by Lee Harris
I had to admit that I liked it myself, my palate, dormant for so many years, finally awakening to the good tastes in life. We spent a pleasant half hour eating and talking about ourselves and our families, leaving the topic of the day for later. Finally, a little after one, we retired to the family room to begin.
“I’d like to ask you about your father,” I said, settling in a chair.
“What can I say? There’s nothing good, but he’s bearing up very well. He’s known about this for a while, but he didn’t want to worry us. That’s the way he’s always been.”
“Where does he live?” I asked.
“With my sister in New York. I invited him to move in with us years ago, but he said he liked the city, that he was a city boy and he didn’t want to live in the country. My sister lives in an apartment in Manhattan, and that gives him the chance to walk in the city. But he’s never given up the old apartment, the one we all grew up in. And now he says he wants to go back and die there.”
“Is it still furnished?”
“It’s pretty much the way he left it a couple of years ago. The furniture is all there, my mother’s china, the old seventy-eight records, the rugs. I don’t want him to go back, but if he insists, we’ll have to go along with it. He’s likely to walk out of my sister’s apartment one day and take a taxi home. That’s the way he is.”
I didn’t blame him and I told her so. Then I took out my notebook and turned to a fresh page. “Tell me what you remember of Iris, from as far back as you can.”
“Well.” Mrs. Margulies gave me a small smile and sat back. She was wearing a two-piece knit dress in a fine black wool with a little white around the hem of the skirt, the round neckline, and the edge of the sleeves. Several thin gold chains hung around her neck, and I could see gold on her right wrist and on several fingers. Some of the rings, I recalled, were antique and very beautiful, with the kind of work one doesn’t see much nowadays. By contrast, her daughter and I wore wedding rings and little other jewelry.
“I think she was always everyone’s favorite aunt,” she said. “She wasn’t more than twenty years older than I and she lived with my grandparents—that’s my father’s parents—when I was growing up. So whenever I went to see my grandparents, I would see Aunt Iris. The others were gone. They were older, they got married, they moved out. But Iris stayed for a long time. I think she must have been in her thirties before she left home.”
“Was there a problem when she left?”
“These are things I wouldn’t know,” Marilyn Margulies said. “My father would know because he was her brother. I have to tell you I come from a family that felt it wasn’t proper to tell children stories about the older generation, and that continues to this day. I’m sure my father knows gossip about people who are long gone, but he would never tell me because I’m a child.”
“I know about things like that, Mrs. Margulies. My own family also kept secrets in much the same way.”
“Chris.” She leaned forward in her chair. “You must call me Marilyn.”
“OK.” I smiled. It would make things easier, and I was happy to be part of her circle of friends. “So she left at some point and got her own apartment. Did she have a roommate?”
“Oh, I don’t think she ever lived with anyone. She didn’t have to. She could afford her own place, and I think she liked keeping house. My grandmother helped her when she got started. I know this because when Aunt Iris died, many of my grandmother’s things were in Iris’s apartment.”
“Then your grandparents probably weren’t upset that a single daughter left home before she married.”
“I don’t think so. And if they were, they came around.”
“Tell me about her work.”
“She was the world’s greatest secretary. She worked for one man for years and years. It wasn’t her first job, but it was her longest and the last one. She was always there when he needed her and he was good to her. I think he once paid her way to Europe for a vacation.”
“Do you think there was anything romantic between them?” I asked.
“You mean like an affair? No, I wouldn’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because—well, Iris wouldn’t do that. I’m sure she kept her social life separate from her work.”
I was somewhat amused at Marilyn’s instant shooting down of my little balloon. It was pretty clear that she had no idea what Iris’s social life was all about, if she had one, but the thought of her aunt engaged in something illicit was too repugnant to consider.
“What was her social life like?” I asked, since the matter was on the table.
“Well, she spent a lot of time with her family and she had a good friend from childhood that she saw a lot of.”
“Did she date?”
“I think so.”
“Did you ever meet anyone she went out with?”
“There was one man—what was his name? He used to visit her at her apartment and sometimes he came to my grandparents’. Mr., Mr.… If I think of the name, I’ll let you know.”
“He was the only one?”
“The only one I ever met, but I’m sure she went out.”
“What about this old friend? Do you remember her at all?”
“Oh yes. Her name was Shirley, Shirley Finster, I think. I used to see her a lot. Do you remember her, Melanie?”
“I met her a couple of times. But only when I was a child. By the time I was in my teens, I don’t remember seeing her anymore.”
“You know, you’re right. I wonder if anything happened or maybe Shirley just moved away. Maybe she got married and moved out of the city.”
“Do you remember seeing her at Iris’s funeral?” I asked.
“Mm. That’s a good question. And I don’t remember.”
“Were you at the funeral?” I asked Mel.
She shook her head. “Mom didn’t want me to come. She was afraid it would upset me. I stayed at school.”
“It would have been too much for her,” Marilyn said. “Just living through that terrible night when Iris walked out was bad enough.”
“Tell me about that night,” I said.
“The seder,” she said reflectively, taking a deep breath. “It was as usual as every seder I’ve ever attended, which means a lot of things happened that were typical of my family and probably don’t happen in anyone else’s family.”
“Like what?”
“Like the usual squabbles about who would sit where. We never had enough room at the big table for everyone, so we put the children at a separate table in another room. Sometimes the older ones didn’t want to sit with the younger ones and sometimes the little ones wanted to be with their parents and we would play a kind of musical chairs until we had everything settled. Then there were always the latecomers and my father would get angry because we wanted to start on time, and I don’t think we ever started on time in my whole life.”
“I remember your father looking at his watch at eight and saying he’d been promised an eight-o’clock start.”
“See?” Marilyn said. “Nothing changes. And although I can’t really tell you what happened and what didn’t happen that night, I’m sure most of those things went on and Pop got angry because we were late and someone probably showed up fifteen minutes after we got started and made Pop angry all over again.”
“Uncle Dave was late,” Mel said. “I remember. Grandpa was furious.”
“Uncle Dave is always late. He’s never learned how to be on time in his life. And he never will.”
“What about Iris?” I asked.
“Oh, Iris was there early. She was helping Mom in the kitchen.”
“Were you there when she arrived?”
“I don’t think so,” Marilyn said. “I think she was probably there most of the afternoon and I came later.”
“So you didn’t see her hang up her coat or put her pocketbook down.”
“No. I’m sure she was there when I came.”
“Do you reme
mber what she was wearing?”
“Not really. I think she had an apron on when I got there and I just didn’t notice later when she took it off. But I can tell you she always dressed well, and for a seder she would have worn something very nice, probably new. She was a beautiful woman, tiny, perfect figure; clothes looked like they were made for her.”
“How did she act that night?”
“The same. It’s hard to separate out that seder from all the others, but you can believe that after she disappeared, we all gave that night a lot of scrutiny, and I couldn’t remember anything that seemed different or unusual. I told that to the police. Do you remember how our seder began, Chris? With the four questions?”
“I remember very well. All the children asked them.”
“The first question is: ‘Wherefore is this night different from all other nights?’ I must have asked myself that question a thousand times in the weeks and months that followed. What was different about that night? What was different about Iris? What was different about the people at the table? And the answer was always nothing. It was the same as the year before and the year before that. What was different was that Iris walked out of the apartment when she opened the door for Elijah.”
“Do you remember her leaving the table?”
“Yes, I remember. I was sitting near her, not right next to her, maybe two seats down. And somebody said, ‘It’s time for Elijah,’ and Iris said, ‘I’ll go.’ And she pushed her chair back from the table and walked out of the room.”
“How long did it take for people to notice that she hadn’t come back?”
“It took a while,” Marilyn said. “We just continued with the Haggadah. I don’t think anyone really noticed she wasn’t there. People get up and sit down all the time. I know when it happened,” she said as if she had just remembered. “The reading went around the table and then it was her turn and her seat was empty. Mom called her. Then maybe my brother did. Then maybe I got up to look for her. Nobody was in the bathroom. The bedrooms were empty. Only the children were at the children’s table. So I went to the front door. It was still open just a crack. No one was in the kitchen. I closed the front door and went back to the table and I said I couldn’t find her. I didn’t think for a moment she had left the apartment. I just thought she was somewhere and I didn’t know where.”
“Do you remember what happened then?”
“I think everyone started calling and looking for her. Pop was furious. He wanted to continue the reading. But Mom was a little nervous. And then Aunt Sylvie started to cry. Do you remember Sylvie?”
“I remember.”
“She’s a very delicate little woman, very emotional. Her husband died years ago, but she can’t talk about him without getting teary. Not that I blame her. He was a wonderful man and he was very good to her. But when she started to cry, I felt scared.”
“How long did you look for her?”
“I don’t know, another five minutes, maybe.”
“Did anyone go outside to look for her?”
“Not right away. Who would imagine she would leave in the middle of the seder?”
“Do you remember who the first person was that suggested it?”
“No. All of a sudden it seemed to occur to all of us at once. My brother put his coat on and went out to look for her, and we kept looking around the apartment like crazy people, looking under beds, looking in closets. And then my father said, ‘Call the police.’ ”
“How long do you think it was from the time Iris left the table till the police were called?”
“A long time,” Marilyn said. “Fifteen minutes, anyway. Maybe more. It’s because no one noticed she wasn’t at the table for so long.”
“What happened when the police came?”
“It was chaos. My husband had called and he told them over the phone that Aunt Iris had been grabbed by a man in the hall, which wasn’t true, but he wanted them there right away and it worked. Two officers came, they talked to us, they asked us some questions, and then one of them said, ‘What color coat was she wearing?’ And that was the first time we thought to look for her coat in the closet. It wasn’t there.”
“I can imagine what the officers said.”
“They said that she probably went out for a breath of fresh air. By that time, they had pretty much straightened out the story and they were angry that my husband had lied to them over the phone. They said we should call her at home, that she’d probably be there soon, and let them know what happened.”
“You said your brother went looking for her.”
“He walked around the block, and when he came back, he saw the police car and came upstairs.”
“And you called Iris’s number.”
“A hundred times. In the morning my brother called the police and said she hadn’t been seen all night. They don’t investigate right away, you know.”
“I know.”
“By the time they were ready to get started, someone found her body.”
“How long had she been dead?”
“Long enough that they were pretty sure she’d been killed on the first night of Passover.”
“So all your fears were well founded,” I said.
“All our fears, the ones we admitted to and the others, the ones we couldn’t bring ourselves to think.”
“What was she wearing when they found her?”
“Her coat,” she said, as though that were the important thing. “She was wearing her new winter coat.”
“Were there signs of sexual abuse?”
“None.”
“What about jewelry?”
“Now I have to think. What I remember is that she was wearing a gold ring, but I think everything else was gone, her watch, her bracelet, whatever she was wearing on her dress.”
“And her purse?”
“It was never found.”
“Mom,” Mel said, “I thought they found—”
“They never found anything,” Marilyn said firmly. “And that’s the whole story, Chris. The police came and questioned everyone who had been at the seder. They were very nice, very polite. They took notes and asked if there was anything else we wanted to say, any ideas we had on who could have done this, but of course, nobody had any ideas at all. My father was a wreck. My mother almost had a nervous breakdown over it But they never came up with anything.”
“Did they talk to Shirley Finster?”
“They must have. They asked for names of people she worked with and friends and neighbors, and I’m sure we all gave them whatever we knew.”
“Do you have a theory of your own?” I asked.
“I never thought of it as a theory. You can imagine I’ve given a lot of thought to what happened to her. One possibility is that she didn’t feel well and instead of worrying us, she grabbed her coat and bag and went downstairs to find a cab and go home. While she was waiting, some stranger grabbed her. If that’s what happened, it’s as good as saying there’s no answer. The other possibility is that she met someone for some reason and he killed her. But I can’t tell you why. If that’s what happened, she would have gone downstairs to meet whoever it was, give him or tell him whatever she had to give or tell, and planned to come back up before anyone ever noticed she was missing. That’s why she had her coat and purse with her. And if I have a theory, that’s my theory.”
She looked very worn and I said, “Let’s take a break.”
“Good idea,” Mel said. “I’ll just boil some water and we’ll have tea.”
“I can use a cup,” her mother said.
5
We talked about other things while we had tea and cake. Marilyn walked over to the window where Mel kept an arrangement of beautiful plants and admired how healthy they looked. I sat and glanced over the notes I had taken. Whatever I had hoped to learn from Marilyn, it wasn’t there. As I reviewed what she had said, what popped out at me was the idea that Iris had simply not felt well and decided to go home without making an issue of it. As theo
ries go, it satisfied all the facts I knew, that she had taken her purse and coat, that she had volunteered to open the door for Elijah to excuse herself from the table, that wherever the apartment was located, New York streets are not always the safest place for a single woman to walk at night.
I accepted another cup of tea and removed myself from the mother and daughter, who had begun a conversation that did not involve me. Holding my cup, I sauntered out into the living room. The sun was streaming into the room, highlighting the pieces of colored glass on tables and shelves, bringing out the color in the furniture and rugs. It was a comfortable room, pleasing to the eye and body. The Grosses didn’t spend much time here, and it seemed a shame that the prettiest room was used the least.
“There you are.” Mel stood at the entrance to the living room. “You slipped away so quietly, I thought you’d gone home.”
“Like Aunt Iris,” I said.
“Is that what you think, Chris?”
“It’s certainly the simplest explanation.”
“Come back and join the crowd.”
I followed her into the family room, set my cup and saucer down, and sat in my chair. “I really need something to convince me that Iris didn’t just decide to go home, maybe because she had a headache, maybe because she was just plain tired.”
“She wouldn’t have left without saying something,” Marilyn said.
“I know that you feel very sure of that, but look at it from my point of view. Here’s a sweet, thoughtful woman who’s had a big day helping her sister-in-law in the kitchen. She’s already drunk a couple of glasses of wine and eaten a big meal. She’s exhausted. Maybe tomorrow she’s helping someone else prepare another seder, and if she doesn’t get home and get a night’s sleep, she’ll be a wreck. When she gets home, she’ll give you a call so you don’t worry.”
“I see what you mean,” Mel said. “You look at it that way—and I’m sure that’s the way the police would look at it—and it makes perfect sense. I guess if a neighbor of mine told me that kind of story, I’d be inclined to see it that way myself.”