by Thelma Adams
“No. She’s no housekeeper. The only way she’d be seen in an apron is if she wasn’t wearing anything else. And when she gives you a spanking, it’s an ouch to remember!”
“Now that’s something I’ll never be able to forget,” Thelma said, placing her right fingers on her solar plexus. “You’re giving me heartburn.”
“Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
“I never gave you anything.”
“I told you not to say that.” He leaned back and examined his fingernails. “Annie was right: you never listen.”
“Since when are you talking to Annie again?”
“Since I had a windfall—I need to park some cash.”
“Isn’t that why God created banks?”
“Did he? Doesn’t seem like his style. Banks—I don’t trust them. A mutual friend introduced me to the homeowner, Mrs. Reckholder. When her daughter married and moved to Philly, the widow wanted to sell and join her. Now, thanks to Uncle Abie, she can—with her mortgage transferred and a sack of cash. It’s a good investment and it doesn’t hurt for me to have a permanent address when the cops show: ties to the community.”
“If they met Annie, they’d know you’re still a flight risk. Something stinks.”
“Trust me. This way, when Louis gets his discharge, he has a place to live, raise a family if he wants. It was Annie’s idea.”
“I just shivered, and it’s a heat wave. Nothing good ever comes from Annie.”
“Don’t worry. I got this. Nobody cons a con. She said it was a peace pipe, but I know better, since I’m fronting the tobacco. What Annie wants more than anything else is a castle for her little king with a backyard and a front porch. And it’s me that’s giving it to her, not that meeskait Jesse.”
“So suddenly you care what Annie wants? What about me?”
“I got you covered. What’s mine is yours. I brought you here first so you can pick your room before Annie arrives and geschreis. Let’s see if she can be an ungrateful bitch once I hand her the keys.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. Is it in your name?”
“What?”
“Is your name on the deed?”
“What, now you’re a lawyer?”
“What’s the angle?”
“There’s no angle.”
“You forget I’ve known you all my life. Spill.”
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “You got me. On Tuesday, we’re going to the clerk’s office on Joralemon Street and I’m putting it in Mama’s name.”
“Why would you do anything for them? Why put it in her name?”
“You’re still a minor, and if the cops want to put a lien on what I own, they can’t, because it’s not in my name. But you and I, we know who bought it.”
“I hope you didn’t outsmart yourself.”
With nimble thief’s fingers, Abie jiggled and then rotated the key in the lock. He shoved the door and ushered Thelma inside while glancing over his shoulder. As they entered the tiled entryway, heat and stale air smothered them. Thelma hesitated, unsettled. It didn’t smell like the home of a widow who’d recently left, but something more vinegary and sadder. She eyed Abie, who bemusedly removed his jacket and looped it on the brass doorknob.
“Welcome to Lorber Hall. It’s not bad, huh, Temmy?”
“I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but did somebody die here?”
“Not me!” he said, and then, “Look, it’s the Ritz: upstairs and downstairs.”
“All you need is a top hat and tails.”
Abie danced up and down the staircase along the house’s shared right wall. He was a regular George M. Cohan, raising his cap and kicking out his legs. When he returned to the bottom, he grabbed Thelma’s waist and whirled her around the empty living room. “You’re the only girl for me.”
She snorted like a mare, which made them both laugh. Dancing madly, he shook out her worries. Still, she wondered who, without a gun to their head, would have chosen the brown floral carpeting. It seemed to be defending the floors from filth by being uglier than dirt. Empty walnut curtain rods hung above the pair of windows with the rings askew, as if someone had hurriedly yanked away the fabric.
Breathing heavily, they strolled through oak pocket doors into the dining room with a built-in buffet. Because it was a row house, the absence of side windows darkened the interior rooms. Below them, the parquet floor had a Greek key design forming a bracelet around the perimeter. Through a swinging door, a window overlooking a fenced-in concrete patch brightened the kitchen. Thelma crossed the room and squashed her nose against the glass, imagining nights under the stars catching a breeze and releasing it.
They had their own private piece of the world. She should be thrilled, but what she felt was anxiety and she couldn’t figure out why. Putting on a smile, she turned and grabbed Abie’s hand and said, “Thank you.”
“Aw, it was nothing,” he said. “Let’s pick your room.”
“So this is what it’s like to be rich.”
“Minus the diamonds and chauffeurs,” he said.
When she thought of wealth, she remembered that kid sitting opposite her in the streetcar when they went to visit her brothers at the orphanage. The two girls hadn’t exchanged a glance: she’d stared and the other had ignored her. She’d been invisible, a bundle of rags with a shorn head trapped between two mountains, Mama and Annie. She recalled the bright-red wool coat with the mouton collar and the black Scottie dog that licked his owner’s lips. But more than that, she considered the girl’s self-possession, her ankles crossed, secure in her perfect coat with black velvet buttons, bearing a dog and her privilege. At the time, Thelma had wanted to change places, to go where that girl was going, drink her hot milk and honey with vanilla wafers, warm her feet in the stranger’s slippers. And when she’d gazed at Mama, she’d felt more hostage than daughter.
Abie poked her and pointed to a door off the kitchen. “How about this room, princess?”
She wrinkled her nose and then realized how strange it felt to reject something on offer, suspicious there wouldn’t be another choice. Still, she said, “Better for Mama, right?”
“Never underestimate the advantage of a quick back-door exit.”
“I don’t see myself shinnying over the fence,” she said. “I’m too clumsy.”
“We don’t want you to break that magic leg.”
“Let’s try the second floor. Can you believe it—a house with upstairs and downstairs? I never thought I’d see the day.”
“You gotta dream big,” he said, offering his elbow. “Shall we?”
“Let’s!”
On the top landing, Thelma cracked a door to a narrow room. She pulled a string dangling from a lone bulb. “Bedroom or closet?”
“Closet,” he answered. “That broom is a dead giveaway.”
“Smart,” she said, shadowing Abie into the big front bedroom as wide as the building. Light flooded through three double-hung windows facing Montauk Avenue and splashed across the window seat. She cracked the doors of a built-in closet and (despite a mothball blast and an undernote of exotic oriental perfume) imagined a yard of gossamer dresses above three pairs of shoes. She was happy but immediately suspected her elation, searching for the catch. She turned to Abie. “Did someone die in here?”
“Still with the dying: Did anyone ever tell you that you’re morbid?”
“You taught me everything I know.”
They sat beside each other in the window seat. She looked away from him and he took her hand. When she looked back, his eyes were studying her face. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s wonderful, Abie, a home of our own.”
His eyes didn’t leave her face. She looked down, playing with his pinkie ring. “Tell me, Temmy. What aches?”
“It’s perfect, Abie, I’m just overwhelmed, verklempt.”
“No, you’re not,” he said, softening his voice and focusing all his attention on her. “I can see bees buzzing in your head. Tell me
what’s what.”
“It couldn’t be better,” she said, stroking his cheek. “It’s a happy ending.”
“You want to sleep with Mama your whole life?”
“You know that’s not it.” The seventeen-year-old wondered what she truly wanted—and presented with the house, which should have been a dream, she felt in her gut that she needed something, some acceptance, that wasn’t four walls and a roof. “Who cares what I want?”
“Try me,” he said. She bit her lip. “Let it out.”
“Abie, you share everything with me, and nobody treats me better.”
He raised his eyebrows, creating a cliff on his forehead. “But?”
“But nothing,” she said. “It seems that whatever it is I want, whatever that turns out to be, can’t be found at the end of this hallway, or that one. I don’t know. I feel like I want to break free.”
“Ah,” he said, nearing her and not letting her eyes wander. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I don’t even know what I want, exactly, or how to string the words. I have to figure out who I really am in the world, not the husband thief, the wicked little sister, the runt.” She didn’t know how to explain that she wanted to feel the way she’d felt with Giorgio: light on her feet and beloved, sparklers everywhere and singing in the shadows.
She knew what she didn’t want to be: judged by a hanging jury. Fame or infamy: not for her. She wasn’t obsessed with becoming someone who made the papers, like her brothers. She wasn’t good enough to perform onstage, but she wanted to dance through life, to feel that joy she’d felt downstairs, her elation in her brothers’ company. She wanted to love and be loved.
He touched her cheek. “What are you afraid of?”
“No one ever asks me that. I’m afraid all the time. Annie scares the hell out of me. I’m afraid that everything she says about me is true. I’m afraid I’ll be stuck with her forever. I’m afraid that I’m unlovable.”
“I love you,” he said. “And I don’t throw that around like loose change.”
“The feeling is mutual,” she said. “From that first time you rescued me from Annie, you’ve always seemed certain who you are. I don’t know who I am.”
“I don’t, either.” He looked down at his shoes, licked his finger, and wiped away a spot. “I know who they made me.”
“No one is more his own person than you!”
“That’s what you think, kiddo.” He laughed. “Who had time to bother with who I was, or what I wanted, before the knives came out? I know what I don’t want—and that’s somebody else’s boot on my neck. Not Annie’s, not that stupid jerk Nathan Rothman or his bosses, not the cops nor the army neither. I’m tough, sure, but it’s not like I had a choice.”
“This house isn’t for us, is it, Abie?” she asked. “It’s wonderful—don’t get me wrong. But it’s Annie’s dream, not mine. What I really wanted when I came to meet you was to escape Mama and Annie.”
“I understand, Temmy, I do. The best cell in prison is still behind bars.”
Chapter 20
As they walked from room to room on Montauk Avenue, Thelma asked, “What other bedrooms are there?”
“Not big enough for you, Temmy?”
“This one’s for Annie.”
“Who cares what Annie wants? She’s getting a house from stoop to nuts on my dime. You’ll never get what you want if you don’t take it.”
“I’m not picking a fight from day one.”
“Since when is me giving you the best room picking a fight?”
“Don’t futz with me, Abie. She’ll explode and I’ll be yanking shrapnel from my tuchus for months while you’re out playing the joker. Who needs the shpilkes?” Not her. But tsuris seemed inevitable, because she heard her sister’s shrill voice inside her own head. Annie made everyone miserable until she got what she wanted. If she wasn’t allowed to control the situation, to decide who was coming to Passover, when the meal would start, and when everyone would leave so that her children’s precious bedtime wouldn’t be disturbed, she’d melt down. Everyone in the household, even Mama, dreaded that outburst. Not Abie: He didn’t do fear. He did revenge.
Abie could handle the consequences, not the thin-skinned Thelma. He’d go to any extreme to slice Annie down to size. He played dirtier than she did and then sneered as he danced out of reach. To Thelma, his personality appeared sandblasted and immutable, his confidence as pure as the color blue. Not her. She questioned who she was, dependent, scalded by Annie’s tongue. She had a generosity her sister lacked and yet she felt inferior—didn’t Mama love Annie but not Thelma?
Unlike Abie, who reminded her that seeking Annie’s approval was like trying to squeeze blood from a stone, she still hungered for intimacy with her sister. If only she did this kindness, behaved that way—but it was a fool’s errand. And, for now, she was that fool. It shamed her that she still cared what Annie thought. Even though she told Abie almost everything that was on her mind, she guarded this weakness from his ridicule. She still hoped that, if she could restrain herself and not attack, Annie would ultimately accept her. It was ridiculous, because she suspected she’d only please Annie by submitting completely, extinguishing the light that shone so brightly within her, the spark that had attracted Giorgio. She’d have to disappear, even from herself.
Thelma didn’t yet accept that unconditional surrender was the price of peace (as it had been for the Huns). She kept trying to connect, to somehow do the right thing to appease Annie, making the older sister recognize and protect the younger, as she did with her own children. It aggravated her that Annie could nurture Julius, Adele, and Eli and, with a swivel of her head, spew dragon fire toward Thelma. She was caught between her desire to get this kindness that flowed from Annie toward her children and her need to expose Annie for the cruelties visited on herself, Abie, and Louis. That was who Annie really was, sadistic and hateful, that was her core—but that’s not who Mama saw, or Jesse, or the trio of kids.
Right now, Thelma wanted to discover who she was in the world, but she kept hearing Annie: “Nothing, a schnorrer, going nowhere.” Her legs were too long, her kinship with her brother criminal. She wasn’t affectionate, she was clingy, and yet, as Abie led her down the murky hallway, she felt the warmth of their connection through their entwined fingers. They passed three identical windowless chambers.
“No,” he said. “No. No.”
They entered the larger of two sunny corner rooms overlooking the rear. She overplayed the game, trying to recapture a lighter mood despite the sweat soaking her pits. She shuffled across the bare wood floor, toeing aside a dead iridescent fly.
“This is it,” she said, spinning around. Dizzy, she flung open a window. A ginger tabby slunk into the jungle of the neighbors’ sunflowers. “I want this one.”
“It’s nice, but why not the biggest?”
“This is more private.”
“Pick the fancy closet, because that pig Annie will want that room. And when she blows up because your dresses are already there, you’ll be in a position to negotiate. You’ll get the room you want—and a leg up.”
“She’ll be ferocious.”
“Enjoy the fireworks.”
“It’s the cost of doing business, huh, Abie?”
“You’re learning.”
“Which room is yours?”
“I’m staying with the contortionist. At least there I know where I stand.”
“On your head,” she said, disappointed. “You’re a good man, Abraham Lorber.”
“Not common wisdom but much appreciated, sweet little sister. You’ve got a big heart, but beware—it makes for a big target.”
Later that week, when Annie arrived, Thelma had removed her meager wardrobe from the master bedroom closet where Abie had hung it. She’d taken the easy route. Content to hide at the back of the house far from Annie, reading movie magazines, she waited for Louis to return and share a wall, taking the other bedroom at the back. This would be their home as mu
ch as Annie’s, and she’d have an ally. She’d smiled at the thought: how he’d always had her back and held her secrets. A brother like that was worth a thousand Annies. She remembered how he was that day at the orphanage, his pants too big, spotted and torn, his lip split and his eyes holding the floor until she took his hand. He’d looked up and she’d soaked in his sadness and shot back love, devotion. It was like she could think a feeling even then and mail it through her eyes to him. His postcards from the front had been a continuation of that: he could say so much to her in short sentences. He wasn’t dumb; he was just cautious with his emotions.
She waited, but Louis didn’t come back to Brooklyn. He’d broken up the band without as much as a warning telegram. He didn’t have the words for cruelty, and he would have known how devastated they’d be. She and Abie had just assumed he’d train it home as soon as he was demobilized to collect the respect he now deserved. They would be there to share in the glory—he wasn’t just a war hero, he was their war hero. Their brother was the pride of the Brooklyn Dodgers without ever having thrown a pitch. How could they be no good if he’d fought alongside the greatest in the Great War?
But, no, after being promoted from private to corporal and cited for bravery, Louis reenlisted. Now he was stationed at Camp Pike in Pulaski, Arkansas, near Little Rock. It could have been the moon. Jews just didn’t go to Arkansas. In New York, you could be Jewish and, if you didn’t leave the neighborhood, you’d hardly know there were Christians, except for the Italians, and they shared a similar system of guilt.
Louis occasionally wrote Thelma, informing her that he had friends where he was, fighting men who understood him, his band of brothers from other mothers. She kept the letters tied with penny ribbon, gray for his eyes, treasured beneath her pillow, where she could finger them at night. He told her that he appreciated army discipline and he didn’t mind obeying men who made sense to him. They were working together with a shared goal: he liked that. If he followed the rules, he got along, praised even. Chaos was the battlefield, but there was an order among soldiers and officers. She understood what he left unsaid: that he despised living under the rule of Annie, the randomness and ferocity of her anger. He would rather die from an enemy’s assault than the thousand pointless cuts at home. She sensed, and felt jealous, that he’d found a family in the army and, though she would always be close, there was no place for her there. He’d invited her to visit, but she’d never make it out of Brooklyn. She was stuck and tangled here. He’d made it out.