Old News

by Ed Ifkovic

  He grunted but said nothing at first. Rather, he tapped his foot on the floor, the pouting child. Then, purposely, he spat out the words: “I suppose you came to apologize.”

  My mother spoke up. “My Edna doesn’t need to apologize for anything.”

  I held up my hand. “I can fight my own battles, Mother.”

  Ezra, eyes bright, mimicked a look of innocence. “This is a battle?”

  I glowered at him. “A skirmish, really. My opponent woefully at a disadvantage.”

  “And why is that?”

  “You don’t understand that you’ve already lost.”

  That confused him, but he stopped talking. Sarah was grinning, actually pointing a derisive finger at him.

  “Outnumbered, dear Ezra,” she told him flatly. “Look around you. Women in the kitchen, in the dining room…they overwhelm.” She counted. “Seven against one. Lucky seven. You make us unlucky, Ezra—eight is doom.”

  Leah was tired of the squabble. “What’s wrong with you two? Do you hear yourselves? We should be thinking of one thing now.” Once she started, she went on and on, a sad ramble, until all of us—not me, really—tried to look penitent and sorrowful. Ezra, too—he never altered his look of disgust and condescension.

  The doorbell chimed. “Good God,” Sarah said, “is this a hub of the Illinois Central?”

  A sheepish Ad walked in, trailed by a jittery Minna. Ad said nothing and seemed surprised and bothered by the number of folks gathered there, but Minna entered talking, thrusting out a white box tied with twine. “Cookies from Bremmer Cookies.” She was holding out the box toward Sarah but recognized her error, swung around and bumped into Ad’s side as she searched for Leah. Ad watched her, annoyed, but Leah approached her, accepted the box and embraced the woman. Minna stepped back, colliding with the edge of a table, and kept muttering, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” She viewed the room in a panic and said, “I haven’t been here in ages.”

  Leah followed Minna’s gaze. Perhaps some in the room flashed back to a time when Minna had been the sweetheart of Herman until Ivan, finding fault with the bumbling girl, had nixed that union. Minna once sat at that very table…dinners, plans, dreams. Leah, of course, had given them her blessing, so she’d liked Minna—something apparent now as she held her, Minna’s face buried in her shoulder.

  “Ad told me. I didn’t know. How is…?”

  Leah shook her head slowly, comforting. “It’s all right, Minna. Sit, sit. Please.”

  Ad sat at her side, though all the attention centered on Minna, frail and trembling. I watched Ad. Drawn, weary, shattered. He’d shaved but missed a spot near his left ear, a faint patch of beard stubble that seemed endearing to me. The Arrow collar he’d clipped to the pale blue shirt was coming undone, poorly fastened. Despite his sharp-pressed pants and the polished button shoes, he looked disheveled. A man who hadn’t cared that morning as he bathed and dressed for the day.

  “Were you at the hospital?” I asked him.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I stopped in before I got to Minna’s. Nothing doing. They wouldn’t let me into his room.”

  Ezra spoke up. “Family only, young man.”

  Ad’s face got hot. “Jacob is my best friend. Always has been.”

  “It’s all right, Ad,” Leah reassured him. “He knows you’re his best friend. No matter what. Some things don’t got to be said.”

  Ad’s expression got dreamy. “I keep thinking about my last talk with him. A few days ago. Just before he started to avoid me—to avoid everyone. He shuffled along like an old man, shoulders down, droopy eyes. You couldn’t shake him out of it, and I kept asking what was wrong. ‘Tell me, tell me. C’mon, Jacob. Tell me.’ But he’d get this funny look in his eyes, that lazy sleepwalker’s look he sometimes had, and stare at me. Like he was already far away from the world. Lord, it scared me. It was so—crazy…deep. But at the same time I felt he wanted me to help him. So close to me, the way he stood.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Ad stopped a second, catching his breath. “What he said chilled me.” Another pause, his eyes half shut.

  “What?” I prompted.

  Ad peered into my eyes, but he glanced for a second at Leah. “He said he’d failed his mother.”

  Leah tensed up. She wrapped her arms around her chest, and swayed. “But he never failed me. He knew that. He had nothing to do with…”

  Ad couldn’t look at her now. “He believed he did. Then, like that, his eyes got hard as glass, real scary like, and he said to me, a finger jabbing in my chest, ‘Don’t you know it’s time?’ ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Time, time, time. It’s time.’” Ad swallowed. “It was like some chant.”

  Sarah spoke too loudly. “What does that mean? Are you saying he planned to kill himself?”

  Ad gasped. “God, no.” Then, fiery, “No, dammit.” He shot a look at Ezra, then at me. Ad had announced Ezra as Jacob’s attempted murderer last night. Now, as Ad’s eyes focused on him, Ezra squirmed. He’d been lighting a cigarette and dropped the wooden match. He swore under his breath.

  “Ad,” I said, “Jacob was sinking into his troubles. It’s hard to know what he meant by that.”

  “I dunno.” Helpless, a whimper. But he went on. “Then he said, ‘Should I let the past stay dead?’ He mentioned those days when we all sat around the back room at Nathan’s. ‘Disgusting, all of it,’ he said. Then, like that, he closed up.”

  Sarah said, “If Jacob comes out of his coma, maybe he’ll tell us what really happened.”

  Ezra glared. “Be realistic, Sarah. He’s not going to make it.”

  Ad shot him a look. “How convenient.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Ad didn’t answer.

  By chance, I’d been watching the twins as Ad told the story of his last conversation with Jacob. Ad had a drifting, rolling voice. His narrative was intoxicating. I watched his handsome face, the deep lines under the eyes and at the corners of his mouth that, in a man like Ad, added to his charm. Though not to everyone, especially Ezra, ready to pounce. But to Ella and Emma, rapt and attentive, mouths slightly open, heads tilted back, Ad’s tale was powerful, the stuff of heroes. It struck me then that both women, bound by sisterhood and spinsterhood and the awful poverty of women on their own, shared an abiding infatuation with Ad, one that probably dated back to childhood years. The plain, forgettable sisters watching the handsome, debonair playboys, Ad and Jacob, cavorting on the porch, in the yard, squiring the popular girls to basement clubs and sandlot baseball games. Quietly, they held onto their hunger, unspoken maybe even to each other, but clearly still alive. Ad must have known—how could he not? Such unabashed devotion in their eyes. Because even now, sensing their riveted looks, he faltered, smiling, and then, embarrassed, he reached for Minna’s hand.

  “We have to leave.” He nodded toward Leah.

  Ezra made a dismissive sound, then seemed to regret it.

  With a mystical power I’d not anticipated, Leah slowly began to shoo us toward the door, the loving mother hen, tending, pecking, a flicker of an eyelid, the curve of her chin. It was magnificent to watch, so effective, so seamless. There she was, the woman sprung from isolation in the leper colony, the disgraced woman, the alleged murderer of the man who once lived in that house with her—there she was, benignly leading everyone to the door, the schoolteacher herding stubborn or dim-witted children. Thank you, thank you, so kind…

  As Emma and Ella moved, they whispered to each other, saying something we couldn’t hear but nevertheless communicating some bitterness. Bickering that would probably end with a sisterly feud that would last for years—the deadly silence, the nasty gossip, the noxious bile. I knew that cruel story because my sister Fannie and I didn’t speak for years at a time. So, too, Ella and Emma, Siamese twins joined at their loneliness, had now found a way to leave each other. Ezra seemed loathe to lea
ve, smiling at Leah who ignored him—that sleek, expensive man, gussied up with pomade and moustache wax and a flashy garnet pinky ring—a man no one ever trusted, could never trust again. And Sarah, watching her exiled sister take control of a house she’d ruled for years, the prison matron with the cruel jibe—she herself stood back, watching, her jaw set in disapproval, her eyes wary.

  And, of course, Jacob’s spirit hovered over us, the lost lamb, shattered, now dying…or already dead…

  I was the last one to leave, trailing after my mother and Esther. Ad and Minna were the first, in a hurry. Ella and Emma and Ezra moved, then stopped, debated, then left together.

  Leah shook her head as she leaned into my neck.

  “Edna.”

  I turned back. “You all right, Leah?”

  “Of course, I am.” A pause. “I have no choice now.” Then her voice trembled. “You know, Edna, I didn’t kill Ivan, but somehow I destroyed my family.”

  She walked away.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The trouble began as daylight waned. All afternoon the heat built, miserable, the air clammy, and we waited for the thunderstorm that would do nothing to end the long hot spell. The sky darkened and we waited. A few drops fell, a sprinkle, teasing us, wisps of steam rising from the hot asphalt. Then the light began to fade, the heat getting worse, a furnace. Everyone wilted. I sat on the porch and waited for the storm to come.

  Herman Brenner and his wife, Naomi, pulled up in his town car, idling in front of Leah’s home. They debated stepping out—I could see Naomi’s head swiveling back and forth as though she were arguing with her husband—but finally Herman stepped out and slammed the door. He wasn’t happy.

  A shadow moved in the rear seat, leaned forward to say something to Naomi, and in seconds Emma opened the door and walked out. Naomi stayed in the car.

  Emma yelled to her brother, “She won’t get out.”

  “Then leave her, for Christ’s sake.”

  Emma without her sister? Sitting in the backseat of brother Herman’s automobile? So here was the recalibrated twin, long convinced of her mother’s guilt and hammered into obedience by Ella, now visiting—without her sister.

  She spotted me on the porch, said something to her brother, who waved indifferently. He walked to the passenger door, leaned in to say something to Naomi, and she finally got out, though not without grunting her unhappiness. The three stood on the sidewalk, waiting, watching one another. Naomi glanced up into the twilight sky, and pointed. Again, Herman waved, but this time the gesture seemed a salute, very Prussian military. I waved back. Then, in a body, they moved toward me.

  “Edna,” Herman yelled, “no one answers my telephone calls to the house.” He jerked his head toward his mother’s home. “Have you seen signs of life there?”

  “I have no idea, Herman. I don’t keep track of the neighbors.”

  He scoffed. “Edna, Edna. You expect me to believe that?”

  “Believe what you will, Herman.” I turned to Emma. “Emma, a return visit? Where is Ella?”

  Emma waited for her brother to answer for her. When he didn’t, she said, “My sister is not happy with me.”

  “And why is that?”

  Naomi bent into her, her fingers brushing Emma’s sleeve. As she whispered something I couldn’t hear, Emma shrugged her off. “She resents my…I was the bad sister, the unforgiving one. She trumpeted my mother—I refused. Now I want to return home and she…she’s unhappy.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Herman was glaring at Emma, but he spoke to me. “You don’t have to, Edna. This has nothing to do with you.”

  Naomi was tugging at her sleeve. “Could we go and get your mother?”

  Herman explained to me, “The doctor called earlier. We need to be there now.”

  “Jacob.”

  “We’re losing him today.”

  My heart raced. I stepped off the porch. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  Herman stepped closer to me, ready to say something, but simply stared at me.

  The door behind me opened, and Minna strolled out onto the porch, though she was speaking to someone behind her. When she spotted us, she stopped, alarm in her face, took a step backward, and then forced a smile. “Herman.” Again, her voice lower, “Herman.”

  Probably Herman was a man who rarely got flustered, had long practiced his stoicism, but staring up at the woman he’d once planned on marrying, the woman he swore undying love to and then abandoned, he stiffened, his mouth twitching, and insanely one of his hands gripped a thigh. His shoulders hunched up. He stole a look at his frowning wife, someone doubtless aware of her husband’s first love affair, but Naomi wore a cruel smile, nervously pleased with her husband’s unexpected discomfort.

  “It’s been a long time, Minna,” Herman got out.

  “Yes, it has.” Cold, distant, so unlike the bubbly, scattered Minna who giggled into Ad’s ear.

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine.” Minna managed to make the throwaway remark biting. She was wearing a pink bow in her hair, a Mary Pickford affectation, and she checked to see whether her little-girl look was intact, running her fingers through her ringlets. A failed move, however, because she made it lopsided so that she seemed the madcap ingénue in a vaudeville farce.

  “It’s been a long time.” Herman repeated the words, then regretted them, flicking his head away.

  Emma tried to maneuver him away, but he was rooted to the sidewalk.

  It dawned on me then that Herman still loved Minna. Settled now, middle-aged, moneyed, the father of two children, ages fifteen and thirteen, and a loyal if plodding husband, pragmatic Herman still held a lingering romanticism about the girl he had loved when he was a young man. A carefree bachelor then, his father’s awful edict—exiling unacceptable Minna—had driven him into a marriage that probably satisfied his father but no one else, least of all Herman. Minna represented a moment of freedom he’d walked away from. And a real love had blossomed in the mechanical man. Now, on the hot sidewalk as we waited for the thunderstorm, Herman froze. This was what his dead father Ivan had wrought. This…this awful paralysis.

  “Fine.” Minna repeated the same word. A curse now, wrought with steel.

  Herman shrugged. “You visiting Esther?”

  Perhaps he didn’t know about Minna’s long courtship with Ad, though that surprised me. Yet it was possible. Since Ivan’s murder fifteen years back, Herman was an infrequent visitor to the neighborhood, and the Newmanns kept their distance from the cursed house next door.

  “I’m marrying Ad.”

  Herman seemed puzzled. “Adolph?”

  “Of course.”

  He squinted. “But I’d heard you were seeing him years ago.”

  She faltered. “Yes, we were—I mean, are. Have been…” The troublesome conjugations threw her off, and she finished with: “We’ll be…still.”

  “Minna.” My voice was sharp. “Minna, go back into the house.”

  She didn’t move. There they were, the two of them, back twenty years ago, ignoring the intervening years of other marriages and other engagements and other disappointments. And the horrific murder next door—something not to be imagined.

  Minna dropped into a chair, her face crumpled. Oh my God, I thought: Don’t let her cry. Not now. Not on the porch.

  At that moment Molly came outside and, smart woman, understood what was happening. “Minna,” she said firmly, “Ad is waiting for you.” Then, cane tapping, she addressed Herman. “Herman, if you are intending a visit to your mother, you’d best be on.” She lifted the cane and pointed dramatically to Leah’s home.

  But Herman still didn’t move.

  A sudden wooza wooza wooza jolted us, as Ezra pulled up in his roadster. He leaned on the insulting horn again, pulling alongside the three people standing on the sidew
alk. Emma let out a mouse-like squeal, was embarrassed by it, and then giggled. Naomi, eying the interloper with steely eyes, took a step toward the idling car and cleared her throat. Herman, however, produced the most bizarre response—he cursed Ezra roundly, a string of goddamn yous while raising his fist into the air. I could never imagine Herman so out of control, so maddened, nor could he, because almost at once he froze in place, blinking furiously, affronted by the behavior of a street lout.

  Meanwhile, Ezra put the automobile in gear and slid to a halt in front of Leah’s home. He threw back his head as though he’d just heard the most hilarious story. By the time he stepped out of the car, Herman was right there, face crimson and hands flapping at his side.

  “My heart went into my mouth,” Herman roared. “That infernal horn. Do you have a brain in that head of yours?”

  Ezra ignored that. “Is Leah home?”

  “She’s not answering the telephone,” Naomi told him.

  “Maybe she’s not home.”

  The two men stood there, facing each other, their dislike palpable. Ezra was spiffy in a charcoal gray summer seersucker suit, a creamy white shirt open at the neck, and a rose-colored silk handkerchief peeking out of his breast pocket. On his head he wore a bleached straw bowler. Next to him, Herman, the younger man, came off as the drab poor cousin in his wrinkled black suit, buttoned up to the neck, an old-fashioned businessman’s black cravat, and a brimmed cap with attached goggles that he always donned for motoring. A tad ridiculous, his look, especially the ludicrous goggles, and made more so next to the dapper uncle. Herman’s blurted out curses made no secret of his dislike of Ezra, and Ezra—long used to being the despised blood relative who visited—couldn’t have cared less.

  “I thought I’d take her to the hospital,” Ezra said. “To see Jacob.”

  Herman glanced back at me—and his eyes lingered on Minna, watching from a seat on the porch. He sneered, “I still don’t know what happened that day with Jacob.”

  That surprised Ezra, who fumbled. “He slipped…”

  “And you couldn’t stop him?” Tense, snide.