by Sarah Blake
She leaned against the doorway, watching him moving around the kitchen with quick, efficient hands. He had pulled out peppers, onions, and eggs and was reaching for the knife.
“So,” she said carefully, “when did you mean to show me?”
He turned. “The photograph? I don’t know. Today.”
She shook her head. “There’s got to be an explanation for it. A reason.”
“Your grandfather stood with Hiss, remember.”
“And his best friend liberated the camps, came home, and drank himself to death.”
“Guilty.”
“Or heartbroken.”
Paul took the onion and started to peel it. “What’s he doing there at that picnic with the head of German Steel, the head of Deutsche Bank, and one of the Luftwaffe heroes of the First World War, in 1935?”
“I don’t know.”
“How did he make his money?”
“Investments.” She took a mug from the shelf and poured a cup of coffee. “You know that.”
He slid the onion skins aside and looked at her. “Don’t you want to know?”
No, she thought, I don’t.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
He turned back to the cutting board. “When did they buy the Island?”
“What?”
“Nineteen thirty-six, right?”
“So?”
“They bought an island in the middle of the Depression,” he said. “Think about it, Evie.”
He was being careful. Handling her.
“You are the second person in as many days to point this out to me.”
He looked at her. “Who else?”
“Hazel,” she said. “Both of you are pushing me to see something bad. And I just don’t think it’s so simple, Paul.”
“Why not?” He turned back and started chopping again. “Why isn’t it?”
Please let’s stop, she thought. Let’s not start.
“Paul,” she said softly. “What happened over there?”
He didn’t answer right away. The steady beat of the knife on the wood drummed between them.
He let out a slow breath. “I understood it all, Evie. Finally.”
“Understood what?”
“There is the crime and there is the silence.”
Standing at the other end of the kitchen, he seemed impossibly far away. And she saw he wasn’t joking.
“And what is the crime here?”
“Deals. Handshakes. Nods. An island bought with Nazi gold.”
“You don’t know that.”
He turned the knob of the burner, holding the tick tick tick of the pilot until it caught. “No. I don’t.”
“And that’s not me. This isn’t me,” she said.
He reached for the olive oil. “What did you say last night? ‘Beggar our children’?”
“You know what I meant.”
He turned around. “Let it go, then,” he said.
She went still. “No one would tell anyone in your family to let it go.”
“I’m not talking about your past,” he returned evenly. “Or your history. I’m talking about a summer house.”
“But I am,” Evie said. “I am talking about history. Our history. Mine. It’s in that place.”
“It’s not your history,” he retorted, “it’s a myth. And the danger of a family myth is that you are raised to believe it.”
“And not history?”
“History can be validated. What happened when, to whom. The hero was a bastard. The mother had consumption. There are records.”
“Please,” she snorted. “History is a story we tell ourselves to explain how we got here.”
“Come on, Evie, the idea you have about that place—that there’s nothing without it, that you might be nothing without it—it’s dangerous. Worse.” He paused. “It’s wrong.”
“But I don’t believe that,” Evie protested uneasily. “I don’t at all.”
He raised his eyebrows. “We talked about this, Evie. We can’t afford it.”
“But maybe we could,” she said. “I don’t know, maybe—”
“Evie, stop,” he pleaded. “Stop it.”
She looked down.
“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay then, but I can’t give it up because of some theory you have—”
He didn’t answer.
“I know,” she erupted. “I know, all right? I know how much you hate it up there—all of us wafting around being Miltons. As if that were such an awful thing.”
“Evie,” he said very quietly. “Wake up.”
“Don’t be condescending. I’m wide awake.” She turned from him. “And I’m not protecting them. I’m not.”
Her study was flooded with the morning sun, the green windowsill bright behind the red geranium. She reached and deadheaded the crimson flower, sinking down into her desk chair and closing her eyes.
Evie, her mother’s voice rose in her head. We must go.
Eighteen
AS THE MONTH went on, Len found himself wandering through Pennsylvania Station in search of the girl, pulling open the heavy brass-inlaid doors with an impatience shot through with a kind of glee. He was absurd, and he knew it. But even as he crossed the great vault of travelers day after day, telling himself what a fool he was, at the same time he checked his watch, remarking the exact times of his crossing, as though he could make a science of foolishness.
And then, one evening toward the beginning of July, as Len passed through Pennsylvania Station, there she was. Standing right where she had been the last time. He stopped. Was it her? He walked forward. Then turned around. It wasn’t, was it? But it was, he knew. It was her. He stopped behind the information booth at the center of the floor so that she wouldn’t see him. And stared at her, leaning again into the balcony, her bare arms crossed as she waited. Not for anyone important, he judged, as she stared out at the crowd with a languor that suggested she was only waiting, not hoping for something to happen. He wanted to watch her, even more than he wanted to speak. He felt sure that he might never understand her, and that alone was a reason to keep watching. He had not known until this moment that what he wanted was this—mystery.
She wore a navy blue linen dress whose slim lines covered her completely and yet directed attention to her shoulders and to those long, lean arms, which uncrossed now as she reached, snapped open her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and sneezed in one fluid, unembarrassed motion.
He stepped out from the protection of the booth and started for the stairs, looking straight ahead as if he were in a hurry and his mind were elsewhere, concentrating only on gaining the stairs, and climbing them two at a time. She stood off to his left, and as he climbed he willed himself not to turn toward her, to simply keep going up and up. If she called him, if she called out, he’d pause. He was nearly at the top of the stairs, and his heart was catapulting out of his chest. The bank of doors at the top of the stairs that gave out of the station stretched ahead of him.
“Levy!”
And even as he turned in the direction of that delighted voice, to the spot where she stood, where the voice came from, though it couldn’t be her voice, he hoped.
Moss Milton stepped forward and held out his hand, pulling Len up the last two stairs, a great grin on his face. “Len Levy,” he said again. “Good to see you!”
Over his shoulder, Len saw the girl see him and caught the flare of recognition on her face.
Moss turned to her. “Joanie,” he said, “meet Len Levy. Levy”—he still had his hand on Len’s arm—“my sister Joan.”
“Hello.” She smiled.
Jesus, Len thought.
“We’ve met.” He allowed himself to look at her, and shook her hand again, standing nearly on the same spot as the first time. “In fact, we met right here.”
“Did you? How incredible.” Moss’s smile didn’t change.
“It was hardly a meeting,” Joan told Moss, slipping her hand away. “I was flat out on the floor. Mr. Levy hel
ped me up.”
She shook her head quickly, a little smile caught on her teeth. “Though it’s a bit of a tumble in my head.”
Her lipstick was precise. Her dark hair was parted down the middle and clamped to the side, drawing attention to her neck, rising out of the soft collar of her dress. He stared at that spot with a mix of apprehension and desire.
“I see,” said Moss, hesitating.
“Evelyn was with me,” she explained to Moss.
“Oh.” Moss looked back to Len, shaking his head helplessly. “That clears it right up.”
“Are you catching a train?” she asked.
“No.” He swallowed.
“Come on.” Moss took his sister’s arm and turned her toward the doors. “Let’s go up to the Algonquin, find a cold drink and some soft chairs.”
Len couldn’t move. The girl in the station, the girl he’d dared to imagine his, was Moss Milton’s sister. She was Ogden Milton’s daughter. Joan and Moss turned around.
“Maybe another time.” Len nodded at the two Miltons.
“But,” she asked, “where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Isn’t a drink on your way?” Moss asked.
Len couldn’t think of an answer. He followed the brother and sister out the heavy doors. But outside, in the bright heat, he raised his hand in a wave, picked a direction, and started walking away fast.
Joan watched him disappear into the afternoon crowd heading east on Thirty-third Street. She had forgotten his voice. How it made her want to listen. And his broad, strong hands.
“Who is that?”
“That,” Moss said, “according to Dad, is the hope of the firm.”
“What do you mean?”
“Milton. Higginson.” Moss hit each name like a note on the scale.
She squeezed his arm. “He works for Dad?”
“He works for Dad.” Moss nodded. “And you”—he grabbed her by the waist, steering her in the direction of the Algonquin, toward the cool clutch of good gin on the rocks—“are the boss’s daughter.”
“Well, that puts me in my place.”
“It’s the oldest song in the playbook.”
“I thought he was your friend.”
“Well, not exactly,” Moss answered. “Though I like him. He is ambitious as all hell, I can tell you that.”
“I see,” she said stiffly. “So all this talk is just that.”
“What?”
“Talk. Talk. Talk. You can look, but you can’t touch. You can open the door, but god forbid the wrong ones go through.”
“Joanie,” he reproached her. “That’s not fair. You’re my sister.”
“Never mind.” She shook her head at her brother. “You needn’t worry. I have a hunch he’d be the one in the story who’s after the lion, and never mind the girl.”
“I don’t know.” Moss was doubtful. “He looks the type who’s got plenty of girls.”
This made Joan pause.
“I kissed him, you know—”
Moss halted dead in his tracks. She nodded up at him, and then, at the sight of his astonishment, the deep chuckle that was all hers, a chortle, really, burst out. “Why not?”
“I wouldn’t have thought he was your type.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Because he’s Jewish?”
“Yes,” said Moss. “It’s marvelous. You’re both marvelous. Let’s go drink.”
* * *
LEN WALKED SEVERAL blocks without seeing where he went, his mind whirling and blank. The pavement beneath his feet shimmered with the day’s heat. She was a Milton. He was a Jew from Chicago. His father was a grocer. Her father was his boss. Two men in Brooks Brothers suits veered off the sidewalk in front of him and up the stairs into the Harvard Club, its crimson flag hanging from the portico; a little farther along, there was the Yale Club. These buildings. There was no escaping. New York was full of them.
He turned around slowly and headed away from the flags, toward the Algonquin.
The Miltons were sitting in a booth in the back, and when she looked up and caught sight of him, his heart plunged.
“Oh.” Joan drew in her breath. Moss followed her gaze.
“Uh-huh.” He grinned, got to his feet, and waved Len over.
“I have some time to kill,” Len explained as he arrived at their table and unbuttoned his jacket. “Yes,” he said, nodding at the waiter who appeared that instant. “I’ll have what they’re having.”
“Gimlet,” said Moss. “He’d like a gimlet.”
Len slid into the booth next to Joan.
“Moss says you work for Dad,” she said, leaning a little away from him.
“I do.” Len nodded.
“What’s he like?”
“Careful, Joanie.” Moss looked at Len. “We don’t want to break any—”
“One in a million,” Len answered her simply. “He’s one in a million. I’d follow him anywhere.”
Joan turned to Moss. “See that?” she challenged.
“It won’t matter.” Moss shook his head.
There was a mole nestled in the hollow of her neck. Len forced his eyes to follow the conversation between the brother and sister, the cord between them light and strong. He didn’t get it, but he did not want it to stop. He wanted to sit in this booth beside this girl for as long as it lasted. There were four inches of fabric between her skirt and his suit leg; her bare arm rested on the table.
The waiter set Len’s drink on the table.
“Don’t say that, Moss. It’s not true.”
“It is.” Moss shrugged. “But Len doesn’t need to hear my sob story. Let’s toast.” He raised his glass. “To the end of the beginning.”
Len raised his eyebrows.
“It’s Dad’s favorite saying at the moment. Our sister is getting married in September,” Joan explained.
“The girl I met?” Len asked.
Joan nodded.
“And you?” he pressed.
The face she turned toward him just then was soft and very clear. Serious.
“Joan,” Moss said as he signaled the waiter and held up three fingers, “has as-pir-a-tions.” He hit each syllable like the chime of a bell.
“More than that.” Joan shook her head. “And you know it, Moss.”
It was important to her, Len saw, to be precise.
She glanced at Len. “I’ve got a job, right now. As a typist.”
“Where?”
“With a madman,” Moss teased. “And a genius.”
She didn’t take the bait. “I work for Mr. Rosset, at Grove Press.”
Len shook his head. “Should I know him?”
Joan nodded, smiling. “Only if you believe in freedom of expression.”
Moss snorted. “Or dirty books.”
“Barney Rosset is suing the postmaster of the City of New York to release the books he seized and to allow the original version—the unexpurgated version—of Lady Chatterley’s Lover to be published. We’re still waiting for a ruling from the Supreme Court.”
“Get a load of that word,” Moss tossed back dryly, swirling the ice in his glass.
“Everything should be unexpurgated,” she said seriously to Len beside her. “Everything should be right up on the surface, don’t you feel?”
There was that dare in her voice under the calm, and Len heard it.
“Each of us has a body, and each body is its own…” She searched for the word expression. She paused, keeping her eyes on Moss, across from her. “My brother sings, for instance. And he has that smile—that fuddled smile that looks like it hurts him.” She pointed across the table at Moss, who smiled obligingly. “That’s all his own.”
“And I’ll be damned if anyone’s going to expurgate me.” Moss grinned.
Joan didn’t waver. Len could see she was intent on making her point. She was steady and sure, and he sure as hell didn’t want her to stop.
“And your sister?”
“My sister, somehow
, makes everyone want to stop and look at her. I never learned how to do that, but she can. She can walk into any room and carry it off. She and my mother, they know exactly how to hold someone’s attention.”
“And you?”
“Me?” She looked up at him beside her on the banquette. “My body has a crack running right down the middle. You’ve seen it. A fault line. I’m damaged goods,” she said.
“Come on, Joanie,” Moss protested.
“It’s all right.” She shrugged. “Evelyn can be in charge of all that. Something’s not right about me. Never will be.”
“I’d say everything’s right about you,” Len said quietly.
She didn’t look at him. The hand nearest his reached for one of the peanuts in the bowl and then played with it, flipping it loosely through her long fingers.
“But eventually,” she said, “I want to teach.”
“Teach what?” He found his voice.
“Children,” she answered. “How to read.”
“What should they read?”
“Well, everything, ultimately,” she said firmly. “Dickens. Even Lawrence. Austen. I love Jane Austen,” she confided. “You think it won’t work out, and then it all does. But in the beginning”—she risked looking directly at Len—“just books, lots and lots of books.”
Len nodded at her, the gin and the air-conditioned cool working on him like a benediction, a space to fall into, grateful to listen as she went on. This was the difference for the girls like her, he thought. Life unfolding like a book—first chapter, second, third. A man could be sped up or slowed down, things could be brought to bear, and a life could be plotted. He wondered what she’d make of his father’s life if she were to read it—day after day in a grocery store, every single day—bread, pickles, salami, ham, bread. Rigorous in its unchanging plod. A life that went round and round in the same place, wearing down the same groove.
“I’d want them to read about other people,” she was saying. “I’d want them to understand, to imagine something else.”
“Other people?” Len finished his drink.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Ralph Ellison, and Saul Bellow—”
“Len is from Chicago,” Moss told her.
“Oh,” she exclaimed. “What do you think of The Adventures of Augie March?”
“Don’t know it.” He shook his head and, seeing her disappointment, said, “I haven’t had time to read much at all.”
