Loving Liberty Levine

by Colin Falconer

  A bowing waiter in Mandarin pajamas brought them egg-drop soup in willow-pattern bowls and withdrew.

  “Why are you the only boy?”

  A flicker of a smile that suggested he had heard the question, but he didn’t answer. He picked up his spoon. “Do you like the soup? It’s not for everyone. They make the broth with chicken bones and drop an egg in.”

  “Does that mean the subject’s off limits?”

  “I guess so.”

  A waiter reversed into the swing doors at the back of the dining room, and for a moment she saw one of the chefs hacking up a chicken with a shining steel cleaver. Her eyes must have widened, because Jack glanced over his shoulder, but the doors had already swung shut.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “One of your favorite gang members was practicing his technique.”

  “Unlikely. They use machine guns, like everyone else, these days.”

  “Just to kill the chickens?”

  Another smile. He looked utterly different when he smiled, a boy again.

  “How long are you back in New York?” she asked him.

  “That hasn’t been decided.”

  “What are your choices?”

  “The old man has promised me New York.”

  “All of it? Generous. But I’d hold out for New Jersey as well.”

  “I want the New York office. Davidson’s. He said that once I earned my stripes, he’d make me the manager.”

  “And have you?”

  “Have I?”

  “Earned your stripes.”

  “I increased sales by twenty percent every year in London. He seemed encouraged by that.”

  “How was London? Did you pee on anyone’s lawn?”

  “I was discretion itself. I think I would disappoint you these days.”

  He told her about the monuments, the Lyons teahouses, the jellied eels, about cockney rhyming slang, the fact that there were no summers, the constant feeling that it was just about to rain or had just rained. “Though I didn’t feel like that most of the time,” he said, “because it actually was raining.”

  He tried to explain Marmite and Scotch eggs; his difficulties pronouncing Leicester Square and Holborn; and the intricacies of pounds, shillings, and pence.

  “Everything is old there,” he said. “All the buildings have turned black from the smog and smoke. Everywhere there’s a statue of some dead king or queen or duke. The lawyers wear wigs. Nobody tips. And nowhere is open after six o’clock.”

  “So you stayed in your room and pined for lonely girls in Village clothes shops.”

  “Other times I went to the movies.”

  “Alone?”

  “Only the westerns.” He leaned closer so that their faces were almost touching. “There are some private pleasures you can only share with another aficionado.”

  Two waiters brought more bowls from the kitchen and broke the moment. Jack, of course, could use chopsticks. He chose a morsel from one of the steaming dishes and put it in her bowl.

  “How do you like your chicken, Wild Bill?” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I like my chicken just fine,” he said, in a perfect Gary Cooper drawl, and they both laughed out loud, and a matron in a diamond choker peered around one of the Chinese screens to stare.

  “I’d like to do this again,” he said as they were leaving and waiting for the waiter to bring them their coats.

  “Are you looking for another notch on your bedpost?”

  “Is that what you think of me?”

  “Am I wrong?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, but a comma of it fell obstinately back across his forehead. It was the only part of him that was not geometrical, which made his choice in films and restaurants all the more interesting.

  The waiter returned with their coats and hurried them out the door. She supposed he was anxious to get off work and start swinging cleavers at his colleagues. They stepped outside onto the street, and Jack found them a cab. After they were settled in the back, he said, “I’m not really a ladies’ man, you know.”

  “As long as you’re not a man’s man, so to speak.”

  “I had a girlfriend before I went to London. We were about to be engaged when the old man told me he had other plans for me. She said she’d wait. She didn’t.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “She wrote and told me. Not even a letter. It was on the back of a postcard.”

  “Classy. What was the picture, don’t mind me asking?”

  “Statue of Liberty and Times Square. It said ‘Howdy from New York’ in red letters on a yellow background on the front. On the back it said: ‘I’m sorry, I’ve met someone else, don’t be cross.’”

  “Did she write it, or have it printed?”

  “Red ink. Quite jaunty. A nice touch, I thought.”

  “Well, that’s women for you.”

  “Easier to climb Niagara Falls than to understand a woman,” he said.

  “Don’t believe everything Wild Bill Hickok says. If it wasn’t for Calamity Jane, he would have got himself burned alive by the Indians. You can drop me here on the corner of Minetta.”

  As she got out of the cab, he leaned forward and gave her the full benefit of the Jack Seabrook smile. She felt as if she had been caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  “Good night, Miss Levine. We should do this again.”

  She smiled back. “I’d like that just fine, Mr. Hickok,” she said. She watched the cab drive off. Be careful, Libby, she thought. Remember, he hasn’t told you how many women there’s been since Little Miss Postcard, and you don’t want to be the one to help him climb up Niagara Falls.

  You’re only a girl from the Lower East Side without a postcard to her name.

  50

  Liberty felt frozen through, numb with exhaustion. As she climbed the stairs from the shop, she stopped to take off her shoes. There were red marks on her heels, going to blisters. All day she had been schlepping the streets with her mama’s Liberté portfolio, first to Federated, then Arnold Constable, De Pinna, finally S. Klein on Union Square.

  Only an hour to get ready. She had to get freshened up and put on something nice. Jack had said he would pick her up in his car at seven. She had told him she would wait on the corner of Bleecker and Sixth. She didn’t want him coming to the apartment. First, she would have to tell her mama about him, and she wasn’t ready for that, not yet.

  She hung back, her hand on the door. She really didn’t want to go in there tonight. It would be crowded with Etta and her family, everyone staring at her: the boys with their lewd peasant eyes; Bessie, who could never look her in the eye and always dressed in black, like an old grandmother. So foreign to her, this family of hers. Once she had looked forward to it so much, having a real family at last. What a disappointment they were.

  She took a deep breath and went in. The seamstress girls had gone home, but the living room was still taken up with the sewing machines and the baskets of needles and thread, the thimbles and pincushion dolls, with design patterns on the tables and racks and racks of finished and half-finished dresses.

  Everyone was in the kitchen. The door to the bedroom where Yaakov and Etta slept was ajar. Liberty could see the bed neatly made, embroidered Russian peasant blouses and red velvet suits all hanging up neatly behind a curtain. How can Etta go out in those, she thought. On Orchard Street perhaps, but not here. Her mama had offered Etta some of her dresses, latest designs, and she had turned up her nose. How would she ever fit in if she walked around dressed like a greenhorn?

  There was a white linen tablecloth set out on the kitchen table. She supposed Etta had brought it with her. The silver menorah had been brought out, freshly polished, and there was challah wrapped in something else that was new, a blue velvet cloth embroidered with gold Hebrew letters.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  “Shabbat shalom,” Etta said.

  “Etta has made the seder,” Sara
h said.

  Shabbas. Well, of course, but since they moved out of the Lower East Side, her mama had not made such a big fuss about it. When they had lived with Dewey, Sundays had been more important.

  Liberty could smell broiled chicken and roasted meat. Sarah lit the candles on the menorah while Etta watched, then Yaakov took out a grubby prayer book and started to read the prayers.

  He sang the “Shalom Aleichem” hymn to welcome the angels who visited every home at the start of Shabbat. He asked for their blessing, and then bade them farewell. Liberty fidgeted. What was all this, what was her mama doing? It was like inviting people from the jungle to have dinner with them.

  “I made some of your favorite, gefilte fish, and Etta has made cholent.”

  Libby felt a wave of panic. “But I have to go out,” she said.

  “But it is Shabbas,” Etta said.

  “Mama, what is happening? You never do this anymore. Not since Cannon Street have we done this.”

  Everyone was staring at her.

  “You do not keep Shabbas?” Yaakov said to Liberty. He was looking at her as if she had said that she kidnapped babies and ate them.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and went to leave the kitchen.

  “But you will come with us to the synagogue tomorrow?” he said.

  “I have to work.”

  “Work?” Yaakov said.

  “I have an appointment at Altman’s on Fifth Avenue. It’s important. Isn’t it, Mama?”

  Sarah did not answer her, could not even look at her.

  Liberty hurried out the door. Before she closed it, she heard Bessie say: “If Libby doesn’t go to the synagogue, why do I have to?”

  Liberty had to find something to wear. She positioned herself behind one of the clothes racks and changed quickly, one eye on the door, nothing for those pesky boys to poke their head in here. There was no privacy even in their own place anymore. She put on a dark-red flared skirt with a lumber-jacket blouse. She had seen Claudette Colbert in the same combination in a magazine; then her best coat, black, with a Mendel fur collar.

  At that moment the door opened. It was Sarah. “You are not going to tell me you are going out.”

  “I don’t have to tell everything, Mama.”

  “Look at you, how beautiful you have grown.”

  Libby turned away, embarrassed. She set the cracked mirror against the wall for a better view of her own reflection. She supposed she didn’t look too bad, in the right light.

  “Where is it you are going?”

  “The movies.”

  “Who you are going with?”

  “Friends.”

  She felt her mother’s expert eye take everything in. “A rather perky little hat you have for just going with friends.”

  “Because I have a mother who works in fashion. They expect nothing less.”

  “These friends, they got names?”

  “I expect so. It helps when their mothers call them in for supper.”

  “Libby!”

  “Jane and Emily.”

  “Never have I heard you talk Jane and Emily before.”

  “I don’t have to tell you everything, Mama.”

  She made for the door. Sarah put out an arm to stall her, dropped her voice. “It’s Shabbas. Stay here, for me, for your aunt Etta. Will it kill you, bubeleh?”

  “When have you ever cared about religion, Mama? When have I?”

  “Think on it not as religion, but family. They are new here. They don’t understand.”

  “This is New York, Mama. They’re the ones who have to change, not us. Why are you so scared of them?”

  And she was scared, Libby could see it in her mother’s face.

  Sarah put down her arm and took a step back. Libby went out, closing the door behind her.

  51

  It was raining by the time they got to the Roxy. They hurried into the foyer, past the vendors waving souvenir programs and look-alike dolls of Robert Taylor and Carole Lombard and Jean Harlow. An usher in a tight red bolero pointed them to their seats with a flashlight.

  The picture house smelled of perfume and the damp wool from a hundred coats.

  They settled in. Two boys in college scarves sprawled over the seats in front of them, sniggering at their own silly jokes. They were perhaps not much younger than her date, she thought, and yet just boys to men, really.

  “Why are you smiling?” he whispered.

  “For me to know and you to find out.”

  They had come in halfway through a Betty Boop cartoon. Next they had to sit through the Universal Newsreel: aerial shots of Franco’s warships blockading the harbor at Barcelona; the king of England out hunting in a tweed suit and heavy boots, interspersed with film of Wallis Simpson getting in and out of royal automobiles; in Chicago, ten people had been killed on the L after a collision at Granville station; finally, grim and dramatic music accompanied grainy footage of Adolf Hitler, his hand raised in the air in that peculiar salute of his, his acolytes clustered around him.

  She was almost relieved when the red velvet curtain came down. Yaakov was right to get his family out of Europe, she thought. The world was going mad. Nowhere was safe, except America.

  The Roxyettes chorus line danced onto the stage, blondes alternated with brunettes; the men in the audience started whistling and clapping, as did the college boys in front of her. She thought they were going to stand on their seats and wave their scarves like they were at a football game.

  “Your favorite part of the show,” she said to Jack.

  “Let’s go get a drink,” he said.

  They sat side by side on a red velvet divan with their martinis. They could see their own reflections in the mirrors. “You look like a movie star,” he said.

  “Harpo Marx?”

  “Carole Lombard.”

  “I bet you say that to all the girls.”

  “Only the ones who look like Carole Lombard.”

  “What made you choose this movie? Don’t tell me Bing Crosby is one of your favorite actors? Not you, who likes Groucho Marx and Gary Cooper.”

  “I was curious about it. You can’t get away from the damned song, every trolley driver in New York is singing ‘Pennies from Heaven’ like he expects the passengers to pass around a hat.”

  “He’s not my idea of a leading man.”

  “What is your ideal man, Miss Levine?”

  “I like them big and dumb,” she said. “With blue eyes. And they have to like Gary Cooper and the Marx Brothers.”

  Jack just laughed.

  They went to Dinty’s after the show. Jack’s kind of place, Libby thought when she first saw it: linoleum on the floor and the only decorations were the black-and-gold signs hanging on the walls with pictures of oysters on them. But then she saw Eve Arden from the Follies at one of the tables and heard a man laugh behind her, turned around and saw the Yankees’ rookie everyone was talking about, Joe something or other, sitting with a bunch of older men who were laughing at all his jokes. Clearly the “in” place to be.

  So Libby was surprised that they even got a table, was even more surprised to find gefilte fish on the menu.

  “I knew it was Shabbas,” Jack said. “I thought you’d be pleased.” He pointed to the Irish stew. “They use kosher beef and lamb.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yes, seriously.”

  For all the hobnobbing going on everywhere, it was still almost Hanukkah by the time the waiter ambled over. Jack didn’t seem to mind. He ordered a beer and corned beef and cabbage. She ordered the fish, though she doubted it would be as good as her mother’s.

  “What did you think of the movie?” she asked him.

  “The guy playing the cornet was the best part.”

  “That Louis Armstrong. You like jazz?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Your five favorite songs.”

  “That’s a tough question. Okay. ‘It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie.’ What’s the guy’s name?”

&nbs
p; “Fats Waller.”

  “You know it?”

  “It’s my favorite song too. You just get better and better, Jack Seabrook. I’m almost sorry I beat you up when you were twelve.”

  “You didn’t beat me up. I couldn’t hit a defenseless little girl was all.”

  “Yeah, sure. Second favorite.”

  “‘Summertime.’”

  “Agreed.”

  “I saw Abbey Mitchell sing in Jazz Alley once. Third favorite: ‘Minnie the Moocher.’”

  “‘Hi-de hi-de hi-de ho.’”

  “Then . . . ‘Stormy Weather.’ Ethel Waters.”

  “You get one more pick.”

  “‘Cross Road Blues.’”

  “Robert Johnson? You like blues?”

  “You know him?”

  “You like the blues, and you know when it is Shabbas. Any more at home like you?”

  “There used to be,” he said, and she wondered if he was going to explain himself, but he didn’t. “So what’s your number one?”

  “‘The Good Ship Lollipop.’ No question.”

  A waiter brought their dinners. The baseball deputation was laughing too hard at the next table. Jack shook his head.

  “You don’t want to go over and get his autograph?” she said.

  “I’m a Dodgers fan. Tell me, are you allowed to dance on Shabbas?”

  “It depends. Would you call it work?”

  “You don’t have to do anything. I could just hold you up and drag you around to music.”

  “I guess that would be okay,” she said.

  It turned out that Jack knew the guy at the door at El Morocco. The place had been a speakeasy during Prohibition, made its name with all the big-time celebrities who went there to break the law for the newspaper photographers. He had seen Babe Ruth here one night, he said. Another night, Clark Gable.

  They held hands on a zebra-striped banquette under the papier-mâché palm trees, danced mambo and rumba on the tiny dance floor. The band played “Summertime,” the perfect song for a winter’s night in New York, he said, and they danced slow and close. She liked the feel of his hands through the cotton of her blouse. She held her glass in one hand, over his shoulder.