. It will never heal.” Margaux gestured to the wooden walking stick that stood propped against the table.

  “You seem to get around pretty well with that,” Eleanor said. “I think you have a lot of pluck.”

  Patricia stared at her. No one had ever posited Margaux’s situation in this light before and it was a revelation to hear it described that way.

  “Pluck,” Margaux repeated, as if she were weighing the word in her mind. “Do you really think so?” With the hand not holding the fork, she reached for lemonade; ice cubes rattled against the glass. She took a loud slurp before putting it down, something Patricia had asked her repeatedly not to do, but with supreme effort, Patricia remained silent.

  “I do,” Eleanor said. “I really do.”

  Margaux seemed to like this, because she actually smiled. Just for a second, but still. As the smile faded, she studied their guest carefully, and then asked, “Are you from Moscow?”

  “No, but I suppose one of my ancestors might have been,” said Eleanor.

  Patricia thought she might have been a bit surprised by the question but noted that she still maintained a pleasant, even tone.

  “Are you a Jew?” Margaux asked. The upraised fork in her hand could have been a small, spiked weapon.

  “Margaux!” said Patricia, who felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment. “You’re being rude.”

  “No I’m not,” Margaux said. Now the fork was swiveled in Patricia’s direction.

  “I don’t mind her asking,” Eleanor said to Patricia. “Yes, I’m Jewish. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve never had lunch with a Jew before,” Margaux said. She used the fork to pierce the
single intact petit four that remained on her plate.

  “Well, you’re having lunch with one now,” Eleanor said.

  Margaux considered this for a moment, and as she did, Patricia noticed a glimmer of her daughter’s former curiosity animating her face. Faint, to be sure. But it was there.

  “My Sunday school teacher says Jews killed Christ. Is that really true?” Margaux finally said. “I mean, not you personally, but your people.” She put the chocolate petit four, whole, into her mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.

  Patricia was appalled. “Go to your room!” She stood up. “Right now.”

  “I hope you’re not sending her away on my account,” Eleanor said. “She really does want to know.” She looked at Margaux. “Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Margaux. “I do.”

  “The answer is, we didn’t,” Eleanor said.

  “But Miss Clarke says you did. So does Henryka.”

  “Well, they’re wrong and I’ll tell you why. Jesus was a Jew, and so were his father and mother. He thought his fellow Jews had strayed too far from their faith, and all his preaching was an effort to get them to reform. So the Jewish leaders at the time wouldn’t have killed him. They’d simply have excommunicated him.”

  “Excommunicated?”

  “Expelled him from their church, only they called that church a synagogue,” explained Eleanor. “As for the crucifixion, Jews never crucified anyone. That was a Roman punishment, and they did quite a lot of it in fact. The road to Rome was lined with crucifixes.”

  “If that’s true, why does everyone say the Jews did it?”

  “Although Jesus died, his following lived on. And those early Christians needed to appease the Romans, who were in power. They didn’t want to antagonize the Romans by accusing them of killing Jesus. It was too dangerous. So instead, they said the Jews did it. Jews were the perfect scapegoats.”

  “That makes sense,” Margaux said.