Sarah and Libby stood side by side and stared at the Bergdorf Goodman window. The new season’s fashion was in, and the window designs had been themed with fairy tales. Libby was disappointed there was nothing about her favorite swan story, but she had been drawn to the Cinderella window.
Cinderella wore a black lace evening dress by Jean Patou. It seemed her fairy godmother had given her a Marcel wave, a long pearl necklace, and silver drop earrings. Her coach was a gleaming red Fiat roadster, and four mice sat around the hood looking up at her with expressions of sheer adoration.
Prince Charming waited for her in a tuxedo and two-tone wingtips. He was holding a silver satin T-strap. Behind a ragged curtain, Cinderella’s three sisters looked on, dressed in rags.
“So you like Mr. Dewey?” Sarah said.
Libby nodded her head.
“Is he a millionaire, Mama?”
“Yes. He’s very rich.”
“Is that why you like him?”
“No, it’s not why I like him.”
“Then why do you?”
“Well, it’s not the only reason.”
Sarah waited for more questions. Libby stared at the glass, the lights from the window reflected in her huge green eyes. So hard to know what she was thinking anymore. And she had been such a chatterbox as a child!
“He’s asked me to marry him.”
Libby was quiet for a long time.
“What will happen to me?”
“Nothing will happen, bubeleh. We’ll all go and live with Mr. Dewey. We’ll be a family together.”
“What about Frankie?”
“Frankie?” Sarah squeezed her daughter’s hand a little tighter. “Frankie will have to stay with her family.”
“But where will we be?”
“I told you. We’ll live with Mr. Dewey. He has a nice apartment up near Central Park.”
“That’s a long way away. Can I still see her?”
“Sure, you can see Frankie if you want to.”
“When are we going away?”
“Soon. Mr. Dewey wants to get married straightaway, but I said I would have to talk to you first.”
Sarah had hoped Libby would be excited by this promise of a better life. But the look of sadness she had, Sarah hadn’t expected that.
“Things are going to be so much better for us now. It’s no more than you deserve, this millionaire life.”
“I like my life just fine, Mama,” Libby said.
Sarah bent down, took Libby by the shoulders, looked right into her face. “You mean everything to me,” she said. “Don’t ever forget it. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done it for you.”
“You don’t have to marry him for me, Mama.”
“I’m not marrying him for you, bubeleh.”
“Aren’t you? You hardly know him. How long have you been stepping out with him?”
“You are still at school, bubeleh. What do you know from stepping out?”
Sarah stood up again, looked at Cinderella in her new season’s gown and her new season’s man. The perfect fairy-tale ending. Or was it? Would the scullery maid in the story really have married the handsome prince if he didn’t have a castle and a red Fiat roadster?
But what was it Dewey had said to her? “Just liking me, maybe that’s enough for me right now.”
She did like him. She liked how he knew which jazz clubs to go to and where the best speakeasies were, but he could shrug off his jacket and his suspenders and sit down on a wooden crate and drink beers with men called Mike. She liked that he smoked strange-smelling cigarettes and didn’t care that she knew how to milk a cow.
How did you know if you loved someone, anyhow?
“Is the fairy godmother real?” Libby said.
“Sure she is,” Sarah said. “You take my word.”
Long Island
Bill Dewey threw a long shadow on the rolling green lawn. With his hands in the pockets of his white flannels, he strolled to the water’s edge and stood there watching the sun flick golden spangles across the surface of the water.
The neighbor’s kids were splashing and yelling around their jetty; a motorboat sliced through the water farther out, throwing up a moustache of foam. Dewey took off his tennis shoes so that he could feel the warm sand between his bare toes. This was all so nearly perfect.
But not quite.
He heard the Bentley’s tires on the gravel drive, and he put his shoes back on and headed back to the house. When he got there, Nelson was unloading the Seabrooks’ luggage from the trunk of the car. George’s young son, Jack, was squabbling with his father about whether he could go straight to the lake or whether he should change first. Dewey told the maid to fetch lemonade. Jack negotiated a truce on refreshments first and went inside.
Dewey shook hands with George. “Good to see you again,” he said.
“Thanks for inviting us. And for sending Nelson to pick us up from Grand Central. It’s bedlam down there.”
“You’re just in time for a cocktail.”
“I hear congratulations are in order.”
Dewey clapped his friend on the shoulder. “You don’t mean that.”
“I’d like to mean it.”
Nelson came back to get the rest of the suitcases.
“Nice place you have here,” George said.
“You’ve not seen it before?”
“You know damned well I haven’t.”
“I bought it a couple of years ago. Needs doing up a bit.”
“I should put on an extra wing if I were you. What is it, twelve bedrooms? Not nearly enough for a bachelor.”
Dewey smiled. “Not for much longer.”
“I hope you’re not planning on filling the place with your offspring.”
“I need at least a son and heir. Come on, we can’t let the ice melt in the gin.”
Dewey led the way through the marble hallway. George stopped and glanced at the silver-framed photographs on the wall: Dewey’s grandfather staring dourly at the camera in his dark suit, his fob watch on a chain; Dewey’s father at the helm of the family yacht; one of Dewey’s sisters with her first pony.
“What do Emma and Susan say?” George asked him.
“The same as everyone else.”
“Which is what?”
“Pretty much what you said—don’t do it.”
They sat on the deck, the lowering sun striking gold on the beach. Dewey snapped his fingers while he waited for the help to bring the gins.
“Nervous, Billy?”
“Of course not. Why?”
“You always snap your fingers when you’re nervous.”
“Nonsense.”
“Are you afraid this is the last flicker of the candle before it goes out?”
Dewey threw back his head and laughed. “You’re the only one of my friends who would have the effrontery to say something like that to me.”
“I’m the only one of your friends who doesn’t owe you money. When do I get to meet the lucky woman?”
“Probably not until the big day. You will come?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Would you like me to speak the eulogy?”
Dewey toyed with the mint leaf from his gin glass. “No, but I would like you to be the best man.”
“Me?”
“You’re my oldest friend, George. Well?”
“I’d be honored.”
“Good.”
Dewey took a long swallow of his gin and tonic.
“Did you buy that firm you were looking at in Union Square?”
George nodded.
“So you’re going into the rag trade now?”
“I saw an opportunity.”
“You should have come to me. You’ll get better returns on the market.”
“I told you, Billy, that’s not for me. I like to buy real things with my money, not bits of paper.”
Jack came bounding down from upstairs. Dewey looked up. “How old is he now?”
“Twelve.”
“Growing up
fast.”
“He already thinks he knows it all too.”
“The apple never falls far from the tree,” Dewey said, and grinned. “Look at him. He’s the spitting image.”
That much was true; there was no mistaking whose son he was, with those piercing blue eyes and mop of fair Waspy hair. Dewey got to his feet as the boy bounded in, dressed for action in his tennis shoes and Fair Isle sweater. “How about a twilight sail before dinner?” George said to him. “We can take the cat out on the water before dinner.”
“Can we, Uncle Billy?”
“Let’s do it.” Dewey led the way down the lawn. Must be good to have a son, he thought. Perhaps I really should get one myself.
28
Lower East Side
Libby was sleeping up on the roof with Frankie again. Those girls, like Siamese twins they were. It was a shame to tear them apart. Sarah would try to get Frankie to visit them when they moved up to the One Hundreds. It still seemed unreal to even think of starting a new life up there, in the America her Micha had dreamed of, the Golden Medina he had left Russia to find.
Sarah reached under the bed and pulled out his old biscuit box. She took out the bit of paper, unfolded the receipt:
Dear Madam,
Forwarded herewith, the personal effects of the late Lance Corporal Michael Levine, 4th Infantry Regiment, as per inventory attached. Kindly confirm receipt of same by signing and returning the enclosed slip.
She used her index finger to sort through what was in the tin: his wristwatch, stopped at 10:37; a French five-franc note; a postcard with German script.
And there it was, underneath the useless mementos of his life, the ancient cutting from the New York Times. She stared at it still folded. She would not open it as she was afraid it would tear. Besides, she knew what it said by heart.
“You knew, Micha,” she murmured. “But you never told me. How did it happen? How did you bring this miracle into our life? Well, I have done what you wanted. I have got our baby girl what she was born to. We are not cheating her anymore.”
The summer was almost over. There was a bite to the air tonight. Libby and Frankie wouldn’t be sleeping out on the roof together many more nights. They curled up side by side on the mattress, and Libby showed Frankie the book that her mama’s new friend had given her. They read until it was too dark to see, and then they huddled under the blankets listening to the Kohns shout at each other in the apartment next to Frankie’s, and the family of mice scamper on the roof by the air shaft.
Libby rolled on her back and looked up at the stars and tried to pick out the Great Bear. Suddenly, Frankie said, “Are you going away?”
“Who told you that?”
“My ma said. She said your mother’s going to marry a millionaire, and you’re away to live in a fancy apartment, and we’re never going to see you again.”
“I’ll still see you just the same as always. I promise. Even if I have to walk a hundred blocks every night.”
“No, you won’t, not once you’re a fancy girl. You’ll forget all about us down here, and I don’t blame you.”
“I won’t forget about you!”
“Of course you will. Don’t look so sad about it. You’re right lucky, you are. You’ll be able to have icebox cakes whenever you want.”
“Even if I do, it won’t be the same if I can’t share them with you.”
“Well, don’t forget us forever. Come back at Christmas and Saint Paddy’s Day, and I’ll forgive you.”
Libby didn’t know what to say to her. She didn’t want to leave, not for all the icebox cakes in the world. Of course she would come back.
They heard Frankie’s brothers and sisters yelling downstairs, her ma and her daddy having another row, the sound of a plate smashing. Someone was drunk on the stairs; a big rat poked its whiskers around the gutter right over their heads.
“If it was me, I’d never come back here,” Frankie said. “Not for anything. And you won’t either. You’ll see.”
29
Long Island
Sarah thought about the times in her life when she had wondered if she could face another tomorrow—in the stink and gloom of the third deck on the boat out from Russia; when the soldier came to her door in the tenement in Cannon Street and handed her the brown envelope with all that was left in the world of her husband.
But she had never felt quite as desolate as this. I am supposed to feel so excited, she thought. Today I marry a rich man. This is the day all my dreams for my daughter come true. It’s the end of the fairy story, the moment the shoe fits.
Why do I feel like this?
Dewey had hired extra help to get everything ready. All week his staff had mopped and scrubbed until the marble and parquet shone like glass; his gardeners had been busy with shears and lawnmowers, working the privet hedges and borders into geometric precision.
It was so nearly perfect.
She stood on the front steps of the house as the white Rolls-Royce made its way toward her along the gravel drive. She looked down at Libby. The flower chaplet could not hide the unruly red curls. Was there ever a girl that looked less like her mother? But despite her skinny bones, she looked as lovely as Sarah had ever seen her in the shimmering white satin.
“It’s going to be all right, bubeleh.”
“You’re shaking, Mama.”
“Shaking with happiness.”
Libby frowned, wasn’t buying it. “What happens afterwards, Mama?”
“After, there will be a big party, with lots of nice people.”
“At the church?”
“No, here at our house.”
“It’s not our house, Mama.” Libby was squeezing her bouquet of flowers so hard, Sarah thought she would squash them before they even got to the church. She reached down and smoothed her curls, tried to settle her. “I’ve never been into a church,” Libby said.
“You’ve been in the synagogue. It’s like that.”
“The Reb says that marrying a goy is not really a marriage, and God will not be happy with us.”
“I don’t care what the Reb says anymore.”
“Will there be other children at the party?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“You can have as much ginger ale as you want when we get back from the church.”
“Will we live here after we’re married?”
“No, I’ve told you a hundred times. We’re going to live up by the Park. Mr. Dewey has a nice apartment there.”
“Will I sleep on the roof?”
“No, you’ll never have to sleep on roof again. I promise.”
The Rolls-Royce crunched to a stop in front of them.
“I liked the roof,” Libby said.
One of Dewey’s maids helped Sarah adjust her veil and handed her a bouquet of lilies. Libby helped push the yards of silk on Sarah’s train into the back of the Rolls-Royce, then got in beside her.
It was only a short drive to the church, a small wooden clapboard affair painted a duck-egg blue. As they pulled up, a shower of rain swept in from the sea. They waited in the car. Finally, a bolt of sun coaxed a rainbow from behind a lead-dark cloud.
Nelson came around and opened the door, and suddenly the noise of the bells seemed deafening, or perhaps the din was just all the shouting inside her own head. Dewey had said he had arranged to keep the photographers away, but she heard flashbulbs pop as she stepped out of the car.
She was shaking so hard by the time she reached the wooden porch, she was afraid her legs would not carry her down the aisle. She glanced at her daughter and found her strength there. This is for you, little bubeleh.
A hundred faces craning to see her inside the church, all of them strangers. There was no one to give her away; she had decided to walk up the aisle alone. She felt Libby walking in time behind her, never missing a step.
As the organist picked out the first notes of the wedding march, Sarah took a deep breath and took her first step to
ward the flower-banked altar. She tried not to think about what her vati would say if he could see her marrying a rich goy.
Never mind what he would say. He wasn’t here, and he didn’t have to live her life. From now on, she would stitch her own way.
Chandeliers blazed in every room of the house, throwing bright splashes of light onto the dark sweep of lawn. Staff in white jackets whirled around the rooms with cold and hot hors d’oeuvres on platters; jeweled fingers plucked a champagne flute or a canapé from a tray without even a glance at the help.
Sarah moved in a dream from room to room, overwhelmed by the glitter of silver and crystal, the scent of a hundred bouquets. Dewey must have bought every flower in Manhattan. She tried to mingle, her juniper and tonic in hand. I must be the loneliest bride in the world, she thought. The only person here who does not know everyone else.
Laughter and conversation filtered through the French doors from the terrace, where silver-haired bankers and brokers in black ties and flappers in fringed gowns flirted with each other in the shadows. A twenty-piece orchestra played Mozart in a room somewhere out of sight. Dewey had told her that he had a black blues quartet coming in from Harlem later to play ragtime. “When the stuffed shirts have gone home.”
She came upon a room piled almost to the ceiling with boxed presents meticulously wrapped and beribboned. In another, there was a table covered with a white linen tablecloth and on top of it an artfully arranged pyramid of champagne glasses. A thickset man with oily hair and a white jacket two sizes too small for him was pouring French champagne into the topmost glass so that the liquid flowed in a cascade down to the glasses below.
The Volstead Act was merely an inconvenience for men like Dewey. He told her he had organized for crate loads of French champagne, eighteen-year-old Scotch whisky, and spiced gin for the party, all arranged from a reliable source he had. He didn’t tell her where.
But now she recognized the man pouring the champagne, from a club they had been to in Harlem. He kept ducking below the table to take nips from the whisky bottle itself. She told Dewey, but he shrugged it off. “If I complain, they could skedaddle and take all the booze with them,” he said.
“But they’re stealing from us.”
Loving Liberty Levine Page 16
