Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel

by Thelma Adams

  That golden day in Coney Island, Thelma began to view herself as the desirable, good-hearted woman reflected in Phil’s eyes. “I never want to go home again.”

  “We can’t go home,” he said. “It’s not a date until we go dancing.”

  She couldn’t hide her absolute delight. That would’ve been canny. Retain some mystery. Get to know Phil better. Press your thighs together. Besides, she had to work the next day. Piles of Sunday ironing for the entire household awaited her on Montauk Avenue, with clock-watcher Annie tapping her toes. But when he suggested dancing, her heart surged. They separated to pass through the turnstile. But on the far side, she threaded her arm around his waist under his jacket, pulling closer.

  Never let this end, she thought, closing her eyes to make the wish come true.

  They rode to Manhattan while she dozed on his shoulder. Gently, he nudged her awake after Times Square, just managing to slip through the closing doors at Fiftieth Street. Philip led the way, knowing which steps to climb and where to descend. Suddenly, they escaped the piss-and-exhaust stench into the sweet June evening. Broadway lights radiated a dazzling daylight. She felt jazzed, every nerve ending as electric as the Roseland Ballroom marquee up above. A photographer snapped pictures of the swarm with a Speed Graphic camera, flashes blinding.

  Philip angled his hat and offered Thelma his elbow, which she grabbed with both hands. He skipped the line, the bouncer ushering them in through red-upholstered doors. She felt exalted and awestruck: so this was living. Men looked at her as she passed on the stairs; Phil nodded to acquaintances. A sharp orchestra grooved from above as they rose to the second floor. On the bandstand, a girl singer lamented lost love in a tinsel dress surrounded by tuxedo-clad musicians. Thelma’s soles itched to swing.

  He checked his hat, her pocketbook, smiled at her and winked, in no apparent rush. She admired the cozy way the items looked side by side, his and hers. And then he led her to an enormous dance floor. He swayed and caught the music’s beat. She followed with an ease she’d never known before, under his arm and out into the floor.

  Part of the jiving mass that covered the giant floor, they hoofed it as if they’d practiced all their lives. She knew the familiar steps, turning under his right arm and his left, the dishrag, the pretzel, sliding doors. He taught her new moves. When she confused her feet and hissed under her breath, he reassured her with his touch. He sent her swirling faster and faster, a top in his hands. She laughed out of a giddy fear that she might lose the beat. She didn’t.

  First he removed his jacket, then his tie. He rolled up his sleeves. Sweat drenched her homemade dress. By the seventh song, other dancers stopped and watched the new couple. The crowd parted. He picked her up and slid her between his legs. And then he pulled her back, popped her over his left shoulder and swiveled her up so that her toes pointed skyward. She’d worried strangers would see her cheap underwear, her mended garters. Then care evaporated. He caught her. He settled her on her feet, clasping her right hand in his left. A physical connection shot through her entire body. He pushed her away for one last turn and then gathered her in for their lips’ first meeting: fire in flight.

  Chapter 22

  According to Annie a knock at the front door past midnight always signified trouble. And this pounding wouldn’t quit, waking Annie, who’d fallen asleep while awaiting Thelma’s return from Coney Island with Philip.

  “Open the door in the name of the law!”

  Annie’s heart palpitated as Eli began wailing and Adele joined him, while Julius ran into the bedroom to announce he’d had a nightmare. Annie pushed him toward his sleeping father as she sneaked back the curtain and inspected Montauk Avenue. In the lamplight, she noted a black Hudson paddy wagon bearing a gold shield on the passenger door. Since the front porch blocked her view, she couldn’t tell who was down below.

  “Enough already,” Annie yelled out the window, her voice scratchy with sleep and agitation. “You’ll wake the whole neighborhood.”

  As if on cue, lights came on across the street. Annie hurried to head off the neighbors, feeling her hair curlers, an automatic gesture to ensure they remained in place. She unhooked her chenille bathrobe from behind the door. This was too much. She’d gone to bed steaming that Thelma hadn’t returned from Coney Island, that tramp, leaving the weekly pressing pile to her. She’d awakened angrier still, feeling the iron burn under petroleum jelly on the inside of her wrist. What would the people across the street think—that she couldn’t control her own sister and, now, here was the police, too? They lived here, for God’s sake; it wasn’t like the family could flee and shed the shame. They owned this house. They would be shunned—because that’s how she would have treated neighbors who brought the coppers down on Montauk Avenue past midnight.

  Annie checked the clock—it was 4:00 a.m.—and poked Jesse. Deep in her stomach, her kishkes, she felt foreboding. Something had happened to Thelma, something bad the girl deserved. She’d never disappeared for the entire night since they’d moved to this house, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t up to mischief. Her middle name should have been mishegas, she was so much trouble. In her mind’s eye, Annie beheld a picture of Thelma, a flapper floozy wearing that skimpy dotted dress, barely a slip, with legs akimbo in dirty yellow shoes, stuffed headfirst into a garbage can outside Nathan’s. Staying out all night like that was begging for trouble. What did she want from the world that she couldn’t get at home? As if she could attract the honorable attentions of a Wyona Street boy, a landlord’s son. He hadn’t even had the respect to pick her up at the front door and meet her family. That date was probably a hoax and she’d been catting around with the Italians instead. Just what Annie needed: another jailbird and more shame on the family. She didn’t deserve the aggravation. If Thelma wasn’t dead, she’d toss that girl out on her skinny rump roast.

  More banging, to which she yelled, “I’m coming. You think I’m deaf?” She threw the bolt, opened the door, and faced two tense and sweaty Irish policemen who’d clearly been up all night. They flashed their shields.

  Annie asked, “What happened to Thelma?”

  “Who?” asked the taller of the policemen, a regular giant with hands as big as waffles. His partner stood beside him, hardly out of his youth, with a pockmarked face and a nose that had been flattened sideways uninvited. They both carried hats tucked under their armpits and wore looks of concern and urgency that were unwelcome, whether at 4:00 a.m. or high noon. Even as they stood in place on the porch waiting to be invited in, it was as if the lawmen were still rushing, running on adrenaline, cats pursuing a rat.

  “What?” Annie touched her upper lip, which felt sticky. She’d forgotten she’d left on the cream to dye her mustache and was mortified, but there was nothing she could do now. No one else in the house could handle the police, not Jesse, not Moe.

  “Do you know Abraham Lorber?”

  “Do I know Abie? What’s he done now?”

  “Are you his mother?”

  “Sister,” she sniffed. “I’m his sister Annie.”

  “Well, then, Miss Annie, I think you’d better sit down.” He stepped into the stairwell, belatedly introducing himself. “I’m Detective William Asip, and this is Officer Joe Corrigan.”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she hissed. Hearing Mama enter the living room from the back, she turned and said, “Abie’s dead.” Mama began to wail, falling to her knees in a puddle of stained nightgown, while Jesse descended carrying the inconsolable Eli, a weeping Adele attached to his pajama leg.

  “Can we cut the circus, here, Mrs. Lorber?”

  “Lazarus, Mrs. Lazarus.”

  “Your brother isn’t dead, but he’s no picture of health. He’s been shot, twice.”

  “But what about Thelma? Where’s Thelma?”

  “The lady’s in shock, Bill,” said Officer Corrigan.

  The detective put out his hand. “Smelling salts, Joe.” After forced administration of the restorative, Detective Asip dragged a straig
ht chair over. He spun it around and straddled it, which Annie found unnecessarily aggressive even through the sting of the salts and the fog, and all the tears from young and old. She could see the bulge in his pants and she tried to keep her eyes on his watery blues, but she kept looking down and then away.

  “Mama, take the kids into the kitchen. Give them the leftover kichels.”

  “It’s too late for sugar cookies.”

  “Then give them Corn Flakes, Mama, just get them out of here.”

  “What about my Abie?” Mama said, her voice squeezed like liver through a grinder.

  “Mama . . .” Annie threatened. She’d been expecting this day since Abie had torched her underwear drawer. It was as if she’d wished the gunfight into being with her own hate and resentment. Nothing he deserved more than two bullet holes in his fancy-schmancy lapel. If she’d been man enough, she’d have done it herself.

  Brushing her gaze on the carpet, where a dust clump shocked and annoyed her, Annie tried to dredge up some scrap of sympathy that her brother was in agony, hanging on to the ledge of his life with dirty fingernails. But she felt nothing. Triumph, maybe? Yet that wasn’t the face to wear with these policemen. She needed to appear sympathetic in the eyes of the law, to demonstrate enough empathy not to seem responsible for the violence, but not enough to suggest that she would conceal evidence to protect Abie. She could tell these men in blue stories about him, but how would that benefit her?

  Her brother’s comeuppance should have been more satisfying, and yet, even though she’d long predicted his downfall, the idea that he’d been pierced by lead frightened her. If the gunmen came for him, they could come for her and her children. Thelma would lead the villains straight to the front door. It could just have easily been the assassins as the police who knocked. She heard Jesse ask, as if from a great distance, “Where’s Abie?”

  “Coney Island Hospital,” said Asip.

  “Shot in the arm,” said Corrigan, pointing, “and another in the chest.”

  “Who did it?” Jesse asked.

  “That’s why we’re here.”

  “What happened to my baby brother?” asked Annie. She’d never called him that before, but she was circling her wagons. These officers were goyim, after all. They wouldn’t understand a rift between brother and sister in a good Jewish home—and she was determined to show that they were standing in a stable Hebrew household, not a shtetl flophouse or a den of thieves. She couldn’t leave herself open to their judgment.

  “Here’s what we know,” began Detective Asip, who flipped open his notebook and revealed that the assault had occurred at two that morning. When the victim had briefly regained consciousness, he’d told the officer that he was loitering on the corner of West Twenty-Fourth Street and Mermaid Avenue when a well-dressed blonde had made eye contact. The beautiful stranger had approached him, asking if he knew of a speakeasy nearby. Then she’d started posing personal questions, and when she inquired where he lived, he balked. After that, she inquired if his name was Samuel Lorber and he replied, no, he was Abraham. And then she twisted her scarf so that the knot faced the rear and stepped past him before turning and pointing straight at him.

  The detective thumbed the notebook page, found his place and continued: a Packard wheeled around the corner carrying four men and squealed to the curb. The passenger-side doors exploded open, and two unfamiliar gunmen jumped out. They drew pistols and hit Lorber in the arm and chest, and he collapsed, unconscious.

  “That’s all your brother told us before losing consciousness again at the hospital,” said Asip. “He acted confused about why he might have been the target of a hit. He claimed he didn’t recognize anybody in the car and he had no outstanding beefs. Everybody loved him, he said. He told me he was a clerk, but we know Little Yiddle when we see him. We have reason to believe the assault stemmed from a fight over an unidentified female.”

  “Well, that would be Abie all over, wouldn’t it just?” said Annie. “If there’s a fight over a girl, that’s Abie. He just never got shot over it before. You know he’s married with a kid, so maybe you should be questioning his missus. I can get you her address. I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

  “We thought you’d want to know your brother’s condition—and you might have information that leads to the gunmen.”

  “Fat chance,” she said. “His business is his business, and we don’t want any part of it.”

  “Nice house,” said the detective.

  “Mortgaged,” said Annie.

  “But not rented.”

  “Officer . . .”

  “Detective.”

  “You know more than we do, Detective, and we want to keep it that way. We’re hardworking folks trying to put food on the table—”

  “Is he going to survive?” interrupted Moe, who had remained quietly in the background tucked in his mocha-striped bathrobe.

  “Is who going to survive?” asked Thelma. She’d sneaked in the front door, dress disheveled, cheeks glowing, shoes dangling from her hand, and bare feet blistered. If Annie wasn’t mistaken, her sister looked radiant, like a girl floating in love without a care in the world. That wasn’t going to last long.

  “Who’s this?” asked Asip.

  “I’m Thelma.” Her face fell. She dropped her shoes, which clattered on the tiles.

  “Pick those up. I’m your sister, not your maid,” Annie said before turning to the detective. “She’s Abie’s sister.”

  “I thought you were his sister?”

  “She’s his unmarried sister.”

  “Does she live here, too?”

  “When she shows up,” Annie said, making no effort to hide her disgust in front of the cops.

  “Isn’t it late, miss? Where’ve you been?”

  “Coney Island,” said Annie.

  “You were in Coney Island, too?”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Abie,” said Annie.

  “Let me handle this, lady,” said Asip. “Were you with your brother in Coney Island?”

  “No,” Thelma said, the color drained from her cheeks. “I was with a friend.”

  “What friend?”

  “I’d rather not say, Detective. I don’t want to get him involved.”

  “You’d rather not, but you’re going to. We’re investigating a shooting.”

  “Who’s hurt?” Thelma whipsawed from the policeman to Annie. “Where’s Abie?”

  “Just answer my questions, young lady: Who were you with?”

  “Philip,” she said. “Philip Schwartz. But we didn’t see Abie.”

  “Where were you at two in the morning?”

  “Yes,” said Annie. “Where were you, sneaking around?”

  “Mrs. Lazarus, desist. Let her answer.”

  “We weren’t anywhere near Coney Island.” Thelma looked at Annie, her eyes a startled mix of panic and pleading. “We were dancing. He took me to the Roseland.”

  “In Manhattan?” asked the detective.

  “Yes,” said Thelma. “Have you ever been there?”

  “Manhattan? I’ve heard of it.”

  Annie shook her head. “You went all the way from Coney Island to Manhattan on a Sunday night while I was doing your ironing? You should see the burn I have,” Annie said, lifting her wrist, shiny with Vaseline. “It blistered. Who gave you permission to go to Manhattan?”

  “I don’t need your permission.”

  “As long as you live under my roof . . .”

  “Your roof—since when is it your roof?”

  “Ladies, we have bigger fish to fry. Did anybody see you there?”

  “At the Roseland? Scads, but nobody I knew.”

  “It’s seems like a big coincidence that you and your brother were in Coney Island.”

  “Half of Brooklyn was in Coney Island, Detective.”

  Moe approached with a straight-backed chair. “Temmy, you need to sit.”

  “Why?”

  “Sit,” Moe said. “Somethi
ng’s happened to Abie.”

  “Why didn’t you say so when I came in? Where is he? Will he be okay?”

  Asip looked at Corrigan and shook his head. “He’s unlikely to recover. He’s at Coney Island Hospital with two gunshot wounds, one to the chest.”

  Thelma’s face collapsed. Her jaw worked, but she only squeaked. She lost control of her features, becoming ugly and unglued. It appeared to be quite the performance in Annie’s opinion, but she looked sideways at the police, and they were buying tickets. She could see in their faces that they’d registered a lot of reactions to bad news, and Thelma’s was authentic. She realized belatedly that this should have been her response: tears and trauma. The suspicion fell back on her, but nobody in the room was checking her reaction anymore. Thelma was a regular Mary Pickford, upstaging Annie again. She stroked her blistered wrist as her anger rose, but she swallowed her rage with spit. It was unsafe with lawmen dragging dirt on the carpet.

  “We need to be at the hospital now,” Thelma said, jumping up. “Let’s go! Annie? Jesse?”

  “Don’t be stupid. He’s unconscious,” Annie said. “He won’t even know we’re there.”

  “He’s alive and he needs me,” Thelma said, making for the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned back. “I know where I belong, even if you don’t.”

  “You’re wearing that to the hospital?” Annie asked.

  “I’d go naked. I’d even go in your shabby bathrobe with curlers in my hair and bleach on my mustache. We have to save Abie. He can’t die. He can’t leave me alone.”

  Annie heard the unspoken: with you. “How are you getting there?”

  “I’ll walk,” Thelma said.

  “We’ll drive you,” said Officer Corrigan.

  The detective put on his hat. “We’re done here—for now.”

  “You know where you can find us,” said Annie.

  Moe followed Thelma and the retreating policemen, bent over the tile, hooked something on his fingers, and called after them, “Shoes.”