by Ed Ifkovic
“I’m sorry.”
My father’s voice was raspy. “Pete, is there something you’re not telling us?”
I made a joke of it. “Bill, I’m spending my days advising young women to use chiffon velvet instead of panne velvet in the making of a shirtwaist.”
Houdini shifted, uncomfortable. “I must go.” He watched me, though he shot a concerned look at my father.
Again, silence, Houdini fidgety, my father wrapping his arms around his thin chest. I felt my heart in my mouth, my throat dry, my temples pounding. Houdini had touched a wellspring within me, ill defined and elusive though it was; and I’d been tossed, pell mell, into a vortex of grown-up trouble. Houdini was telling me something. The man with the tremendous heart had delivered a message. But what? I felt overwhelmed, smothered. Insanely, I wanted to be a little girl again, sitting with Esther at the Volker’s Drug Store, nursing a lemon phosphate. Like Kathe, I wanted the old Appleton back.
Houdini checked his gold watch and stood. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I’m a foolish man who speaks unwisely. I must be off.”
“Stay for supper.” My father reached out, seeking his sleeve. “My wife will insist.” But Houdini said he had obligations.
I rose, agitated. A world I didn’t understand was spinning around me. What had just happened here?
***
I sat with my father and tried to think of what to say. Cozy platitudes sprang to mind: Houdini is a wonderful man, no? An interesting man; quite the character, no? An eccentric man. A wildly egoistical man. I tried to encapsulate the jaunty Jewish vaudeville performer, but no words came. Something was gnawing at me. My father was rubbing his neck, so I moved behind his chair and began slowly and methodically massaging his head in the practiced manner I knew so well. Deftly, I pushed my fingers hard into his neck and scalp, rubbing the fragile temples, my father’s clammy flesh yielding to my kneading touch, until, at last, I could sense his body relax. His head dipped into his chest, and I knew, for now, the cruel and raw agony had passed. He reached up and touched my hands, his long, slender fingers resting on my wrists, a touch so protective and sure that it always made me want to weep.
When I closed my eyes, I imagined a photograph of Houdini and my father as they huddled together. Fragments of their talk came to me…The old country, the wandering Jews, America, a country in which the landscape went on forever. As I opened my eyes, I was suddenly thrilled that my father had given me a life that was American, that was Jewish, that was mine to do with as I pleased. My father never left the porch and Houdini never stopped moving; but both men were at heart rag-tag yeshiva boys running toward the horizon.
My mother and Fannie turned in from the sidewalk, their arms loaded with packages. At the bottom of the steps they took in the silent tableau of father and daughter, me leaning against him, one hand on his shoulder. My mother hurried past us, shifting the packages in her arms, and said, “Fannie, Ed, we need to get to supper.”
“You missed Houdini,” my father told her. “He stopped here to say goodbye.” But my mother was already walking into the house. I’d caught her eye and I understood how much she resented what I had with my father. At that moment I realized what she’d lost…she didn’t know how to handle the space left by an empty marriage. Watching her stiff back, I knew that she struggled in the same darkness that engulfed my father.
“Fannie, dear,” my father began.
She spoke over his words. “Something horrible has happened.”
I tensed. “Tell me.”
Fannie’s voice was cutting. “Well, you’ve managed to make Kathe Schmidt abandon us. For good. She showed up after school this afternoon and said she’ll no longer work for us. Never again. I just came from her house, pleading.”
“Because of me?”
“Of course.”
“Well, that makes no sense.”
Fannie drummed her fingers on the porch railing. “After those assaults on her, right in the house. I don’t know what you thought you were doing.”
“It seems to me that she was having her say, too.”
“Her poor father accused of murder, and what do you do? You attack her.”
“I didn’t…”
“Edna, I heard you. More than once. I even heard you say, ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ Because she was laughing with her friends in the library that afternoon—at Frana’s expense. You came at her like—like I don’t know what. Edna, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? You practically called her stupid…”
“Well, she is stupid.”
“I know that, but to say it…”
“She seems to think I’m to blame for Jake Smuddie’s leaving her.”
“Edna, I heard you.” A deep sigh. “We all did.”
“Fannie, I’m not to blame here.”
A flash of anger as she spun around. “And who is? She says you intimidate her with your questions and all-out assault. Here she is, the help. Helping me cut dress patterns or…or…we were going to have Wiener schnitzel tonight, but we’re not now. She’s here as a worker, not a suspect.”
My father broke into our spat, his voice weary. “Must we entertain the neighborhood?”
Exasperated, I cried out, “Fan, why must you take her side?”
She adjusted the bow on her blouse. “Edna, you always believe you’re right.”
“This time I am.”
“For God’s sake, Ed.”
“Fannie, it’s not my fault…”
My father, into the squabble. “Could we stop this now?” He half-rose from his seat.
But Fannie was not done. “You don’t know what it takes to run this household. You’re off—you go out there”—she pointed to the street—“and I have to do everything. Do you realize how long it took me to train Kathe?”
“Fan, she’s not a circus animal.”
Fannie snarled, “Flippancy—that’s what you give me.”
“You talk like she’s a dumb ox who is…”
My father stomped his foot on the floor, and we stopped. He stumbled past Fannie and disappeared into the back of the house.
Fannie spoke through clenched teeth. “See what you do, Edna. You drive him to anger.”
I brushed past her into the house, headed to the stairs to my room. “And you drive him to sadness.” I looked back at Fannie. “And that’s the bigger crime here.”
***
The war among the Ferbers escalated through supper. Which was, of course, not Wiener schnitzel but a dreary liver and onion dish Fannie half-heartedly threw together. Sometimes the aftermath of our battles was a dark curtain that covered the house for days. The walls bled with recrimination and anger and weeping. One time last year it had gone on, irrationally, for weeks—this was just after I took the job at the Crescent. No one was happy with that move…even me. One night, distraught over the screaming match of the two volatile sisters, my mother carried her diary from her bedroom and in a clipped, deadened voice said, “Let me read you everything I’ve written in my day book for the past three days. Tuesday: ‘Stomachache all day, shipping delayed at store. At night Ed and Fan at war.’ Wednesday: ‘Jacob to doctor at noon. Edna and Fan crying. Fan smashes vase.’ Thursday: ‘Bad headache. Pain in side. Jacob groaning in his sleep. Edna and Fan tore at each other’s hearts. Fire and pain.’” She’d paused. “What shall I write tonight?”
It had done no good: Fan was jealous of me, and I was of her; and each of us watched for a signal to rush to battle.
When my father attempted a few words about Houdini’s surprise visit, my mother snapped, “And didn’t you ask him to supper, Jacob? Did you leave your manners behind?” Fannie and I muttered at each other. My mother, alarmed by the loss of Kathe Schmidt, blamed me. “Perhaps if you apologize to her, Edna.”
“For what?”
“Ed, you were always a bit cruel to her.”
“I talk to her.”
My mother’s voice was matter-of-fact. “Sometimes you don’t hear the acid in your tongue.�
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“You talk like I’m a witch.” I placed a piece of dark rye bread I’d just buttered onto a dish and announced, “Kathe wouldn’t accept an apology from me because I don’t believe she can recognize decency if she toppled onto it.”
Fannie grumbled, “See, Mother, she…”
“Ed.” My mother cleared her throat. “Today I learned a disturbing bit of news.” She glanced at Fannie, who nodded. “Some townspeople mentioned that you actually paid a visit to Jake Smuddie’s home to see him. His father told people.”
“I’m a reporter.”
“A young lady does not make such a visit, unannounced, unescorted. Or, I suppose, even invited. Ed, think of your reputation in this town. People talk. Yes, you have a job to do, but this murder seems to have pushed you beyond the line of respectable behavior and conduct and…”
“He wasn’t home.”
“And had he been?”
“I knew he wasn’t home.”
“Then why did you go there?”
“I’m a reporter.”
Fannie was frustrated. “If you use that sentence one more time…”
My mother pushed some dishes around, bit her lip. “You were also seen talking with him at the gazebo in the park, the two of you, at twilight, talking, alone.”
I waited. “Yes?”
Fannie raised her voice. “She doesn’t understand, Mother.”
“Oh, I understand. Of course I do. You’re assuming my conduct is…improper.”
“Well, it is,” Fannie insisted.
“And yours isn’t?” I shot back.
Fannie mock laughed. “Mine? How is that possible?”
“I’m talking about your baseless accusations—that’s the real questionable conduct here.”
“Your name keeps coming up,” my mother said. “I don’t know what to say to folks anymore. I’m out of excuses.” Again the deadpan voice, weary, broken.
“You don’t realize, Edna, how people are gossiping about you,” Fannie added.
My mother sighed. “You’re my daughter and…”
A fist crashed down on the table. Dishes shook. A plate slid to the floor, smashed. Water sloshed out of a glass onto the crisp white linen cloth. My father half-rose from his chair. “Have you all lost your minds?” He sat down, folded his arms, and looked as though he were in prayer.
Silence in the room, but not peace: the Ferber women glowered like tempestuous Macbeth witches on an Appleton heath.
My mother turned on him, her eyes cold. “Jacob, I’m trying to guard the reputation of our daughter. People are talking. What they’re saying is not nice. So, yes, maybe I have lost my mind. Someone in this family has to. You sit all day and…” She stopped, breathed in. “I slave all day in that hell hole of a store, making a penny here, a nickel there, pleading the change from dull farmers’ wives who look at me as though I’m gypping them of their first born. And I come home to this…and now this…” She raised a hand, palm up. “The doctor’s visits, the medicines, the…the silences, the dead air of this place.”
My father spoke in a reedy voice. “I understand.”
“Do you? Do you really? What do you understand? A silence so loud I can’t hear myself think.”
“I don’t bother anyone.”
“And yet you bother everyone. This is a house without walls. Tissue paper. The sound of the bank at our backs, hands out. The empty change purse.”
“I worked…”
She shook her head, bitterness lacing her words. “You worked at failing a family. And it wasn’t the blindness”— holding onto the word as if it held an awful power—“it’s the death of something inside.”
“Julia, not now. Don’t accuse…”
“Yes, I accuse you.”
“Julia, stop.”
Her laugh was sardonic. “I sit here and listen to Ed and Fan ripping their love to pieces, night after night, and I hear you say ‘Stop!’ And then again, ‘Stop!’ As though you can use that word as a hammer. Or ‘Peace’—that utterly unreal word.” She started to shake. “I have no peace in my life.”
Silence. The ticking of the hall clock.
“I’ve failed you,” he said, quietly.
I waited for my mother to soften her words, to soothe, as she often—usually—did when they had their altercations, my mother relaxing, apologetic. Her hand would reach out to touch her husband’s hand or face. Instead, she said something I’d never heard her say before.
“Yes, I’m afraid you have.”
***
Later, everyone hiding in the far corners of the house, I approached my father’s chair. “It’s chilly out here.”
“It’s warmer than inside.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. You and Fan should not be here to witness one more sad skirmish of a marriage.”
“It’s all right, Father.”
“Well”—a pause—“no, it isn’t.”
“But…”
“Pete, let’s take a walk.”
Finally, something to enjoy. I wrapped a woolen scarf around his neck. “Night chills,” I warned, “and wind from the river.”
We left the yard. I glanced back at the upstairs window to see my mother there, a shadow looking down on us. While I watched, she disappeared into the room. We strolled on North, down Morrison, over to College, past the Masonic Temple, one of our familiar rambles. On summer nights we’d walk as far as the river and sit on a bench under the leafy sycamores; in winter, we ambled on ice-slicked roads through the Lawrence University grounds. Tonight we turned at the Crescent office, headed down the largely deserted street toward the Lyceum. For the longest time we walked in silence, my arm holding my father’s elbow, my body leaning against his. A leisurely walk, a meditation. An exquisite treasure, I always thought. Even tonight, when the air in the Ferber household was poisonous and heavy.
My father broke the silence. “Don’t judge your mother by her anger.”
I was anxious to talk. “She accuses you of…of letting down the family.”
“Well, I have.”
I wanted to cry out, You’re ill. You’re blind. You’re…you’re a poet, a gentle man in a lion’s den of fiercely demanding women, myself included. But I didn’t. Instead, I snuggled closer to him, reassuring. I could smell the sweet talcum of the soap he bathed in daily, an aroma I recalled from childhood. For a moment I shut my eyes, dizzy.
“And you and Fannie will always be devoted to each other, bound by love, but each of you is cut from steel. You need to be apart from each other.”
“Since I joined the Crescent…”
“It’s what you have to do. You know, Edna, when you took the job last year, something shifted in the house. I noticed it. Fan can’t understand you. She looks at the four walls of the house and says to herself: ‘This is where a girl belongs.’”
“And I look at the four walls of the house and say, ‘What’s on the other side?’”
“Exactly.” A quick laugh. “You got the same fever Houdini has, you know.”
“What?”
“You want to move through walls.”
“Father, I don’t like to see you hurt or caught in the middle of these shouting matches.”
Again, a ripple of laughter. “You two have the same fight over and over, and it’s always as though it’s brand new.”
I peered into the subterranean windows of the Crescent office. A light gleamed. Someone was working. Perhaps Mac? I shuddered and surveyed the street, expecting to see the mysterious man watching me. But my father and I were alone.
He read my mind. “You’re determined to find Frana Lempke’s killer, Ed.” A declarative statement, headlined.
“What?”
“I do listen. And the talk with Mr. Houdini was telling.”
There was so much I wanted to tell him now, but I had trouble sifting through the whirl of thoughts. Images of Matthias Boon at the office—his criticism, his coldness, his diminution of my assignment sheet. I had no
future at the newspaper. Even Sam Ryan, a kindly old man, found my writing overly effusive, flowery. He was losing faith in me. I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to leave Appleton and study elocution. I felt I was being followed. Houdini made me feel special. Houdini was not telling me something…
I was haunted by Frana’s death. “The investigation drags on. The police do nothing.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, I don’t. But it’s been a week.”
“They wouldn’t tell you, Pete.”
“Bill, I’m just asking questions.”
“I repeat—we do have a police force.”
“Yes, we do.”
“But you feel you can help.” Was that wonder in his voice?
“I’m a reporter.” God, how often and cavalierly I hurl that sentence around. Surely, should I die now, it would be etched on my gravestone and some merry prankster would pass by and draw a question mark in chalk over the period.
“But you’re not happy being a reporter.” My father spoke into the darkness.
“What?” Now I stopped.
“At least not at the Crescent. I’ve sensed a change in you.”
“The atmosphere there is different now.”
“How?”
“You know, things change. The new editor, Matthias Boon…”
“You like to write?” he interrupted.
“Yes.”
“Then be a writer. A novelist. Books. Stories. You have it. I think of the times you’ve read to me from your reporter’s pad. The way you describe people you meet. Those snippets of overheard conversation. Write.”
“I can’t do that.”
I saw him smile in the darkness. “Ferber women don’t use that line.” He waited a bit. “Mr. Houdini likes you.”
“I know he does. I’m a curiosity to him.”
“Not true. You’re more than that.”
“I know.”
“He says you have ‘a lightning-flash imagination mixed with a wide-eyed wonder about the world around you.’”
“He said that?”
“But he’s worried about you.”
“I know. I don’t understand that.”
His voice rose. “I do. It’s because he knows you want to solve this murder.”
