“I know, Papa, but I want to be with her.”
“What you want and what is good for you are two different matters.”
Eli relaxed at his father’s soft tone. “She is good for me.”
“I’m sorry, but your mama and I have talked about this extensively,” Ezekiel rubbed his brows, “and we have overlooked your propensity to see her intimately. But you must find a Jewish woman.” His rough words came from a place of softness and though Ezekiel had said we decided, Eli knew it meant he decided and Eli’s face flushed, knowing the obstinacy of his father.
“This is my life, my decision.” Eli’s sturdy words were yet like a whimper, begging the world to understand.
“We cannot allow this under our roof. I am sorry, Eli.” Ezekiel’s face wrinkled with fret. “The Nazi party has only recently been ordered to ban the activities of the SA and SS. The violence is out of hand and you know as well as I do this ban will not last long. People are not sympathetic to the desires of your heart.”
Eli’s hand became a fixed fist of tension holding the anger of a world not ready to understand, and he slammed it on the desk.
“I love her!”
The anger his father knew was not directed at him, or at the desk of papers, but at the country falling apart, at the unfair treatment, at the tensions growing in the city he once loved and at his desperate grip, trying to hold onto a relationship with the woman he loved, loved more than any other woman. Eli swung the door open and walked out to the living room where Rebecca’s ears perked and she pretended to have not heard anything. He reached his hand out to her and she gripped it with her own, then they walked out of the house and to his car.
Saturday, May 7, 1932
Eli had not seen Rebecca since Pesach and expected to see her this weekend since the whole of last week kept them both too busy to find time with each other. Eli worried the argument between his father and himself would cause one more reason for Rebecca to pull away from him.
He could already feel the awkwardness in the car on the drive home that night, an awkwardness Rebecca did not know what to do with, fidgeting with her fingers and then the car door and then her own door as she said goodnight to Eli with a simple kiss on the cheek. Her kiss felt different that night, still with passion, but sad, a subtle sadness, but there nonetheless. Eli never missed any of the little things when it came to her.
Knocking on her door Saturday midmorning, Rebecca answered with a warm cup of tea in her hands. Another teacup waited on the table. She knew Eli would come over that morning because he called her Friday night. She made his tea just the way he liked it with a slice of lemon. The steam from his teacup was still intense and Eli could see it rising from across the room. He shut the door and walked over to her wood table designed in a similar fashion to his. It always reminded him of the night they made love on his table.
He rested his feet from the race down to her room, sipping his lemon flavored tea. Rebecca’s lace robe covered her silk nightgown, a gown she still wore from sleeping in that morning. She wandered from her bedroom back to the wood table and then hung there like moss dangling from the trees. It was hard for Eli to distinguish her emotions and this worried him. He was always good at reading her, but today she seemed aloof and a bit despondent. He nudged her and she used an unknown smile, one Eli had not yet seen.
“What’s wrong, Rebecca?”
“Nothing,” she insisted, but her avoidance only hinted her need of Eli to pry into her feelings.
“Something is wrong. Would you please tell me?” Eli’s concerned tone wavered in uneasiness. Rebecca sat in the wood chair across from him. Her eyes appeared cloudy and she drew her hand to her other hand as if comforting and consoling herself.
“It’s us…me. I don’t think we can be together anymore.” Rebecca said this statement with weak intonation and a flustered sadness. Eli was taken aback by her proclamation, feeling her pulling away the past few weeks, but never realizing the full weight until her round lips spoke those words.
“Why?” His response was sharp.
“My family, your family, this country, no one desires us to be together. Where is the hope in a future?” Her words were true, but painful to Eli, to her, all the same, “I heard you arguing with your father. I don’t want to do that to you. I am tearing you away from them.”
“No, Rebecca. My father will come to understand. My mother will grow to embrace you like a daughter.” Eli insisted on solving this problem Rebecca had formed in her mind, but he wasn’t accustomed to resolving feelings and the unseen emotions of the heart. Even a lawyer had his limitations. He enjoyed deliberating concrete evidence, figures and facts.
“It’s not just your family, its mine too. It’s everyone.” Rebecca wiped her face, her tears from her reddening eyes. “You can’t tell me the prejudice is not there when it is. I don’t want to admit it, but it’s there all the time. We can’t even get away from it with the people who raised us, the people who are supposed to love us, no matter what.”
“Don’t do this.” Eli’s calm demeanor, which formed habitually out of practice at his law offices, crumbled and his emotions intensified. “Please, don’t do this. I love you.” His words pressed hard into her ears as he drew her close to him. The emotions she tried to hide, to forget, leapt to the foremost of her mind.
“I love you.” Rebecca reached for his hand and her forefinger glided across his knuckles and wrist and back again, “but we have to be apart.” With a heavy breath, she took her hands away and wiped more tears from the corners of her eyes.
Eli pressed her to his chest. “I don’t want to let you go,” he said and Rebecca struggled with her arms to push him back, wanting with every instinct to pull him toward her and make love once more.
“You have to,” she said with a brief exhalation of air, her sigh caught between pleasure and retreat. They pushed and pulled in each other’s arms, not in a dance of passion, but in a dance of sadness and pain.
Rebecca’s robe became entangled in Eli’s embrace, clinging to his fingers and then she pushed him with frail hands and red eyes, with a spirit that wanted to pull him back. Eli turned away, released the silk robe, and walked to the door with his head down and without looking back to say goodbye.
For Eli, goodbye would not come easily, not with someone he loved more than himself. He knew in this moment he loved her more than anything else, because when she asked him to go, he left not for himself as everything in him drew him to her, but for her, because she asked him to. The last request that he could honor between them and he did because he loved her.
The next day was terribly upsetting for Rebecca and she could barely get out of bed, regretting what she had done and second guessing her decision, but the phone rang and she did not have time to dwell in her thoughts. The man on the other end spoke and requested that she come back to the hospital to fill out paperwork if she still wanted the job.
Rebecca hung up with a new hope inside of her, a hope that the course of her life had not ended with Eli, but perhaps had another beginning, a beginning that would be spent in healing the sick and nursing the wounds of patients. She told herself this was best between them. He could live in peace with his family and marry the kind of woman they expected and she could fulfill her familial obligations. She, half despondent and half with earnest diligence, clad herself in a long black silk dress with a gold colored belt and made her way to the hospital across town.
She found the steps of the hospital to be wide and long and had to walk a bit before hitting each next step. The gentleman on the other end of the phone waited for her in the front office and escorted her to a back room where the man who interviewed her sat.
Her long brown hair with hints of warm honey was pinned up into a bun. A black silk scarf wrapped around her neck and her black long heels helped her decadent dress wear easy on the eyes. The man asked her to sit and she obliged with a tightened smile that curled downward in the corners. A bundled mix of nervousness and politenes
s, she fidgeted with her hands before placing them on her lap.
“Miss. Baum, it is Miss, correct?”
“Yes, I’m not married.”
“Fine young lady like yourself should find a husband in no time at all.” Rebecca tried not to linger in the thought of marriage and puffed her smile a bit to show she heard him, then waited for his instructions. “I guess I should get to the point.”
He surveyed a pile of papers and then returned his gaze to Rebecca. “We recently lost a nurse who was with us for some time, a Ms. Eppes.” He said her name slowly as if he had to read it off a chart, “and we need a replacement. She was mostly in charge of handling paperwork up front, but we also needed her to occasionally assist the doctors in the back with their patients. Does this sound like something suitable for you?”
Rebecca nodded before the words came out of her mouth, “Yes, yes,” she said, excited yet uncertain of the way the job had become available to her. “You say a Ms. Eppes left the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“May I inquire the circumstances of her departure?”
“It’s really a private matter, but we received too many complaints from patients who didn’t want to be treated by her.”
With those words, those familiar words reminding her of Aaron, Eli’s friend, who had lost his job because of too many client complaints, Rebecca knew exactly how the job had found its way into her fortunate lap. She nodded, knowing she would be given the job, knowing she would take it, and knowing guilt would bother her because of it.
* * *
Eli awoke Sunday morning early. He desired to divert himself from the breakup with Rebecca and focused on his job with his father. He didn’t know how long he would be able to keep his mind occupied, pushing thoughts of her eyes, smile and body away, but he would attempt it. Rebecca asked him to leave. He had to respect her request.
Neither her family nor his demanded this breakup, though he knew their pressures influenced her decision. Nor was it a social requirement she had no choice but to follow. Rebecca made this decision with her own free will. He couldn’t hold it against her, but it left him with no choice but to dive into the life of law.
He walked into work with his lips pressed tightly, holding in the recent unsettling events of his life, discouraging talk about it, keeping it from his father. He did not want to invoke drama around the breakup, a decision he had not fully accepted himself. He shuffled the papers on his desk and organized the files for the upcoming cases. He ensured the papers his father needed were classified correctly, ready to be picked up by Ezekiel when he dropped by Eli’s office before the ending of the day.
Eli and his father developed this new routine, a system used where they did not need to rely on a clerk at the courthouse. Eli would handle the organization and his father or himself would handle the disclosure for the opposing council, receiving the files again before the day of the case. The system worked.
Eli used every minute, every second fighting his urge to invite the thoughts of Rebecca back into his life. Everything was a distraction from keeping those thoughts seeping too far inside where he would not be able to flee from them. Work was the only place they had not shared together. But the files, papers, and busy work only kept Rebecca at bay until late morning when Eli picked up the newspaper and read a critique on the tenor sounds of Joseph Schmidt.
The memories broke the dam he tried to build and she flooded his mind. Events of the day they spent in the theatre, sitting side by side, invaded his space, her gentle touch to his hand on the theatre seat, her coy laughter, her long brunette locks brushing against his face as he handed her the popcorn. Everything about her on that day infused with his current day and then all the other safely contained memories broke free, refusing to be ignored. Everywhere he went, everyone he saw in one way or another reminded him of her. She could leave him, but she would never leave his mind, his heart, his soul — pieces of her would always remain in him.
* * *
One morning in the middle of the following week, Rebecca slept in her bed and swung her arm up over the pillow in an unconscious attempt to grab a hold of Eli. To her, he lay next to her where he should be. Her arm grasped for his body, needing him close to her, but it hit the hard mattress instead. She awoke and her fingers lingered in the emptiness beside her. A slow tear fell from her eyes and to her bed and then the alarm sounded.
She hurried to bathe and clothe herself in the white uniform provided by the hospital. She rushed down to catch her taxi and scurried through the front doors of the hospital. From the moment she walked into the building her day filled with patients needing care. Some needed her assistance with walking. Some needed her help with paperwork. Some needed a shoulder to cry on and, in the midst of all the healing she provided, her own soul felt as if it was breaking.
“Rebecca, we need you in the back room. A patient is convulsing.” A doctor from the back yelled out to her through the swinging doors leading to the front office.
She hastened to the back room where they put difficult patients. The bald old man was coughing. A nurse had him pinned down with her hand to his arm at one end and a doctor holding him at the other.
Rebecca darted to the patient’s side and the doctor smiled at her with just the left side of his mouth as he released his hand and brushed past her. The old man’s body violently pushed up and down on the bed and Rebecca compared his pain to the way she felt the past week, though hers was not a convulsing of the physical body, but of the heart. The doctor gave the man a shot which settled his body and the nurses freed their hands from their stringent grip.
* * *
Saturday morning, Eli stood outside their building, behind a wall on the other side of the street that fronted another apartment. He wore his grey trench coat hanging over grey slacks and a white buttoned shirt whose collar had not been ironed down well. He watched Rebecca’s room, her lights flickering on and her shadow behind the curtain until she drew it back and her soft face came into view.
He missed seeing her so much, he could barely breathe upon seeing her now, though in secret, though uninvited. He felt partly like a thief stealing something that did not belong to him, except she was a part of him and her physical separation didn’t change that fact for him. He watched her prance down the steps leading to the sidewalk where they had their first conversation and his eyes glazed over her as she sprinted across a side street to catch a cab. In his mind he stood next to her, holding the door open for her and slipping into the cab beside her. He wanted to be there and only there.
Rebecca took the cab downtown to meet two new friends from the hospital. They all had this weekend off and decided to enjoy the day with coffee and shopping. The first friend was short with a full figure, and because she was older, the relationship developed into something akin to a daughter and mother. The second friend to greet her was lean, and young with blonde curly hair that swept past her shoulders and, like Rebecca, had attended University against her parents’ wishes. Rebecca enjoyed her company because they both had to overcome social pressures of staying home and marrying in order to follow their careers.
The three of them sipped their coffees and then continued to shop. Window shopping had always been a pleasure for Rebecca, but every time she passed a clothing shop, she saw a tie and thought of Eli and his assorted collection. Then her mind wandered to the New Year’s Eve party when Eli wore a grey tie with silver sparkles in support of the free spirit that night and she found herself in a regrettable demeanor. But Rebecca decided to enjoy this time out with her friends all the same despite her heavy heart.
Sunday morning, Rebecca awoke to the sounds of her own short scream, an ache resonating Eli’s name on her lips. Her bones physically shook for him. His touch. His jokes. His whisper in her ear. She could almost see him next to her and feel her fingers playing with his hair. He would be there now if she had not asked him to go. A mirage of the man she knew, the man she loved stole her breath and she knew in that moment she could
not be without him.
She threw on her cotton pale pink skirt that fell past the knees and her white blouse with a lace collar before running out of her room, pinching up her hair with bobby pins while she hurried. She raced up the steps leading to his room and knocked, hoping it wasn’t too late, and hoping she hadn’t severed the bonds. She found herself waiting at the door with no answer and tapped on it again.
But Eli was not at home.
Rebecca hurried down the steps and swung the front door of the apartment building open, searching with her eyes, with her mind at where Eli could be this early Sunday morning. Her heels clicked hard against the cobblestone sidewalk, running up to the city’s busy street. When she reached its end, her heel snapped at the same time she saw Eli walking back from the park.
Her eyes made contact with his and her body tipped further. Her arms pushed forward, ready to brace herself for the fall but, before she hit the ground, Eli grabbed hold of her. She toppled over, unable to balance on only one heel and he giggled.
“Have you got it?”
Rebecca smiled a wide, long smile. “I think so.” One leg stood higher than the other. Eli released his grip, but she didn’t want him to let go. She grasped for his arms, no longer a mirage of her mind, and pulled him toward her, soaking him in.
“I don’t want to have to miss you.” She nestled her head in his chest covered in a warm beige coat.
“I don’t want you to.” He brushed his fingers over her hair bun and down her neck. “I’m right here.” From all the hours, minutes, seconds they spent apart, a longing ached inside of each of them, leading them back to Rebecca’s room. In the darkness of the lights turned off, Eli swirled with her in his arms and lifted her to her bed.
The Day the Flowers Died Page 11