The Lost Family

by Jenna Blum

  “What happened?” said June. “You didn’t like it?”

  “I got a better job. Traveled a little, from here to there and back. It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.”

  Peter took her face in his hands and kissed her, other travelers eddying around them and the coo and burble of pigeons overhead.

  “Today is what matters,” he said.

  “Speaking of which, I need hostess flowers,” said June and dragged him over to a newsstand, in front of which was a white bucket full of cellophane-wrapped blooms. She deliberated among clusters of mums, seeming not to notice dozens of replicas of her face, lips pursed coyly around a peppermint stick, gazing from the December issue of McCall’s. Peter had asked her once, Did she really not see herself? Goodness, no, June had said; she couldn’t look at newsstands at all. Spotting her competition on other covers, Jean Shrimpton or Peggy Moffitt, made her crazy. Sometimes she literally shielded her eyes, with a hat or her hand, when they walked by kiosks. “I’ll take . . . this one,” she said, selecting a rust-colored bunch, and then they had to sprint for the train.

  They were lucky and got two seats together; the train wasn’t as crowded as it normally was with commuters, rows and rows of men in hats, but there were still plenty of people in transit for the holiday. Peter offered June the window and she nestled in, seemingly unaware of the looks she drew from men and women alike. To Peter it was still a novelty, the reflected celebrity of her presence. The few dates he had been on in this country had been with pretty girls, some actually quite lovely. But none in the same category as June, with her height and boyish blond hair; her startlingly exquisite white face; her miniskirts and collection of thigh-high platform boots in every color. She was, as the chefs at Masha’s called her, some dish. The train began to move forward, producing vertigo in Peter at first when, compared to the cars next to them, they seemed to be sliding backward. Then they were in the tunnel, picking up speed. Peter thought as he always did that if one were cognizant of the moment right before one’s death, it might be like this: rushing through dark space at a speed that made one’s ears pop, suspended between one place and another.

  They emerged to the clustered projects of the Bronx, the city reappearing in miniature on Peter’s right. June leaned across his lap to watch it go by. “I never get tired of that skyline,” she said, and hummed a little—If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere—before she sat back and took out her Marlboros.

  “Sometimes it all still seems like a dream,” she said.

  “I know what you mean,” said Peter, lighting her cigarette.

  She smoked ruminatively. “Every night I wake up knowing it’s all going to pop like a soap bubble. Realistically, I’ve got a year at most, maybe two, before I have to go back to Minnesota.”

  “Yes, to your farmer husband, your six children, and your permanent wave.”

  June shot Peter a sideways glance. “Tell me again,” she said. Already they had a catechism.

  “You’ll never have to do that,” said Peter.

  “Ever?”

  “Never.”

  “Even when I’m saggy and baggy and sit around eating bonbons all day?” said June.

  “Especially then,” said Peter. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Oh,” said June, “you are the sweetest man,” and she snuffed her cigarette in the ashtray and hooked one leg over Peter’s and took his face in her hands and kissed him for so long that it was the throat-clearing of the conductor, moving through the car taking tickets, who stopped them.

  “Hi there,” said June. She rearranged herself and handed over her ticket. “’Scuse me, I’m going to go reapply my lipstick, which this guy here messed up.” She slid out of her seat and swayed up the length of the car, everyone—the conductor and Peter included—watching her go.

  “Lucky man,” said the conductor.

  “I am,” said Peter.

  He looked out the window as bars of sunlight and shadow alternated over his face. The tangle of highways, the seemingly thousands of cars, the three- and four-story brick buildings with their graffiti and advertisements at every stop: cutty sark, lucky strike, ban the bomb, chevy, coca-cola, fuck ’nam! Peter thought how different they were from the posters of his youth: ein volk, ein reich, ein führer!, for example, or der jude: kriegsanstifter, kriegsverlängerer—war agitator, war prolonger. Neither had there been, in Berlin, any of this disorderly scribbling on walls. In fact, little about the American travel system with its litter and anarchic epithets resembled the U-Bahn and S-Bahn of Peter’s native city, not to mention the later trains, the ones on which one had no choice of where to sit, the ones in which there were no seats or even windows but instead rough walls against which one stood, pressed, with hundreds of other people, unable to sit or move or scratch one’s nose, stinking and waiting in the dark. For a moment Peter thought of a child’s hand winking in the sunlight: “Papa! Over here!” Then it was gone.

  He got up and made his way through the car, past a family sharing lunch, a woman in rollers and kerchief smoking, a fat man scowling at his newspaper. One of the bathroom doors stood open. The other was closed. Peter tapped on it.

  “June? Are you all right?”

  The door rolled open an inch on its track, and one of June’s blue eyes peered through.

  “I need help with my zipper,” she said.

  Peter stepped into the tiny compartment and shut the door. “Are you . . . changing outfits?” he asked with some confusion—he hadn’t seen her bring any other bags along—and then she was grabbing him, her hands around his neck, sucking on his lower lip. Peter caught on; without removing his mouth from hers, he hitched her legs up around his waist and swung her so she was perched on the tiny sink. He reached under her skirt; she was wearing garters but no underwear. She planted her boots on the opposite wall as Peter unzipped his fly. “Oh!” she said and her head knocked back against the mirror as he entered her.

  She pushed against him, her muscles flexing. Peter gripped her buttocks with one hand and braced the other against the wall. Water sloshed in the commode; the lights went off and on again, the rails went ka-chk ka-chk, ka-chk ka-chk beneath them and the whole room rocked. Somebody tapped on the door; “Just a minute!” June and Peter yelled in unison, and then they looked at each other and tried not to laugh. Peter began moving again, and June bit her lip and put her head back and presented him with her long white throat. Above it, in the mirror, Peter saw himself reflected: he still had his hat on, his coat. Good. The more layers he had on, the better. For nearly a month they had been enjoying just this kind of vigorous entanglement, and June had yet to see him without a shirt or in full daylight. Just the way Peter liked it. It was a lot of work but worth it. June was worth it. The train slowed for a stop, and Peter slid as far as he could into her, into the welcome oblivion of pure sensation. He buried his face in her neck and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  They took a cab from the Larchmont station, passing the White Stag Country Club, which did not admit Jews, and the Briar Rose, which did. June twisted in her seat, taking in the stone walls, the vast lawns, the houses set so far back from the road that only glimpses of them were available. “These places are mansions,” she said.

  “Do you think so? They are just houses,” Peter said mildly.

  June extracted a cigarette for Peter to light as the driver followed a narrow lane into a cul-de-sac. Here the land ended; more houses, tucked among two-story boulders of schist and towering old trees, surveyed the Long Island Sound. “Is that theirs?” June asked, craning forward.

  “No,” said Peter, “that one,” and he pointed to a half-stone, half-timbered house perched on a cliff.

  “Jeez, Pete,” said June, “you might have warned me.”

  “Warned you of what?” said Peter. “Sol is a lawyer, a partner in his own firm. I told you that. He does well. He likes to play golf.”

  He was starting to sweat. He took out his handkerchief and patted his for
ehead as the cabbie wended up the long drive, between rock faces furred with moss and glittering with mica. “Thank you,” Peter said, pulling out his billfold to pay. He helped June out of the taxi, and they stood in the motor court looking up at the house as the cab drove away.

  June stamped out her cigarette and looked around for somewhere to put the butt. “Never mind,” Peter said, “Yoshi will get it.” He added, “The gardener.”

  “Remind me, who are these people again? Your cousins?”

  “Not strictly. Sol was my father’s cousin. Ruth is his wife. They’re the only family I have.”

  “Oh,” said June.

  Peter put his arm around her.

  “Listen,” he said. “They will absolutely adore you. I do—so how could they not?”

  “Well,” said June. But she started to smile.

  Peter tugged her gently toward the steps, which were carved straight into the rock upon which the house sat. As they ascended, they passed through Ruth’s stepladdered gardens—barren this time of year, but with enough Japanese maples and evergreens planted in them that they weren’t totally devoid of color. A waterfall chattered down one rock wall. When they reached the terrace, Peter turned June around to take in the grounds: the yard beneath them a grassy bowl ringed by oaks, in which a kidney-shaped swimming pool gleamed in summer but was currently shrouded in canvas; the wild reeds separating the property from the marsh; the Sound beyond that. Boats bobbed on the horizon.

  “Wow,” said June again. She clung to Peter’s arm. “It’s amazing.”

  “You’re amazing, June Bouquet,” said Peter, and was kissing her when the door to the kitchen opened and Ruth came out.

  “Bubbie!” she crowed.

  She gave Peter a smack on the cheek and lick-wiped the lipstick off. She was wearing a special caftan today in honor of the occasion, patterned with thousands of tiny brown and orange feathers; she looked like a little maroon-crested pheasant. In the folds of her clothes Peter smelled Shalimar, mothballs, and gravy. She turned to June.

  “And this must be the mysterious June I’ve been hearing about?” she asked.

  “Indeed, this is she,” Peter said. “My lady friend June Bouquet. June, this is Ruth.”

  “June Bouquet!” said Ruth, looking from June to Peter with an expectant smile as if waiting for somebody to let her in on the joke; when nobody did, she said, “How nice!”

  “How do you do,” said June, “these are for you,” and she handed Ruth the mums.

  Ruth clucked. “A bouquet from a bouquet? That’s extra special.”

  She tipped her head back to look at June, like a tourist trying to see the top of a skyscraper.

  “Hoo, you’re a tall one,” she said. “And so skinny! Peter, aren’t you feeding this girl?” She took June’s elbow. “Let me guess, you’re a picky eater, but we’ll fix that. Wait’ll you see the spread we’ve got today.”

  She led June inside, June making a comical wide-eyed face over her shoulder at Peter. He blew her a kiss and followed them into the kitchen, where the maid was struggling with something at the sink.

  “Here, let me,” said Peter and took from her one of Ruth’s prized copper molds. He ran a few inches of warm water in the sink and dropped it in. “How are you, Maria?”

  “Fine, Mr. Peter,” said Maria—whom Ruth called her girl although Peter guessed Maria was in her mid-fifties. Peter had grown up with servants, in fact had felt more comfortable with them than his own parents, but it still surprised him a little to find the class system alive and well in America. Wasn’t this supposed to be the land of equal opportunity, of egalitarianism? Of course, one had only to watch Negroes in the South marching for their rights and being attacked with dogs and hoses for their trouble to know that wasn’t quite true, but—among Jewish people, too, this sense of others as destined to serve? Peter didn’t subscribe to it. In his profession, most of the best-skilled workers had brown skin of one shade or another.

  “How are Hector and Victor?” he asked Maria of her sons.

  “Trouble,” she said and pushed at her hair, gray and white in its net.

  “If Victor wants a job when he’s released, send him to me.”

  “You a good man, Mr. Peter,” said Maria. Her smile exposed a gold tooth. “That lady who come through with Missus Ruth, she your girlfriend?”

  “She is,” said Peter, smiling.

  “Ay!” said Maria, “tall,” and she canted her body back to look at the ceiling in illustration.

  “She is indeed,” said Peter. He lifted the mold from the sink, inverted it onto a waiting platter, gave it a gentle tap, and a ring of jellied cranberry embedded with walnuts slid out. Peter had never eaten Thanksgiving dinner here, but he knew what else Ruth had in store for them because every year she called him to consult about the unvarying menu: turkey—of course; sweet potatoes, oyster stuffing, vegetables from her garden. Peter was half dreading, half anticipating the food parade: he knew he would spend the meal mentally cataloging what he would have done differently, but one could always learn something new from someone else’s recipes, too. He patted Maria on the shoulder of her gray uniform, unwrapped the cheese to breathe, slotted the tortes from Masha’s into the already overflowing refrigerator, and went in search of June and Ruth.

  They were in the living room, where a fire crackled behind the brass grate. At the bar Peter fixed himself a vodka tonic—it was past noon, after all. “June?” he said, “may I get you something?” but she already held a glass of white wine, her hangover apparently having fled. There was a run in her right stocking from their escapade on the train.

  “So delicate,” she was saying of Ruth’s Venetian glass collection; “like sea creatures. And all the colors!”

  “Handblown,” said Ruth with satisfaction. She took June by the hand, tugging her around the room. “And look at this,” she said, “and this, and this . . .” Peter smiled into his drink. He had lived in this house for two years when he first arrived in this country, and there were rooms into which he now did not go—the guest room with its slanted-eye deer, for instance. And Sol and Ruth’s master suite. But the living room was a neutral and luxurious space, a warehouse of what Ruth called her tchotchkes—the treasures she and Sol had imported from their many overseas trips. Oriental rugs so thick footsteps were noiseless; jade figurines; Japanese scrolls and screens; china bowls filled with potpourri. A waist-high gold Buddha sat cross-legged and serene on a stand before the picture window, admiring the view of the Sound. There was a Steinway nobody played; a Picasso, a Kandinsky, and a Klee—Sol was a great collector of art.

  June stooped to peer into the lighted display case containing Sol and Ruth’s Judaic memorabilia: Torah, tallith, kiddush cup, dreidels. Ruth had identified them all for Peter when he’d first arrived, aghast at his lack of knowledge. Your parents taught you nothing? Such a shame.

  “What a pretty candelabra,” June said.

  “Darling,” said Ruth, “that’s a menorah. You’ve never seen one before?”

  “No,” said June, “but it’s very clever, isn’t it? I bet it gives beautiful light when all the candles are lit at once.”

  “Oy,” said Ruth, patting her face in dismay. She was starting to explain when Sol came in.

  “What does a man have to do to get a kiss and a drink around here?” he said.

  “Darling!” said Ruth. “How was golf?”

  “Lousy,” said Sol. “Too windy,” and indeed his black-and-gray hair, normally slicked down into thousands of tiny waves, had exploded so it looked like the brand-new hairstyle Peter sometimes saw on Negroes in the city, the Afro. “Who’s this?” Sol asked of June.

  “This is my lady friend,” said Peter, “June Bouquet.”

  Sol’s face creased in a smile. “Aren’t you some hot ticket.”

  “Thank you,” said June. “I think.”

  “Didn’t think you had it in you,” said Sol to Peter and stumped over to the bar, where he poured himself a Scotch—far from his
first, Peter surmised. Sol’s eyes were watering and his nose reddened in a way that couldn’t be completely attributed to the wind on the eighteenth hole.

  “Let’s get dinner on the table,” Sol announced. “I’m starved.”

  * * *

  Although there was a formal dining room in the Larchmont house, complete with mahogany dining set, Peter had never once seen it used. Today’s meal, like all others, was served in the solarium—the glass box Sol had appended to one wing of the house for Ruth’s sixtieth birthday. It was a bit of a horror architecturally, matching nothing, but it was an excellent environment for Ruth’s indoor garden, cacti and ferns and flowering plants that ringed the room on floating shelves and hung from the skylights. From floor to ceiling the walls were glass, giving the impression of eating outside among the giant boulders, the lawn and open sky.

  Peter held Ruth’s chair, then June’s. The table had been laid for the holiday with Belgian linens, Ruth’s Wedgwood china, and Tiffany silver. There were salt and pepper cellars at each place setting. There was a bowl of purple grapes with its own scissors for cutting the stems, which gave Peter a pang whenever he saw it; his mother had had one as well. In the center, a wicker cornucopia overflowed with gourds from Ruth’s own garden.

  Maria came in with the breadbasket, into which she had sliced Peter’s ficelle and a loaf of challah. She lit candles, poured water and wine.