Mrs. Kaplan and the Matzoh Ball of Death

by Mark Reutlinger

  As my beloved mother used to say, “Parents can give their children everything but common sense.”

  Molly now was becoming somewhat agitated. She took out a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. “But I still don’t see why you are telling me this. I know Eddie is a little rough around the edges. But he is a grown man and I cannot be responsible for his bad manners.” She looked to both of us, as if seeking our agreement that she was not responsible. She was looking unhappy now, and I was sorry that we were the reason.

  Mrs. K said, in a sympathetic tone that I am certain was genuine, “I am afraid it is more than bad manners.” And she proceeded to tell Molly what she had learned from the police, leaving out, of course, how she learned it. Molly looked even more unhappy as the telling continued, especially when Mrs. K came to the parts about Eddie being already married and having ties to bad people, maybe mobsters.

  Seeing Molly’s evident distress, Mrs. K asked her, “Did you not already know this?”

  Molly shook her head slowly, saying, “Not all of it. I knew he got married a couple of years ago, but he told me they had separated. I guess I assumed that by now they were divorced. And perhaps they are.”

  “Let us hope so,” Mrs. K said.

  “I also knew he’s had some scrapes with the law. I had to arrange for bail for him a couple of times, in fact. But I didn’t know what serious trouble he’s in.”

  “I am not surprised,” Mrs. K said, “as he would not be likely to tell you about it. But I have a reason for telling you. We may together be able to make things better for both Doreen and Eddie.”

  Molly looked up at Mrs. K. “What do you mean? I don’t see what good can come of any of this.”

  “I mean that what is good for Doreen is to be rid of Eddie, as he is not at all the kind of man she should begin her life with. But she is young and unsophisticated, and while Eddie is flattering her with attention, she will not leave him. And what Eddie needs is to stay out of prison, and to stay away from the big-time criminals he has been flirting with. But he is foolish and has learned bad ways, and he will not of his own accord change them. Do you agree?”

  Molly nodded slowly, as if to herself. Then she looked up at Mrs. K and said, “Yes, you’re quite right. I certainly want to get Eddie away from both the police and those criminals he pals around with. But how do we make that happen?”

  “Ah, that is where you come in. Only you can make it happen.”

  “How is that?”

  “For one thing, I will bet you are using a part of that income you are receiving to support Eddie, is that right?”

  “Yes, of course. He’s hardly ever had a real job, although he does get some money somewhere. I’d rather not know exactly where. But when he is short of money, I usually give him what he asks for.” She added more quietly, “I guess I’m afraid of what he’ll go out and do to get it if I don’t give it to him.”

  Molly seemed on the verge of tears as she said this. It cannot be easy for a mother to admit such things, either to others or to herself.

  “That is what I would have expected,” Mrs. K said. “So you have some financial leverage, if you know what I mean. Now, I have also learned that the police are watching Eddie, together with these others. They are building their case, as they say, gathering evidence, and he may soon be arrested and go to jail for a long time.”

  Molly put her face in her hands on hearing this. Finally she looked up, tears in her eyes, and said, “This is just what I’ve been afraid of. I’ve been worried about Eddie for quite a while. The people he calls his friends, the trouble with the law he’s been getting into. And now you say he’s going to be arrested again…”

  “But that is actually a good thing for our purpose, believe it or not,” Mrs. K said, putting her hand on that of Molly. “We want Eddie to go away and leave Doreen alone. We can hope that Eddie, when you tell him he is close to being arrested, will also want to get away from here in order to stay out of prison. Sometimes it takes coming just to the edge of the cliff to make us stop and back up.”

  “And you want me to tell him this. To tell him to leave town.”

  “To leave town, to leave the state even. I know that if he were my son, I would want him as far away as possible from the trouble he has made for himself.

  “And there is another thing. You must offer your support.”

  “You mean the money I give him? All I’m doing is supporting his bad living.”

  “No, I mean more than the money, although that is part of it. You say he still feels close to you. He does not act toward you as he does toward others. This is not uncommon for a mother and a son, and I was hoping it was the case with you and Eddie. Clearly he loves you, despite his ill-mannered ways with others. It is probably the only genuine emotion he feels toward anyone. And he needs your love in return. Being the kind of person he is to others, yours is no doubt the only true love he receives.”

  Molly thought about this for a minute before nodding and answering, “I guess you’re right. But how does that help in the present situation?”

  “You are the only person who can convince Eddie to leave. Tell him to do it for himself. And tell him to do it for you. That only when he is safely away from the trouble he is in will you be happy again.”

  Molly nodded but said nothing, so Mrs. K continued: “You might offer to help him if he needs money to make a new start, but make it clear that if he does not leave, you will no longer offer your support. In other words, you must offer him a carrot but be ready to use instead a stick.”

  There was a long pause. Finally, Molly looked up at us both and said, “You’re right, of course. It’s the only way. I don’t want to see my son end up in prison, and I don’t want him to be the cause of a young woman being hurt. I don’t know whether I can get him to leave town, but I’ll do my best to put the fear of God into him.”

  “It will be sufficient, I think, if you put in him at least the fear of his mother and of the police.”

  Molly was now actually looking more cheerful again, or at least less miserable. She looked determined, like a person who knows what they have to do.

  Molly went over to a small desk and from a drawer took out a pencil and paper. She wrote down Mrs. K’s telephone number, and then she phoned for a taxi for us. When the taxi arrived, we exchanged a few more words and Molly showed us to the door. As we went outside, she gave Mrs. K a hug and said, “Thank you for telling me about Eddie. I didn’t want to face it, I guess, but now I know I have to. I’ll do what I can. He really is a good boy underneath…underneath.”

  She looked like she believed it. I hoped she was right.

  —

  As we rode home in the taxi—it was also yellow, but much cleaner, and not only did this driver not seem as determined as the first one to break the sound barrier, but also he missed other cars by several inches more than the other—I asked Mrs. K, “Rose, even if Mr. Taubman said you should use your discretion in revealing what he told you about Eddie, do you think it was right to tell Molly that the police are watching Eddie and his friends and may arrest them? I mean, if Molly tells Eddie and Eddie tells the others, could you not be interfering with the plan of the police to arrest them?”

  Mrs. K smiled and patted my hand. “Do not worry, Ida,” she said. “This was the only way I could think of to try to get Eddie away from Doreen, except of course if he were actually arrested and put in jail. But we have seen that the last time that happened, he ended up marrying some other poor girl in order to keep her quiet. It could happen again, this time to Doreen. So I asked Mr. Taubman to ask his son Benjamin whether he thinks the police would rather have Eddie stay here and they arrest him, or have him leave town for good and they cannot arrest him.”

  “And what was his answer?”

  “He did not hesitate. ‘From my point of view, if we arrest him,’ he said, ‘we have to try him, convict him, and if that’s successful keep him in jail, and when he gets out he’ll still be hanging around here makin
g trouble. No, by all means let him, and even the others, leave town and be someone else’s problem!’ ”

  And “Amen” to that!

  —

  I do not know what Molly said to her son, Eddie, or whether she said anything at all to him. But I do know that the next time we saw Rachel Silverman, about a week later, she was looking very pleased. She couldn’t wait to tell us that she had received a call from Doreen, who told her that Eddie had come to their apartment while she was at work, took his belongings and left, with no explanation.

  “She is giving up the apartment and moving in with two of her girlfriends from the store, and she seems to have gotten over Eddie almost as fast as she fell for him.”

  Mazel tov! How quickly the young recover from that which once seemed “eternal.”

  32

  By the time we were finished with our mission to save Doreen from the nogoodnik, it was almost dinnertime. It had been good to have this distraction during the day, but now we were only an hour or so away from being burglars, and neither of us had much of an appetite—just a bowl of soup and a little chicken and a piece of apple strudel for dessert was all I could eat.

  The movie—it was an old one with that shayna maidel Marilyn Monroe—began a little after seven, and would last about two hours, so that was how much time Mrs. K and I had to work with. As soon as we saw that the residents were heading for the lounge—they did not walk quickly, but there was a definite movement in that direction—we hurried to our rooms and changed into the darkest dresses we had. Mine was purple, perhaps nicer than I would have liked to use for such a purpose, but it was the darkest I could find. Mrs. K wore a pretty black dress that I knew she used to save for special occasions, but now she seldom wore because it was a bit tight on her. Nu, this was a special occasion, was it not?

  Sara had come by just before dinner and dropped off the small tool that Florence had made for us, together with two small flashlights and a metal stepstool that folded almost flat and weighed almost nothing. The tool she handed us looked like a cross between a screwdriver and one of those things you use to open bottles with. To look at it you would not think it could open even a bottle, much less a window.

  Sara had not looked happy when she arrived, and after we took the items from her she said, “Flo had told me what she was going to suggest. I didn’t make too much of a fuss about it, but now that you’ve agreed to do it, I’m not so sure. You can still decide not to, you know. I mean, it would be terrible if…if…well, you know.”

  “If we got caught?” Mrs. K said. “So what will they do to two old ladies for looking around in an unoccupied room? Besides, no one will catch us. We will be like the…who is it…The Shadow. Or maybe you are too young to remember him on the radio. Anyway, you should not worry. With Florence’s instructions and tools, I’m sure there is nothing to it.”

  Understandably, Sara did not seem entirely convinced, but she smiled and kissed us both before she left. It was like we were going on a secret mission behind enemy lines and she did not expect us to come back. It was sweet of her to be so worried for us. But oy, it also made me more worried for us than I had already been.

  We thought everyone who was going to the movie had already passed through the hallway, but we were mistaken. We were walking toward the door leading to the back lawn, Mrs. K carrying a flashlight and the special tool and me carrying a flashlight and the stepstool, when a familiar voice from behind us said, “Are you two going to the movie? I think we’re almost late.”

  It was Mrs. Bissela, probably the last person we needed to be seen by.

  Mrs. K turned around and said, “Hello, Hannah. Are you going there?”

  “I am. Shall we go together? We’ll have to hurry or we’ll miss the beginning.”

  “Actually, Ida and I thought we would skip the movie tonight,” said Mrs. K. “We’ve both seen it before, and it’s a nice night for a little stroll on the lawn.”

  This seemed to me like a fair answer, it being mostly true, until Mrs. Bissela said, “With a stepstool?” She pointed at what I was carrying.

  My brain worked furiously to come up with a reason we might be taking a stepstool on a stroll—fortunately Mrs. Bissela could not see the burglar tool Mrs. K was carrying—but it just made me dizzy. Just as I was about to say something stupid, like “What stepstool?” Mrs. K saved the day (as usual).

  “Oh, that is because a bird left a mess on Ida’s window, and we thought since we’ll be back there anyway, we might as well clean it off, rather than wait until Harold can get to it.”

  Had Mrs. Bissela taken the time to think about this statement, it might not have held up too well. But she was in a hurry, and thinking is not what you would call Hannah’s strong suit, so she just said, “Oh, well, have a nice walk” and went on her way.

  Mrs. K and I exchanged a look of relief, then scanned the hallway for more latecomers before continuing on our mission.

  —

  When the coast was clear, we again went out the back door. The night was cloudy, but there was still enough moonlight so we did not need the flashlights. And by staying close to the building, like the burglar lady said, we did not make the floodlights go on. Mrs. K was in front and I was behind, carrying the stepstool. Mrs. K had asked me to count the windows, as Florence had done, so we would know which is the one we should enter. I was doing that as we walked along, when suddenly the window we were just coming to shot out in front of Mrs. K with a man’s hairy arm attached, almost impaling poor Mrs. K on its corner! At the same time, a man’s hoarse voice shouted, “Let’s get some fresh air in here!” Then the light in the room went on and projected a beam right across our path.

  Mrs. K put on the brakes and stopped about two inches from the window frame, which was now protruding outward, but I am not built for fast stopping, and I stumbled right into the back of Mrs. K, making a kind of pluff sound as the air was pushed out of me. It is a good thing we are both well padded, because neither of us was hurt, and my accidental push did not move Mrs. K into the edge of the open window. But we must have made enough noise to be heard inside, as the man’s voice immediately said, “What was that noise?” To which a woman’s scolding voice answered, “I didn’t hear anything. Come away from there.” By this time, I think both Mrs. K and I had recognized those voices—to tell the truth, it would be hard not to—as coming from Lester and Gertrude Scheiber. Lester and Gerty have what you would call a marriage of “give and take”: She gives him hell, and he takes it. Since they’ve been doing it that way for over fifty years, I suppose it works for them.

  As slowly and quietly as we could, we sank down and sat huddled on the grass in the bit of shadow under the window ledge, where we hoped we wouldn’t be noticeable. Then, as we were kind of balanced there, inside the lighted room Gerty’s voice said, or more precisely whined, “You’re such a shlemiel, Lester, always leaving something behind! If it isn’t your glasses it’s your pills or your wallet. Now hurry up or we’ll miss the whole movie!”

  Lester’s voice answered, “Sha! Do you want that everyone in the neighborhood should hear you?” He sounded irritated. “So who should hear?” replies Gerty. “Everyone else is already at the movie! Only you are here poking around looking for your glasses.”

  There was the sound of rummaging in a drawer, the drawer closing loudly, another opening and more rummaging, and then Lester, sounding either tired or just resigned, said, “I found them. Let’s go.” I was very glad, because sitting there on the damp grass, folded up like a human hamantash (that’s a three-cornered cookie—you should read the story of Purim), my bursitis was sure to start acting up.

  Gerty wasn’t quite through with him, though: “Let’s go, he says, like we haven’t already missed the best part. And close that window! You want that bugs should fly in while we’re gone? And the night air is so damp I’ll catch my death…”

  It occurred to me this was sounding a little like my own family when I was growing up, the way my parents sometimes would ar
gue. Nu, people are the same everywhere.

  There was the sound of rapidly shuffling feet, and then suddenly the hairy arm again shoots out of the window, this time almost grazing the top of Mrs. K’s head. It grabbed for the handle and pulled it shut with a loud thud, leaving us both shvitzing but at least undiscovered.

  Gerty’s voice continued on, of course, though now more muffled. “You’ll see, we will have to sit in the back on those hard folding chairs. You know how my legs swell up when I have to sit on those folding chairs…” And so on, as the light finally went out, the door closed, and the string of protests trailed off.

  And then finally we could straighten up and take a deep breath. What a relief!

  —

  We continued our walking and I my counting and eventually we came to the window of the room we were supposed to search. This one was already slightly ajar, not what we expected for an unoccupied room, but definitely a good thing. Now it was time for Mrs. K to take out the little tool that Florence had made for her and use it to disable the thing that limits how far the window can be opened. I couldn’t really see how she fiddled with it, but in only about a minute the window was open all the way, leaving quite a large space for entering.

  Now, of course, came the tricky part. One of us had to climb in. I had volunteered, although Mrs. K had not yet told me what we were looking for, but she insisted that it be her. “I am the one for whom this is important,” she had said before we came outside, “and I should be the one taking the biggest risk. I really do appreciate your help, Ida, and your offer, but I would not think of having you do the…the dirty work, as they say.” So I agreed, and now it was time for Mrs. K to climb in the window.

  I set up the stepstool under the window and held it while Mrs. K stepped on it and leaned over the window ledge. Fortunately, there was a table of some kind in the room just under the window, on which were a few tchotchkes that could be moved aside, so Mrs. K was able to climb from the stepstool onto the table without too much difficulty. I will not describe what this looked like from my angle; suffice it to say it was not a pretty sight. But the important thing was that Mrs. K was in the room, having made almost no noise.