The Two-Family House: A Novel

by Lynda Cohen Loigman

  “Come out,” she told him. But he shook his head. “You come in.” He opened the door a little bit more and ushered her inside. Then he locked the door again.

  “Perfect,” Natalie heard Mimi say. “Now they’re both locked in there.”

  Judith was firm. “Let’s go downstairs. They’ll come out soon.”

  After they heard the girls walking down the stairs, Teddy finally relaxed. At almost five, he was small for his age. Two days of not eating had left him frail and exhausted, and his wide brown eyes had dark circles around them. Natalie was a full head taller and felt like a giant standing next to him. She decided to sit on the floor. She had only been to Teddy’s house once before, and his room was foreign to her.

  “How come you won’t leave your room?” Natalie asked.

  “I wanted to play with you. I don’t like living here. I want to go back to the house on Christopher Avenue.”

  “Me too.”

  “But we can’t. Someone else lives there now. That’s what my mother said. She said we couldn’t go back even if we wanted to. She said it’s nicer here.”

  “My mom wants to go back too. She keeps crying.”

  “Why?”

  Natalie shrugged her shoulders. “She cries every time I ask to play with you.”

  “When I ask to see you, my mother yells,” Teddy explained. “She won’t listen. So I didn’t eat dinner last night. And then I didn’t eat anything today either. But she still won’t listen.”

  Natalie took Teddy’s hand. “Let’s go downstairs. My mom sent cookies.”

  “I’m scared to go downstairs.”

  “My dad said they’re going to figure something out. And I brought you comics.”

  Finally, Teddy smiled. He couldn’t read very well yet, but he loved to look at the pictures. “Which ones?”

  “Captain Comet and Marvelman.”

  “I guess I’ll go.”

  “I’ll race you!” Natalie shot out the door and took the steps two at a time. Teddy chased after her, giggling. Abe was waiting at the bottom for them and grabbed Natalie as soon as she reached him. “Look what I caught!” he bellowed, swinging her in the air. “Teddy’s all right now, Daddy,” Natalie whispered in her father’s ear. Abe nodded and put her down. He led the children to the kitchen, where Uncle Mort and Aunt Rose were waiting.

  When she saw Teddy and Natalie, Aunt Rose stopped pacing in front of the stove. “Will you eat something?” she asked him. Teddy nodded and took a seat at the table. “Natalie said she brought cookies.”

  “You have to eat some dinner first. Then you can have cookies for dessert.” Aunt Rose didn’t bother asking Natalie if she wanted anything. Natalie was used to being ignored by her aunt, but she thought this time it might be different. After all, wasn’t she the one who got Teddy to unlock his door and come out of his room? Shouldn’t that be good enough to earn a smile or at least a hello? Apparently not—Aunt Rose still wouldn’t glance her way. Natalie wondered if she’d be offered a cookie after Teddy finished eating. She hoped so.

  After a few moments of silence, Natalie’s father coughed. “Now that everyone’s calmed down, let’s figure out what we can do so this doesn’t happen again.” Natalie didn’t see the need for a long discussion. She got right to the point. “Can Teddy come over tomorrow?” She had taken a seat between Teddy and Uncle Mort, and directed the question to her uncle. He looked over at Aunt Rose, who looked away. Uncle Mort cleared his throat to get her attention, but Aunt Rose ignored him and busied herself with the reheating of Teddy’s dinner. Natalie couldn’t understand why she was being so rude. Or why Uncle Mort needed her approval before he answered. None of the grown-ups said anything, so Natalie decided to ask again. “Can Teddy come over tomorrow?”

  “That’s fine by me,” Abe answered this time. “How about you, Morty?” Uncle Mort looked at Aunt Rose again, but she refused to make eye contact. “Yes,” he answered. “He can come to your house tomorrow.”

  “Can Natalie come here the day after?” Teddy wanted to know. Aunt Rose put a full plate in front of Teddy. He looked at the food and then looked at Natalie. Before he picked up the fork, he asked again, “Can she?”

  Aunt Rose clenched her teeth. “Fine,” she managed to say. “But school starts for your sisters next week and you can’t play with each other every day then. I’ll be too busy.” Natalie felt Teddy kicking her under the table. “But we don’t want to stop going to each other’s houses after school starts,” she said.

  “Yes!” Teddy echoed. He looked at the plate and pushed it a few inches away, toward the center of the table. Then he looked up at his mother.

  Aunt Rose was staring at the plate. “Maybe you can play once a week,” she conceded.

  Teddy pushed the plate a little farther away. “How about I go to Nat’s once a week and she comes here once a week?”

  Natalie’s father and her uncle, along with Natalie and Teddy, were all turned to Aunt Rose. She threw her hands in the air, exasperated. “Fine!” she said. “Just eat something, will you?”

  Teddy pulled the plate closer and began to shovel forkfuls of chicken and potatoes into his mouth.

  “You can go to Natalie’s house on Tuesdays,” Aunt Rose pronounced. “That’s the day I do my grocery shopping. Natalie can come here Thursdays.” For the first time all evening she looked directly at Natalie. “Thursday is meat loaf day,” Aunt Rose warned. Natalie sensed the threat in her aunt’s tone, but she was too excited about the prospect of seeing Teddy to care. “Meat loaf is my favorite!”

  “Then everything’s settled.” Natalie’s father stood up. “It’s late,” he said, “and I think we all need to get some sleep. Are we good here?”

  “Great!” Teddy said, his mouth full of chicken. Natalie nodded in agreement and got up out of her chair. She wanted to ask for a cookie, but it was more important to leave before Aunt Rose changed her mind.

  Chapter 34

  NATALIE

  (September 1956)

  Natalie’s favorite day of the week was Thursday. Most of the kids in her third-grade class liked Friday best. The teacher was easier on them and more likely to forgive them if they forgot their homework or fooled around. If you forgot homework on any other day, Miss Murray would take out her red pen and mark you ten points off in her grade book. But if you forgot homework on Friday, Miss Murray would just tell you to bring it in on Monday.

  Friday was also kickball day at recess, which most of the kids loved. The boys would line up to pick teams and the girls would stand on the side of the field and cheer. Natalie hated cheering and she didn’t like watching the boys, mostly because Teddy was always the last one picked for teams. She knew the other boys wouldn’t tease him (she had put an end to that in first grade when she punched Jerry Adler in the nose for calling Teddy a “scrawny weirdo”), but she couldn’t force them to choose him. Besides, if she punched Jerry again, the principal would call her mother to pick her up, and Natalie worried that her mother wouldn’t be as forgiving the second time.

  “What did you do to that boy?” her mother had asked on the way home that day. “Did you know his nose might be broken? Even your mashugana brothers never broke anyone’s nose.”

  Natalie didn’t respond.

  “Honestly, what got into you?”

  “He’s a jerk,” she answered.

  “What makes him such a jerk?”

  “He was teasing Teddy.”

  “So you punched him to make him stop?”

  “Yup.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “Let me know what happens.” Was her mother smiling?

  All in all, Natalie didn’t think Fridays were so great. But Thursdays—those were terrific. First of all, Thursday was library day at school and she was allowed to take out as many books as she could carry. Second, Thursday was her day to go to Teddy’s house. Ever since the night Teddy locked himself in his room, Tuesdays and Thursdays had become their days
together. Their mothers knew they couldn’t take them on errands or to dentist appointments, and Natalie’s mother always baked something special for Tuesday afternoons.

  One of the reasons Natalie liked going to Teddy’s was that it was peaceful. Her house was too noisy. Harry was gone most of the time, but Joe and George were always yelling or fighting or messing around. Sam was even worse—always teasing her or hiding her schoolwork. But at Teddy’s house, Aunt Rose left them alone. She didn’t make Natalie sit at the table and talk about her day or her week the way Natalie’s mother did with Teddy.

  When Teddy came over to her house, Natalie’s mother couldn’t stop herself from hovering. The older Natalie got, the more annoyed she became with it. Her mother fawned over Teddy, making his favorite foods for dinner and forcing him to take seconds. Once, after a particularly irritating day, Natalie accused her mother of liking Teddy better than her own children. “That’s ridiculous!” her mother insisted. But Natalie wasn’t convinced.

  Aunt Rose was the opposite. There were no special cookies or treats on the days Natalie came over, and Aunt Rose didn’t speak to her any more than she spoke to Teddy or his sisters. Natalie liked it that way. Every once in a while, Natalie felt her aunt staring at her when she sat at the kitchen table doing homework. Did Aunt Rose think Teddy was giving her the answers? Or that she was giving them to him? But Aunt Rose never said anything, so Natalie didn’t ask.

  There was something about the predictability of dinner at Teddy’s that was comforting. Aunt Rose cooked on a weekly schedule, so every Thursday night the family ate the same meal. Thursday night happened to be meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peas. The dinner never varied. The conversation never varied either. And there was never very much of it.

  “How was your day?” Aunt Rose would ask Uncle Mort.

  “Fine. Our shipping productivity is up seven percent from last year at this time. How was yours?”

  “Fine. Does everyone like the meat loaf?”

  “It’s good,” Dinah would say. Mimi would nod, push the food around on her plate and then spend the rest of dinner staring at her reflection in the silverware. Judith was never there because her Thursday classes ran late.

  “Teddy, what did you learn at school today?” Uncle Mort would ask.

  The standard reply to this was “nothing,” but once in a while, when he was feeling more confident, Teddy would try to tell his father something about their science experiment or about what happened in a book they were reading. No matter how hard he tried, though, Teddy would end up stammering, coughing and sputtering through his explanation. Natalie couldn’t understand why. If you knew someone was going to ask you the same question every night, how difficult was it to have an answer ready? But Uncle Mort made Teddy nervous. Natalie wanted to interrupt sometimes, to clarify something Teddy said or help her cousin get his point across. But she worried that interfering would embarrass him, so she stayed silent. Truth be told, she enjoyed the feeling of sitting at the table and not having to say anything. At her house, if she didn’t jump into the conversation, her mother was liable to feel her head and ask if she had a fever. At Teddy’s house, she could relax.

  One Thursday in the middle of September, Natalie and Teddy were playing outside. Teddy wanted to practice pitching, so they wandered into the garage to look for an extra baseball mitt. “Think there could be one in here?” Natalie asked, pointing to a dusty cardboard box. Someone had printed GARAGE on it in neat black lettering.

  “Maybe. Let’s open it,” Teddy told her. He pulled off the packing tape and pried open one of the corners. “Darn,” he said, disappointed. “It’s just a bunch of old books.”

  “What kind of books?” Natalie wanted to know. “Anything good?”

  “I can’t tell.” He pulled harder on the cardboard flaps. “It looks like textbooks. They must be Judith’s.”

  “Are you sure? They look really old. Let’s see … Theories of Probability, Calculus, Modern Statistics. These are all math books. These can’t be hers.”

  “I guess not.” Teddy was confused. “I wonder whose they are.”

  “You know what?” Natalie told him. “I think these are your dad’s. My dad told me once how much your dad loves math.”

  “My dad never talks about it.”

  “Hey, let’s look at this one.” Natalie pulled a thick green book out of the box. The silver letters across the front read An Introduction to Mathematics.

  “Can’t we just have a catch?”

  “I don’t have a mitt, remember? Besides, this one says it’s an introduction. Maybe we could figure some of it out. We can ask your father about it at dinner.”

  “Okay.” Teddy was resigned. “Let’s bring it to my room.”

  They brought the book to Teddy’s room and sat cross-legged on the floor touching kneecaps. The book was spread open in front of them, half resting on Teddy’s lap and half resting on Natalie’s. It was full of equations and symbols they couldn’t understand. Natalie thought it was interesting, but Teddy wasn’t convinced.

  At dinner that night, the meat loaf was as dry as ever, and the conversation was just as predictable. Natalie kept waiting for Teddy to ask about the book, but he didn’t say a word. Eventually, she kicked him under the table.

  “Dad, can I ask you something?”

  “You may.”

  “Can you help me and Natalie with a book we found today?”

  “What book?”

  “It’s a textbook—An Introduction to Mathematics.”

  Uncle Mort didn’t answer.

  “It was in the garage.… We were looking for a baseball mitt, and then we found it in a box.…” Uncle Mort’s silence made Teddy nervous. “We looked at it for a long time … but the math is too hard for us.…” Teddy looked to Natalie for support.

  “We want you to teach us how to do the problems in the book!” Natalie blurted out. Teddy gave her a stunned look.

  “Um, I mean, please.” She lowered her voice. “Please, do you think you could teach us, Uncle Mort?”

  Dinah stopped chewing, and Mimi looked up from the back of her spoon. Aunt Rose put down her water glass. All eyes were on Uncle Mort, awaiting his reply.

  “What makes you think I know anything about mathematics?” he asked.

  Natalie looked at Teddy, but he just shrugged. It was up to her.

  “Well,” she began, “you’re in charge of all the money stuff at the business. And money is really just numbers, so you must be really good with them. With numbers, I mean.”

  Uncle Mort looked at her expectantly, as if he were waiting for further explanation. Now she knew how Teddy felt.

  “And second of all, you always use numbers when you speak. You like to talk about percentages and things that come from math. So you must think about math a lot.” She cleared her throat.

  He was still looking at her.

  “And third, my father always says how careful you are with numbers and how smart you are in math. We figured there’s a ninety-nine-percent chance [did Uncle Mort raise an eyebrow?] it’s your book. You probably still remember a lot of it.”

  Uncle Mort took a drink of water. Then he asked Natalie a question.

  “How did you calculate your percentage?”

  She was confused. “Excuse me?”

  “You said there was a ninety-nine-percent chance the book is mine. How did you calculate that?”

  “I didn’t. It was an expression.”

  “Either the book is mine or the book is not mine. Do you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then isn’t there only a fifty-percent chance that the book is mine?”

  “Well, if you look at it that way—”

  Uncle Mort interrupted her. “There are six people living in this house, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “If that is the case, then isn’t there a one out of six chance that the book is mine?”

  “Maybe, but—”

  “But what? If there is a one out of six
chance that it is mine, then what would that percentage be?”

  Natalie took a few moments to think through the answer. “A little more than sixteen percent, I think, but that isn’t really right.” Natalie felt her cousins stiffen. None of them has ever had this long of a conversation with Uncle Mort before.

  “Why isn’t it correct?”

  “Because we know the book can’t be Teddy’s or Mimi’s or Dinah’s. They’re too young. There are really only three people out of the six people living here who could be the owner of the book. Judith, you and Aunt Rose. So it’s a one out of three chance.”

  “Teddy, bring me the book.”

  “Okay.” Teddy got up from the table and returned with the large green volume.

  Uncle Mort took it from him and turned to the back cover.

  “If you had been more observant, you would have found that there is actually a one-hundred-percent chance that this book is mine.”

  “Why?” Teddy asked.

  “Because I wrote my name on the back cover, right here.” He held up the book and pointed to his signature. Natalie giggled. She felt the tension drain out of the room as Uncle Mort’s lips formed something close to a smile.

  “We can look at this together next Thursday,” Uncle Mort said. “Unless you want to study it with me alone, Teddy.”

  Teddy shook his head. “No, Natalie and I want to do it together. So I’ll wait.”

  “Fine,” said Mort. “But I’m only going to do this if you both agree to work hard and pay attention. I’m not going to waste my time unless you both are fully committed.”

  “We will be,” Natalie assured him. She sat back in her chair and exchanged smiles with Teddy. Dinner is finally getting interesting.

  Chapter 35

  MORT

  Thursdays became the highlight of Mort’s week. In the beginning, he worried that looking through his old math books might bring back painful memories of having to give up school. But his fears were unwarranted.

  The first time he read those books, all he wanted was to soak up the information as quickly as possible. Looking at the books with Teddy and Natalie so many years later, he understood what he should have been doing back then: enjoying the study of the subject.