by Marc Simon
“I’m hungry.”
Delia pointed to Tuttle’s Luncheonette. “Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee. And a cherry Coke for you, Alex. We’ll sit and talk. I want to know all about you. Plus, my feet are killing me.”
They were about to enter Tuttle’s when a shouting match broke out right in front of them, between a woman carrying a sign that read “Support Women’s Suffrage” and a group of hecklers. One of them grabbed the sign away from her and played keep away with his cronies. Others pelted the woman with orange peels.
Delia dropped Alex’s hand. She ran headlong into the skirmish and grabbed the sign stealer by the throat, knocking him to the ground. She was about to smash the sign over his head when two policemen grabbed her by the arms.
Alex yelled, “Delia.” He shook loose from Hannah’s grip and ran into the melee, threw his long arms around a policemen’s waist and groped for his revolver.
“What the hell?” the policeman said. He hoisted Alex up by the collar.
Delia said, “Alex, no!” She stopped struggling instantly. “Hold on a minute, let him go, you creep.” She grabbed his arm, easing his fingers away from disaster. “Go ahead, sweetheart, go with Hannah. Everything’s all right. O.K.? Have your lunch, all right? I’ll see you later, all right honey?”
Alex threw a final kick at the policeman and walked back to Hannah. He took Hannah’s hand, which was as white as her face.
As the police walked her away, Delia kept her head up, and the little crowd that had gathered applauded. “Yeah,” Delia shouted. “You people, go tell the newspaper what you seen here with these goons, beating on women and children. Go ahead, tell them.”
Hannah dropped to her knees next to Alex and pulled him tight. “My God, you just scared the life out of me. You could have been injured, do you know that? You’re never to run off like that again, understand?”
“But I wanted to help Delia.” Alex wondered why she hadn’t run after Delia, too. Maybe she didn’t like Delia, but he did, better than Hannah. “Where are they taking her?”
“Oh. I don’t, uh, well, they’re just going to talk to her.”
“Delia said I’m supposed to have lunch now. She said she’d come later.”
“Well, all right. Maybe we should just go. We’ll have lunch at home.”
“Does Delia know where you live?”
“What? I don’t know. Let’s just go for now, all right?”
Alex looked back to where Delia was being led away as Hannah pulled him in the other direction.
Timothy Wagner, a beat cop that had detail duty for the parade, watched two of his fellow officers struggle to cuff a dark-haired woman. He walked over to see if they needed any help with the good-looking broad.
“Hey, Wagner.”
He recognized Delia from The Squeaky Wheel. She’d let him slide on a couple of tabs over the last few months when he’d been short on cash due to the demands of his estranged wife and three teenage daughters. He tapped the shoulder of one of the arresting officers. “What’d she do, fellas, rob a bank?”
“Nearly took the head off some slob with one of them signs.”
“Sounds like a real dangerous criminal. A menace to society, she is. Give us a moment, will you?”
“You know this skirt?”
“I seen her around.”
“Well, all right, she ain’t going nowhere with them bracelets.”
Wagner took Delia’s elbow and walked her to a cobblestone alley lined with a row of trashcans. They stood in the shadows. “What the hell are you doing here, Novak?”
“What’s it look like, Wagner, dancing the jig?”
“Nice mouth on you. I never took you for one of them dike broad marchers.”
“Yeah? There’s a lot about me you don’t know. So anyway, how’s your wife?”
Wagner frowned. “You ain’t making this any easier, Novak. I’m trying to give you a break here.”
“Yeah, well you owe me one. Why don’t you take these cuffs off me for starters?”
Wagner twirled a key on a chain. “Yeah, sure, I could do that, but what’s in it for me?”
Delia smiled. God, men were dumb. “Tell you what. Next time you come by The Wheel when I’m working, I’ll take care of you good.” She lowered her voice. “Real good.”
“Real good?”
“Come by some time and see.” She held up her hands. “Come on.” The handcuffs clanked against her wrists.
Wagner put his hand on her shoulder. “I got to hold you here a couple of minutes, to make it look good, like I was giving you the business.”
“Yes sir, Officer Wagner.” She let out her breath. What a goddamn morning. “Got a cigarette?”
Five minutes later, Delia was back at the restaurant, looking around for Alex and Hannah, but since they were nowhere in sight she decided to head back to her apartment and kick her shoes off for a while. She was due at The Wheel for her off-day job a few hours later. She wondered if Abe would be there. She hoped so. They had a lot to talk about, especially this Hannah character.
*
Abe helped himself to a gumdrop from the pound bag he’d bought for the boys at Rucker’s Market on the way from work to pick up Alex from Hannah’s house. He was in a pleasant state of mind, at peace for one of the few times since his mother-in-law’s death. With Alex being taken care of, his older boys toeing the line, and some extra money in his pocket from the overtime, he felt things were finally going his way. Maybe he could even spend more time with Delia, buy her something pretty.
He whistled as he walked down Black Street to Hannah’s house. He knocked on the door, which generated a series of high-pitched arfs from the dog, with two-second pauses in between. After a few moments, he knocked again.
Belle swung the door open. She frowned. “You.”
Now, Abe thought, what the hell is wrong with her? They’d been getting along swell for two weeks, they even had him and the older boys to dinner last Friday, and he’d begun to feel the aunts were kind of an unrelated extended family around Alex. He tried to maintain his upbeat mood in spite of the chill he felt from her. “Good Shabbas, Belle.”
She put her hands on her broad hips. “So, now he’s Mister Jew after denying it for 30 years.”
“What?” Abe scratched his head. “Belle, I’m just trying to be pleasant. I don’t think God would hold it against me.”
She snorted. “Now he’s an expert on God. Anyway, Miller, you’re late.”
“I stopped to get something for the boys.” He looked past her shoulder. “Where’s Alex?”
“With Hannah, where else would he be? Well, don’t just stand there, you’re letting the flies in.” Her curtness reminded him of how Ida used to treat him when he came to call on Irene; basically, he had to justify his existence every time he came by her house. What the hell had happened since he dropped Alex off this morning to sour Belle on him so bad?
Once inside, Lillie looked at him as if he’d just robbed the rabbi’s poor box. On the floor was a ballerina figurine, broken into several pieces. “Lillie, did my boy do that?”
“He was chasing the dog.”
Abe took out a roll of bills. “How much is it? I’ll pay you for it.”
“Put your money away, it was an accident. Besides, you don’t have enough.”
As the sisters stared daggers at him, he felt as if he were on trial for a crime he wasn’t aware he’d committed. But from the tightness of their glares, he realized he wasn’t going to get anything out of them by way of explanation. He glanced at the stairs, figuring Alex was with Hannah up in her room. The wall clock chimed. He wanted to be home by three, three-thirty at the latest, to give him enough time to make something up for dinner, clean up Alex, take a quick sponge bath and a shave. Arthur and Benjamin would be home from the ball game by four-thirty at the latest. If they weren’t, then he’d have to take Alex to The Wheel. “Well, if it’s all the same to you I’ll collect my son and be on my way. And thanks for taking him today
.”
“Don’t thank me, thank Hannah.”
“Is she upstairs?”
Lillie sat down. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Huh? Why?”
“Ask her.”
“But you said she doesn’t want to…never mind, where are they?” He started for the stairs.
“Other way,” said Lillie. “They’re on the sun porch.”
Crayons were scattered all over the porch next to a coloring book. Outside, Alex dug in the tomato garden with a wooden spoon. Abe watched him for a moment before he turned to Hannah, who sat in a rocking chair with her back to him. “Hannah?”
When she didn’t answer, he continued. “I’m sorry I’m late. I already told Belle and Lillie. They give me the business about it, like I got the plague or something.”
Without turning around, Hannah said, “You never told me you had a girlfriend.”
She knew about Delia? But how could she possibly know? Out in the yard, the dog barked and Alex laughed. Maybe the boy had said something about her, but that was a long shot. But then he remembered how the boy had blurted out Delia’s name to Irene one night what seemed like years ago, when he and Irene were on the verge of making love. Still, it seemed so unlikely. “Girlfriend? What girlfriend?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
“Hannah, come on.”
“Delia Novak. Or is there another one you never told me about?”
Christ, the little bugger must have said something. What the hell else had he told her? That he and Delia saw each other at The Squeaky Wheel whenever they could? That every once in a while on a Saturday night, Daddy doesn’t come home until very, very late, even later than Arthur stays up, or that one time on a Sunday morning, Miss Delia was at their house, and that he’d wandered into the bathroom and saw her with no clothes on? He remembered how Delia had laughed at that, but inwardly he shuddered. Did he tell her about that, too?
“Hannah, I can explain about her.”
“Oh, don’t even bother. She and I had a nice conversation about you just this morning. Before she got arrested.” Hannah went on to describe how she and Alex had by chance happened to meet Delia at the suffragette parade, and how Delia made a total fool of herself, fighting with policemen, and how Alex was caught up in everything and almost got hurt. But thank God, she was able to force her way through the crowd and pull him away and keep him safe.
“You saved him?Is he hurt?” He began to leave the porch but Hannah grabbed his arm.
“I told you he’s fine, I saved him. You can see that.”
His son looked all right as he dug in the dirt. “Well, thank you for saving my boy.”
“Don’t bother.” She turned her back on him.
He touched her lightly on the shoulder. “Hey, what’s wrong, I thought we was friends.”
“Friends.”
“Yes. I mean you and me, I thought we was getting to know each other real good, and Alex, hell, excuse my language, he thinks the world of you.”
She turned slightly. “He does? He really does?”
“Sure. He talks about you all the time.”
Her voice quavered. “Really? Because sometimes I think he’s a little cold toward me. No, that’s not the right word. Cautious. Or fearful. Why would he be fearful toward me?”
Calling on his rudimentary understanding of child behavior, Abe said, “Well, kids are funny like that sometimes. They change like the weather, you know that. But he likes you plenty, don’t worry about that.”
She stopped rocking and squeezed a pillow to her chest. She closed her eyes and spoke toward the ceiling, as if she were explaining herself to a higher power. “I love him so much that I would be crushed if anything ever happened to him, my God, like what happened today. You don’t know how terrified I was.” She stood up, much too close to him, and touched his chest with her index finger. “But I don’t want to talk about that any more. I want to know what’s going on between you and this Delia Novak, and you’d better tell me the truth because I can tell when a person lies to me, it’s one of my special abilities.”
If he were to tell her the truth, that Delia still could make him loopy with lust with just a touch in the right place, that there were times he could barely control the lion in heat inside him for her, even though he knew that with Delia, the only future was the immediate future—if he told Hannah all that, this arrangement for Alex would go right out the window, he was sure of it, and then where would they be? Not only that, but he’d begun to think that he could do a lot worse than Hannah Gerson. Maybe the problem was, she needed to get out from under her aunts’ thumb. She was young but she wasn’t no kid. Plus, the girl had suffered. When she told him that her parents and brother had died of The Dip the same year Irene had, it brought tears to his eyes. Maybe what she needed was a family to take care of. Maybe what he needed was a woman to take care of him and his sons. And it sure as hell wasn’t going to be Delia.
He cleared his throat. “Now, Delia and me, we used to go around together a bit, but over the last couple of years or so, things, well, they ain’t been the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I’m embarrassed to talk about it.”
“Don’t treat me like a child, Abraham. I’m not.” She threw her arms around the nape of his neck more aggressively than he would have thought. Her lips touched his ear. “I know all about men. I know what they want.” Her right hand brushed against the front of his pants.
At first he thought it was an accident, but the way she kept her hand on his pants, he wasn’t sure what to think, except the way she moved it, this was no accident. What was he supposed to make of this woman—one minute she acted as if he were the biggest heel that ever lived, and the next she was on him, hot and heavy. As much as he liked how she was stroking him, he knew it wasn’t the time or the place. He tried to push her away, but she held firm. “Whatever she can do, I can do better.” She reached between his legs and rubbed the back of her hand against his scrotum for a few seconds, then turned her palm up and massaged him.
Breath whistled from Abe’s nose. He felt himself getting hard. What if the aunts walked in? He tried to pull away, but she grabbed his wrist with a strength that surprised him, and pulled his hand between her legs. He said, “What are you doing?” even though he knew damn well.
She squeezed her legs tight on his hand. “I know how to make babies. I can show you.” The more he tried to pull away, the tighter she held.
“Daddy?” Alex looked up at the two of them locked together, and he thought, Daddy must like Hannah, but he likes Delia, too. Hannah was pretty and smelled good and gave him anything he wanted, but Delia, she said funny things, she called him kiddo and buddy and pumpkin. Hannah called him her baby and he wasn’t a baby, and he wished his father would just hurry up and marry one of them. He wanted a mommy.
*
The Saturday afternoon lunch crowd had for the most part gone home to domestic chore-dum and dinner with the wife and kids. It would be a while before the Saturday evening crowd came by, and so at four o’clock The Squeaky Wheel was virtually empty, save for Horshushky the butcher who, as was his custom, was working on his Saturday drunk, which started at noon. The only other regular was Davy O’Brien, who sat at his usual table, puffed on his pipe and read from his Collected Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson.
John was perched on a barstool with the newspaper spread out in front of him. He alternately nibbled on a ham sandwich and puffed his cigar. A crack of light slid through the front door, momentarily illuminating Horshushky’s beer as Delia entered. She went behind the bar and took an apron from below.
John motioned toward the kitchen. “You want to get the sandwiches ready? I already got the meat sliced.”
She rinsed her hands in the sink. “Busy day?”
“Not bad. Should have a decent night if it don’t rain.” He flipped the page. “Christ, what’s the world coming to?”
“What? The war started already?”
“No.” He tapped the newspaper. “Listen to this. There was supposed to be some kind of women’s march for the vote today, this morning. Damn suffragettes. You heard about this?”
“Oh yeah. I was there.”
“You was what?” John burst out laughing. “Quit pulling my leg.”
Delia almost told him that she wasn’t, but what the hell, let him think it, he was keeping her employed. “So anyway, how you doing?”
Horshushky pounded his mug on the bar.
“Go see what the Polack wants. What a pain in the ass.”
Horshushky pushed his hair back behind his ears with the palms of his hands, which were callused and scarred from numerous slips of the knife. Smooth nubs had grown over where the tips of the right thumb and left ring finger used to be.
“What’s it gonna be, sir?”
“How’s about a smooch?”
“I don’t need this today.”
Horshushky slipped his hand around her waist. “Come on. What’s your Jew boyfriend got that I ain’t got?” He flicked his tongue like a lizard. “Something wrong with me?”
“Nothing a week in a bathtub and a new face wouldn’t cure.” She pushed his hands away. As she went to the kitchen, she tapped John on the shoulder. “Call me when Abe gets here.”
Chapter 20
By four o’clock that afternoon, Arthur Miller and Jack Walsh had hitchhiked all the way to Weirton, West Virginia, where they planned to rendezvous with Jack’s cousin Robert and enlist Monday morning, bright and early, in Wheeling, 25 miles away. The boys were in high spirits, partly due to the prospect of becoming real men in uniform and partly because, prior to that day, neither had traveled more than five miles from home, much less to another state entirely. Even though Weirton was just a little more than 30 miles from Pittsburgh, as they passed though the countryside colored with red barns, hillsides of green corn and silver water tanks, it was as if they were on a journey to a foreign land.
They sat on a wood bench on Main Street and waited for Robert. According to Jack, his cousin had agreed to put them up until Monday, when all three boys would enlist. Arthur and Jack chewed on sandwiches they’d bought from the general store, and Arthur told Jack that it was the best chicken he’d ever had, that the chicken tasted different in West Virginia, Jack agreed, they sure knew how to make chicken salad down here in Weirton, it was even better than his ma’s. He paused.