Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel

by Thelma Adams

  Chapter 23

  At Coney Island Hospital, twenty-four hours had passed in the darkened ward. Thelma clutched her hands together, praying for her brother’s survival. He remained comatose, tubes entering and exiting his body. He wasn’t some random newspaper thug—he was her brother. She willed his eyes to open. Seeing him tiny and inert, a waxwork dummy, shattered her.

  Averting her swollen eyes, she scanned the room, counting ten beds, five on each side. Just enough room for a fat bubbe to visit, or a doctor and nurse to fiddle with a patient’s catheters, separated them. Occasionally she heard the three boys with alcohol poisoning retching out their guts, one starting and his buddies chiming in. There were the groans of the grandfather and his adult son who’d gotten sunstroke at the shore on Sunday, the scrabbly sound of rats’ paws racing in the ceiling. Stationed just outside the ward, the policeman whistled a tune, which might have been “Yes! We Have No Bananas,” but he wasn’t much of a whistler.

  After a while, the uniformed guard shifted to “Who’s Sorry Now?” I am, she thought, shifting on the hard visitor chair. She hadn’t eaten since Nathan’s on Sunday. Nothing sat on the side table but a copy of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and an untouched water cup with a straw—not flowers, not grapes. The policeman kept associates from visiting; their family was another story, the schnorrers. She shouldn’t be alone: Where were Mama, Annie, and Tillie? Her sister wouldn’t be lording it over Montauk Avenue without Abie.

  A light shone over her brother’s head, because he remained under constant observation. An opaque tube drained fluid from his chest. A bag of yellow liquid hung from his bedside attached to his body by a catheter. Brown blood stained a spot over his left chest, and sometimes she’d look up and there was a fresh red pool in the middle, right where he would have pledged allegiance if he did that sort of thing, which he didn’t.

  Abie didn’t shame her—the women of her family did, abandoning him at the Coney Island Hospital, at the New York Hebrew Orphan Asylum. She was the one here beside him, if he ever woke up. His hair gathered in greasy whorls on his head, which was too big for that little body under the pus-stained white sheet. With his eyes closed and his mouth shut, he shed all that was big about him, his flash, his energy, his daring. On any given day, he was a carefree guy looking over a precipice to face down hell—but he’d always gambled he had years before the unavoidable descent.

  But, to Thelma, it seemed like the inevitable had caught up with him, and she didn’t know where to shelve her heavy heart. As the hours passed, anger scorched her until she could hardly sit. He’d risked everything, and for what? So he lined his pockets; she could live with that crime. But the escalating violence terrified her. What had he done, who had he crossed, to inspire gunfire?

  Sorrow replaced Thelma’s anger. She deceived herself into believing she didn’t have any more tears to cry, lulled by the banality of the hospital, the smell of antiseptic and shit and sour towels, and the way she was disconnected from the outside world with no solace and no way to comfort the wax figure lying before her. He couldn’t fix this situation, and neither could she. A lonely wind howled in her belly, and she squeezed her brother’s hand, which was small and callus-free, the nails long and pinkish shiny, unchanged, as if he were her sleeping beauty. But he was oblivious, bloody and broken. On the cusp of thirty, the assault reduced him to this: a little man with a strong chin stripped of his spirit, wearing a hospital gown that exposed his ass when the nurse flipped him over for his sponge bath.

  The white-capped sister of mercy had commented how light Abie was for all the police bother. The guy in bed number ten didn’t seem that dangerous, the nurse had confessed. Thelma imagined the rage and resentment that ordinarily would have animated her brother given this level of disrespect. Instead, he breathed, his eyes fluttered beneath the lids, occasionally he jerked a limb like someone who stumbles in their dreams. But even that didn’t awaken him.

  Thelma had sent a telegram to Louis at the base and he’d responded with one word: “coming.” Not when or how but he was on his way. Another day passed and she remained alone. She ate the Jell-O from Abie’s tray, which tasted like cleaning fluid. At dusk on the second day, Abie still hadn’t regained consciousness. Not Annie, Jesse, Mama, nor Moe had appeared during visiting hours. Thelma had expected Tillie to show in a tattoo of heels on the cement floor and a cloud of perfume, dragging their son behind her, but she hadn’t come, either. Abie’s stubble grew. His hair matted. The nurse came and wiped him down. The doctor took his pulse and peeled back his dressings and sniffed. The boys with alcohol poisoning began to laugh and, within hours, exited the ward. The man with sunstroke left his father behind and went home with his wife and kids. An Italian boy who’d fractured his femur on a construction site entered screaming on the shoulders of his crew and then fell silent after a shot of morphine. And still Abie remained in absentia, the body in bed ten without a soul.

  Thelma needed to go home, bathe, and change clothes. She itched between her legs and under her armpits. A whitehead throbbed on her chin. But she couldn’t face the crew on Montauk Avenue, inquiring after Abie while refusing to visit, all under Annie’s thumb. And, then, late on the third day, while the custodian slopped his mop, singing “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” she heard shoes hustling down the hallway well after visiting hours ended. She untucked her feet from under her and nearly fell when she tried to stand up and there was Louis.

  He dropped his duffel bag and hugged her hard until they were both breathless. He rested his hand on the back of her head to notch it into the bend of his neck, his fingers slipping through her new bob. His company was comfort. He’d come home from the war in his uniform, finally, with medals, even. He’d been promoted to sergeant, someone who gave orders as well as took them, a part of something bigger than family, an American. She could feel that solidity in him: he was a grown-up, separate and accomplished. And, despite her sadness, she felt proud. He was still her brother, but he had entered the larger world beyond Brooklyn and survived—thrived, even. He had escaped.

  When they detached, he eyed Abie and said, “Jesus.”

  “Mary and Joseph,” Thelma said.

  “I only have forty-eight hours—and it took eighteen just to get here.”

  “Maybe he’ll wake up now that you’re here.”

  “I’m not promising miracles, but it’s been known to happen.” He approached Abie with his hands clasped behind his back and peered down while asking, “Has he said anything?”

  “Not to me. He talked to the police that night, but he wouldn’t or couldn’t tell them who shot him,” she said, hovering behind him. “And he’s been unconscious ever since.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  She shook her head. “Does it matter?”

  “No,” he said. “It’s done.”

  “Will he make it?”

  “Sure, Temeleh, sure, he’ll make it.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “He’s alive and breathing. He still has some kick in him. I saw worse in France, and they popped open their eyes when they smelled whiskey.” He extracted a dinged metal flask from his chest pocket, unscrewed the cap, and passed it under Abie’s nostrils like smelling salts. They stood in silence, just the rats running relays in the walls, but the liquor had no magic effect. He nodded. “I’ve seen worse come back, Temmy.”

  “Can he hear us, Louis?”

  “Maybe or maybe not: you never know who’s gonna rally, but I’ll put cash money on Abie. Just don’t reveal any secrets—I remember a guy in a coma whose best buddy confessed he’d bedded the victim’s wife and the wounded soldier woke up swinging.”

  Louis scraped up another chair and they sat beside the bed. He shared the flask with Thelma, who took a small sip, and then a gulp. Her head immediately whooshed because her stomach was empty. She glanced over at Louis in uniform and briefly believed he was a mirage. As welcome as his presence was, it also confirmed how dire Abie’s situatio
n was. She focused her attention on Abie. “Hey, schmuck,” she said, “Wake up! Louis’s here.”

  “C’mon, you putz; I brought you a hot redhead.” Nothing.

  To an outsider, their exchange might have seemed jocular, blasé—but it was anything but. So much emotion vibrated between them while their words were as clumsy as children’s wooden blocks.

  “You look good,” Thelma said.

  “You look better.” Louis hung his hat from the corner of the sickbed.

  “Liar,” she said. “Tell me about the army.”

  “Now?”

  “We’ve got time. If I had a deck of cards, I’d beat you at rummy.”

  He sighed, apparently reluctant, and she couldn’t determine whether he was being modest or if the memories triggered images he’d rather avoid. He spoke softly now, although his voice echoed in the otherwise quiet ward. He told her about the battle, the big one at the Marne in July of ’18 that continued for days, the final German drive that should have sunk the Allies, the moment when the Americans turned them back and seized the offensive. But they didn’t know that then. The Thirty-Eighth Infantry was green. They’d hardly had any real battle training, rushed as they were to France to help their beleaguered allies. They’d been honed in action, sometimes fighting under French command. They were just boys in the woods and, on the riverside, fresh meat. He’d taken to it better than most—he’d always relied on his sense of direction—but this was countryside, meadows and steep wooded hills, meandering rivers and slippery swamp, and he didn’t know how to plot his location by the stars. He couldn’t even find the Big Dipper in the Brooklyn sky.

  They couldn’t even pronounce the places they were expected to protect, mangling the names: Château-Thierry and Chalon and the Surmelin River valley. He told her how first there was silence and darkness like a person never witnessed in the city. Their ears tuned in to every noise. The waiting had its own sense of dread, and they couldn’t even whisper for fear of drawing enemy fire. And then it was like wind, the sound of the German artillery rushing across the Marne, the whiz and bang, the shells exploding, cratering the earth and sending out shrapnel and body parts, the hands of friends. The bombardment continued without pause. They were at the front.

  They put on gas masks, which were their own suffocating torture, but nothing like inhaling mustard gas. A soldier couldn’t recognize the man beside him, a monstrous bug who could only nod and gesture to communicate. His own wheezing was louder than the sound of the incoming assault, so he had to calm it, breathe slowly, move quickly, even as German soldiers crept over a footbridge and attacked. He had a revolver and his orders: keep the Huns from getting traction on the river’s west bank by any means necessary. By then, he’d already killed one mother’s son and buried a pal under a wooden cross in Courboin’s churchyard.

  What was it like? He wasn’t any other place, any other time. There was just the now, the inching forward. He was scrambling and fighting and protecting his brothers to his left flank and his right. He wasn’t reckless but he didn’t flinch, and so his pals figured he was brave. He just did what he’d learned from Abie. If you’re going to fight, you can’t be of two minds. You’re as good as anybody, and you don’t need to be any better. Use your weapon. If their artillery is bigger, persist, because what choice do you have? War is hell if a person hasn’t grown up in the New York Hebrew Orphan Asylum or been raised by that wolf Annie. At least a soldier knows who the enemy is.

  “Are you two girls going to gab all night?” asked a hoarse voice from the bed. “How’s an invalid supposed to sleep?”

  Thelma leaped from her chair. “Thank God!”

  “He had nothing to do with it,” squawked Abie, his voice strained from the effort to expel air out his lungs and past the chest pain. “Temmy, can you help me here?”

  “What do you need, baby?” She exploded in an exaggerated nursey energy. She’d wash his wounds, wipe his brow. He’d risen from the dead. Thelma would nurse him back to health and give him whatever he needed, as long as he just stayed with her. “Should I raise your head?”

  “That’s a start,” he said. She rearranged the pillows, trying to be gentle while lifting his skull so that he could see them. He grimaced and groaned. “Are those tears?”

  “Dust, tough guy,” she said. “Should I call for the nurse?”

  “Is she good-looking?” He tried to laugh, wincing instead. “No rush. I’m not going anywhere.” He squinted, drawing a short breath. “You should see your faces.”

  “You should see yours,” said Louis. “I’ve seen better-looking corpses on the battlefield—and you were no beauty to begin with.”

  “It’s rude to insult the dead. Better to do it behind their back while they’re alive,” Abie said. “So, Louis, what a sight for sore eyes: my brother the war hero. I’d salute, but I can’t raise my right arm. What, do I have to get shot for you to come home?”

  “Some headline: I survived France and you got plugged in Brooklyn.”

  “Coney Island, what a toilet! Who shoots a guy on Mermaid Avenue? Harpooned, yes, but shot?”

  “You made the Brooklyn Daily Eagle,” said Thelma.

  “What was the headline?” Louis asked.

  “Lorber Shot Down by Two Men in Auto Directed by Female.”

  “Did I make any other papers, Temmy?”

  “Just the one,” said Thelma. “But you got page three above the fold. The subhead was ‘Victim of Coney Island Assault Reveals Very Little to Police.’”

  “And I’m staying ignorant. It should have read, ‘Coney Island Victim Clams Up.’”

  “You got good placement, right next to the report that actress Marjorie Rambeau was suing for divorce on account of her husband beating her.”

  “She’s a good-looking dame,” Abie said. “I met her once at a speakeasy.”

  Louis stretched his legs. “Now you have another story you can’t tell your kids. Where’s your wife? Why isn’t Tillie here?”

  “That’s a funny story.”

  Louis crossed his right leg over his left, removing his cigarettes from a pocket and then putting them back. “Why do I get the feeling she doesn’t agree?”

  Abie scratched his ear. “You want the long story or the short story?”

  “The truth, maybe,” said Louis.

  “You know I didn’t want to stand under the chuppah with that broad in the first place. I’m not the marrying kind. I did right by her.”

  “We’ll see,” said Louis.

  “First, she complained that I never came home—but why would I want to live in the Bronx near her mother?” So, Abie explained, one Sunday he sent some of the boys up to her apartment and shlepped her and the kid and the double bed down to a two-bedroom place on Rodney Avenue in Williamsburg. After that, he came home but, wouldn’t you know it, she missed her mother up in the Bronx—and she didn’t appreciate it when he called Mrs. Chersonsky an old yenta. But, what, she couldn’t handle the truth? He was her husband. That’s what she wanted, a man around the house and that’s what she got: a man, not a patsy. If he paid the rent, he was going to pick the place. They all wanted to stick their fingers in his business, those Chersonskys. Feh on that: take the money and yaps shut.

  So maybe that was why she wasn’t at his bedside, but she was a pill. The more time they spent together, the less they liked each other. She couldn’t keep a secret, either. Anything that happened, every hangnail, she told her mother. She began to complain that he was sitting around the apartment in his ratty underwear. So what did he do? He took them off. He thought it was funny. Who knew she lacked a sense of humor.

  When Tillie kvetched that now he was exposed in front of the kid and it’s disgusting, maybe it hurt his feelings a little, maybe he didn’t feel like being told what to do in his own house where he paid the rent—and the electric and the grocer. So he made it a habit of never wearing clothes on Rodney Avenue. Like a baby: bare-assed. It got so that he unlocked the bolt and dropped trousers just inside the
door. She told him to get out. He said “with pleasure.” He got her to agree that it was her idea that he’d never cross that threshold again. That’s how he fixed his marital discord. He could write an agony column, he was so proud of himself. She needed him, but not vice versa.

  “That’s quite a story,” said Louis. “Even an angry wife shows up at her husband’s deathbed. Now I know why she’s not here.”

  “Nobody’s perfect.”

  Thelma arched her eyebrows. “I’m guessing we won’t be having Passover at your house anytime soon.”

  “The contortionist makes great lasagna.”

  “She took you back?” Thelma asked.

  “She’s flexible,” Abie said. By then, the early-shift nurses had realized the patient in bed number ten had regained consciousness. And while they checked Abie’s pulse, they fussed even more over Louis. Thelma had never seen it before, the way women responded to him in uniform.

  “Hey,” Abie asked. “Did Annie show up? Mama?”

  Louis and Thelma looked at each other. She shrugged.

  “Screw them,” said Louis.

  Thelma sighed. “What else is new?”

  “I guess I gotta change my will.”

  “While you’re at it, can you change jobs? This life is going to be the death of you,” Thelma said, feeling more emotionally out of control than she cared to express, blinking back tears. “And me, too.”

  “She’s right,” said Louis. “If your enemies had better aim, we’d be tossing dirt on your corpse.”

  “Any chance you could work a desk?” Thelma asked.

  “Don’t push me, Tem. I know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s clear: knocking on death’s door with your ass hanging out.”

  “Leave it,” Louis said, sending a warning glance Thelma’s way. “It’s too soon, Tem.”

  “This isn’t the kind of business where I can apply for a transfer.” He looked at her for a long time, holding her gaze until she glanced away. “So I really scared you this time?”