by Joan Dempsey
“There it is,” said Izaac.
Inside a waist-high Plexiglas box, lovingly displayed as if it were a family heirloom, rested one of the rusty milk cans that had housed the Ringelblum archives. They walked over, and Izaac stood solemnly, hands clasped loosely together. He wiped the outside corner of each eye. Ludka remembered the can’s original dull lead color, now obscured by dark brown rust. Without thinking, she took another swallow of wine, and grimaced as it went down. She searched around for somewhere to set the glass, and that’s when she saw him. Not Oskar in the flesh, but Oskar as she had sketched him, full-bodied, staring straight at her, hands pressed protectively over the small chest of a big-eyed young boy who leaned back against him. The first boy they’d saved—Aaron, she remembered with surprise. Suddenly Izaac’s arm was around her waist, and he asked if she needed to sit down. She took a deep breath and shook her head. She held out the wine glass.
“Take this.”
While Izaac looked for a place to get rid of the glass, Ludka clutched the strap of her bag and walked slowly over to her drawing of Oskar, the gateway to the rest of her work. She caught only glimpses of the exhibit as people came and went, but it was enough. There were her parents, folding the blankets for distribution. Ten-year-old Izaac read at the kitchen table, a heavily curtained window behind him. Manny Ringelblum bent over a work-table littered with papers, Gela Seksztajn and her husband, Izrael, by his side. A scrawny dog lifted his nose toward a tiny boy no older than six, who held a loaf of bread like an American football and reared back to launch it over the ghetto wall. A young nurse crouched in the back of an ambulance, and held tight to a laundry bin. Because Ludka had stowed him there herself, she knew a skeletal, sedated, ten-year-old Izaac lay in the bottom of the bin, under laundry they’d made to appear soiled. Typhus terrified the Nazis, so the nurses typically went unmolested, although the word typical had lost its credence; many nurses, of course, had been lost.
The paper had yellowed, and some of the drawings had splotches of stain from water or mold or both, but all were largely intact. Ludka held on to the display with her left hand and found that with her right she was gripping her thumb and fingers as if holding a pencil, as if it hadn’t been more than sixty years since she’d regularly sketched. She hurriedly let go. The drawing of Oskar wasn’t quite right, and in a rush she remembered how much trouble she’d had with the thickness of his hair, how later she had grabbed it in both hands and given it a frustrated tug.
“Odstawić, Polly, leave off!” Oskar had said, grabbing her wrists.
But in the sketch, his hair was the only thing not right, and she touched the glass as if she could reach through it and hold a palm against his cheek. She searched the gallery again. There were so many people!
At last the milling around was over, and everyone filed out of the exhibition area and filled the rows of chairs. Ludka stood in front of her reserved chair in the front row and scanned the crowd, randomly at first and then methodically, row by row. Izaac urged her to sit, but she ignored him and started again, from the back, scrutinizing each man in every row, and then those who were standing two deep in the back and along the sides. She could not believe he’d be unrecognizable, and it was impossible he wouldn’t see her standing alone there in the front. Finally, she could delay no longer and she sat, the entire crowd at her back. When Izaac took her hand after a moment, she realized she’d been slumping, her eyes closed. She straightened and hitched up her shoulders, swallowing hard and trying to appear alert as Mandelbaum took the podium.
It wouldn’t be until the following week when she was home, when she watched the symposium on the Institute’s website, that she would realize just how special it had been. The scholars were thorough and respectful, putting her work into the larger context of Holocaust art, praising both her talent and her courage, and expressing their gratitude that she had been found so they could thank her in person. One young woman, a professor at the University of Warsaw who ran a slide show of Ludka’s sketches during her entire lecture, cried openly when she was through and seized Ludka’s hands and leaned down to kiss her on both cheeks, one of the few things Ludka remembered. She would be relieved to see that her long professional experience had carried her through without embarrassment, despite her rusty Polish, and that she’d even managed to be gracious.
But sitting at the Institute as the symposium wore on, trying not to glance back over the crowd, trying to appear attentive, all Ludka could think about was what it might mean that Oskar had not come. Izaac nudged her.
“It’s time, kochanie. You must go up. Do you need me to help you?”
She shook her head but held tightly to his hand as she stood. She swayed for a moment, then let go and stepped to the podium where Mandelbaum had made room for her. She grabbed hold of the podium and could at last survey the crowd. Oskar was not there. Mandelbaum seemed to be presenting her with something, and then there was an outburst of applause, and the crowd rose to its feet, and people clapped harder and harder, and she thought they would never stop. In the video, she would see herself frowning, tears spilling down her cheeks, lips pursed, eyes darting around like a cornered animal, Mandelbaum applauding beside her, smiling broadly through his own tears. With one hand she held on to the podium, with the other she clutched the glossy book Mandelbaum had presented to her along with a fresh new sketchbook, “for happier times,” he said.
And then they were back in the exhibition hall, and many people wanted to take Ludka’s hands or kiss her or share their own stories, while others milled around in her vicinity, staring at her peripherally but not daring to approach. Izaac flagged down a waiter who came over with a tray of fried pierogi.
“Give us a moment, please,” Izaac said to the waiting people. “Here, kochanie, eat these.” He handed her three pierogi, and all at once she realized how weak she felt and gratefully she ate them, all of them filled with aromatic mushrooms and cheese. From her bag, she took the bottle of water and drank half, offering the rest to Izaac, who also drank greedily. And then, across the room, she glimpsed a familiar boy in a large photograph.
“There’s that street busker with his violin. I knew I had seen him! Alexander Roslan painted that same boy, that exact expression. I must have seen him on the street. Look at that raised bow!”
She put a hand to her throat, and for the first time since they’d arrived at the Institute, she smiled, and that was when she saw him, contemplating the same photograph, his back to her, head slightly cocked, right leg turned out like a dancer’s. His tightly cinched, worn trousers hung as if made for a much larger man. He was bald. For a moment she thinks she has made a mistake. Surely this is some other man, some other man who will turn, his face a stranger’s, but then he does turn—Oskar does—and looks directly at her.
“What is it?” says Izaac. “Where are you going?”
As fast as she dares she makes her way toward him. He pushes into the crowd, away from her—but he did see her, didn’t he?—and she loses sight of him, and wonders again if her mind is playing tricks, if she is imagining all of it, having an episode. But there he goes, skirting a young couple. He checks back over his shoulder, finds her. She lifts a hand, then clutches at her bag as it begins to slip. Something’s wrong with his hip, she thinks—a vestige of what they did to him at Pawiak? She has to touch people to alert them she wants to pass. They smile and address her, their voices muffled as if trapped inside a display case, and she nods absently. Now he has an open passage to the door—that’s it, she will lose him—and then, abruptly, he stops. His shoulders fall as if in defeat. He rubs a hand back and forth over his bald head. He turns, and waits. She’s alarmed by his eyes—dusky bags entrenched beneath them—the eyes of a depressive, an insomniac, a man unaccustomed to smiling. And he does not smile now. He tugs at a limp silk ascot and, like a leery child in the presence of an unfamiliar dog, doesn’t take his eyes off her. Vaguely, she senses a woman’s voice addressing her, a presence beside her. She excuses herself, wai
ts for an elderly couple to pass, and then she is standing before him.
“Hello, Polly,” he says.
She throws a hand over her mouth and tears spring forth. Oskar averts his gaze. Ludka slowly lowers her hand. She makes a fist and shakes it at him, then grips his bony elbow to keep from swaying. She speaks to him in Polish.
“I knew you would come. It was you, the letter to Mandelbaum? I knew it. But listen, Oskar.” She lowers her voice, suddenly aware that Izaac is watching from a respectful distance. “Immediately I must tell you, you must listen carefully. You have to forgive me, Oskar, wybacz mi!” And in a torrent of broken words that don’t string sensibly together, that fall all over themselves to get out, she explains about Stanley, and Victor, and how she had kept it safe for so long, and how she had waited outside the diner, and how the weasel had never come out—
“Polly! Polly. Kochanie Polly.”
Again she presses her fingers to her lips, and they stand there assessing each other. Oskar finally smiles. She laughs and touches his cheek. Her bag jolts off her shoulder, and Oskar deftly catches it before it slams into the crook of her elbow. He frees it from her, sets it on the floor, and takes her hands. “Still full of the drama,” he says. “How wonderful.”
He pulls her hands to his chest and presses them there and slowly shakes his head, then gives one satisfied nod, as if his work were done, and all the tension Ludka has been holding simply drains away, and for the first time in a long time she feels calm, and grounded, and steady on her feet.
26
Arbitration
The glass wall at Meck’s back was making him uneasy. Behind him, across an open, busy hallway, a cluster of gray cubicles housed a group of paralegals and an assistant who kept them stocked with fresh coffee and water and anything else Abe Goodman requested. Goodman had been a gracious host at yesterday’s arbitration hearing. Today it was Connie’s turn to present the school’s case against Tommy Zeilonka, and Meck’s confidence wasn’t what he’d like it to be, given Pat Kinney’s presence in the arbiter’s seat. Goodman had presented a compelling case yesterday, and Pat hadn’t given him the sort of drubbing Meck had expected. Assuming the students and parents stayed on script today, Meck thought they’d provide Pat with enough ammunition to uphold Tommy’s dismissal, but so far Meck couldn’t tell which way Pat was leaning.
The parents and students were arriving now, and Meck rose and greeted each as they entered and showed them to their seats around the edge of the room; the polished conference table was reserved for the attorneys and selected representatives from each side. Goodman, Tommy, and his friend Robert conferred on the other side of the table; Tommy’s mother, his two colleagues who had also been fired, and some of the students and their parents who had testified yesterday on his behalf sat behind Tommy along a wall of windows. His cheeks sported bright, rouge spots in an otherwise pallid face, as if he’d had to smack himself to bring up some color. Meck felt sorry for him. Tommy turned toward the window and despite a discouraging hand from his mother, spun fully around in his chair and stepped over to a section of the glass wall that didn’t have chairs in front of it. The Westboro picketers must have arrived. Meck made his way around the table and stood five feet from Tommy. Seeing the two of them from behind, one might mistake them for brothers: same height, slight frames, similar blond hair.
Three stories below, half a dozen picketers—one young man, three middle-aged women, and a boy and a girl no older than ten—circled on the sidewalk. The boy noticed them watching at the window and stepped out of the circle. He stared at Tommy and held high his signs: God Hates Fag Teachers and Fag Teachers Corrupt Kids. Meck winced and glanced over at Tommy, who briefly closed his eyes.
“Shame on them,” said Meck.
Tommy glanced at him, surprised.
“I don’t condone their behavior,” said Meck. “I want you to know that.”
Tommy dismissively turned his attention back to the picketers.
“They’re entitled.”
“True enough. Even so.”
Tommy pushed his fingers up under his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He and Robert had assumed Meck would want a repeat performance of the Boston rally outside of this hearing, and Tommy had wanted to organize a counterprotest to outnumber the picketers. Izaac, however, in his e-mail from Warsaw, had wisely advised otherwise. “Warren will want as much distance from these people as he can get,” he had written. “Trust me on this one. Wait for the Education Committee’s public hearing at the State House—that’s when we’ll pull out all the stops.” As it turned out, outnumbering them wouldn’t have been difficult. There were already twice as many reporters as picketers.
The boy leaned his signs against a trash receptacle, disappeared from view, and came back with a new one. He held it high over his head as if trying to get as close to Tommy as he could: God Hates You. A cameraman followed the boy’s gaze and got shots of Tommy quickly stepping away from the window, while Meck calmly stood his ground. Meck thought fleetingly about crossing his wrists over his chest in the now-heralded salute, but he didn’t believe God hated anyone. He stepped away.
“Tell me something,” said Tommy. “If you don’t condone their behavior, how can you condone your own? Those picketers out there didn’t plot to strip me of my job, and don’t say you did it for the kids. I’m committed to those kids, but you’ve made them your pawns. That’s something I don’t condone.”
Meck rubbed the back of his neck. When he spoke, his voice came out too loud.
“These children …”
Robert, who’d been conferring with Abe, heard Meck and joined Tommy. Meck swallowed and tempered his tone.
“These children are not here for me. They’re here because they feel like they’ve been discriminated against, silenced. They believe in the First Amendment, as do I.”
Before Tommy could respond, a burst of laughter out in the hall distracted him. A man with a mane of white hair clapped Pat Kinney on the shoulder and, still laughing, spoke to Kinney, who nodded rapidly before holding open the door.
“Who’s that?” Tommy asked.
“Royce Leonard, our pastor at the Fellowship.”
Tommy frowned.
“Kinney seems to know him.”
“I do believe they’re acquainted, yes. Let me introduce you.”
“We’ll pass, thanks,” said Robert.
But Meck had already waved him over. The pastor smelled like wood smoke, as if he’d spent a cozy morning reading by the fire. He used both hands to warmly shake Robert’s. He did the same with Tommy, and encouraged them to call him Royce. Meck didn’t know how anyone couldn’t like the pastor. Merely being in his presence made Meck feel like a better man. The pastor held on to Tommy’s hand.
“I’m so very sorry about what happened to you, Tommy. Are you healing up all right?”
Tommy was struck by his kind eyes, the absence of malice. He wanted not to trust the pastor’s expression, to label it false; that he couldn’t angered him.
“I am healing, thank you.”
Pastor Royce shook his head.
“Terrible thing, that. Just terrible. I hope you’ll come and visit our church, fellas. See for yourself we’re not like our misguided brethren out there. Wednesdays are best—those are our seeker services. Curious newcomers plus the regular contingent. You might be surprised at how welcoming we are.”
Robert spoke up.
“My husband already has one unwelcoming church, Pastor. Please don’t pretend we’d be welcome at yours.”
Meck tried not to wince when Robert said “husband.” Before Pastor Royce could respond, Kinney addressed the room.
“Okay, people, let’s get started.”
In the hubbub of the settling crowd, Pastor Royce laid one hand on Robert’s shoulder, the other on Tommy’s, then leaned away and opened his arms as if to encompass everyone sitting on their side of the room.
“Each and every one of you are most welcome. Really, you are! I hope you
’ll come. Good to meet you both.”
He looked from one to the other, gave a single nod, then turned away and held out an arm to usher Meck back to their seats.
“Bastards,” said Robert. “We should show up. Give them a little thrill.”
Kinney, an angular man with short, tidy hair, called out again and then sat down with a flourish at the head of the table, as if accommodating a judge’s robe instead of a simple blue suit.
“Be mindful of our time today, gentlemen. I want to finish by three.”
Meck frowned. Pat was cutting short their time. For the benefit of those new to the hearing, Kinney went through the ground rules, asked for but received no questions, and turned to Abe.
“I promised you fifteen minutes this morning, Abe. Mind you don’t exceed it.”
Abe inclined his head.
“I’d like to call on Superintendent Arnie Dengler.”
“Oh heck,” said Dengler. “Again?”
Meck shot him a look and Dengler threw up his hands.
“Okay, okay. Go ahead, Abe, shoot.”
“Just a couple more questions, Arnie. Here’s what I’m wondering. At what point in the process of deciding to let my client go did you and Ed discuss Chapter 71 Section 42, or 603 CMR 26.00? No need to scowl, it’s not a trick question.”
Dengler took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. He appealed to Shaw for help.
“Eddie might recall better than I do—”
“Ed will have his chance, but now I’m asking you. Did you specifically discuss the law? How about the dismissal rules from the Adams High handbook?”
Connie, who sat to Dengler’s right, whispered to Dengler.
“What I mostly remember,” said Dengler, “… you have to understand we were under some serious pressure from these good people.” He indicated the parents and kids sitting behind him, then leaned forward and peered past Connie to address himself to Kinney. “And for good reason! Wait till you hear their stories, Pat! So, no, I guess I don’t remember, not precisely, anyway, talking about those issues.”