Old News

by Ed Ifkovic

  “And now,” Ad added, “Jacob sits in the park and cries.”

  “Because,” I said quietly, “he has his mother back but he doesn’t believe she killed his father.”

  A collective groan, my mother’s falsetto cackle breaking above Molly’s squealing protest and Esther’s quiet whisper. Ad’s look conveyed the notion that I was a pesky disturber of the peace.

  Only Sol, portly and fleshy, sitting with his hands resting in his lap, wore an enigmatic smile that alarmed me more than their expected responses.

  “What?” I asked him.

  At that moment we heard a heavy footfall on the front steps, followed by an insistent rap-rap-rap on the front door. Everyone jumped, though no one headed to the door. Finally Sol shuffled to the front door, then followed an irate Herman Brenner into the kitchen. Once there, planted in the doorway, Herman repented his brash invasion, grunting and fussing, half turning toward the front door.

  He stammered, “I’m sorry.” He addressed Sol, then Esther. “I’ve come from my mother’s. Ezra telephoned her about Edna, telling a horrible tale. Little of it makes sense. Jacob is slobbering and is accusing me of God-knows-what. That I betrayed our mother. I lay all this at the feet of this questionable young woman who plays with my family’s…tragedy for…for sport.”

  Sol placed his hand on Herman’s shoulder. “Sit down, my boy. We haven’t seen you in such a long time.” He nodded at his wife. “Esther, a cup for Herman. Some rolls with butter. Please.”

  Rattled, Herman dropped into a seat, his mouth open, suddenly aware of where he was, where we all were. His eyes swept the kitchen and rested on Esther.

  A sheepish smile. “Lord, I haven’t been in this kitchen for years and years.” So simplistic an observation, so naïve that Esther, watching him, teared up. Herman struggled to stand. “I’m intruding. Unforgivable, my temper. I didn’t mean…I’m sorry.”

  Esther placed a cup of coffee before him, smiling at him, and Sol nodded at him. “Drink some, Herman. Please.”

  As if by habit, he sipped the coffee, though his hand trembled. He nibbled on the crust of a roll. A smile lit up his face. “Esther, your rolls. Heavenly. As a boy we made sure we wandered in here in the morning. The aroma from the sidewalk…” He stopped.

  “Is Jacob all right?” l asked.

  Herman’s words were bitter. “The happy-go-lucky fool we all got used to now moans and blames and starts at any noise. My mother doesn’t know what to do. She walks the hallways, waiting for him to come out of his room. She’s crying. He’s crying. The only one who isn’t crying is Sarah. I stop in and find a topsy-turvy home. Jacob says to me, ‘We did a horrible thing to Mama.’ What can I say to that? ‘We put Mama in hell. Who is the murderer, Herman? I’m afraid it might be me.’ Then he looks at me and says, ‘Or you.’ Can you imagine such words from his mouth?”

  Sol nodded toward Herman’s coffee cup. “Drink, my boy.”

  Herman stood up. “No more. I’m sorry. A mistake, my rushing in here. I came here in poor taste—to confront Edna.” He nodded at me, not angry now but with a hint of melancholy. “My mother’s house is filled with ghosts today. That’s what drove me here. I’m sorry. I’ll leave you all in peace.” He half-bowed to Molly and Esther, even to my mother, but not to me. He was gone.

  A minute of stunned silence.

  Sol spoke up. “Herman, after all these years—and so crazy a visit.”

  My mother fumed. “Look what you’ve done, Edna.”

  I faced all their stares, but didn’t care. “I don’t understand why everyone is content to let a wronged woman wear a stigma. What about justice?”

  Tap tap tap. Molly exploded. “And you know more than the police, dear Edna?”

  “The police never investigated this the way they should have. No investigation at all. Leah was an easy target.”

  In a small, unexpected voice, timid, Esther began, “I never believed Leah did that horrible thing.”

  Startled, we all turned to her.

  “What?” said Sol, befuddled.

  She shrugged. “It just seemed…impossible then. Like the big pieces of a puzzle were missing somehow.” She faltered. “A thought, that’s all.” Then, staring into my face, “It seems to me that someone knows something—if Edna is right.”

  “But she isn’t,” Molly screamed.

  Ad stood and his glance took us all in. “Nonsense, all of this. Do you hear yourselves? When everyone turned away from that family, left Jacob to flounder, helpless, I was the one who stayed at his side. I got him through it all. I made him laugh again. When people pointed at him on the sidewalk, I …I sheltered him. Me—me. And now, he’s slipping back into that black pit. I never thought Leah would be allowed back home, but what do I know? All I do know is that it’s…it’s like somebody took a family photograph way back when, everybody standing in their Shabbas best, but now, years later, someone is shredding the picture, piece by piece, ripping it all apart.”

  He paused. “And now we’re in the picture.”

  Molly sputtered, “Leave us out of it. Your love for Jacob is a curse, Adolph. A tropn libe brengt amol a yam trern.” A drop of love may bring an ocean of weeping.

  “Stop, Edna,” Ad said. “Stop! Can’t you see what you’re doing to them?” And his outstretched arm pointed at his own family.

  ***

  I sat on the front porch, alone, crying softly. What had started as a glance from an old woman on her porch had led me to a conviction that something was wrong. I stumbled through my questions, driven not by meanness but by a heartfelt belief that there was, indeed, rightness to life. If Leah was innocent—as my gut told me, and the smattering of evidence suggested—then there was a murderer among us. One of the folks I’d met, socialized with, talked to, followed, probed, debated. Everyone saw me as hard and insensitive and maybe cruel. But a murderer lurked in the shadows of Monroe Street. When was the world going to be fair to Leah, with her lost life, her dark corners, her fears? “I don’t want my children to be hurt,” she’d said to me over and over. A prayer. But she also didn’t want her children to have a murderer for a mother. What mother did? I believed that. A mission, a—

  “Edna!”

  I jumped. Sol had slid into a chair next to me.

  “Sol, you startled me so.”

  “You’re crying, Edna.”

  I turned my head away. “I’m all right.”

  Sol shuffled his seat, edging it closer to mine. He reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly. “Dear Edna,” he said with affection, “a problem for you, this whole story.” He waited. “Look at me.”

  I faced him. Strangely, he was smiling. “Sol…”

  “No, no.” He put his hand in front of my face. “You’re young, a modern woman. Maybe one of those girls I don’t understand. It’s a different world nowadays. I’m old. But you want to do the right thing, always. You want to make the world better. Most people don’t. Yes, they say they do. Everybody is on the side of right. Everybody jumps back from evil. From doing the wrong thing.” He waved back toward the kitchen. “Everybody believes they are good people. And they are. But you’re—what?—a different girl. You do things, Edna.”

  “And everyone hates me.” Self-pity, a trait I disliked in others, especially myself.

  “No one hates you.” He chuckled. “Maybe a little irritated with you, I tells you, yes. They don’t understand what’s inside you. You push and push.” He laughed. “They should make you a puller up on Maxwell. Imagine the sales!” Then his voice deepened, serious. “Edna, don’t worry. Follow your heart. You gotta be…Edna. Yourself. Like the Talmud says, ‘A man’s name is his soul.’ You understand? That’s you…inside. They”—again he pointed inside—“can never understand a girl like you. The passion.”

  “I believe in Leah.”

  A long pause. “So do I.”

&nb
sp; Startled. “What?”

  “I’ll tell you a secret. Like my Esther, I never believed she killed poor Ivan. She loved that man, and he was a hard man to love sometimes. Not good with his children. Mean to Jacob, so bad. I used to ache for what he did to that boy. One time I says to him, ‘Leave the boy be. Jacob is a good boy.’ And he says for me to mind my business. Okay, so they fought. But we all fight. I seen her that day when the police come here—frozen, dead eyes. The face of a grieving woman, not a murderer.”

  “Then who?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s why I…”

  “I know, I know. And let me tell you something, Edna. I’m proud of you. You need to do this. You are a girl with a heart so big it makes others tremble. You know the saying, yes? Dos hart iz a halber novi.” I shook my head: no. He watched me carefully. “‘The heart is half of a prophet.’ You walk on a road that looks into the future. The others…you can’t help the way they thinks. You will always be a mystery to your own mother. In the end they will still love you.” He winked. “As much as they can.”

  “But this isn’t going to have a happy ending.”

  “It don’t matter. It will finally have a…ending. That is enough.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Minna Pittman telephoned me to check if we were still on for the theater on Sunday. “I hope you don’t cancel,” she said nervously.

  Of course not, I told her, annoyed. I’d been wishing to see Sigmund Romberg’s Blossom Time at the Auditorium on Michigan Avenue.

  “But,” Minna went on, as though I’d vacillated, “I am really excited about it. We are, Ad and I. But this whole thing with Jacob and…” Her voice trailed off, a squeak at the end. She waited. Then quietly, “I hate when people don’t talk.”

  “Minna.” I raised my voice, confused. “What are you saying?”

  “Ad told me about Herman barging in and how Ad told you to…he told you to leave things alone. To stop it. Hurting his family.”

  “Minna, is that why you’re calling? I am not mad at Ad. Is that why he’s been sulking around?”

  She didn’t know what to say. Finally she blathered, “He thought he hurt your feelings.”

  I shook my head “Good Lord, Minna. Tell him—oh, never mind, I will tell him.”

  She hung up.

  So that explained the silence in the hallway, Ad’s sheepish avoidance, the hesitant hellos and goodbyes. Our minor kerfuffle over breakfast was forgotten, though my mother had reminded me, once again, that I was a guest in the house. Good Lord—how thin-skinned did Ad think I was? Though, considering it, I smiled to myself: ah, the unnecessary gentleman that he was.

  So on Sunday as I walked with Ad and Minna up Monroe to Maxwell Street to catch a streetcar, Minna did most of the talking, Ad silent beside her, grim-faced.

  “Ad,” I told him, “I’m a big girl.”

  He made a face. “The women in my family—and the woman in your family—told me I wasn’t…polite to you.”

  I laughed out loud. “Ad, didn’t you ever learn to fight back?”

  “I only win battles with Minna.” He flicked his head toward her. “She lets me.”

  The remark seemed dismissive. The girlfriend with lukewarm water in her veins, the faint-hearted child who lacked the iron blood the women in his household possessed. Minna—destined to be the alte moyd. The spinster much pitied yet coddled. At that moment, listening to him, Minna heard that condescension, and I watched her squirm, bite her lips.

  Curious, that scene, because Ad immediately sensed his error, stammering, “Minna never finds fault with me.” But that cavalier line was dreadful, a deeper cut, utter disregard. Finally, groping for an apology, he simply walked ahead and muttered over his shoulder, “I should keep quiet.”

  “Advice most men fail to learn,” I commented.

  Ad showed me his crooked smile, which failed to charm.

  Minna was blinking her eyes rapidly, an idiosyncratic behavior I’d noted once before in her—a girl who would never be comfortable in the matriarchal world of Molly Newmann, Monroe Street martinet.

  “Jacob won’t answer the door.” Ad spoke suddenly, a line not directed at Minna or me.

  “I told you, Ad—he’s sad. Leave him alone.” Minna touched his elbow, reassuringly.

  Ad banged one fist into the other. “I knock on his door. Yesterday. Today. He won’t answer. I’m getting worried. It’s always been him and me. Blood brothers. He knows that. Through the bad times. I held him up when he fell apart.” His eyes got wide, round. “Now, I’m afraid.”

  “He’ll come around,” Minna said softly.

  Ad’s eyes rested on me. “His mother told me she’s worried. Edna, you should’ve seen her face—like…like a ghost.”

  I glanced back down the block. “I need to stop in to see Leah. She hides away, too.”

  “Everybody hides in that house.” Ad breathed in. “It’s a locked-up fortress. Sarah, the guard dog at the gate. Jacob’s mad at the world. His knuckles bruised—a fist against his bedroom wall.” Then, a helpless look. “But he cannot be mad at me, can he?” He shook his head back and forth. “It’s crazy.”

  Minna touched his elbow again. “Call him later.”

  He scowled at her, impatient. “Why would he be mad at me? He always comes to me.”

  “C’mon, Ad. Please.”

  He had no interest in the play, though I did. The American version of the Viennese musical, Das Dreimäderhaus, Sigmund Romberg’s adaptation of Franz Schubert’s melodic tunes, was a jolt of old-fashioned melodrama, depicting the sad (and final) days of the celebrated composer. Lovely, I thought, a soothing balm after the open wounds on Monroe Street. “Serenade,” an enticing ballad, made Minna cry. It made me miss my father.

  Ad fidgeted throughout the musical, though the spirited song of “Three Little Maids” did elicit a snicker from him. Minna was overly solicitous, tugging at him, the mother hen with her awkward runt offspring, though Ad shrugged her off. At intermission when he was away in the lobby, Minna whispered to me that Jacob’s new disaffection was Ad’s only story.

  “Ad doesn’t like people being mad at him.” She leaned in. “You know that Jacob had a real bad breakdown after his mama was taken away. Ad cried for days.”

  When Ad returned, Minna’s jerky laughter confused him, and he shot a penetrating look—not a kind one—at me. Edna, the spreader of gloom and doom throughout the Western hemisphere. The wicked stepsister rubbing her foul hands together with glee over the cauldron of steaming poisons.

  Ad offered to treat us to coffee and dessert at Henrici’s Fancy Bakery and Café on Randolph Street, though I said no—since he’d provided the tickets, that snack would be my pleasure. Minna squealed as if I’d paid for catastrophic surgery. But we were all in a genial mood now, the afterglow of splendid theater, always so bolstering for me, covering us, making us giddy and foolish. Ad played the clown as we strolled along—he warbled “Bei Mir Bist du Schein” too loudly, and purposely off-key, but Minna frowned him into silence.

  Over walnut rolls and robust cherry phosphates, I faced the two of them in a booth. Ad had whispered something in Minna’s ear, and she’d blushed to her ringlet roots. Watching Ad’s curiously distant yet still solicitous gestures, I understood, yet again, the calculus of their love. Ad would be the perennial bachelor under his aged grandmother’s doting care, Peter Pan in a Friday night yarmulke. The boy who never wanted to leave his bar mitzvah party.

  I wasn’t paying attention to their bantering, engrossed as I was in my own splendid summation of the overgrown yeshiva boy before me. I was startled back into the conversation by Minna’s uncharacteristically brusque, clipped tone. The surprising mention of Herman Brenner. Minna had been talking of Herman’s abrupt visit to the Newmann kitchen, followed by his tepid and embarrassed apology, but her mention of Herma
n’s name seemed particularly bitter. Amazing, I thought, how someone can say a name—in the case, Herman—and the word dripped with bile. What was Sol’s quotation from the Talmud? A man’s name is his soul.

  I sat up, alert. “Herman?”

  Minna narrowed her eyes. “I mean it.”

  I had no idea what that meant. Unfortunately, now as a habit, I never listened to Minna.

  Ad was shaking his head. “Edna, Minna has a history with Herman.”

  I turned to her, this pencil-thin, frail woman, as brittle-boned as a skeletal bird, forgettable. Or not. “Tell me.”

  “Nothing to tell,” she stated, her eyes dipped down at her plate.

  Now those words always infuriated me. They were any inquiring reporter’s least desired response, an indication of so much left unsaid, the rich ore under the sandstone earth. Nothing to tell.

  “Tell me.” I spoke so sharply Ad spit soda pop onto his sleeve.

  “My first beau.” Said quietly, an epitaph etched in the soul.

  “Herman?”

  She giggled. “Impossible, no? That…that stiff collar, that over-starched man.”

  “When was this?”

  “We were young, well, eighteen, nineteen. For a real short time. A foolish time, let me tell you. Our parents arranged it, of course, as they did back then. They planned for us to love each other, very Old Country, no? And we were determined to be real Americans, red, white, and blue to the core. We enjoyed being together, me and Herman, though always under the eye of one parent or someone. Ice skating at the Midway Plaisance, box suppers in Humboldt Park, volunteering at the Davis Square Settlement House because they had an ice cream parlor downstairs. As proper as can be, our relationship. And Herman used to laugh a lot back then, before he was told he wasn’t supposed to.”

  “What happened?”

  Minna wrinkled up her face, which made her look like a disgruntled ferret. “His father took a dislike to me.”

  “Can you imagine that?” said Ad, tapping her wrist.

  “Ivan? But why?” So innocuous a girl, so invisible in a room.