The Witch and the Borscht Pearl

by Angela Zeman

  “Stanley wasn’t a swimmer?” I asked.

  Zoë made a rude noise. “Lifeguard every summer in the Catskills, growing up. How could he drown?” She started pacing again.

  Pearl turned pain filled eyes to Zoë. “You’ve never forgiven her. If I can, why can’t you?”

  Zoë’s expression became stony. “I might’ve, eventually. Until Solly. Because it was like dominoes. She began the whole thing that ended up with Solly—” she sat again and looked down at her lap. Her dry misshapen hands rubbing together made a rustling sound. “Same old pattern, same old Bella.”

  “She stole your fiancé again,” I blurted at Pearl.

  “No, she didn’t,” said Pearl.

  “Yes, she did,” insisted Zoë.

  “Finish,” commanded Mrs. Risk softly.

  Obediently Zoë nodded. “After Stanley bought it in France, some months later, I don’t know how many, Solly met Velma on the road. This was before Velma got popular, became ‘Pearl’. He was looking for prospective clients and saw Velma’s act. And he fell for her. Everybody knows the reason he never married all these years is because he loved Velma.”

  Zoë turned and for the first time, looked scornfully at her friend. Pearl lowered her eyes as if ashamed. Zoë said, “You finally said yes this summer. But just like with Stanley, Bella crooked one little finger and hooked him hard. All the women he’d shtupped and dropped, waiting for you, and that goddamned Bella hits town one minute, and gets a proposal the next.” She paused, as if she needed a moment to control her rage.

  “If you’re too blind to see Bella for what she is, then maybe you are ‘Pearl,’ for real. An empty-headed stage personality.” She spoke the last words with bitterness then turned and stalked off toward the back of the house. “I’ll make you all the tea in the world,” I heard her mutter before she passed through the far doorway, tears evident in her voice. Ilene jumped up and went after her.

  When Ilene disappeared, Mrs. Risk asked Pearl, “Is she right? Did Bella steal Solly’s affections away from you?”

  Pearl picked up a needlepointed sofa pillow and clasped it to her chest, her bony fingers like claws. “No,” she finally said.

  Then suddenly she yawned. “I couldn’t sleep after I got home from the hospital.” She grinned forlornly. “The cops wouldn’t let me.”

  Mrs. Risk regarded Pearl steadily. “On top of which, Zoë’s sturm and drang is very wearing.”

  “She’s upset.”

  “How about you?”

  Pearl shrugged. “I guess I’m too stunned to know what I’m feeling.”

  Mrs. Risk stood, walked to a sideboard laden with bar supplies and de-corked a bottle of wine. She handed glasses of a glittering ruby liquid to each of us. “To friends,” she murmured as she sat down. We all took a sip.

  Pearl, looking faintly startled, said, “This is good. This isn’t Kosher. Where’d I get this?”

  Mrs. Risk answered with an amused look, “From me. Last week.”

  Pearl’s eyebrows raised humorously. “Hey, I pick pretty good friends.”

  Cheered by the wine’s warmth in my stomach, I leaned over to rejuvenate the neglected fire. A silence, comfortable this time, filled the room, disturbed only by the muted battering of rain on the window and the friendly snapping of the fire.

  “I often consider that I owe my career as a comedian to Bella,” commented Pearl after a few moments.

  Mrs. Risk nodded. “Because she married Stanley in your place?”

  Pearl looked at Mrs. Risk, startled. “Yup. I had it all planned. Bella would be my ready-made child and Stanley would support us. We’d buy a two story colonial in an upper middle-class suburb. Bella would go to Barnard, and I’d play cards every summer at the Beach Club. I would’ve worn gloves and a hat to social evenings. My life would’ve been so—so …” her eyes were large, mesmerized at the picture she herself had painted, “so regular.”

  Then she exhaled. “Thank God it never happened.”

  “Instead you became ‘Pearl’.”

  “Exactly. Looking back now, I can’t imagine never having been Pearl. I would’ve been Velma Fischmann, a whole different person. A blah, tucked into a box person.”

  After another pause, she asked, “Did you know I was named for Velma Banky? My mother was star struck and admired the silent screen actresses. So even then, I was aimed towards the stage. Just didn’t know it.”

  “How did you become a comedian?” I asked, fascinated to watch the shadows of memories flit across Pearl’s broad worn face.

  “I was shy as a kid,” she said. “Chunky and oversized, I felt ugly and awkward in people’s presence, and was awfully lonely. I remember when I was eight or nine, I discovered that if I made jokes, people would laugh. I figured if people thought I was fun, they’d want to be my friends. It worked,” she said simply.

  “I never thought of entering show business until Bella disappeared. But when my whole world crashed around me, I looked around, saw nobody depending on me anymore and said, ‘Why not?’ I had nothing to lose.

  “I’d been absorbing things at the theater where I worked—what was professional, what wasn’t. Backstage, while swabbing out the dressing rooms and tending lights, I’d keep performers relaxed and distracted with one liners. And for something to do, they coached me on pace, timing—the mechanics of my craft. And the mechanics of survival, like ‘nem di gelt’. First thing you learn, or starve. ‘Get the money’.

  Pearl stroked the ice blue brocade of the couch cushions. “Because I’d quit school, it was really the only education I got.

  “At first my goal was to act. I figured I’d break in at the theaters, then move on to Hollywood about a year later.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. I had absolutely no realistic idea of what I was attempting to do, and definitely hadn’t thought then about comedy as a profession.

  “I got a glossy 8x10 photo made, dropped off copies at the theatrical agencies. I read “Show Business” and “Actors Cues” for casting calls, and started knocking on doors.

  “I tried out for everything,” she said dryly. “What a horrible disaster. To keep up with job rumors, I hung out in the Star Diner with other hopefuls. When somebody suggested I might joke around with the secretaries at the casting offices to be remembered, I put together some of my earlier backstage routines.

  “Then one afternoon I learned comedians could make thirty bucks for one night! Serious money!

  “There weren’t many women doing it then, not like today. Totie Fields, Pat Carroll, that was about it. Elaine May and Joan Rivers hadn’t arrived yet. Looked like a wide open field to me.”

  “So you put together an act,” I said.

  “What I thought was an act,” Pearl corrected. “Really just a string of stolen jokes. Solly caught my act in a Bethlehem, P.A., dive. I’d ducked out of sight after the first show to hide from the manager. I had to get one foot on that stage for the second show before the manager could find me to fire me. That meant, by AGVA rules, I had to get paid. If they fire you right after the first show, they don’t owe you a penny, see. Solly,” Pearl laughed, “Solly threw a drink at the piano player to keep the manager occupied until I snuck onstage for the second show.

  “But in spite of my lousy act, in spite of the audience hating me, Solly said he saw something. He asked if I was prepared to do whatever he told me.”

  Pearl flashed a quick grin of self-mocking mischief. “Can you picture it? A tall handsome Jewish prince asking me to put myself completely in his hands? I backed off like he was yesterday’s halitosis. No way I was going to trust this movie star face. It was chauvinism in a way, maybe because of Bella’s looks and what she’d done. I said no. I’d manage myself. I delayed my success by a good two years, doing that.

  “But Solly, when we finally got together, he was the best. He made fun of my failures, kept me going when I got discouraged, fought managers for my paycheck, made me soup when I was sick. And sometimes fed it to me. He turned down ven
ues that were wrong for me, edited my act, bought my clothes, and invested my—my money. He got me where I am today.”

  Pearl began to cry. “I can’t believe he’s gone forever.” She dropped her face into her hands and sobbed as if her heart would break. Mrs. Risk put her arms around her and rocked her gently on the sofa like a child.

  After a long while, Pearl straightened up and began wiping her red wet face with the backs of her hands. I delved into Mrs. Risk’s basket for tissues, which I handed over. She blew her nose. “He was my right hand all those years. He kept dropping other acts he was managing until I was his only client for the last ten years. We depended on each other. I won’t know how to … to … live without him.”

  Mrs. Risk made soft murmuring noises.

  “Were you going to marry him?” she asked softly, when Pearl had calmed down.

  “Well, I was.” Pearl looked up defensively. “I know it was selfish of me, but I felt tired and worn down, and I missed Bernie. Oh, how I miss my Bernie.” She took a deep breath and another shaky sip of wine. “Bernie, he was the love of my life, corny as that might sound. But he was. I figure I’ve been as lucky as one woman could get, I’d never find anyone like him again. But I wanted—”

  “A friend?” I suggested.

  “Well, more. I felt the loneliness like I never had before. Solly was always so good to me, I thought I couldn’t do any better. He was some guy, that Solly.”

  “But when Bella came along?” asked Mrs. Risk.

  “Solly fell like a rock. Like I had for Bernie. I recognized the symptoms. How could I begrudge him? Actually, my conscience’d been bothering me anyway.”

  “So Bella stole nothing from you,” said Mrs. Risk.

  Pearl shook her head. “Far from it. I still had my friend and business manager. He’d be my brother-in-law, too. Plus, now I had a sister. I really preferred having her.” Tears began welling in her eyes. She tried to smile, but failed. “But—”

  “But what?” I asked.

  “But maybe not,” finished Pearl lamely. “Maybe now I’ve got nobody.”

  “Pearl, you have dozens of friends who love you, who are devoted to you.” Mrs. Risk touched Pearl’s broad hand as she spoke. “Believe me, you’re far from alone.”

  6

  AFTER A FEW PEACEFUL minutes of watching the fire, Mrs. Risk suddenly said, “Zoë seems deeply troubled. Granted, she’s a close friend and loves you, Pearl, but is something else upsetting her?”

  “Zoë feels I let Bella betray me a second time. She knows I’m extremely sensitive about betrayal.”

  “But she’s angrier about it than you are,” I put in.

  Pearl shifted uneasily, “My heart attack really frightened her. Plus, I can’t get her to understand why I feel the way I do about Bella’s return.”

  Then she said, “When Bella reappeared, I’d come to an odd place in my life. When Bernie died, and I became so ill, and then my accountant, Marv, died … I’d known Marvin practically since birth. I guess it was all those things put together, but suddenly I found myself wondering. All those years of hard work, getting ahead. Now that I was here, how important was it, really?

  “I’ve had a terrific life, I know that. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what I’ve had. I should appreciate it, I earned it. But now, I look around. I wasn’t able to have children. I have no husband. When I die, who’ll say my kaddish? And who’ll remember how I broke up the house in Minneapolis, telling Yiddish jokes to a bunch of Swedish dairy farmers who never saw a Jew in their lives?”

  Pearl put down her empty wine glass and pushed herself to her feet. She wandered over to the large window and stood there for a moment facing the turmoil raging outside. Then she turned around.

  Pearl met Mrs. Risk’s eyes with her brimming ones. “I missed my sister. I’d longed for her for years, but now I urgently wanted her back. It wasn’t a coincidence she walked into my house that day in August. I’d hired a detective to find her. She was still in France, had never left in all those years. We talked over the phone, and she sounded different. I thought, well, life had changed me from a ‘Velma’ to a ‘Pearl’, couldn’t it be possible she’d changed, too? I sent her a plane ticket. And I never regretted it for a moment. I still don’t.”

  “What about the theft of your necklace, Pearl? Did you refuse to call the police because you were sure the thief was Bella?”

  “No, no, I just …” She shrugged, not finishing what it was ‘just’. “The necklace is nothing, in the face of all this.” She fluttered a hand vaguely in the air, a gesture I assumed was meant to encompass the reconciliation, Solly’s death, and the suspicions surrounding herself and Bella. “I can’t worry about that necklace now.”

  Mrs. Risk asked, “Have you searched your house? Would it help for me to conduct a search myself?”

  Pearl looked at Mrs. Risk uneasily. “I don’t know why you keep bringing it up. It’s not important now.”

  I opened my mouth, preparing to state indignantly that it might mean something to Bella if we could prove her innocence, but an amazing idea occurred to me, and I closed it with a snap.

  Watch and listen, Mrs. Risk often says. Watch and listen. Even if the person talking is a fool, she says, even just gauging the extent of the person’s foolishness might be a valuable piece of knowledge. I watched Pearl’s increasing discomfiture with interest.

  “Bella didn’t steal your ‘Borscht Pearl’ necklace, did she,” stated Mrs. Risk gently. “And you knew it all the time.”

  They stared at each other. Then Pearl exhaled. I was dumbfounded to hear her say, “No. She didn’t. And yes, I knew.”

  I asked, “You mean you found it? Or did someone else take it?”

  Pearl started to speak, then stopped.

  “Why did you tell everyone the thief was Bella, Pearl?” Mrs. Risk pressed.

  “I can’t explain it now. It’s too complicated.”

  “But the necklace is safe?”

  “Oh, yes.” She gave a nervous little laugh. “Actually, Bella does have it. She’s keeping it for me.” She looked miserable. “Listen, please don’t tell Zoë, or—or anyone, would you?”

  “Why not? Don’t you realize most people still think Bella stole it?” I blurted, then cursed my uncontrollable mouth. I sneaked a glance at Mrs. Risk, but she only continued to watch Pearl with the concentrated serenity of a circling hawk.

  Pearl nodded, not meeting my eyes. “I know it looks—”

  “Bella has it,” repeated Mrs. Risk.

  “Yes. The necklace is valuable, but that’s not why it means so much to me. I kept it nearby, where I could see it or, or wear it if I wanted to, to feel closer to Bernie. Sometimes I need him so badly. I wish more than anything it could’ve been me instead of him that died.” Her eyes again welled with tears.

  So then why give it to Bella, I wondered. Emboldened, I asked, “Could I see it sometime? It sounds incredible, and the pictures in the newspapers are always so blurry.”

  She flushed as if I’d given her an extravagant compliment. “Of course,” she said, her eyes shining. “In fact, I’ll call Bella to tell her I need it back now.”

  Mrs. Risk said, “We’ll be visiting Bella after we leave here. If you don’t mind, could you call and ask her to let us see it? I’m curious about it myself.”

  “Sure,” she said and she left the room.

  A few minutes later we heard a brief muffled cry. Mrs. Risk bounded from her chair and ran down the hall, with me close behind. We found Pearl in her bedroom, on her knees beside the bed. A rug had been pushed aside, revealing a floor safe, the lid of which was thrown back like a trap door. She was staring aghast at an empty velvet-lined case she held in her hands.

  Dresser drawers and closet doors around the room all hung open, clothing hanging out and tossed every which way. A strident beep proclaimed that the phone receiver on her bedside table was off the hook.

  “Pearl, what is it?” Mrs. Risk asked sharply.

  “It’
s not here! I called. Bella said she never got it. So I looked—Oh, Bernie. It’s really gone.” Pearl dropped the empty necklace case back into the hole in the floor, and began to cry. “I don’t understand,” she sobbed.

  Mrs. Risk and I helped Pearl up to sit on the side of the bed and I fixed the receiver to stop its racket.

  “We have to file a police report, Pearl,” said Mrs. Risk. “You realize that? If it’s actually stolen this time.”

  Pearl stared up at Mrs. Risk, her face horrified. “No. I can’t! Everything will be all right. No! No. I remember now, I must have left it at the bank …” She crumpled, sliding from the bed. Mrs. Risk and I caught her just before she would’ve hit the floor.

  We helped her back onto the bed and I ran for Zoë. I found her staring sourly at a steeping tea pot on the kitchen counter. I didn’t need to speak. One look at my expression and she raced back down the hall before me, with Ilene close behind.

  In a few moments Zoë had removed Pearl’s clothes and dropped a loose flowing gown over her head with the expertise of the costumer she was. Mrs. Risk called Dr. Savoia, then we waited in the living room like unwanted brush salesmen. Far from helping, we’d seemed to worsen Pearl’s condition. The fate of her necklace could only be speculated, but we clearly wouldn’t be allowed to file a report of its theft.

  Zoë stalked into the living room. This time I had no heart to resent her belligerence. It was with a newly humbled tone I asked, “How is she?”

  She propped her two fists on her billowing hips and glared at me. “You believe me now? Don’t come here again. If she lives through this, it won’t be with your kind of help.”

  Mrs. Risk stood. “We’re leaving, but first tell me why Bella isn’t here? Pearl’s clearly very attached to her.”

  “Bella’s where Bella wants to be, to hell with anybody else, as always. She’s installed herself like some damned queen at Solly’s mansion in East Hampton, like she’d married him already. Would she lower herself to stay here with her sister who needs her? Hell, no. And now Velma’s got the meshugina idea that all this trouble with the law is her fault.”