by Thelma Adams
“Worse than Frankenstein,” she said. “I wasn’t sure you were going to make it . . .”
“. . . but I did. It takes more than a bullet to the chest to kill Little Yiddle.”
“Don’t take that for granted,” said Louis.
“I don’t take anything for granted,” Abie said. “Look, it’s not a total loss—I brought the three of us together.”
“I’d rather meet in better times,” said Louis.
Abie coughed and grimaced. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Abie, promise me this won’t happen again,” Thelma said.
“We’ll see, Temeleh. It’s not exactly up to me, but I’m in no rush to meet my maker.”
“As if he’d recognize you,” Louis said.
A matron in white with brisk movements and soft eyes approached. “You have a visitor.”
“Me?” asked Abie, digging his free elbow into the bed and trying to lift himself up.
“No,” said the matron. “Your sister does—at the main nurses’ station.”
“That’s strange,” said Thelma. Without thinking, she hoped it was Philip. But she’d never want him to see her like this, still wearing the same dress three days later at the bedside of her mobster brother. But his was the first name that came to mind.
She rose and stretched before entering the hall and nodding to the disheveled policeman, who’d slept through the awakening. He looked like a man who’d spent the night playing stethoscope with a nurse, and he smelled like it, too—funk and rose water. She rolled her eyes and then proceeded down the quiet corridor. Her footsteps in her dirty yellow T-straps echoed as she passed an open door. Peripherally, she viewed an old man’s yellowed feet as twisted as tree roots. She felt the patients’ loneliness as the hospital began to stir.
At the nurses’ station, Moe stood waiting for her in his coarse brown weekday suit, the skullcap pinned to his scalp, the tsitsis stringing down at his hips and visible at the jacket’s hem. He held a large brown-paper package wrapped in string. His chin jutted forward and she noticed, as if for the first time, the underbite that suggested a stubbornness she knew lay beneath. She wasn’t sure if he was forty-three or forty-four by now. She avoided keeping track.
“What a surprise!” She felt an awkward heaviness. Any more emotion than she was already carrying was unwelcome. When she got within a few feet, her stepfather extended the parcel, saying, “I thought you’d need clean clothes, maybe a change of shoes.”
On impulse, she peered at her T-straps that had had so much dance in them and now looked as worn out as she felt. She didn’t know what game he was playing. She didn’t want to know, yet it impressed her that he, of all people, had done the right thing and made it to the hospital. “Do you want to see Abie?”
“I have to get to work.” He shuffled backward in his scuffed shoes. “Don’t tell Mama I was here.”
“Short leash, huh?”
“Arf,” he said with a basset hound’s sad, shiny eyes. She began to turn back toward the ward with the bundle beneath her arm. “Wait! I got something else . . . for you.”
She turned to see him fumbling in his jacket pocket, his jeweler’s fingers failing him. He extracted a small paper sack and rattled its contents. “Lemon drops,” he said with a shy smile, “your favorite sweet.”
“Thanks.” She wasn’t a little girl now, but she still loved candy. Nevertheless, she kept as much distance between them as she could when she plucked the bag from his grasp, awkwardly extracting her fingers when he tried to hold her hand. He had something more to say, their encounter pregnant with it, but she cut him off. “I have to get back. Abie woke up.”
“Should I tell Mama?”
“Don’t bother, Uncle Moe. You don’t want them to know you visited the hospital to see your stepson like any good father would.”
She turned and gave him a good, long look at her behind, which she was sure he was watching. By now, as an adult, she understood that he hadn’t wanted to be married to her mother: Who would? But he’d been Mama’s husband when he’d touched her. And she’d been a child; she saw that so clearly now. He’d exploited her and left her to the wolves, unprotected. But few people were just one thing or the other: she still saw the kindness in him, the gentleness and warmth, the thoughtfulness of his creeping to the hospital before work to bring her clean clothes. She didn’t know, again, where to put that gratitude, how to sort that push-pull of affection and betrayal, the disgust she felt for this aging stranger, her stepfather.
In the distance, she saw Louis talking to a nurse, who was showing exaggerated interest in his medals. Carrying his duffel bag, her brother turned toward her and began slicing the distance between them. “I have to go back,” he said, and her heart sank. “Say my goodbyes to Mama and Annie.”
“I’m not taking that bullet. They won’t be pleased that you came to Brooklyn and didn’t pay respects.”
“I was right here. If they’d been where they belonged, they would have seen me.”
She smiled: her brother, the man of few words but true. “Forget them. It made me so happy to see you, and see you thriving. Just go out there and be happy, Louis—love who you want and come back when you can. We’ll be here. Or at least I’ll be.”
“Abie’s in good hands. What a relief he’s going to make it. I’m so glad I got leave. I wouldn’t be here without that crazy mensch,” said Louis. “When I’m done with the service, I’ll come home to Montauk Avenue. I’ll bring Lucille. You’ll like her. And our kids will play together.”
“Maybe I should marry first.” She wanted to believe what Louis said: that they had a future together, that their children, cousins—even Abie’s son—would play catch and hopscotch on Montauk Avenue. Why not? Stranger things had happened. She put her hand up to his cheek where the stubble was gathering. Even bristly, he looked handsome in his uniform. He seemed to finally fit in his skin, to have found his place in the world. When they hugged, she tucked the bag of lemon drops into his front pocket. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“I’ll never be a stranger to you, baby.”
Chapter 24
Thelma didn’t return to work. Instead, she remained close to home for the next six months, surrendering her bed to the convalescing Abie. He was a nasty patient, a bear ripped from hibernation too soon. He’d seen the afterlife, and it was no picnic, a glaring white light in the distance and angels squawking and his emaciated papa stretching out his hand and coughing at him to come quick, join him. He’d hitched the first ride back to consciousness.
At night, she slept lightly on a heap of featherbeds on the floor, listening for her brother’s snoring, awakening if she heard an irregular gurgle. She’d do anything to protect him. She figured it was what he’d do if the situation were reversed. Through Abie’s frequent sleepless nights, she entertained him with childhood stories or movie magazine gossip. They preferred Polish-born femme fatale Pola Negri, who, according to Photoplay and Movie Weekly, demanded rose petals be strewn on her dressing-room floor, drank champagne from a footed ice bucket, and danced the Charleston to burn off excess energy between takes.
By 1923, the star of Bella Donna and The Wildcat had tossed fiancé Charlie Chaplin while keeping his diamond and was cycling through European noblemen and costars while partying with newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, movie star Marion Davies, at their San Simeon mansion. Rumored to be Jewish, the five-foot-tall, dark-haired, pale-skinned spitfire wasn’t wrapping her love in tinfoil and saving it for some future happy ending on- or offscreen: she relished a be-here-now character that burned brightly before discovering a good man to make her an honest woman.
Thelma had hoped Phil would be her good man. She hadn’t spoken to him since he dropped her off after the Roseland. Assuming he’d follow the newspaper reports like everyone else in the neighborhood, she didn’t reach out. His father owned buildings; her brother was in a less savory business. If Phil had really been interested, he knew where she lived.
He could always knock.
Besides, Thelma had her hands full. Up in her second-floor room, Abie thirsted for fresh air, demanding she throw the windows open, because she apparently required a constant reminder that he was alive and breathing. Annie would hustle in to shut them, complaining that they had to pay for the heat, and he would bark her out of the room, saying, “Take it out of my pension.” Pain still plagued him, but being dependent bugged him more. He wanted to move, to get back in the game, to escape the house and the order of women.
Slowly Thelma began to assist him out of bed, watching him flinch as she helped him put on his robe, and trying to be cheerful enough to encourage him but not so chirpy that he snapped, calling her Nursey. Gradually they reached the point where he could creep downstairs, holding her shoulder with one hand and the banister with the other. He spent the next three days on his back, exhausted, but then he pushed himself, refusing to stay in bed like an invalid and appropriating Annie’s favorite parlor chair. In the coming weeks, they’d trace the block together, down Montauk, across Sutter Avenue, up Milford, over Belmont, him straining with effort and acknowledging that Mama could beat him in a footrace. Over time, their circuit became larger, taking them two blocks to Pitkin Avenue and returning down Shepherd. He eventually recovered his wind, began to straighten shoulders that had been curled inward to avoid stretching the scars. They’d stop at the luncheonette for a grilled cheese and an egg cream, teasing the paper-hatted soda jerk behind the counter. When Abie could swallow an entire hamburger steak, he began to discuss girls again.
During Abie’s convalescence, a weekly courier arrived with daisies and a yellow envelope. When she inquired what the thick packet held and who’d sent it, he’d answered that they were love letters from Tillie. He let that sink in and then added, as an apparent afterthought: don’t open the door if the guy doesn’t have the flowers.
The payoffs’ arrival stoked her dread that Abie’d brought the danger of the streets to their doorstep, but she’d never abandon him, considering the transaction the cost of keeping him safe and close while he recuperated. She hoped that when he improved he’d be more cautious. In the meantime, he paid the mortgage, the electric, and the grocer, while she devoted herself to his health, which meant avoiding aggravating questions. He requested meals from Mama and Annie: hold the tsuris. Annie acquiesced, but only if he took out a life insurance policy naming her as the beneficiary. If it would shut her up, he’d do it, even if he called her a vulture as he signed the document she pushed in front of him.
He had no love for his niece and nephews—not for him to treat them as precious cargo after the way Annie had raised her brothers and sister. The kids were more than a little afraid of him. He liked it that way—and it amused Thelma, always his best audience. He growled. He told Julius, Adele, and Eli, now twelve, ten, and five, stories about orphanage life, threatening to send them there if they didn’t behave. He offered to show them his wounds and let them put their fingers in the bullet holes, but he had no takers among the timid trio.
Abie’s near-death experience changed him. He was sullen for long stretches of time without explaining what inspired the moods. The attack had given his heart a shock and, while it returned to beating, it carried more resentment and less generosity. This was who he was, only darker. And Thelma still stood by him. When he could walk without a cane, they started testing the limits of his range. After a few weeks, they could make the mile west on Sutter Avenue to the Premier Theater, stopping en route at the candy store to get a Hershey bar for him and lemon drops for her. Inside they’d buy a soda with two straws and share.
Smuggling in contraband enhanced the pleasure, but mostly entering the high-ceilinged movie palace offered a sense of almost religious awe and an escape from drudgery (and Annie). Plush red carpets muffled the sound of their footsteps. Crossing the lobby, they’d pass a goldfish pond and a wishing well. They had their rituals, stopping for Abie to hand his sister a shiny penny to toss over her shoulder—bye-bye President Lincoln—Thelma silently wishing Abie good health and a safe job.
Inside, Abie led them to their spot on the left aisle—and beware anyone occupying his favorite seats. He preferred swashbucklers, like Douglas Fairbanks battling through The Thief of Baghdad without breaking a sweat, ever charming, lethal—and the slapstick of Laurel and Hardy shorts. Sitting beside Abie, Thelma noticed, as customers shifted their seats, that he had become notorious, recognized as the hood who’d survived the hit. He was about as subtle as a dueling scar—and he didn’t seem to care. If he knew why he’d been targeted for death, he’d never explained it to Thelma.
And, as the months passed, it was as if he’d turned the theater into an office. Once the feature started, he’d sometimes excuse himself with a grunt. She’d put her hand on his arm and say, “Stay,” or “Don’t leave me in the scary part,” but she had no apparent influence over him as he slowly navigated up the incline to the balcony steps. She knew he was gravitating back to his old life, his old friends, one reel at a time, but she felt powerless to stop him. If the audience was quiet, she could hear his heavy breath as he climbed, having warned her not to look back or up.
It was on one of these days, late in 1924, when Thelma was watching Negri tilt her chin and flash her eyes as Catherine the Great, notching off lovers, zesting for life and ruling Russia in Ernst Lubitsch’s Forbidden Paradise, that Thelma first noticed Phil. He sat alone two rows down and to the right. She split her time watching Negri (“Pola’s Catherine is what one might call a good bad woman. But her wickedness is done gorgeously and regally,” Photoplay had raved) and the light flicker off Phil’s profile. She remembered him teasing, “Do you want to see my Valentino?” And, then, “Do you want to see it again?”
Yes, she thought, I do want to see it again. She tried to stifle her tears during a comic scene without a weeping audience to provide cover, recalling how complete she’d felt that day they’d shared, how meant for each other, how every tune was played for them. And then that dream had been shot right in the heart (technically above and a life-saving bit to the left). She’d read that Negri had abandoned her hunt for the one great love and was now diddling her costar Rod La Rocque. Thelma would have to discard her one-and-only dream man, too, she thought as Abie returned to his seat, handing her his hankie and asking, “What’s up?”
She gestured toward Phil with her chin.
“Who’s that?” Abie asked in full voice.
“Shh.” So mortified, she could have crept under her seat.
“Is he the guy?” he asked, lowering his voice to an audible stage whisper.
She groaned as half the theater turned around to see who’d spoken, but Phil kept watching the screen. When intermission came, she returned Abie’s soggy handkerchief and began to gather gloves and handbag. “I believe you know this gentleman,” Abie said as Phil loomed above them in the aisle.
“Phil,” she said, in a fruity formal voice that sounded plucked from a cinematic garden party, “how lovely to see you again.”
“I do declare,” teased Abie.
“I’d like to introduce you to my brother Abraham.”
Abie clutched the armrest and began to rise from his seat.
“Don’t bother,” said Phil.
“No bother,” said Abie, reaching out to grab Phil’s hand and using it to leverage himself up.
“Check your arm for your watch,” Thelma said. The men greeted her joke with awkward silence, so she plunged ahead. “Abie, this is Philip Schwartz.”
Abie looked Phil up and down as if assessing horseflesh. “It’s nice to meet you at long last.”
“Are you two staying for the second feature?”
Thelma looked to Abie for a cue. He said, “Excuse me, but I gotta see a guy about a thing,” and then he winked at Thelma before asking, “Could you see Temmy home? My sister’s a little shy.”
“Suave,” she said, pronouncing it with a long a.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Abie said.
Phil took Abie’s vacated seat beside Thelma. She felt her cheeks flush. She crossed her ankles and then her knees, smoothing her skirt, which wasn’t her best. She tried to look sideways and tilt her chin up like Negri as he said, “I love the way this picture leavens drama and tragedy with humor.”
She paused, trying to join him on safe ground with a smart comeback about the movie. Instead, she betrayed herself with earnestness. “It’s nice to see you, Phil.”
There was a long pause. “You, too, Temmy. Can I call you that? Temmy?”
She relaxed a smidgen. “Call me anything—as long as you call me.”
“Have you been dancing?”
“Not since . . . ,” she began.
“I get the papers, too.”
“You know my brother . . .”
“I’ve read about your brother,” he said, “and I know you. You don’t have to explain.”
“Maybe I want to explain.”
“There’ll be plenty of time.”
“How do you know that?”
“I believe in wishes,” he said. “And I’ve been wishing for you at the well every time I’ve crossed the Premier lobby.”
It was just the kind of dumb, mushy thing the youthful hero might say, bounding off the court and serenading the heroine. “Has anybody ever told you that you look like Valentino?”
“Never,” he said. “Well, almost never. Do you want to go up in the balcony?”
“My regiment leaves at dawn.”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
Maybe she should have been more suspicious, but she was Pola Negri, spontaneous and dangerous, a good bad girl. She said, “I’m a woman of the world, and that’s my air of mystery.”
“So that’s what I smelled. Follow me.”
Chapter 25
After reuniting at Forbidden Paradise, Thelma and Phil circled each other for a while without making any overt declarations of affection. She feared getting hurt but was available and easy to find, regularly attending the Premier with Abie while he gradually recovered his strength—if not his sense of humor. Her brother was getting antsy again, an itchy scab. He began to debate the pros and cons of returning to the old neighborhood under the Williamsburg Bridge. When Thelma squeezed his good hand, half jesting as she pleaded, “Don’t leave me,” like a damsel in distress tied to a railroad track, he promised to fix a retail job for her on Pitkin before scramming. He knew a guy. He always knew a guy. She didn’t want to be alone again on Montauk, but she knew he wouldn’t remain forever. He’d leave when he couldn’t tolerate Annie anymore, and their sister was already way up his nose hairs.