Old News

by Ed Ifkovic

  “You’ll be in trouble?”

  “This will be the least criminal act committed in this building today.” Laughing, he motioned me toward the open door. As I went to thank him, he simply bowed, threw out his arms like a stage performer at the end of a revue, and disappeared.

  A quick hour, but an intense one, focused, my pencil scribbling furiously in the notebook I’d carried in my purse. A skinny file, granted, but its chaotic notes—was that Detective O’Reilly’s illiterate penmanship?—intrigued me. Notations later ignored or forgotten—and ones that never made it to court or to the skimpy Fourth Estate accounts. What particularly intrigued me were the desultory—and largely trivial—interviews with relatives and neighbors. O’Reilly misspelled names, and in one case began a paragraph describing Sarah, quoting her, and then at the end of the same paragraph decided the quotation was by Ella (which was crossed out and “Emma” inserted). Folderol, most of it, a man in a hurry to head to Bath-House John’s Groggery or to his browbeaten mistress in a fourth-floor walk-up.

  But what I gleaned made the visit worthwhile. After all, I was at the point of asking the central question: Who was where that fateful day? How did the hapless players in this sordid drama move, interact, or absent themselves from the fatal scene? Yes, I knew what I’d been told by the players, some reinforced by the skimpy reportage in the Chicago Tribune, but here, in the detective’s rambling and bumbling narrative, was a beggar’s opera of tidbit and anecdote.

  First, Jacob, the wandering Jew, the sensitive artist whose perfected art was avoidance—and now absence. The report said he was upstairs the whole time, all morning, emerging only with Sarah’s screaming. So his current story of walking in and seeing his father on the sofa was perhaps fanciful, failed memory. Or perhaps he’d lied to the detective. I‘d lie too, confronting that supercilious buffoon who’d convict out of convenience.

  But there was an appended follow-up to Jacob’s scattered behavior that day. Leah, dazed and silent, had been taken to Cook County Hospital, which surprised and pleased me, though, according to Detective O’Reilly, her moaning essentially admitted guilt. I gathered he somehow deciphered the words “fight” and “Ivan” and “sorry” from the sounds she spilled out. All of which the perfunctory detective interpreted as an outright confession. That same night, released from the hospital, she’d been summarily arrested for murder. Jacob, sitting in the hospital hallway with Uncle Ezra, wailed and smashed his fist into the wall. His intended target was supposedly some cop who was holding onto Leah, but Jacob, maddened with a welter of confused emotions, missed, bloodying his knuckles on a doorjamb, an inept assault on a police officer that luckily spared him handcuffs and arrest.

  That same night Jacob disappeared. Sarah called the police the next morning, saying her nephew hadn’t returned home, nor had he taken a suitcase or a change of clothing. The notation on the typed sheet stated, crassly, “Out on a drunk? Drowning his sorrow? Or at Hattie Beeber’s brothel?” I imagined the smirk that accompanied such scribbling.

  When Jacob was gone for a week, even the cops sat up and paid attention. Another murder perhaps? All in that misguided and hot-tempered family? A call from an old cousin in Bloomington Hills, Michigan, however, let the family know that Jacob had arrived there, distraught and exhausted, the night before. He wouldn’t say where he’d been the day before, though his grubby clothing and unshaven, haggard face suggested tenderloin flophouses and waiting rooms in train stations.

  He refused to return. “Dead. Everything’s dead there.” Jacob’s words on the telephone, as recorded.

  Uncle Ezra asked Adolph to ride with him to Detroit because Jacob said he’d only speak to Ad. Nothing followed the summary, save a remark that Jacob was finally coaxed to get into the automobile. He returned home.

  There was nothing written about the nervous collapse Jacob shortly would experience.

  Sarah’s comments were routine, cursory, though she seemed to contradict her own statements on her second (and apparently final) interview, the first that afternoon, the second the next morning after being informed of the arrest. I recalled that she’d told me emphatically that she’d not been interviewed at all. She’d lied to me. At first she told the police she’d spotted a knife on the hardwood floor, feet from the dead Ivan. But, questioned further, she’d balked—she was so hysterical she looked for a knife. After all, Ivan had been stabbed. You could tell from the blood on his neck. On his chest. She swung around. The afternoon light through the curtains, the tilt of sunlight, the shadows. But she was wrong. Of course, she was wrong. As she was quoted, “There was no knife. We all know that now.” She’d also said she’d rushed down the stairs to find her sister standing back from Ivan, just by the kitchen entrance, immobile, facing her. That detail was transmogrified within the same interview to Leah’s bending over the body, inches away, as though she’d topple onto him. But one fact was consistent both days: Leah said nothing. She stared blankly at a questioning and screaming Sarah—and couldn’t speak. Now and then a low moan. The awful silence, the stillness that underscored the horror of the tableau.

  Sarah did provide information not in the news accounts nor, obviously, in her brief talk with me. And I wondered how true—or forgotten—that information. She told Detective O’Reilly that she’d been reading upstairs and vaguely heard the front door open. She was asked why not the back door—the door that led to the garden where Leah had been earlier. Or the side kitchen door. Had Leah left for errands? No, Sarah insisted, it was definitely the front door, massive and oak and a little warped, so that it made a dragging sound, a creaking wail. No other door did that, but only on opening it. When you closed it, there was only a quick pop. So, she said, she thought maybe someone had entered through the front door. But in her second interview Sarah said she wasn’t sure now—it might not have been that afternoon. After all, folks walked in and out all the time. She thought it was that afternoon—but—

  I scratched a note on my pad. What was that all about? If true, something very different was evident: someone walked in from outside when Ivan was in the parlor. Through the front door. No knocking or bell ringing. Jacob, returning? Which door had he used earlier? If, indeed, he’d been out earlier. Ivan on the sofa, watching. If true, that person was free to approach Ivan. But who? Leah returning from errands? Wouldn’t she have used the kitchen door? Unless she was sitting on the front porch. That was possible. But would the door be shut behind her? Herman? Ella and Emma? Morrie, sneaking away from the butcher shop.

  The butcher the baker the candlestick maker…

  Sarah, upstairs, waited for the pop as the door closed. It never did. The door left open?

  The police had found Morrie at his store, surprised at the visit, greeting them in a bloodied apron and gripping the cleaver he’d been using moments before they arrived. No, he told them, he never left the shop. A cup of coffee upstairs, running up, few minutes maybe with his wife there, his counter helper, Manny, still downstairs with customers. Even upstairs he could hear the front door jingle. No, no, Ivan was home sick, yes, no, no, such a busy morning it was, yes. Such a story you tell me now! Oh my God! Let me sit down, collect myself, let me.

  Morrie’s story, recorded by a transcriber, complete with vaudeville dialect.

  Buried deep in the paragraph was a brief mention of Levi Pinsky, described as “Morrie Wolfsy’s helper,” a man who came out of the back room having eavesdropped on the conversation, and said one thing to the cops, which totally baffled them: “Evil everywhere, you men. Demons. Everywhere the night falls during the daytime.” With that, he turned and retreated into the back room.

  That made no sense to me.

  Morrie had confided to the detective, “Everything that happens can be found in some line from the Torah.”

  Which made no sense to Detective O’Reilly who noted, “Crazy kike.”

  Nice touch, I thought, his sorry attempt at alliteration.
/>   I skimmed through the comments by random neighbors who’d gathered on the sidewalk. A half dozen names that meant nothing to me—and offered nothing concrete. But what did startle me were the words offered by Esther and Molly Newmann—not Ad, I noticed—who stepped onto the Brenner lawn that afternoon. Molly, I gleaned from the notes, had considerable nonsense to offer, none of it of value, so labeled by O’Reilly—“An old biddy next door thinks I’m there for coffee and a cruller”—while Esther, described as “the old lady’s niece or daughter,” kept tugging on Molly’s arm, directing her back home. As Leah was led away, Molly muttered, “You reap what you sow,” to which Esther, suddenly sobbing, reached out to Leah, trying to lay a comforting hand on her, though she never did. A bad scene, Molly playing Greek chorus to that awful tragedy. And decent Esther, always forgiving, an ineffective antidote to her mother-in-law’s nasty and unnecessary homily.

  ***

  Back on Monroe Street, fevered, my notepad bursting with jottings, I knocked on Leah’s front door. She seemed surprised to see me, wariness in her eyes. Dressed in a shapeless Mother Hubbard, coarse gray, with a white lace shawl thrown casually over her shoulders, she held a book in her hand, clutching it to her chest. Despite the broiling heat of the afternoon, she appeared chilled, her skin pasty, clammy. She’d pulled back her white hair into a careless bun, bound with a red ribbon, but vagrant strands broke free, giving her the look of a wagon-train gypsy.

  “Edna,” she whimpered, but offered only a cool, distant smile.

  “Are you all right?”

  She winced, her voice thick. “Has something happened?”

  “No, no,” I said hurriedly. “Ad told me Jacob is troubled—won’t talk to him. Hiding away…”

  She motioned me inside, watching the street as I moved by her. A woman expecting to be shadowed, watched, questioned.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Is this my fault?” I asked quietly.

  She sighed. “I suppose it’s all my fault, if you think about it. I did come back home.”

  “It is your home.”

  Resignedly, “I suppose so. But what that means I no longer know—a roof over our heads, sure, but too many ghosts in the woodwork.”

  “I’m sorry, Leah, if I hurt you or your family.”

  “I know you are, Edna.” A sigh. “Nothing to be done about it now.”

  She pointed to a chair, but I didn’t sit. “I’m not staying. I’m expected home. I wanted to see about Jacob.”

  Her eyes brightened. “Thank you.”

  She was turning away, glancing toward the stairwell. Jacob, upstairs perhaps, listening. Or Sarah, eavesdropping. Ghosts in the woodwork. I longed to question Sarah about her remark to the police about the front door opening, but this wasn’t the time. The atmosphere had shifted in the home since my first visit. Then, there’d been warmth, a soft glow to the light, bodies eased into overstuffed armchairs, the tinkle of ice in glasses, conviviality. That was my visit with Leah, of course. My scattered talk with Sarah on the sun porch was a different matter. Now, however, late afternoon shadows swept the parlor, darkening corners, exaggerating the stark light from a solitary lamp switched on in the hallway. A mausoleum, that room—that house. Sarah’s gaudy figurines an eerie circus panorama. A crypt in a Gothic romance. Leah sat at the edge of the shadows, most of her face in darkness.

  I seemed an intruder now, a violator of a hard-won serenity that was dangerously close to being lost. My fault. Mea culpa. My blame. Edna, who never allowed herself the luxury of guilt—now consumed by it.

  My voice choked, I turned to go. “I only wanted to help.”

  Suddenly Leah grasped my shoulder, made me face her. The move seemed to surprise her as much as it did me, but she spoke tenderly, a catch in the back of her throat. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Edna.”

  My head turned toward the stairwell. Jacob and Sarah, up there, listening. The hum of a radio. “But…”

  She was rocking me gently, a mother’s soothing grip. “Nothing. You don’t think I wondered all those years? You don’t think I felt blessed when you stepped onto my porch that day?”

  Tears escaped the corners of my eyes. “This can’t have an happy ending.”

  “Nothing in my life will ever have a happy ending, Edna. It can’t be, not now. Not after all these years.” She let go of me. “All I ask is that it have…an ending.”

  ***

  The Newmann kitchen was alive with preparations for supper as I walked in. My mother was peering into a huge pot of boiling water, preparing to drop in handmade rolled egg noodles. Esther sat at the table, dicing burgundy-red beets into thick fleshy slices, her fingertips tinged red. Molly, leaning against a counter, her cane resting at her hip, was breading chicken legs, dipping the pieces into egg and then rolling them in the flour. A deep-dish apple pie, heavy with the smell of grated cinnamon and nutmeg, sat on a wire pie rack, cooling, tantalizing. They’d been chatting amiably, but they stopped, almost on stage cue, as I banged through the back screen door.

  “Edna,” my mother said, “we expected you hours ago.”

  “Research downtown.” I told the truth.

  “Truck farms in High Prairie? The Dutch farmers?”

  I nodded, dumbly, but I said to Molly who held up flour-coated hands, “I didn’t know you and Esther spoke to the police the day Ivan died.”

  My mother groaned, ready to explode, but Molly squinted at Esther, puzzled. “So? All the neighbors did. We stood on the front lawn, watching.” A pause. “And how did you know that?”

  ”You were quoted in the police report. Lots of people were.”

  Molly stared, unfriendly. “And what did I say?”

  “In Leah’s yard. ‘Reap what you sow.’”

  Suddenly the three women exchanged looks, a gurgle rising from Esther’s throat, and then they burst out laughing. Though I had no idea why, I joined in, that infectious community of women sharing some laughter in the steamy kitchen. “What?” I manage to say. “What?”

  Esther had tears in her eyes. “Molly always says that. To Sol, even now. To Adolph and Harriet when they were little babies. To me.” The corners of her mouth twitched. “Especially to me.”

  “Wisdom for the ages,” Molly added, nodding. “Perhaps you should heed it, Edna.” She glanced at my mother, nodding back at her.

  I got serious. “But why hurl it at Leah that afternoon? She was a stricken woman.”

  Molly was perplexed. “If I remember correct, I was saying it to Sarah. Leah was already gone. Not to Leah.”

  Now that made no sense. Leah, the rumored adulteress. Leah, the murderer. Leah, the neighborhood leper. Sarah, the skittish spinster sister.

  “But why Sarah?”

  Molly waited a heartbeat. “Well, I suppose it was for Leah, a shameless harlot. But they were already carrying her off. Sarah was standing there, a snippy look on her face that said to me: Get off my lawn. This is not your affair. I don’t like you.”

  Esther faced me. “Molly and Sarah have had long clashes over the backyard fence.”

  Molly pouted. “She once accused me of being a yenta. A busybody. That Sarah was always a brat. Leah was the pretty flower, vacant as an abandoned house, so far as I was concerned. But Sarah, she was like sandpaper against my skin. ‘Mind your own business,’ she says to me. She complained about me to Herman who talked to me. Said he’d send the rabbi to talk to me. Imagine that! Him and his wife, Naomi, that dreadful cold fish. Both of them are like Sarah, a form of life best left under rocks.” She smiled maliciously. “So there!”

  “I didn’t know this,” I said. “The feud between the Newmanns and the Brenners. The Hatfields and the McCoys.”

  “No feud,” Esther insisted. “Leah had coffee with me at this table. She was my friend—one of the few I had.”

  “Against my wishes,” Molly said.
She banged the cane against the cupboard door. Tap tap tap.

  “Sarah also suffered that day—what she had to see, no?” asked Esther.

  Molly would have none of it. “She put her two cents in. That’s why I tried to catch her eye on the porch.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Molly covered the platter of floured chicken and then rinsed her hands in the sink. The cane rattled to the floor as Esther rushed to pick it up.

  “Edna, that bruising fight that morning. Above Ivan’s yelling and Leah’s wailing there’d be Sarah’s voice yelling, ‘Stop!’ or “Just stop!’ It was almost comical—like a child trying to stop a speeding train.”

  “You never mentioned Sarah as part of that fight.”

  Molly shrugged. “I told the police.”

  “It isn’t in the report.”

  Molly’s voice cracked. “That ain’t my fault.” She paused. “I must have told them.”

  Now Esther spoke up, befuddled. “Molly dear, you never heard Sarah then. This is the first time I’m hearing about it.”

  The old woman teetered a second, squinted. Now she deliberated. “Or was it another time?” She tossed her head back. “What does it matter now?”

  “It does confuse the story,” I said.

  “Edna, you’re being ridiculous. I can’t remember everything.”

  Ad opened the screen door and walked into the kitchen, Molly wagged a finger at him. “You’re late.”

  “I didn’t know I was expected.” He kissed Molly on the cheek.

  His mother poured him a glass of lemonade, which he gulped down. “Adolph,” she asked him, “tell Edna about the fight Leah and Ivan had that morning.”

  He rolled his eyeballs. “Didn’t we have this talk before? A thousand times? Is this the only story left in the world?”

  “Your grandmother now says Sarah kept telling them to stop.” She waited.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Molly jumped in. “It’s no big deal, dear. I recall Sarah stepping in and trying to end it. We all heard her, no? She yelled ‘Stop!’”