by Jan Cherubin
The older boys howled with laughter.
“Quiet!” somebody yelled from the end of the row. “I’m trying to get some shut-eye.”
I kept David Copperfield in my head as I marched through the tar-smelling corridors of the old brick building. I had a mother and so did Davey. Davey’s mother was forced to send him away, like my mother was forced to send me away. But he loved her all the same.
CHAPTER 10
“Got it,” I said. “They fed you at the orphanage, but not enough. So you went hungry anyway.”
“Don’t be a wise guy,” my father said. I hadn’t meant to be. For a few minutes he’d been animated, like his old self. But I sensed his headache coming back, a shadow lengthening across his face. He buckled his belt on the last hole. “So Evie, I’ll let you know when I get down to 127 again.”
My mother murmured a laugh and tilted her chin down, her signature look of affection, then left Cedar Drive clasping her clump of jailer’s keys, and my father’s burst of energy fizzled completely. He slunk back to the table. “I can’t read,” he said. He looked me plainly in the eye. He had his glasses off, lying next to his plate—the weight on his nose and temples was intolerable. I’d hardly ever seen his eyes not through a lens. He blinked. They were sad eyes. All those years, I thought, it might have been only a pair of glasses that kept me from knowing him. “I can’t eat, I can’t do the crossword. It hurts.” He held his head between his hands, a cigarette poking out between his fingers like a unicorn horn.
“How can you bear to see him like this?” I said.
“I’m used to it,” said Brenda.
I made my bed on the sofa and lay with my arms folded behind my head. I’d try to be helpful and not get in Brenda’s way. I’d do the dishes, run errands, walk the dog. I’d be there, camped out on the sofa. For a week at least, Brenda could go to work without worrying that he was going to fall asleep with a cigarette and burn the house down. But that was it. I wasn’t signing up for anything more. I had no experience with doctors or sickness, and I didn’t want any. I was young. I hadn’t taken care of anyone before. Why would I have? The thought was gruesome and horrifying. Needles and bedpans. Let Brenda do it, or my sister. Susan took care of her kids. It was the same thing, sort of. She was organized and he favored her, so let her pay him back. He’d always been deaf to my needs, shutting me down enough times that I stopped asking for anything. We were supposed to feel lucky for having a father at all. It was already better than he got. We were supposed to be grateful. Our father was there, even more than the other fathers on our block, the salesmen and Westinghouse technicians. A teacher was home by four o’clock. He was there, bigger than life, meeting the day-camp bus in gardening clothes—cut-offs, no shirt, a gondolier’s hat—waving with a cigarette in his hand. Singing to embarrass us. I saw him every day. I was grateful. He didn’t see me, though.
Hoffman’s tag jingled as he shifted his weight on Brenda’s bed. A car door slammed across the creek on Dalton Drive, and then it was quiet. I was sound asleep when a sharp cry pierced the night. I shot up and bolted out of the covers and rushed to his room.
“My TV!! Where’s my TV? She took my TV! Why? Why?”
Brenda was sitting on the edge of the bed in a pool of orange light tenderly rubbing Lanacane on his right temple where he felt the most pain. I was about to tiptoe away, thinking I had dreamed the cries, when my father noticed me standing in the doorway. He struggled to a sitting position.
“Joanna,” he said. “Where’d she put my TV?”
“She’s right here,” I said. “Ask her.”
“The damn thing was in my way,” Brenda said. “Try giving Dilaudid injections with all that junk on the bed. It did nothing for him, the Dilaudid. Which, by the way, Dr. Cromwell says is impossible.”
“But you’re not giving injections anymore. Can’t he have his TV back?” All he got now was Tylenol with codeine in tablets that he couldn’t swallow.
Brenda screwed the top onto the Lanacane tube. “You try dealing with him,” she said, and went across the hall to her room. Uncle Harry had sent the little TV. Uncle Harry who hadn’t been speaking to my father for a couple of years because of some slight, real or imagined. But then Harry heard about the headache and forgot about the slight and started calling and sending expensive presents—a juicer, a short-wave radio kit, the TV. My father loved that TV. He couldn’t see the big one in the living room clearly from his reclining chair without his glasses and his glasses hurt his head. But the one Uncle Harry sent was so small my father could have the TV in bed with him. He’d pull it close to his face, careful not to yank the plug out of the wall, and Harry’s gift became his connection to the world.
After a lengthy search with no help from Brenda, I found the TV on a chair in the corner. She had hidden it under a pile of clothes. “My TV from Harry,” he said. “From my brudder.” I plugged it in and put it down on the rumpled sheet. He wrapped his arm around it.
CHAPTER 11
Was Uncle Harry’s scheme so outlandish—changing the locks on the doors? Brenda had a family. They’d take her in, get her help. Maybe throwing her out was just common sense, because obviously she was nuts. I was ready to do it, but then I’d change my mind. I’d find Brenda holding my father’s hand cooing “honey” and “sweetie,” and I’d picture my plane ticket to LA tucked in an envelope and I’d think she’s not so bad. He needs her, I need her.
And so I took my sister’s advice, tried not to step on Brenda’s toes, and there were moments when my stepmother and I got along. The first morning, for example, she demonstrated how to make farina the way he liked it, and we laughed together about his ridiculous demands. After she left for work, I followed her recipe and placed the steaming bowl in front of him at the table. He chopped at the hot cereal with a spoon as if I’d given him a bowl of rocks. “This is no good!” he said angrily. “Cook it one-and-a-half minutes. Not two minutes! Don’t stand there like an idiot. Do it over.” The whole day he bullied me. I ruined his tea (didn’t boil the water long enough) and answered the phone wrong. “No! No!” he shouted. “How is anyone supposed to know who Joanna is? You don’t live here anymore!” That one really stung.
When Brenda came home from work, we commiserated about his tantrums, and allied by our common enemy, we agreeably cooked dinner together—leftover brisket she doctored, potatoes I sliced paper-thin and roasted, a recipe from Nora Ephron’s Heartburn—but that turned out to be one of the few days Brenda and I got along. My father sat with us at dinner, although he could barely even sample the gravy. My mother stopped by afterward for coffee—to check on me more than him—and I appreciated her presence, as we all did. Even Brenda. She peppered my mother with questions—where did you get those shoes, Evie? I love your hair, who does it?” And when my mother got up, ready to flee to her apartment downtown, Brenda remarked about how my mother must have hated living on Cedar Drive, she was always in such a hurry to leave. This stopped my mother. She felt misunderstood. She put her leather bag down on the buffet. My father, Brenda, and I were still at the table, and we watched hopefully as my mother dropped her keys on top of the bag. I heard the familiar snap of her ankle as she shifted her weight. She folded her arms defensively. “No, I didn’t hate it here,” she said. “I made the best of it. It was just that, you know, I never thought I would end up in the suburbs. I thought we’d live in New York.”
My father gave her a small smile of encouragement, nodding for her to go on, and I wondered, as I often did, why my parents weren’t together when clearly they belonged together.
“Well, we did live in New York for a few years after the war,” my mother said, warming to the topic.
“So? What happened?” Brenda said.
“We ran out of money, that’s what. So we came back to Baltimore, to my family. The plan was to live in Baltimore for a year or two until Clyde got his writing career going. Of course, then he started teaching English at City and he liked the high school job so much he wanted
to stay. And he never did write like he said he would.”
I glanced at my father to see if he was annoyed by her reference to his thwarted ambition, but he was rapt as a child listening to a bedtime story.
“New York was romantic,” my mother said, “but I had my own reasons for coming back to Baltimore. I had connections here in the leadership.” My mother’s eyes were shining with the memory. “I thought if I stayed local, I could work my way up in the organization, whereas I’d be a nobody in New York.”
“What organization?” said Brenda.
My mother lowered her voice to a whisper. “The Maryland chapter of the CPUSA. You know, the Communist Party,” she said, and then went back to her normal voice. “But my brilliant career never materialized. The McCarthy hearings happened instead.” My mother pulled out a chair and settled into the seat lost in thought.
“Clyde told me you were a communist but I never took it seriously,” said Brenda.
“I think Clyde was more scared than I was,” my mother said.
My father shrugged. He took a drag off his cigarette and flicked a chunk of ash into the ashtray.
“Clyde thought we could blend in by moving to the suburbs and having kids—we’d live the American Dream, he said, and slip under the radar. At the time, we had a nice apartment on Liberty Heights in Baltimore City and I said, fine, I’ll get pregnant. But no way we’re moving to the suburbs. I’d die of boredom. Downtown Baltimore was lively then. Shops nearby we could walk to. Row houses, streetcars, candy stores.”
“I guess you let Clyde call the shots,” said Brenda. “Seeing as you ended up in the suburbs in this house.”
“No. It wasn’t Clyde,” my mother said. “Something else happened that changed my mind.”
“They made her an offer she couldn’t refuse,” my father said. He and I smiled at each other. He must have been feeling better. “Tell her, Evie,” he said. “Tell Brenda the story.”
“Really? It’s a long megillah.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Brenda with a laugh.
“It used to be a big secret,” my mother said. “This happened in ‘53. So what is it now, ‘86? Thirty years ago. Jesus, I should be able to talk about it at this point. That apartment on Liberty Heights was on the second floor of a row house, and I remember coming downstairs onto the front porch with the baby on my hip—it was Susan, not you Joanna. Susan was six months old. You weren’t born yet. My plan was to take the baby for a walk, but one of the baby-carriage wheels was caught between the white slats or posts or whatever they’re called in the wood porch railing. The carriage wouldn’t budge, so I looked around to see if Daddy was on his way back from the library, but nobody was out on the street. It was a lovely October day, bright orange leaves on those big trees.”
“Those are gone now,” my father said. “Dutch elm disease.”
“I noticed a strange car parked on the block, a few doors down. One of those tanks we used to drive,” my mother said. “And I’m thinking, why the hell isn’t Clyde around when I need him? But that wasn’t really fair. Clyde was around a lot. That day, though, he was off for some kind of grading period, right Clyde? Wasn’t that it? And instead of hanging out with me at breakfast, he walked to the library. The Forest Park Branch was a few blocks away. I was wearing those black Capri pants I loved and a white blouse with big black buttons, crouched down holding the baby in one arm, yanking on the carriage wheel when a sound startles me and I jump to attention and almost drop Susan. Three men are standing at the bottom of the porch stairs in suits and hats and shiny black shoes. I was glad I was alone. Mrs. Mankewitz who lived in the downstairs apartment was away visiting her daughter in Richmond. I didn’t need the neighbors watching.”
“You must have been scared all by yourself,” Brenda said.
“I was mainly worried about the neighbors. That they would know what the men wanted, as I did.”
“You knew?” said Brenda.
“Why else would the Feds show up at my door in 1953? ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Aronson.’ The stocky guy in the middle was the only one who talked.
“C’mon, Evie, you had to be scared,” Brenda said.
“Sure I was scared. I held Susan tight and I kept thinking, I’m a good person, I’m a good person. My baby is certainly innocent. My husband is innocent. And then I remembered—Clyde signed the oath.
I’m standing on the porch in front of these G-men shouting in my head: ‘Shit! Shit! Don’t come home, Clyde. Stay at the library! Don’t show your face!’ Because you see, that year, for the first time, the State of Maryland asked public schoolteachers to sign a loyalty oath. And of course Clyde signed. He had to in order to keep his job, and besides, he wanted to because Clyde was the most patriotic person I knew. Still is.”
My father smiled.
“You were one patriotic, John Philip Sousa humming, red-blooded American communist, right, Clyde? That last part, though, that was the tricky part. That was where he’d get into trouble, because although not a so-called card-carrying member of the Party like me, he was a fellow traveler, a May Day marcher, a writer of letters to the editor, an attender of meetings. You know how he kvells all the time, ‘greatest country in the world.’ He did back then too, even during the McCarthy years. Yeah, Brenda. Your husband’s full of contradictions. Like any thinking person.” My mother lowered her chin and gave my father an admiring look.
“Sure I was scared. I didn’t know exactly what they had on me, or Clyde, or how they would use it. I remember the adrenalin crackling in my chest, though. It felt like an electric current or something, you know what I mean?”
“Not really,” said Brenda.
“I was thinking about the Rosenbergs,” my mother said. “It had just happened. Having Susan with me gave me courage. ‘Look at this child,’ I wanted to say to the Feds. ‘My baby is American as apple pie.’’’
“That’s right, 100 percent American,” my father said.
“So then the agent says, ‘You do understand, Mrs. Aronson—the Federal Bureau of Investigation has jurisdiction over matters pertaining to the internal security of the United States.’ And I nodded yes, and finally he asks the question I’ve been waiting for.
“‘Are you or have you ever been. . . .’
“I interrupted him and said ‘Yes, I was a member. Many years ago.’ That’s what I had decided to do—tell the truth right away but point out that it was ancient history. I didn’t think I had much to lose coming clean. I had no job to be fired from. I was nobody. But then he keeps it up, he says, ‘See, the trouble is, Mrs. Aronson . . . It says right here you’re still receiving the Daily Worker, a newspaper well-known to disseminate communist propaganda.’
“I told him he was wrong, I hadn’t gotten the paper since 1946. Which was a lie, and I hated lying, but it was a small one. Imagine these creeps telling me what I can and cannot read? Then the bastard says, ‘You’re a pretty young woman. What on earth are you doing associating with an organization intent on destroying our way of life?’
“I can’t say which part of that question made me madder. ‘I’m not sure what my looks have to do with it,’ I said. My anger must have given me courage, too.
“The FBI man smirked. ‘Yet you admit, freely, to taking orders from the Soviet Union?’
“‘That’s ridiculous. I was in high school,’ I said. ‘I joined for social reasons.’
“‘Social reasons?’ he says.
“‘They threw parties and picnics . . .’ God, it pissed me off having to trivialize the good work I’d done. Yes, I enjoyed the social part. But that wasn’t the reason I joined. I had ideals. I wanted a better world, decent wages for the working class.
“‘So who attended these parties and picnics, at, let’s see, 1019 North Avenue, or the colored Elk’s Lodge, 1528 Madison Avenue?’
“‘I don’t remember names,’ I said, and that was a lie I enjoyed. I hated lying about the Daily Worker and I hated saying I joined for the da
mn picnics. But lying to save someone else’s ass? Boy, that felt good. So he says, ‘You don’t remember names? Is that so? Let me ask you something, Mrs. Aronson. What was a nice girl like you doing over at the colored Elk’s Lodge?’
“Can you believe the gall? ‘There were lots of nice people over there,’ I said. I wasn’t going to let him intimidate me.
“‘Nice people like George Goldsmith?’ he says. ‘Or can’t you remember him either?’
“Jesus Christ. Right there on the porch while I’m holding my baby, he wants me to ruin a man’s life? George had four kids by then and a job at Social Security he couldn’t afford to lose. He played the piano at 1019, you know, our clubhouse, and did the books. I wouldn’t have betrayed George under any circumstances, but thankfully I didn’t have to worry about it, because I hadn’t signed anything, so I couldn’t perjure myself. I couldn’t be blacklisted or blackmailed. But, of course, my husband could be all of those things, and I had lost track of time. Clyde would be home any second, walking up the street into a trap! I came down off my high horse and I looked over the heads of those G-men and searched the sidewalk for Clyde. You know the loyalty oath, don’t you Brenda? You were alive then.”
“I was ten years old,” Brenda said.
“I do not advocate the overthrow of the government by force and violence. This was what the teachers had to sign. I have never been a member of any organization that advocates the overthrow of the government by force and violence . . . Clyde had everything to lose, and he would lose it, too, because if there’s one thing Clyde does not do, it’s snitch on his buddies.”
“Those hypocrites!” I said. “A loyalty oath promising you’ll rat out your friends. It should be called A Rat’s Oath.”
“Good one,” said my father.
“The point is,” Brenda said, “you’re loyal to your country, and no one else.”
“I like Joanna’s joke, though,” my father said.