Red Menace

by Lois Ruby

“We are not interested in one of your statements!” the chairman yells.

  She jabbers fast, to get a few words in before they muzzle her. “Dr. Yossele Mendelev was a perfect gentleman, respectful of our home and college and students, a brilliant poet, a man of generous spirit—”

  “Nor are we interested in his glorious dossier, or a testimonial on his virtues. We are only interested in his suspicious activities as a spy against the United States and his connection to you, a Polish national.”

  Mom sinks back in her chair. One senator covers his mic and leans toward the chairman for a pitcher/catcher conference.

  “One of our distinguished committeemen has a pressing engagement with the ambassador from New Zealand, so we shall have to tidy up this session and invite you to return at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Quincy stands up. “Respectfully, gentlemen, I advise you that the Rafner family has a train reservation at three tomorrow afternoon.”

  The chairman barks, “Sit down, Mr. Quincy. The business of this committee takes precedence over all other obligations. However, in the interest of good sportsmanship, I feel certain that we will conclude this hearing, one way or another, before lunch tomorrow.”

  The gavel pounds again, sending pencil stubs flying over the committee’s desk. This guy knows as much about sportsmanship as Coach Earlywine does. When it’s all over, are we gonna file through, slap hands, and say good game, good game, guys?

  “So, what should we do with the rest of the day?” Mom asks once we’re away from the reporters.

  It’s four o’clock, too late for a museum or checking out the Polo Grounds, where the Giants play, just to see how the other half of New York baseball lives. (I’m a Yankees man; I don’t count the Brooklyn Dodgers.)

  Dad says, “I’m tired, and you must be exhausted, Rosalie. Let’s go back to the room and take a nap before dinner.”

  A message is waiting for us at the hotel. Mom hands me the note as she kicks off her heels and flops on the bed. “I’ve been putting my foot in my mouth all day. You call her, Marty.”

  Bubbie answers and starts right in. “I don’t know if it means anything, but I found this little red cardboard envelope with a key in it.”

  “Key to what, Bubbie?”

  “Who knows, sweetheart? It says YMHA at 92nd and Lexington. Zeyde and I used to live there in New York.”

  “YMHA? What’s that?”

  From the couch, where Dad’s sprawled, comes, “Young Men’s Hebrew Association. Like a YMCA, but Jewish.”

  Bubbie says, “You want to go up there and see if it’s anything? Maybe years ago my Avrum hid some important stuff in a gym locker. Maybe a million bucks, or, who knows, could be the citizenship papers. That’s all I got for you.”

  “We’re out the door!” I shout into the phone, slamming down the receiver.

  Dad pulls out his subway map, shows me which train we’ll take, which stop.

  Outside there must be five thousand people smashed together in Union Square, with more coming and pushing forward. On a milk crate at the center, a man with a giant megaphone stands under an American flag, bellowing to the crowd: “PRESIDENT EISENHOWER, HEAR OUR PLEA. WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR JULIUS AND ETHEL!”

  “JUSTICE, JUSTICE SHALL YOU PURSUE!” the crowd responds as one throbbing voice.

  My heart starts to race, beating to the rhythm of a new chant: “CLEMENCY NOW! CLEMENCY NOW!”

  Hand-lettered signs on long wooden slats wave above the heads of the frenzied crowd: CLEMENCY FOR THE ROSENBERGS! DO IT FOR ROBBY AND MICHAEL! FIFTEEN DAYS! IT’S A TRAVESTY! WHERE’S DEMOCRACY?! A few signs even say SHAME ON JUDGE KAUFMAN, the judge who sent them to the Chair.

  Police with billy clubs rim the crowd, hot to pounce if things spin out of control. A few mad people are dragged away, kicking and screaming, “FREE SPEECH IS DEAD IN AMERICA!”

  Dad pushes me through the crowd, quiet beside me, but I’m caught up in the energy, every nerve of my body tingling with excitement, like I really am a Rosenberg Person. I’m chanting along with the rest of them: “JUSTICE FOR ETHEL! JUSTICE FOR JULIUS! JUSTICE FOR ETHEL! JUSTICE FOR JULIUS!”

  “Marty?” Dad taps my shoulder to snap me out of it. “We have to get uptown to the YMHA before the office closes.”

  Right. My focus has to be on JUSTICE FOR ROSALIE.

  Two seconds later I turn around, and Dad’s gone!

  I swallow some sour panic juices trying to decide what to do: try to find him in this massive crowd, which is a complete needle in the haystack situation, and not get to the YMHA in time? Or go on my own? I remember how Dad showed me the route on the map. Hey, I may be just a kid from Kansas, but I’ve been on New York subways three times already this week. How hard can it be to get to 92nd and Lexington? If Dad can figure it out, so can I. Right?

  Chapter 31

  Wednesday, June 3

  “You’ve got what?” the YMHA receptionist asks. I could swear that’s a wig she’s wearing, lacquered down with a quart of hairspray.

  “A locker key, real old.” I keep watching for Dad. Bet he figured out I’d get to the YMHA by myself, and he’s coming on the next subway.

  The lady’s palm’s out. “Let’s see the key.”

  “I don’t exactly have it, but it’s kind of important. Lives depend on it.” Only a slight exaggeration. “Is there anybody who might know about old lockers? Like, what happened to stuff that was left in them thirty, forty years ago?” Then, to make it sound more official, I add, “My father’s on his way,” in case she thinks I’m just a kid playing a prank.

  With a sigh, she jabs a prong into the switchboard and talks into the mouthpiece dangling over her lips. “Some schmendrick’s here about an old key. You want to handle it, Izzy?”

  A round-faced guy shuffles out. He’s wearing a yarmulke over a snarly nest of white curls and long curly earlocks, and he’s about as old as Bubbie. Good sign.

  “Sir, my Bubbie found an old key that’s got this address on it. She’s in Teaneck, New Jersey—”

  “Mazel tov. Teaneck, very nice place.”

  “Yeah, I guess. So she needs me to claim my grandfather’s stuff. He’s been dead seven years.”

  “He should rest in peace. This way.”

  Izzy’s office is about five feet square, with stacks of papers tacked helter-skelter to the walls and spilling out of file cabinets. An ancient black typewriter rules most of his desk, with a limp piece of paper hanging over the carriage.

  Izzy eyes me suspiciously. “You’re Jewish?”

  Suddenly I’m defensive. Mr. Sokolov always makes me cover my head when we’re studying Torah, but now . . . “Yeah, I’m Jewish. So?” Tough guy. Wish Dad would get here already.

  “What was your zeyde’s name?”

  “Avrum Weitz, Abe. Do you remember him?” Like there aren’t eight million people in New York, at least two million of ’em named Abe.

  “I’m lousy with names. Not so good with faces, either.” He goes to the farthest file cabinet and jerks open a drawer that’s probably not seen daylight for thirty years. His fingers sift through fat folders. “Ah, here. Old history from before the flood.” He looks at my blank face. “Noah and the big flood, way back. It’s a joke, sonny. Give yourself a break. Smile a little.”

  “Sorry. I’m kind of in a hurry.” And already worrying about how I’ll get back to the hotel, since I blew all my money on the uptown subway.

  “Weitz, Weitz,” Izzy says. “Ahh!”

  “You found something?”

  “No, my back. I got a twinge.” Finally he yanks out a piece of onionskin with a few faded lines typed on it. “Says here an Avram Weitz—olev hashalom, he should rest in peace—left a box in locker 347.”

  My heart leaps into my throat. “Can we go to the locker, sir?”

  “At the junkyard? Those lockers came out of this building in 1948. Rusted from all the steam in the schvitz room. You should see the schmancy new ones. Rust-proof.”

  I squash my panic.
“But what did you do with the leftover stuff?”

  “This I happen to know about, sonny.”

  Clutching the bannister with both hands, he leads me down some marble stairs. Dad’ll never find me down here in the catacombs. Izzy unlocks a door with one of the keys on a giant jangling ring looped through his belt. Inside the room is a random assortment of old junk piled on sagging shelves. Musty smells sting the inside of my nose.

  “Your zeyde, he’d be in the W’s, back here.” Izzy huffs and puffs and turns tomato-red shifting boxes around. Sheesh, I hope he doesn’t have a heart attack. Things are tumbling out of the disintegrating cartons—grody socks, a pipe spraying tobacco. A rusted flashlight clatters to the cement floor. And there in the back I spot a metal strongbox with a label that says WEITZ. Yes!

  “It’s your lucky day, sonny. Where’s the key?”

  My spirit fizzes out as I shake my head.

  “Didn’t I say it was your lucky day, a nice grandson like you?” Izzy pulls a flat-blade screw driver from his key ring and jams it into the skinny space between the top and bottom of the strongbox. The old lock pops, and the lid springs open.

  No million bucks inside, just official-looking papers and a faded, rumpled photo of an impossibly young Bubbie and Zeyde wearing Uncle Sam hats and waving little American flags. The picture’s fastened by a rusted paper clip to a couple of bee-u-tee-ful citizenship certificates.

  Upstairs, Dad’s waiting for me and says, “Good thinking, Martin, well done.” That’s Dad’s version of “WOWEEEEEE, kiddo! Ya hit it out of the park!”

  Chapter 32

  Thursday, June 4

  Day two of the hearing. We’re wearing the same wrinkly, smelly outfits from yesterday, since we expected the whole thing to wind up in one day.

  Groaning: “Aw, Mom, do I hafta wear the tie?”

  “It’s a full Windsor,” Dad announces proudly as he ties the thing around my neck. A full Windsor must be another name for hangman’s noose.

  Mom’s jamming her feet into those heels that look sharp enough to slice open a gut in the operating room. “Thanks to you and my mother, I might just beat this wrap. Where are the papers, Irwin?”

  Dad waves a manila folder with copies of Bubbie and Zeyde’s citizenship papers, dated 1907, plus their ketubah, the marriage contract, in the Jewish year 5660, which is 1906. Also a copy of Mom’s birth certificate from 1909, and just to be sure, the official document proving that Zeyde was released from the Polish army nine years before Mom’s birth. All that was in his strongbox, along with a note to Bubbie in his own handwriting:

  Sylvie, listen, I don’t trust nobody with these things, especially not the fershtinkina goverment. Your loverboy, Avrum.

  “My father was a character, all right.” A bright smile smears across Mom’s face, but she’s crammed a lot more things into her overnight bag. When she catches me staring she says, “Might as well be comfortable and well-supplied in case I’m in stir a few weeks.”

  “Whoa, Mom, I thought the citizenship thing would be all you’d need.”

  “Oh, sure, Marty, it’s just that we have to clear up the Mendelev matter, too. I don’t believe he’s dead. They said that to shock me. It’s revolting how they’ve made a pawn of that fine gentleman.” She locks her arms around me, as if I’m not already choking from the tie.

  “Where are the papers?”

  “Rosie, they’re right here, I told you.” Dad fans them across her face.

  “Feels good.” She puffs hair off her forehead. “Don’t let them blow away, down the gutter.”

  ♢

  Vic joins Mom and Mr. Quincy at the witness table. A bunch of journalists and photographers doze in the back rows until things heat up, which happens about an hour into the questioning about Dr. Mendelev. These guys are really hung up on food. Again they want to know if he cooked foreign meals in our kitchen, like maybe he was baking commie propaganda in pirozhkis and blinis. And incidentally, he did cook these things for us, washed down by a lot of vodka, which they didn’t let me guzzle.

  Mom has the good sense to say he never cooked that stuff. A little lying under oath; what can it hurt? Ha!

  Eventually they drop it, and one of the committee members says, “I have a few additional inquiries, Mrs. Rafner, regarding your status as a foreign national. You are, as I understand it, a citizen of Poland.”

  Our team is just waiting for this attack. Vic and Quincy both stand up, and Quincy holds the microphone right up to his mouth, making sure the reporters hear each word.

  “As we speak, senators, the INS office here in Manhattan is reviewing a document providing indisputable evidence that Mrs. Rafner’s parents, Sylvia and Avrum Weitz, became naturalized citizens of the United States in 1907, two years before the birth of their only child. That would be Rosalie Weitz Rafner, the witness who sits before you honorable gentlemen today.”

  Vic carries copies up to the senators, one pile for each, then sits down next to Mom. She’s beaming.

  This news ripples up and down the committee table, until one of the senators sputters, “When did this document conveniently turn up?”

  By grabbing the mic, Mom signals Quincy and Vic that she doesn’t need a pinch hitter. “Gentlemen, proof of my parents’ citizenship vanished from the Chicago INS office under suspicious circumstances.” She lets that sink in. “However, through excellent detective work on the part of my son, my parents’ naturalization papers were found and have been delivered to the local INS office. Respectfully, senators, I must say that I’m as American as you are.”

  The old Rosalie is back in the game! Nobody says a word for a couple minutes as they eyeball the papers, and then the chairman says, “I understand you have your family with you today, Mrs. Rafner?”

  “I do, yes, sir.”

  “How fortunate,” the chairman drawls. “Would the members of Mrs. Rafner’s family please rise?”

  Firing squad? I kick the train case out of the way to get to my feet. My tie’s flipped over, but I can’t mess with it while everyone’s watching, so I look like a nincompoop.

  Next to me, Dad fumbles with his coat button, and his hat sails to the floor. Vic doesn’t know whether to stand up or not, so he half rises, then drops down to his seat, emitting a whoopee-cushion noise. What a crew.

  Mom stretches her arm toward Dad and me, grinning, showing lots of teeth. “My husband, Dr. Irwin Rafner, and our son, Martin Rafner.” All the cameras spin toward us as the newsmen rush to the front of the hall. I’m blinded by flashbulbs. The whole world will see that I forgot to part my hair this morning.

  The committee talks with their hands over their microphones, while we stand there like carnival ducks. Go on, toss the beanbag. An argument is brewing. Maybe somebody on the panel has the decency to know that they’re giving Mom a bum deal.

  The chairman clears his throat. “This subcommittee of the U.S. Senate does not wish to detain you further, Mrs. Rafner, while we peruse the alleged citizenship papers.” With a sneer, he adds, “We have no desire to separate you from such a fine, upstanding family.”

  Yeah, we’re still standing up.

  “However, we reserve the right to recall you at some time in the future should we feel the need to pursue your questionable associations, specifically with the spy Mendelev. Dismissed.”

  Just like that, it’s over. While the flashbulbs pop, making the room smell like it’s about to catch fire, Vic comes over to us and whispers to me, “She’s a tough babe, your mother.”

  My mother, a babe? Tough, yes. She’s beat them at their own game. She hugs Quincy. Dad and I rush to her as the gavel pounds and the chairman bellows, “Next witness.”

  Before we’re out of the hearing room, Mom pulls the bobby pins out of her knot and lets her hair tumble to her shoulders, like in real life.

  We jackknife our way through a pack of journalists baiting her for some reaction.

  “How ya feeling, Mrs. Rafner?”

  “Relieved!”

 
“Excuse us, pardon me,” Dad shouts, as we work our way through the crowd.

  Another reporter nudges Dad with a mic. “What are your feelings today, Mr. Rafner?”

  Mom spins around and says, “It’s Dr. Rafner.”

  A mic is shoved half way up my nose. “So, where ya goin’, Marvin?”

  Dad breaks out in a wide beam, the best smile I’ve seen on him for ages. “It’s Martin, for your information, and I’ll answer that question. My wife, my son, and our legal team are going out in pursuit of the thickest, juiciest corned beef sandwich in the Lower East Side, after which we’re heading home to Kansas.”

  Then some crackpot spoils the party by asking, “What’re your thoughts two weeks before the Rosenberg execution?”

  “No comment.” Mom pushes the microphone out of the way and kicks off those stiletto heels. One hits the doorman, who takes it as a trophy, and the other lands in the sewer. We all get a charge out of seeing Mom run down the street in her stocking feet, with her hair flowing behind her. The seams up the back of her legs are all zigzaggy, but who cares?

  We’re free!

  ♢

  On the train heading home, reality sets in. On some senator’s whim, Mom could be called back. Even if she’s not, who knows if she or Dad can stay at Hawthorne if she still refuses to sign the loyalty oath? We might have to move. Palmetto is home; always has been. I couldn’t leave any more than Mickey Mantle could leave the Yankees.

  Unless I have to.

  As we’re clackety-clacking along the train tracks, me tucked between the cool, crisp sheets of my bunk, my mind snaps to thoughts I’ve blotted out while I was focused on Mom’s hearing. Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg, these are their final fifteen days, unless there’s a miracle like Bill Wambsganss’s amazing unassisted triple play in the 1920 Series. He caught a line drive, stepped on Second for a put-out, then ran to First to tag out the batter.

  Hey, miracles happen.

  Chapter 33

  Thursday, June 11 – Sunday, June 14

  Back in Palmetto, it’s business as usual, except nothing is usual. You’d expect the FBI car to be gone, since Dr. Sonfelter’s skipped town and Mom survived the SISS hearing, but no such luck. Guess Milgrim and Kluski haven’t been told what their next gig is. News travels slow by carrier pigeon from D.C. to Kansas. Or else we’re still under suspicion. After all, the SISS guys are looking over the citizenship papers, which they could disappear again, and they threatened to call Mom back any time. Maybe we’ll never shake ’em.