Bittersweet Brooklyn: A Novel

by Thelma Adams

  The Latin lover’s tragedy resonated among the locals circling the plaster statue of Our Lady of Carmel in her grotto, asking the Madonna, “Why? Why?” Like the kneeling women, Valentino was an Italian immigrant. His mother’s pet and his father’s disappointment, he’d been the black sheep, sailing to America to discover himself, finding work washing cars and dancing with women for tips long before becoming famous. Valentino had been stardust, providing his fans with an escape from sickness, from mopping, from the shirking husbands and the disrespectful children who snapped back at their mothers in a foreign tongue. If Valentino succumbed with the best doctors money could buy, how could they survive?

  To bawl for their individual sorrows was self-pity but, together, the women’s grief chorus formed a collective cry of loss. Clutching to Phil, fearing he might drift away, she read,

  Valentino died practically alone . . . Twice divorced, his sister Maria in Rome, his brother Alberto in Paris, were across the seas. His two wives were out of his life. Pola Negri, who declares she was Rudy’s fiancée, was in California. As tender-hearted Norma Talmadge, led weeping from Rudy’s room last night said with tears: “He’s lonely, the poor boy is lonely.”

  It was hard for Thelma to comprehend how a famous man could feel isolated when surrounded by adoring fans, but when she turned to Phil, she began to understand the gap between a man’s suave appearance and his private heartache. They walked for miles from the old neighborhood to the new, Williamsburg to Brownsville and East New York, hearing sobs everywhere they went. Newsies hawked death on every corner: “Valentino Passes with No Kin at Side; Throngs in Street.”

  Before long, at Manhattan’s Frank Campbell funeral home, “film’s greatest lover” lay in state under a mountain of flowers, including an ostentatious wreath of scarlet roses with “Pola” inscribed in white blooms at its center. Rioters broke windows, trampling each other trying to gain entry, restrained by mounted police. Negri, having rushed cross-country by train, appeared days later in widow’s black. Exhausted from her trip, she collapsed on the coffin. But, rather than being sympathetic to her pain, the sheik’s frenzied fans rose up like hordes of jealous women who rejected Negri’s claim to be Valentino’s fiancée. Skepticism met her extravagant display, which was perceived as a publicity stunt. The intensity and voluptuousness of the Polish woman’s grief alienated an American public who had applauded the identical overwrought behavior on-screen.

  Not Thelma. Rather than rejecting Negri, she identified with her. If Valentino’s death had stirred up a nation who had only known him on-screen, imagine the feelings of a woman who had shared his bed, read his poetry, and been his “Polita.” She believed in those feelings, that Negri met the sadness in Valentino with her own sadness, without judging, and that she and Phil were tied to each other in the same way.

  Brokenhearted, Thelma had a premonition that life was short for those who burned brightly. The lucky ones, like Valentino, experienced a brief, ecstatic burst of pleasure. Perhaps it seemed desperate, but she had to grab this imperfect love while she had it, suddenly afraid of dying alone, without family, like Valentino. In the following months, Thelma and Phil clung to each other, enjoying more good weeks than bad, catching fireflies of joy. Having confessed his secret, Phil relied even more on Thelma, but they remained in the bubble of each other’s company, isolated from their fractured families.

  At the Roseland, their popularity soared. They perfected their tango, becoming more fluid, welding technique to their deepening emotional connection, as the circle of spectators widened around them. More often than not, women cried, throwing scented handkerchiefs and exclaiming, “Rudy! Rudy!”

  Valentino died, and as Negri’s star faded, fickle Hollywood moved on to Mexico-born Ramon Novarro. Thelma and Phil spent 1927 watching movies about life in a glittering Manhattan where women jiggled in revealing evening gowns and men swanned in tuxedos, nourished only by music and martinis. They’d leave the Premier momentarily stunned beneath the marquee’s brilliant lights, adjusting to the world outside, the schmutz and hustle, the cries of children as their mothers smacked them, imagining they themselves belonged to another life buoyed on vodka and repartee. They dressed the part, with Thelma going full flapper in her drop-waist frocks that revealed her knees when she crossed her legs. Fashion that was adored at the Roseland often met with critical sidelong glances at the local, and while she’d been in the bathroom, she’d overheard a friend of Annie’s call her “cheap.”

  They were living in two worlds, which were about to collide. Since, if the movies were to be believed, marriage was the ultimate happy ending, the pair began to circle the subject. He’d first floated the idea during one intermission that he was ready to take the plunge whenever she was. The following August they exited the wrenching war romance Wings, starring Clara Bow, and were strolling Pitkin Avenue to share a banana split when she spun around, spurred on by the movie’s tragic love triangle, and asked, her mouth rushing ahead of her common sense, “Will you marry me?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” He picked her up, twirled her around, and the borough spun as he bent her back in the move they’d perfected at the Roseland, his eyes locked on hers. A turbaned washerwoman leaned on her broom and clapped, igniting the applause of a series of strangers who paused on the sidewalk to watch with giddy smiles. Afterward, they walked until late, wasting shoe leather, eating grilled cheese at an all-night diner, and making plans. Within two days, they visited the Brooklyn courthouse, got a license, paid for a witness, and became man and wife on August 2—all without inviting their families.

  Following the “I dos,” they telegraphed Abie with her new address on Wyona Street and got well oiled on martinis at the nearest bar. They enjoyed a liquid wedding feast, flooded with toasts from Wall Street drunks on their way home. The financiers predicted great times ahead for the couple, many children, bushels of happiness, and an era of prosperity like America had never seen before.

  Afterward, Phil poured Thelma into a cab to ferry them to Wyona Street. He carried his bride over the threshold (stumbling only once) into the house filled with books and his mother’s screams. His thirteen-year-old sister, Pearl, seated on the brocade sofa and flipping through a Felix the Cat comic, looked up with infinitely sad, dark eyes and said, “Go while you still can.”

  They ignored the teenager at their own peril. From that moment, it was like they’d slipped on a banana peel while doing the Charleston. There’d been a reason they’d protected their relationship from their caustic families. Thelma had leaped out of the frying pan of Montauk Avenue into the fire of the Schwartz household, no more wanted by Phil’s mother than by hers.

  As bitter as horseradish, Minnie was a small, anxious Rumanian immigrant of forty-seven. She pulled her white hair tight into a bun, covered herself wrist to ankle with handmade clothes that had been outdated decades before, when she’d arrived in New York via Ellis Island. Her beauty, though faded and crosshatched with anger lines, was evident: the prominent cheekbones, almond-shaped brown eyes, and arched brows that had remained defiantly black. She must have been as attractive as Pearl, who shared her mother’s features but peered at the world suspiciously through identical dark eyes, rarely speaking and remaining in a state of suspension unusual for a girl so young. She watched. She waited. Another shoe would inevitably drop.

  The following Friday, Thelma met Phil’s father when he arrived for Shabbat dinner to a house scented with fresh-baked challah and chicken broth. Like Phil, Solomon was tall and trim, but that’s where the similarity ended. Stern and sober and judgmental, he was a man confident in his ability to make money through hard work and other people’s sacrifice. The father’s arrogant blue eyes seemed to tally the value of this over that, estimating punishments to fit the crimes surrounding him. According to Phil, success had only solidified his assurance that he was the smartest man in any room he entered.

  Mr. Schwartz handed Pearl his hat and coat, admonished her not to drag it on the floor bec
ause it cost good money, and assumed his position at the head of the table. He performed the HaMotzi, the prayer over the bread, in a commanding voice that could have filled an entire synagogue—although it overwhelmed at a mahogany table with seating for eight. When Minnie poured the wine, her husband cleared his throat as she came to Phil. Her head bowed even farther, if that was possible, and she left her son’s glass conspicuously empty, following suit with Thelma’s. That was when Solomon stared fully at his new daughter-in-law, who had never known a father and lived in hope. The patriarch shook his head. “She’s not much to look at,” he said as if she wasn’t in the room. “I suppose she has money. What does your father do?”

  Verbally slapped, Thelma fumbled to recover from his insult. “Not much,” she said. “He’s dead.”

  Her father-in-law pushed back his heavy chair, tossing his cloth napkin in disgust beside his china plate. He sucked his teeth and sighed with the burden of authority. Minnie rushed to collect the napkin and refold it. He approached the sideboard, where the perfect roast chicken gleamed in all its headless glory, inserted the silver meat fork, and began his methodical cutting with the wings. Thelma shivered, crossing her arms over her chest. As he severed the flesh from the breast, he began to speak again, without looking away from his task. “Well, Miss Thelma Lorber, dead man’s daughter, how do you expect to live with my son Philip?”

  “Papa, stop, please,” said Phil. “By law, we’re man and wife. What God has done, let no man put asunder.”

  “What does God have to do with it? You chose a judge over a rabbi.”

  “It’s legal. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Philip. Be quiet or I’ll commit you.”

  “Daddy,” Pearl pleaded.

  “Ah, she speaks. Boo, little mouse, boo.” He dug the knife into the thigh joint until there was an audible crack. “Thelma, do you think you’re going to move in here and sponge off my son and myself like the gold digger of Montauk Avenue you so obviously are?”

  “I love your son,” she said, looking at her Phil. He tried to wink, she saw it, and she willed him into the response she needed to hear. She wanted to be at the movies. She wanted to be out dancing. She’d rather be in Abie’s moldy lair alone with her man than here watching his father flay him as only family could. Maybe losing a father wasn’t the end of the world.

  “Don’t look at him, miss. He’s not in charge here. This is my house, my table, my chicken, my son. Not your husband, my son. You look shocked, but why should you be? Are you aware of Philip’s fragile health? There’s a reason he didn’t ask our permission to marry you: we’d have forbidden it.” He changed his tone. “Would you like light meat or dark?”

  “White meat, please.”

  “I bet you would. You’ll take anything you can get, anything that’s not nailed down.” He sliced the oval knob from the tail end, the tushie, and handed his wife the shameful delicacy to serve to his daughter-in-law. After that, Solomon served himself a thigh and a drumstick and returned to his seat, leaving the rest to his wife. “He’s damaged goods. Ask Mildred. They’re all sick in the head. It runs in her family. All you had to do was ask. At least my wife’s family had money.”

  Minnie picked up the carving knife and pivoted, beginning to raise the blade up over her shoulder until Pearl rose from the table to disarm her mother and remain to help serve the meat. There was a knock at the door. And another, followed by a pause and then urgent banging.

  “Don’t answer,” said Mr. Schwartz. “It’s Shabbos.”

  Thelma looked at Phil, who was now far away, his blank face leaving her painfully alone to contend with his father.

  “Temmy,” a disembodied Abie called from beyond the oak door followed by more banging. The doorknob rattled. “Open up! Now!”

  “It’s my brother,” Thelma said.

  Mr. Schwartz glared at her. “Don’t answer.” Thelma disobeyed, rising and hurrying to the door. “Don’t break the Shabbos,” he said as if he were Moses wielding the Ten Commandments.

  Ignoring her father-in-law, Thelma turned the knob. Abie stood on the doorstep wearing a green tweed suit with knickers that ballooned below his knees, argyle socks, and two-toned spectator shoes. Her first reaction was embarrassment at his garish outfit, as if he were visiting a racetrack, not the home of a businessman who owned buildings. What would come out of his mouth in front of Mr. Schwartz and expose her and Phil to more ridicule?

  She immediately sensed his distress. It was like a buzzing energy around him—his hands twitched, his feet shuffled, he rubbed his nose. Entering without invitation, Abie told her, “You’ve got to sit down.”

  “I just got up,” she said.

  “You’re not welcome,” said Mr. Schwartz from his place at the head of the table. “We’re eating.”

  “Good for you,” Abie said. “Where I come from, when family shows, you set another plate.”

  “We don’t come from there,” Mr. Schwartz said.

  “You come from Rumania. I’m not impressed,” said Abie. “I know you.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I never forget a mug. You’re that Schwartz of Shyster & Shyster at 79 Fifth Avenue.”

  “I won’t be insulted in my own home, you criminal.”

  “You come by Lazarus & Sons. I’ve seen you lay down cabbage on the ponies, the ones with showgirl names. I never forget a bet.”

  “Abie, drop it,” Thelma said.

  “You’ve got me confused,” said Mr. Schwartz.

  “Don’t blame me for your confusion, Mr. Shyster,” said Abie, appearing unaccountably angry so that Thelma, who’d been merely embarrassed, now feared violence.

  “You need to leave,” said the father.

  “I need to talk to my sister.”

  “What is it, Abie? We’re eating.”

  “Nice dishes,” he said. “Sit down, Tem.”

  She sat. He removed his cap, crushing it between his hands as he knelt beside her. “I hate to tell you this,” he said, leaning on her knee, locking eyes as he inhaled and lowered his voice. “Louis is dead.”

  A wail rose up from her navel. “That can’t be!”

  “It can’t, but it is.”

  “Was he shot in the streets, too?” asked Mr. Schwartz.

  “Who asked you?” growled Abie. “My brother was a war hero, you schmuck.”

  “I don’t believe a word you say.”

  “I don’t care what you believe. Rock of the Marne, you heard of that? Turned the Hun around and kicked their backsides. What did you do in the war, old man?”

  “I bought war bonds.”

  “Not quite fighting on the front lines.”

  “Louis’s dead?” Thelma repeated. Shell-shocked, her ears buzzed. Everybody in the room receded but Abie. “What happened?”

  “He died in the Philippines.”

  “Is there a war over there, too?”

  “Influenza,” said Abie. “He has a kid now. A baby named Shirley.”

  “Had a kid,” said Thelma, looking down at Abie’s flashy two-toned spectators. Her voice broke. “He survived France. Where the heck are the Philippines? He’s supposed to be safe.”

  “No, baby, nobody’s safe.”

  “He’s never coming home?”

  “He’s never coming home.”

  “He’ll never see Montauk Avenue? We’ll never live together again?” It was strange, but that was what she thought: that they’d bought the house so that someday Louis could come home and they’d be a family, secure together in a home where they belonged, a house he’d love, a stoop of their own, with Philip, too. And that was a lie. She’d been sold a bill of goods. It would never happen. And the last time she’d seen Louis was at the hospital when she slipped lemon drops into his pocket, believing his promise that they had a future together when he left the army. He died in uniform in a foreign country as far from home as he could get.

  She crumpled into Abie’s arms, soaking the scra
tchy tweed until she felt Phil’s soft touch on her neck. She turned away from her brother toward her husband, who looked at her with sympathetic sorrow, and found that spot between his neck and shoulder where only her head fit. Behind her, the door slammed.

  Chapter 27

  1927

  Louis’s death blew Thelma sideways, while the postwar world plunged ahead. On “dish night,” locals flocked to the Kinema, where the owners distributed one plate a week; if theatergoers returned, they could acquire a full set. Actual dishes! Free! The first feature-length talking picture, The Jazz Singer, opened on October 6. It starred Russian-born Asa Yoelson, aka Al Jolson, as a cantor’s son who finds jazz but sacrifices his Orthodox traditions. At the Roseland, dancers packed the ballroom every Saturday night. With Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on the team, the Yankees (nicknamed Murderers’ Row) swept the World Series. Meanwhile, disconnected, Thelma felt unable to explain that her world had stopped while theirs continued.

  After Abie barged in, Solomon abandoned his Friday nights on Wyona Street for months. As the roast chicken congealed, Minnie sobbed her voice raw, plucking hairs from her head that could be found all over the house, silver threads with roots. Phil began sleeping on the floor in his mother’s room. Once she recovered enough to bake bread again, Phil retreated to his single bed, the old one in the back room with the basketball trophies, the leather-bound set of Goethe and the works of Sigmund Freud. During that period, Thelma attended her husband, and Pearl cared for her. The sisters-in-law slept in the double bed intended for Thelma to share with her husband in the sunny second-floor bedroom overlooking the street, the room that Minnie had shared with Sol and refused to enter.

  Now, if Thelma went to the movies, it was with Pearl, not Phil. She didn’t care what movie was playing on dish night—everything made her cry. Romantic comedies became tragedies. War pictures made her crazy. She stood up in the middle of the Kinema, her hands over her ears, screaming, “They’re going to die! They’re all going to die!” In a theater that had pretty much seen every kind of behavior, that was very bad form. She became that girl. Get too close and her terror became contagious.