Isaiah Sommers escorted me to the door, but before he could close it I heard Margaret Sommers say, “I just hope you don’t come to me when you’ve found yourself throwing good money after bad.”
I turned down the walk on his angry response. I’d had my fill of bitterness lately, what with Lotty’s arguing with Max, and now the Sommerses taking each other on. Their snarling seemed endemic to the relationship; it would be difficult to be around them often. I wondered if they had friends and what the friends did when faced with this sniping. If Max and Lotty’s quarrel hardened into the same kind of misery I would find it intolerable.
Ms. Sommers’s gratuitous remark about the mean old Jew she worked for also hit me hard. I don’t like mean-spirited remarks of any kind, but this one jarred me, especially after listening to Max and Lotty go ten rounds on whether he should speak at today’s conference. What would Margaret Sommers say if she heard Max detail his life when the Nazis came to power-forced to leave school, seeing his father compelled to kneel naked in the street? Was Lotty right, was his speaking a demeaning exposure that would do no good? Would it teach the Margaret Sommerses of the world to curb their careless prejudices?
I’d grown up a few blocks south of here, among people who would have used worse epithets than Margaret Sommers’s if she’d moved next door. If she sat on a stage rehearsing the racial slurs that she probably grew up hearing, I doubted that my old neighbors would change their thinking much.
I stood on the curb, trying to stretch out the knife points in my trapezius before starting the long drive north. The curtains in the Sommerses’ front window twitched. I got into my car. The September nights were drawing in; only the faintest wisp of light still stained the horizon as I turned north onto Route 41.
Why did people stay together to be unhappy? My own parents hadn’t shown me a Harlequin picture of true love, but at least my mother struggled to create domestic harmony. She had married my father out of gratitude, and out of fear, an immigrant alone on the streets of the city, not knowing English. He’d been a beat cop when he rescued her in a Milwaukee Avenue bar where she’d thought she could use her grand opera training to get a job as a singer. He’d fallen in love and never, to the best of my knowledge, fallen out of it. She was affectionate toward him, but it seemed to me her true passion was reserved for me. Of course, I wasn’t quite sixteen when she died: what does one know of one’s parents at that age?
And what about my client’s uncle? Isaiah Sommers was certain that if his uncle had cashed in his life-insurance policy, he would have told his aunt. But people have many needs for money, some of them so embarrassing that they can’t bring themselves to tell their families.
My melancholy reflections had carried me unnoticing past the landmarks of my childhood, to where Route 41 became the gleaming eight-lane drive skirting the lake shore. The last color had faded from the sky, turning the lake to a spill of black ink.
At least I had a lover to turn to, even if only for a few more days: Morrell, whom I’ve been seeing for the past year, was leaving on Tuesday for Afghanistan. A journalist who often covers human-rights issues, he’s been longing to see the Taliban up close and personal since they consolidated their power several years back.
The thought of unwinding in the comfort of his arms made me accelerate through the long dark stretch of South Lake Shore Drive, up past the bright lights of the Loop to Evanston.
III What Is in a Name?
Morrell greeted me at the door with a kiss and a glass of wine. “How’d it go, Mary Poppins?”
“Mary Poppins?” I echoed blankly, then remembered Calia. “Oh, that. It was great. People think day-care workers are underpaid but that’s because they don’t know how much fun the job is.”
I followed him into the apartment and tried not to groan out loud when I saw his editor on the couch. Not that I dislike Don Strzepek, but I’d badly wanted an evening where my conversation could be limited to an occasional snore.
“Don!” I said as he got up to shake hands. “Morrell didn’t tell me to expect this pleasure. I thought you were in Spain.”
“I was.” He patted his shirt for cigarettes, remembered he was in a no-smoking zone, and ran his fingers through his hair instead. “I got back to New York two days ago and learned that the boy reporter was leaving for the front. So I wangled a deal with Maverick magazine to do a story on this Birnbaum conference and came out. Of course now I have to work for the pleasure of bidding Morrell adieu. Which I won’t let you forget, amigo.”
Morrell and Don had met in Guatemala when they were both covering the dirty little war there a number of years back. Don had gone on to an editorial job at Envision Press in New York, but he still undertook some reporting assignments. Maverick magazine, a kind of edgier version of Harper’s, published most of his work.
“Did you get here in time for the Maccabees-EYE-team standoff?” I asked.
“I was just telling Morrell. I picked up literature from both Posner and Durham.” He waved at a pile of pamphlets on the coffee table. “I’ll try to talk to both of them, but of course that’s breaking news; what I need is background. Morrell says you might be able to supply me with some.”
When I looked a question, he added, “I’d like a chance to meet Max Loewenthal, since he’s on the national committee dealing with missing assets for Holocaust survivors. His Kindertransport story alone would make a good sidebar, and Morrell tells me that you know two of his friends who also came to England as children in the thirties.”
I frowned, thinking of Lotty’s furies with Max over exposing the past. “Maybe. I can introduce you to Max, but I don’t know whether Dr. Herschel would want to talk to you. And Carl Tisov, Max’s other friend, he’s here from London on a concert tour, so whether he’d have the time, let alone the interest-”
I broke off with a shrug and picked up the pamphlets Don had brought back from the demonstrations. These included a flyer from Louis Durham, printed expensively in three colors on glossy stock. The document proclaimed opposition to the proposed Illinois Holocaust Asset Recovery Act, unless it also covered descendants of African slaves in America. Why should Illinois ban German companies who profited from the backs of Jewish and Gypsy workers but accept American companies who grew rich on the backs of African slaves?
I thought it was a good point, but I found some of the rhetoric disturbing: It’s not surprising Illinois is considering the IHARA. Jews have always known how to organize around the issue of money, and this is no exception. Margaret Sommers’s casual comment about “the mean old Jew Rubloff” echoed uncomfortably in my head.
I put the flyer back on the table and rifled through Posner’s screed, which was irritating in its own way: The day of the Jew as victim is over. We will not sit idly by while German and Swiss firms pay their shareholders with our parents’ blood.
“Ugh. Good luck in talking to these two specimens.” I flipped through the rest of the literature and was surprised to see the company history Ajax Insurance had recently printed: “One Hundred Fifty Years of Life and Still Going Strong,” by Amy Blount, Ph.D.
“You want to borrow it?” Don grinned.
“Thanks, I have my own copy-they held a gala a couple of weeks ago to celebrate. My most important client sits on their board, so I got chapter and verse close up. I even met the author.” She’d been a thin, severe-looking young woman, dreadlocks tied back from her face with grosgrain ribbons, sipping mineral water on the fringes of a black-tie crowd. I tapped her booklet. “How’d you get this? Bull Durham going after Ajax? Or is Posner?”
Don patted his cigarette pocket again. “Both, as far as I can tell. Now that Edelweiss Re owns Ajax, Posner wants a printout of all their policies from 1933 on. And Durham is quite as insistent that Ajax open their books so he can see whom they insured from 1850 to 1865. Naturally Ajax is fighting like crazy to keep the IHARA, with or without Durham ’s amendment, from getting passed here or anywhere. Although the Florida and California legislation that inspi
red the Illinois act doesn’t seem to have hurt insurers any. I guess they’ve figured they can stall until the last beneficiary dies… Morrell, I’m going to kill in a minute if I don’t get some nicotine. You cuddle Vic. I’ll give my great hacking smoker’s cough to warn you I’m coming back in.”
“Poor guy.” Morrell followed me as I went into the bedroom to change. “Mmph. I don’t remember that bra.”
It was a rose and silver number I rather liked myself. Morrell nuzzled my shoulder and fiddled with the hooks. After a few minutes I pulled away. “That smoker’s cough is going to hack in our ears in a minute. When did you find out he was coming to town?”
“He called from the airport this morning. I tried to let you know, but your mobile phone wasn’t on.”
Morrell took my skirt and sweater and hung them in the closet. His extreme tidiness is a big reason I can’t imagine our ever living together.
He perched on the edge of the tub when I went into the bathroom to take off my makeup. “As much as anything, I think Don wanted an excuse to get away from New York. You know, since Envision’s parent company was bought by that big French firm, Gargette, he hasn’t been having much fun in publishing. So many of his authors are being axed that he’s afraid his job will be cut. He wants to scope out the issues surrounding the Birnbaum conference-see if there’s enough in them for a book of his own.”
We went back into the bedroom, where I pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt. “What about you?” I leaned against him, closing my eyes and letting the wall of fatigue I’d been battling crash over me. “Is there any risk of your contract for the Taliban book being canceled?”
“No such luck, babe.” Morrell ruffled my hair. “Don’t sound so hopeful.”
I blushed. “I didn’t mean to be so obvious. But- Kabul. An American passport is as big a liability there as a woman’s exposed arms.”
Morrell held me more tightly. “You’re more likely to get into trouble here in Chicago than I am in Afghanistan. I’ve never been in love before with a woman who was beaten up and left to die on the Kennedy.”
“But you could visit me every day while I was recuperating,” I objected.
“I promise you, Victoria Iphigenia, that if I am left to die in the Khyber Pass, I will get Humane Medicine to fly you over so you can see me every day.”
Humane Medicine was a human-rights group Morrell had traveled with in the past. They were based in Rome and were hoping to set up an inoculation program for Afghan children before the Himalayan winter set in in earnest. Morrell was going to roam around talking to anyone he could, observe the state-sanctioned boys’ schools, see if he could find any of the underground girls’ schools, and generally try to get some understanding of the Taliban. He’d even been taking a course on the Koran in a mosque on Devon Avenue.
“I’m going to fall asleep if I don’t start moving,” I murmured into his chest. “Let’s get some dinner for Don. We’ve got that fettuccine I bought on the weekend. Put some tomatoes and olives and garlic in it; that’ll do the job.”
We went back into the living room, where Don was flipping through a copy of the Kansas City Review-Morrell had a critique of some recent books on Guatemala in it. “Good job, Morrell-it’s a tough question, what to do about old juntas in new clothes, isn’t it? Tough question to know what to do about our own government’s involvement with some of these groups, too.”
I drifted for a bit while they talked about South American politics. When Don announced a need for another cigarette, Morrell followed me to the kitchen to pull supper together. We ate at the island countertop in the kitchen, perched on barstools, while Don talked with a certain gloomy humor about the changes in publishing. “While I was in Barcelona, my corporate masters announced to the Journal that writers are just content providers. Then they sent out a protocol on how to type manuscripts, demoting the content providers to clerk-typists.”
A few minutes before ten he pushed his chair away from the counter. “There should be some coverage of the Birnbaum conference on the ten o’clock news. I’d like to watch, although the cameras probably concentrated on the action out front.”
He helped Morrell scrape the plates into the garbage, then went to the back porch for another cigarette. While Morrell loaded the dishwasher, wiped down the counters, and wrapped leftovers in airtight containers, I went into the living room to turn on Channel 13, Global Entertainment’s Chicago station. The evening anchor, Dennis Logan, was just finishing his summary of the upcoming news.
“Events turned stormy at times at the conference on Jews in America being held today at the Hotel Pleiades, but the real surprise came at the end of the afternoon from someone who wasn’t even on the program. Beth Blacksin will have the whole story later in our broadcast.”
I curled up in the corner of Morrell’s couch. I started to nod off, but when the phone rang, I woke up to see two young women on-screen raving about a drug for yeast infections. Morrell, who’d come into the room behind me, muted the set and answered the phone.
“For you, sweet. Max.” He stretched the receiver out to me.
“ Victoria, I’m sorry to phone so late.” Max’s tone was apologetic. “We have a crisis here that I’m hoping you can solve. Ninshubur-that blue stuffed dog Calia takes everywhere-do you have it by any chance?”
I could hear Calia howling in the background, Michael shouting something, Agnes’s voice raised to yell something else. I rubbed my eyes, trying to remember far enough back in the day to Calia’s dog. I had stuffed Calia’s day pack into my case, then forgotten about it in the harassment of getting her to Max. I put the phone down and looked around. I finally asked Morrell if he knew where my briefcase was.
“Yes, V I,” he said in a voice of long-suffering. “You dropped it on the couch when you came in. I put it in my study.”
I set the receiver on the couch and went down the hall to his study. My briefcase was the only thing on his desk, except for his copy of the Koran, with a long green string marking his place. Ninshubur was buried in the bottom, with some raisins, Calia’s day pack, and the tale of the princess and her faithful hound. I picked up the study extension and apologized to Max, promising to run right over with the animal.
“No, no, don’t disturb yourself. It’s only a few blocks and I’ll be glad to get out of this upheaval.”
When I returned to the living room, Don said the suspense was mounting: we were on the second commercial break with the promise of fireworks to come. Max rang the bell just as Dennis Logan began speaking again.
When I let Max into the little entryway, I saw he had Carl Tisov with him. I handed the toy dog to Max, but he and Carl lingered long enough that Morrell came over to invite them in for a drink.
“Something strong, like absinthe,” Carl said. “I had always wished for a large family, but after this evening’s waterworks, I think I didn’t miss so much. How can one small diaphragm generate more sound than an entire brass section?”
“It’s the jet lag,” Max said. “It always hits small ones hard.”
Don called out to us to hush. “They’re finally getting to the conference.”
Max and Carl moved into the living room and stood behind the couch. Don turned up the volume as Beth Blacksin’s pixieish face filled the screen.
“When the Southern Baptists announced their plan to send a hundred thousand missionaries to Chicago this past summer as part of their plan to convert Jews to Christianity, a lot of people were troubled, but the Birnbaum Foundation took action. Working with the Illinois Holocaust Commission, the Chicago Roman Catholic archdiocese, and Dialogue, an interfaith group here in Chicago, the foundation decided to hold a conference on issues that affect not just Illinois ’s substantial Jewish population but the Jewish community in America as a whole. Hence today’s conference, ‘Christians and Jews: a New Millennium, a New Dialogue.’
“At times, it seemed as though dialogue was the last thing on anyone’s mind.” The screen shifted to footage of the demonstration
s out front. Blacksin gave both Posner and Durham equal sound bites, then shifted back to the hotel ballroom.
“Sessions inside the building also grew heated. The liveliest one covered the topic which sparked the demonstrations outside: the proposed Illinois Holocaust Asset Recovery Act. A panel of banking and insurance executives, arguing that the act would be so costly that all consumers would suffer, drew a lot of criticism, and a lot of anguish.”
Here the screen showed furious people yelling into the mikes set up in the aisles for questions. One man shouted the insult that Margaret Sommers and Alderman Durham had both made earlier, that the reparations debate proved that all Jews ever thought about was money.
Another man yelled back that he didn’t understand why Jews were considered greedy for wanting bank deposits their families had made: “Why aren’t the banks called greedy? They held on to the money for sixty years and now they want to hang on to it forever.” A woman stomped up to a mike to say that since the Swiss reinsurer Edelweiss had bought Ajax, she assumed Edelweiss had their own reasons to oppose the legislation.
Channel 13 let us watch the melee for about twenty seconds before Blacksin’s voice cut in again. “The most startling event of the day didn’t take place in the insurance session, but during one on forcible conversion, when a small man with a shy manner made the most extraordinary revelation.”
We watched as a man in a suit that seemed a size too big for him spoke into one of the aisle mikes. He was closer to sixty than fifty, with greying curls that had thinned considerably at his temples.
“I want to say that it is only recently I even knew I was Jewish.”
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