by Marc Simon
On the trolley ride home, Abe explained the plan as outlined by Hannah. Since there was no school for him at the synagogue, Hannah—er, Miss Gerson—said she wanted to be his au pair, which means she’d be your nanny, Alex, she’d take care of you instead of Mrs. Traficante. She’s too old to be running around after you. Just think, she’s got a big house with a swing in the backyard and a dog, you like dogs, right, and lots of books to read, and you can bring your soldiers, too. And then when I pick you up after work you’ll be with me and Benjamin and Arthur and you can sleep in their room every night, if you like, how does that sound?
“But why can’t I go to work with you?”
Abe laughed. “Wouldn’t that beat all. But my boss, he wouldn’t allow it. A metal shop’s not safe for a little boy.”
“Is it safe for you, Daddy?”
“Oh, sure. Nothing’s going to happen to your old man.”
They rode two stops in silence. Alex turned from the window. “Do you like Hannah, Daddy?”
Like her? He liked how she looked, how she smelled, how she smiled, how she seemed to really care about him and Alex, but did he like her? “Yeah, I like her, I mean, she’s all right.” He opened the window and put his face out next to Alex to catch the breeze. “What about you? Did you like her?”
“Who do you like better, her or Mommy?”
“Well, your mother, of course, son, but she’s gone, you know that.”
“Her or Delia?”
“What?”
“Benjamin says Delia is your girlfriend. Is Hannah your girlfriend, too?”
“Well, I, no…Hannah is, she’s just going to take care of you, that’s all. All right?”
Alex turned back to the view. “I guess so.”
Chapter 17
Delia Novak leaned on her elbows as she watched the gold and white koi glide around the pond at the far end of the topiary garden, approximately 100 yards from the main house. She fingered the pack of cigarettes in her apron pocket, wondering if she should risk lighting up. She never knew when Marie was watching, acting as if she were the lady of the house instead of just a sniveling bitch of a housekeeper. If Marie caught her smoking again, however, she’d toss her out on her ass, and Delia couldn’t afford to get canned.
A gust of wind rattled the leaves on a huge elm tree. Thunder rumbled from a wall of black clouds massed to the west, moving her way. She sprinkled bits of dried bread on the water. The lousy fish had a better life than she did, at least they didn’t have to grub for money or ask permission to smoke a lousy cigarette. She felt like grabbing one of them and flipping it onto the lawn to watch it suffocate, so that it would feel the way she did.
Next to her cigarettes was an envelope she’d found in her mailbox that morning, postmarked Chicago, Illinois. What in God’s name was her old friend Lotte Henderson doing in Chicago? She had seven more minutes’ break time coming to her, and hell, they couldn’t fire her for opening a goddamn letter.
The wind kicked up again and rippled through the huge weeping willow that bordered the pond. She opened the letter and began to read:
Dear Dee,
How’s tricks, hon? Geez oh man, I wish I was there with you right now to see your face as you read this letter from your old partner in crime, but if I was there, then I wouldn’t have to write no letter! Anyways, I’m sorry I have not wrote to you since I got your letter what is it, four or five years ago, when you had wrote to tell me you moved to Pittsburgh, but my life has been crazy since then.
Remember how you always used to say I should join the circus, because I could do all them tricks like bending over backward and putting my head between my knees, and doing the splits and pulling my legs behind her ears, on account of I’m double-jointed? Well, guess what, I did! I joined Ringling’s! Which is why your letter took so long to catch up with me, because I’m always on the road, see.
So anyways, now they call me Miss Lotte Larue, The Elastic Lass, The World’s Most Flexible Female. Can you believe it? They even made up a poster of me bending backward over the mouth of a lion, which is just a made up painting, it ain’t something I ever really done. I stay as far away from them wild animals as I can. They smell bad and besides, their eyes look so sad it gives me the blues.
Sorry to read about your mother passing away. She was always good as gold to me, even when them other grown-ups in the neighborhood said I would never amount to nothing but a little tramp. She left you a pile of dough, huh? My folks never even left me a pot to piss in, excuse my language.
Anyways, it’s been a long time, Dee—they still call you that? Geez oh man, the trouble we used to get into when we was young girls and had them cute little heinies, huh? Golly, did we have the fun.
So how do I like the circus life? Hey, I can’t complain. I make good money for a girl—$70 a week, can you believe it, plus three squares a day. Hey, it sure beats sitting behind a sewing machine fifteen hours a day, working for peanuts, which by the way we got plenty of at the circus. Don’t mind me, I’m a kidder from way back, you know that.
No, the life here ain’t so bad, not really, once you get used to pulling up stakes most every night and taking a train from one burg to another, except when we stay put in a big city for a couple of days, like when we come to Pittsburgh this Labor Day, which is when we’ll be there.
Anyway, I been around these United States, the eastern part mainly, but to tell you the truth, a rube is a rube no matter what city you’re in, and there ain’t a lot you can tell about a place through a train window when you’re rolling through it at four in the morning. But like I say, it sure beats the pants off of hanging around in Youngstown and getting put in a family way by some mill-hunky and ending up as fat as a cow, with four brats by the time you turn 30.
Speaking of getting knocked up—hey, I know I’m going on and on but I have so much to tell you—I’m living with a real sweet guy, Mojo the Sword Swallower. He’s a Jew, can you believe it, and he treats me real nice. Jews, they make the best husbands, at least that’s what I heard, not that he proposed or nothing. So far there’s been no fooling around on me—believe me, there are plenty of good-looking skirts hanging around in little circus outfits to tempt a man. How do you think I got Morris! That’s Mojo’s real name, Morris Josephson. And he’s never hit me, not like that bastard Edgar Foster I used to go around with, you remember him. I hope he’s six feet under or better yet, he should rot to death with consumption.
Oh, so you probably want to know why this letter come to you from Chicago. That’s where I was when I mailed it. Where I am now while you’re reading, it could be any of many cities east of the Mississippi.
Anyways, like I was saying, my Morris is a smart guy, and we’re saving up so’s he can to go to school to become a dentist or a pharmacist, he’s not sure which, but something professional. There’s good money in that, and we could settle down somewhere nice—not Youngstown—and have a house with curtains on the windows and a white picket fence, and a family. That’s what I want. I can’t be the Elastic Lass forever.
Geez, Dee, you should see some of the characters we got walking around this place. Half of them can’t speak the King’s English to save their lives, but that’s okey dokey, everyone gets along pretty good most of the time, and we’re putting on the greatest show on Earth every day, sometimes twice, and I don’t know, getting out there in front of a crowd gets your heart pumping. Plus with all these circus people around, there’s always someone to yap with, except for the clowns, which are as miserable and dirty a bunch of goons as you’d ever see in all your born days.
About my act—well, for one thing, I bend over backward and stick my head between my legs and light a cigarette. Then I do a handstand and arch my back so my legs come down to my hair and then I scratch my head with my toes. Then I spell out the alphabet with my hands and legs. I know it sounds dumb, but the rubes, they love it. The men, you should see them, their tongues hang halfway out of their mouths, because I gotta say, all this exercise has the o
ld body in very nice shape and the tight costumes with the spangles and sparkles, well, Mojo says I am an occasion for sin, if you know what I mean.
Anyways, I promised myself I wouldn’t write more than a page or two and here I am going on page five like I was Julius Shakespeare or something, but I just want to tell you, Dee, how excited I am that we’re coming to Pittsburgh and maybe you and me can get together like old times. Old friends are the best friends, that’s the truth. Write me back, o.k.? Just send it in care of the circus at the address here. You let me know how many tickets you want and they will be there waiting for you. And ask for me, we’ll go out when my show is over and you can show me the town!
Well, I gotta stop now, Morris will be wanting his supper. Love you, can’t wait to see you!
Lotte, the “Elastic Lass” Henderson
PS: Dee, don’t forget to write, like I did!
A harsh voice from across the lawn yelled, “Novak! Break’s over!”
Delia’s cheek was wet with tears. She folded the letter. Her friend was pulling down seventy bucks a week for what, being a freak? Boy oh boy.
Sure, she’d write back to Lotte. She’d tell her a good story, a true story about a tiny little boy that could throw darts and knives with incredible accuracy. They had knife throwers in the circus—hell, people would pay money to see a child throw, wouldn’t they? But someone would have to make the introductions, do the negotiations. Seventy dollars a week? If she played her cards right, there would be a place for her in the circus, too.
“Novak!”
In began to rain in fat, cold drops. She ran back to the house with the letter pushed deep in her pocket.
Chapter 18
The yellow brick, two-story, foursquare house was the largest on the block. It had a dining room, foyer, kitchen and pantry, a sitting room, a cold cellar and four bedrooms. The front porch ran the width of the house, and in back, the yard occupied nearly a half-acre, with forsythia and lilac bushes, a vegetable plot and a forty-year-old honey locust tree with a tire swing.
The Gerson sisters, Belle and Lillie, used the kitchen and the dining room and shared the large master bedroom, where they slept together as they had since they were children, born eleven months apart in 1868. Two of the smaller bedrooms were stuffed to the ceilings with their deceased parents’ furniture and keepsakes from the old country, covered with sheets and two decades of dust. The second-largest bedroom was Hannah’s.
Belle weighed fifty pounds more than “little” sister Lillie. She smoked two packs of Chesterfields every day and drank black coffee from morning until night, except during meals, which were, at Lillie’s insistence, always served with wine. Despite her age, her hair was carrot red. She dressed in bilious black housedresses no matter what the weather or the social occasion.
Neither Belle nor Lillie ever married, although Lillie, the petite, pretty sister, once had entertained a proposal from a gentleman ten years her senior, a respected, reserved Jewish mortician named Irwin Kalmenstein, who, to sweeten the pot, pledged that Belle could live with them once they tied the knot. Lillie thought it was a generous offer, but Belle, who called Irwin “Old Gloomy,” felt the offer was too generous—did he think he was in for a two-for-one deal, and anyway, what kind of man would want to live with his wife’s sister? Ultimately, Belle and Lillie agreed that it was better to enjoy life with each other, as they’d always done, rather than outlive and bury a mortician.
Moreover, they didn’t need his morgue money. Both had worked as bookkeepers in the payroll department at Union Switch & Signal and, because they lived with their parents, they were able to save most of their salaries. Their frugality, combined with inheriting their parents’ moderate savings and paid-off house, allowed them to retire at the ripe young age of fifty-five and live the life they wanted. They had orchestra seats at the Pittsburgh Symphony, two sets of China, Irish linens, a Polish maid, and two high-holiday seats at the synagogue they rarely attended but annually supported. They treated themselves to annual trips to New York to see the sights and take in a Broadway play or two, always musicals, and vacationed at fancier resorts on Lake Erie or in the Laurel Mountains. They contributed generously to the suffragette movement, since they’d been working women themselves.
They also took in their niece Hannah after her parents had basically disowned her. It wasn’t exactly the arrangement they’d planned for in their retirement, but since they were her only relatives, and she their only niece, where else was the poor 20-year-old girl supposed to go, with no job, no friends and virtually no self-esteem?
That had been two years earlier. Hannah had toed the line thus far—no men, no alcohol, no late nights out. True, she’d lost every job the sisters had managed to find for her in six months or less, but they were forgiving, far more than her parents, for they could see the flighty girl was still traumatized by the past and might remain so for some time. It was all she could do to keep up with her shorthand correspondence school courses, but at least she was neat and most of the time cordial and was not a financial burden, as her father, their brother, sent the sisters money every month for Hannah’s keep.
Lillie was reheating Friday night’s chicken, soup, roast potatoes and green beans for Saturday’s lunch, when Hannah banged through the front door. She turned to Belle, who was filling water glasses. “Guess who.”
“Belle, Lillie. I’m home. I’m starving.”
Lillie said, “She wants lunch? She never eats lunch.”
Belle looked up. “Something’s gotten into her.”
Hannah called from the stairway. “I’m going to wash my hands. I’ll be down in a minute. I have wonderful news.”
*
Abe and Alex arrived home to an empty house. Benjamin had gone to the Pirates game, not to attend—although he would have loved to watch his heroes Honus Wagner and Babe Adams—but to hawk peanuts and pennants on Bouquet Street outside Forbes Field for Nunzio Fiore of Fiori Importers. Nunzio paid him two cents a bag on the peanuts and ten on the pennants. On the days when attendance was low, Benjamin and his fellow vendors would slip past the sleepy ticket takers to catch the game from the seventh inning to the top of the ninth, at which point they’d have to rush back and try to sell merchandise to the meager post-game crowd. Benjamin relished these brief ballpark interludes, and he imagined himself chasing down fly balls on the vast green lawn and smacking high arcing drives over the right field fence.
Arthur normally worked alongside his brother, but not on this particular afternoon. Instead, he was at Jack Walsh’s house, his former enemy and current co-conspirator. The boys, barely sixteen, were in Jack’s basement, composing letters to their parents. Their birth certificates lay open on the workbench.
Alex pushed the stepstool up to the icebox. “I’m hungry, Daddy.”
Abe looked inside. There wasn’t much: a half empty bottle of milk, a jar of pickles, a crumbly hunk of cheddar cheese and a salami that had a green tinge to it. Christ, now he’d have to go food shopping, and the day would be shot, which meant no Delia once again, unless she was working late and he could figure out a way to get the older boys to stay home with Alex. He poured some milk.
Alex dunked an oatmeal cookie. “Am I ever going to be big, Daddy? Like you and Arthur and Davy and John the bartender?”
Abe’s eyes got watery. How many time had he had this conversation with him? “Well listen, when I was your age I was little, too.”
“Little as me?”
“No, but they used to call me ‘shrimp’ until I got my growth.”
“But when will I get my growth?”
Abe thought that maybe he should go back to that synagogue and ask God to give him the answer, for sure as hell he didn’t know. He rubbed Alex’s hair. “Why, it could be any time. Anyway, we talked about this before. Why are you asking me now, son?”
“If I got big I wouldn’t need to go to Hannah’s house.”
True, Abe thought, but then, that would take a miracle, and he couldn’t wait ar
ound for one. What else could he do now, under the circumstances, but take Hannah’s offer? Hell, it was only natural the boy was a bit nervous about this new deal, but he’d get over it in a few days. He patted Alex’s hand. “Don’t worry, son. Hannah’s gonna take good care of you.” He hoped it was as true. He needed a break.
*
“Slow down, Hannah.”
“We can’t understand a word you’re saying when you talk with your mouth full of food.”
Hannah kept talking anyway. “You know how you always say we’re supposed to do mitzvahs, good things for other people, that good deeds are the best way to please God?”
“Do I always say that, Lillie?”
Her sister shrugged.
Hannah stood and began to pace around the table. Pudgy the dog, a Boston Bull/cocker spaniel mix, pranced on her hind legs, doing her best to get some scraps to fall her way. “Well, even if you don’t say it, it’s true, don’t you think? I do. Anyway, this morning, after services, I met this poor man and his darling little boy who stumbled into the synagogue.” She went on for five minutes straight, describing in detail how Abe’s beautiful and loving wife had taken care of her three boys, especially little Alex, only to sacrifice herself to diphtheria to protect her sons. “And just a month ago, his mother-in-law Mrs. Murphy died in a horrible fire.”
Belle said, “Murphy? Are these people Jewish?”
“What? Oh, Abe is Jewish, absolutely. What was I saying?”
Lillie sipped her wine. “The fire, dear.”
“Yes, it was horrible.” Hannah described the fire in far more detail than Abe or even the newspaper had described it, adding how a courageous fireman had rescued Alex from the flames in the nick of time. She opened the two top buttons of her dress. “Just talking about it makes me warm.”
The sisters exchanged a quick glance. Belle said, “So what’s the mitzvah?”
For a second Hannah looked perplexed. “Oh. Well, because now Abe has no one to look after Alex while he’s at work, and the synagogue can’t help him, I said I would take him in. He’s so cute.” Her eyes flicked back and forth from Belle to Lillie. “It’s all right, isn’t it? He has nowhere to go.”