The Tin Horse: A Novel

by Janice Steinberg

Sitting next to the fire, physically and emotionally wrung out, my mind drifts to the story I’ve just heard and to the person I can’t forgive—Mama.

  Never run out of places to go. That was the unintended moral that Barbara took from Mama’s cautionary tale. But was it unintended, accidental? Or did Barbara hear exactly what Mama meant to tell her? Did Mama deliberately—though no doubt unconsciously—project her own yearning for escape onto Barbara and give her the strength to leave? And not just the strength but the resolve, as if she virtually pushed Barbara out the door?

  Every person grows up in a different family, Harriet said. And I get it that my sisters and I each experienced a different version of Charlotte Avramescu Greenstein. Nevertheless, a Mama who refused to tell us Barbara was safe, a woman who chose Barbara’s—and, even more than that, her own—fantasy of freedom over relieving our anguish, is someone I don’t even recognize. That woman is a monster, condemning her other daughters to suffer and letting Papa keep going to the morgue to look at dead girls!

  Condemning Barbara, too? I would have written to her. In fact, I might have taken the next train to Colorado Springs. And then? I can’t imagine her coming home with me—I understand how stifled she felt—a lifetime of estrangement, is that what she would have chosen?

  The rage … it’s as if embers have leaped out of the fireplace and set me alight. My body is smoldering, my brittle hair a torch.

  “Elaine?” Josh’s voice pierces my concentration. For a moment I wonder if I’ve actually burst into flame. But he’s just telling me they’ve finished filming. Apparently Barbara has called a halt to the interview.

  “Gram, no way!” Jen is protesting. “You know, they have to film for hours to get five minutes they can use.”

  “That’s plenty, isn’t it, Josh?” Barbara says.

  “Your grandma’s a natural,” Josh tells Jen. “It’ll be fine. I’ll let you all know if the funding comes through for me to finish it.”

  “Lynn’s got lunch for us,” Jen says. “I’ll go tell her we’re ready.”

  “We just filled up on cinnamon rolls,” Barbara says. She’s drained and anxious to get rid of us. I’m every bit as anxious to go, to be alone with this fury. I’m afraid that if I try to speak, venom will shoot out of my mouth.

  “It’s beef barley soup,” Jen says.

  “They’ve got to get going if they want to get back to Cody before dark.”

  But Jen is a girl who sticks to her guns. “They’ll have time. And I promised Josh a snowmobile ride.”

  “Couldn’t you have done that earlier?” Barbara snaps.

  “We could have if we’d known you two were going to be talking for hours!” Jen turns away for a minute, helping Josh pack his gear. Then, with a coaxing voice that takes me back seventy-five years, she says, “Come with us, Gram?”

  Barbara rolls her eyes. “Elaine, do you mind hanging out for half an hour? You can have some soup.”

  “I …” I look outside. The pale northern sunlight glitters on the snow. “I want to go snowmobiling, too.”

  “Have you ever driven a snowmobile?”

  “Sure,” I lie.

  Jen finds me snow gear that more or less fits. I suit up like a chartreuse Michelin Man to match Barbara’s electric blue and listen impatiently to Jen’s lesson on how to start, accelerate (by pressing a lever), stop, and turn.

  Finally we’re moving. Slowly at first, making our way through trees, but then we hit an open field. “Take it easy,” Jen cautions, but Barbara shouts, “Yahoo!” and presses the accelerator. So do I, yelling at the top of my lungs.

  Icy air smacks my face. Deeper than anger, I feel the sting of an ancient wound—my earliest, infant awareness of the intense bond between my mother and my sister, the magic circle from which I was excluded. That was the real twinship in our family, Mama’s and Barbara’s twin souls. And me standing at that bright window, gazing at my mercurial, sparkling mother and sister, longing to be let in.

  Tears half blind my eyes. Still, I squeeze the accelerator, relishing the speed, the risk. I hear yells, and suddenly a stand of trees rises ahead of me. I’m shooting straight at them.

  For one more split second, I hurtle toward the trees. Then a small jerk on the handlebars and I’m back in the open, slowing down and waving in response to the panicky shouts behind me. Is this how Mama felt when she walked out of the ocean in her sodden clothes? Shaken and exhilarated? And suddenly clear?

  Jen races up to me on her snowmobile. “Are you all right?” She looks terrified.

  “I’m fine. Sorry I gave you a scare.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’ve never driven one of these before, have you?”

  “No, but I drive on the Los Angeles freeways. I figured, how hard could it be?”

  “You and my grandmother! The two of you must have raised hell back in the day. Do you want to go back to the house? I’ll go with you.”

  “Are you kidding? Now that I’ve finally figured out the controls? I’m fine. Really,” I say. And I am.

  Snowcapped peaks rise ahead of me, Barbara’s mountain paradise. But what I’m seeing is the landscape of my life, the breathtaking vista in the photographs I brought with me—pictures of Mama and Papa holding my kids on their laps, lounging in my yard on a sunny afternoon, sipping drinks out of coconuts on a family vacation to Hawaii. Papa looks as if he finds this last activity undignified but nonetheless delightful. And the smile he’s giving Mama … Did she keep Barbara’s secret even from him, or did she tell him? How can I know what went on in their private moments, what their story was, when I was so mistaken about my own?

  My envy of Barbara’s bond with Mama took root when I was so young, it became part of my Elaine-ness. The pain of being left out was so intrinsic and unconscious I didn’t go back and revise the story, didn’t notice that I long ago stopped standing in the dark, my nose pressed to the window; I am inside, at the hearth. Barbara, it’s true, had an extraordinary connection to Mama, a moth-to-a-flame closeness, intense and ephemeral … and perilous. And I have had the life in those photographs, the bumpiness and mess and ordinary daily happiness of all those years with Mama, Papa, Audrey, Harriet, Pearl, Sonya.

  In my favorite photo, taken by Ronnie when he got his first camera, Mama is just sitting, holding a cup of coffee, at my kitchen table. She was in her sixties then, her hair completely gray but her cheeks still softly rounded and her skin smooth, the blessing of being plump. It’s a candid shot; no one had moved a plate of toast crumbs from the table or straightened the day’s Los Angeles Times. Mama’s eyes are wide as if she’s been startled, but I can tell she’s exaggerating her surprise for Ronnie’s benefit, because she’s smiling at him with such love. Such astonishing love.

  “Hey, slowpokes!” Barbara has circled back to us. “Come on, Elaine, want to race?”

  We take off.

  The dogs scamper behind us, barking their joy. Dogs are allowed at Rancho Mañana. I ought to get one.

  I let out a whoop. She whoops back, the two of us tearing through the snapping cold. Flying, Barbara and me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOR HELPING ME ENTER THE WORLD OF JEWISH BOYLE HEIGHTS IN the 1920s and ’30s, I owe particular gratitude to author-historian Harriet Rochlin, who grew up in Boyle Heights—and who not only provided thorough, thoughtful responses to my questions but invited me to look through her personal archives. Thanks also to Elizabeth Fine Ginsburg, who told me about going from Boyle Heights to study dance at the Lester Horton studio; and to the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California, where I spent hours exploring a treasure box of Boyle Heights oral histories. For information about train schedules—and for saving me from putting Elaine on the wrong streetcar—I’m grateful for the patient assistance of James Helt, librarian at the Erwin Welsch Memorial Research Library at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum.

  The insights and encouragement of writer friends started with Abigail Padgett and Sara Lewis, who pushed me to write this story that kept k
nocking at my door. For deep, truly constructive feedback, kisses to the Flaming Tulips—Abigail Padgett, Anne Marie Welsh, Carolyn Marsden, Lillian Faderman, Oliva Espin, Robin Cruise, and Sheryl Tempchin—and to Ann Elwood and Mary Lou Locke. Another important reader was the person who made me fall in love with books: my mom, Harriet Steinberg.

  It’s a rare joy for an author to find an insightful reader who engages deeply with her work. When I approached the publishing world, I had the great fortune of finding a dream team of such readers. My agent, Susan Golomb, was my first brilliant editor and has been my champion throughout the journey to publication. Elaine became as real and important to Kendra Harpster, my editor at Random House, as she was to me. More than that, Kendra expanded my vision of what the book could be; she saw what wasn’t yet on the page but was in Elaine’s heart and in her world. And Susan Kamil at Random House had an astonishing ability to zero in on big-picture issues. Thanks also to Eliza Rothstein at the Susan Golomb Literary Agency and Kaela Myers at Random House.

  My husband, Jack Cassidy, lived the book with me from the beginning—touring Boyle Heights with me, listening as I talked through problems, celebrating every triumph, and keeping my spirits up the rest of the time. My gratitude to him is beyond measure.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JANICE STEINBERG is an award-winning arts journalist who has published more than four hundred articles in The San Diego Union-Tribune, Dance Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She is also the author of five mystery novels, including the Shamus Award–nominated Death in a City of Mystics. She has taught fiction writing at the University of California, San Diego, and dance criticism at San Diego State University. A native of Wisconsin, she received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of California, Irvine. She holds a blue belt in the Nia dance-fitness practice and teaches weekly classes. She lives in San Diego with her husband.