“Yes, ma’am.” Rosalie sets the iron to cool.
“They were here,” Sadie repeats.
“Yes ma’am. I did not see them,” Rosalie says. She quietly takes a rack of shirts upstairs, and does not reappear before Sadie remembers that Bill wanted to deliver the gift himself; before Sadie finds her keys on the telephone table, and leaves the house for no reason she is sure of. She does not see Mother Feldstein. She does not see Dr. Rosen. She misses her volunteer shift at the Red Cross. Instead she slips into the public library and browses the shelves, and for an hour thumbs through Life. She has taken to doing this now and then, hiding in the library: it’s rare that she sees anyone she knows, except a woman named Sylvia who works there, and used to work with Goldie, and knows to leave Sadie in peace. You can see why Goldie liked it here, the reverence for books and quiet and being alone.
In the afternoon, at the house, Sadie reads another romance novel, which distracts her from the world. She ignores the ringing phone until the girls get home from school. Rosalie moves through the house quietly, saying little, though she calls Margo Cinderella and gives the girls oatmeal cookies.
And when Bill arrives home, Sadie forces cheeriness and later even makes love with him (ending talk of Dr. Rosen). She won’t allow herself to be unhinged.
After two more days she receives a letter from Irving.
Dear Sadie,
I don’t recommend Georgia, but at least it’s still warm here. If you want to reach Goldie you can write in care of General Delivery, Venice, California. That’s all I know.
Love, Irving
p.s. if Celia’s boots don’t cost too much, I could use some pocket money here.
So there is the address and no more than the address. Is Goldie’s last name the same? It’s difficult to imagine her married, though Sadie can’t pinpoint why. Before Goldie disappeared, Sadie sometimes thought of her as a kind of mole, burrowing and plain, despite her prettiness in photos: in her absence she’s seemed more consistently beautiful. Why is that? Is it simply the late knowledge of her romance with the piano teacher? Something less tangible? Or a flaw in Sadie that allows her to see the beauty only when Goldie is absent?
It’s true that as children, Goldie did not like Sadie, did not like any of them it seemed, except maybe Irving. But later this shifted, and for a time when Sadie was in high school she and Goldie shared novels, passing them back and forth with the briefest of comments—I think you’ll like this, the last one was lovely—each of them then off to separate rooms to read, to the separate private realms of books, ignoring their father’s identical warnings: you read too much, you’ll ruin your eyes. And there was the care of their mother, and with it a kind of melding. During their mother’s illness, perhaps they’d been too close: Goldie and Sadie taking care of their mother, Goldie and Sadie bathing her, feeding her, alternating sleep and watchfulness. It was an intimacy of worry and strain, a closeness defying perspective. As when you cannot tell the difference between your body and your husband’s in coupling, the moment in all that fever when the tangle of bodies seems a melting. Or when what you feel and see don’t match, when you are so close to his shoulder you cannot see the whole man, just edge and curve; so it might have been with Goldie. All you could see was the line of sadness, or the ferocity, or the stinginess with love.
Goldie’s edginess was likely a sadness, wasn’t it? But some days more than Sadie could bear; nor could she bear Goldie’s undisguised sadness, just brimming at the surface. Giving in to grief seemed to Sadie an unaffordable luxury. During those years she did not acknowledge it, and maybe for that reason also could not see beauty. You had to put the hard things aside and keep on, Goldie had told Sadie, and then did not live by her own words. Or did she? Why wouldn’t she marry? Stubborn, it seemed they all were. She’d had prospects, decent men, even in the year after her mother’s death, the lovesick piano player but also other respectable men—a teacher, a shoe store owner—who tried unsuccessfully to court her.
Sadie cannot picture California: she pictures Goldie only as Goldie appears in photographs from Sadie’s own wedding, the simple sleeveless dress, a rose pinned in her dark bobbed hair, a wry, slightly quizzical smile. At her writing table, Sadie begins: Dearest Goldie, How are you? abandons the note card and begins again. The letter emerges like a child’s primer, in short graceless sentences.
Dearest Goldie,
How strange to imagine you reading this letter. For reasons I cannot explain, I have not known how to reach you. Irving is in boot camp—did he tell you? Jo works at the store. I have two daughters. We are grateful that you are fine and grateful for your help for Celia. You are welcome to visit any time. Please write when you are able.
Your loving sister, Sadie
She seals the envelope and adds a stamp and walks through light snow to the letter box on the corner. After she drops the letter into the box, the cold air seems more breathable. And when she returns to the house, it’s as if reentering a moment from a lighter season. She’s hungry and chilled, considering hot coffee, wondering if the cookies for the girls are all gone. Rosalie sits at the kitchen table, polishing the silver for Friday night, Rosalie whom she was practically uncivil to. Practically but not actually, she thinks, she said nothing wrong, this is her home and in her home things happen, difficulties, moods. She’s Rosalie’s employer: there is no need to explain.
Rosalie glances up and back to the silver candlesticks. “Will you be needing the kitchen, Mrs. Feldstein?”
“Oh, no,” Sadie says. “I’m going to brew a pot of coffee. Would you care for some coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Rosalie says.
“The silver,” Sadie says, “looks very fine.”
“I’m glad. Thank you.”
“You sure you wouldn’t like some coffee?”
“I’m sure.”
“Rosalie.” She pauses, not knowing what to say, how to soften the sharp edges of the conversation. She’s got one hand on the coffee tin, the other propped on the counter: her body feels airy and strange, like loose wool. The moment slips and she finds herself staring at floor tiles, blue hexagons interspersed with white. “It’s a hard time, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Mrs. Feldstein, it is.”
Sadie scoops out the ground coffee, sets the water to boil. “Take some later if you change your mind.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rosalie says, and it’s a sting, the ma’am. Sadie opens her mouth to say something more, something else, but can’t locate herself in words, finding instead an altered bewilderment, not a sea this time but a bog. And the question forming Did I . . . ? and before it’s complete, the answer there in her mind again, No, I’ve said nothing wrong, and then the firmer reiteration, It’s a hard time, yes, there’s a war going on, and strain and moods, which everyone has, surely Rosalie has them, surely Rosalie knows, but Sadie’s right not to make her answer the phone, Jo can be more than difficult, she’s suspicious of Italians too, worse now that the war’s on. A hard time, and Rosalie knows, her son Thomas a young man now, her son Thomas just the right age to go to murderous Europe, where glamour has died, and young men, and entire towns.
Sadie brews the coffee on the stove and the snow beyond the window seems a dry bleached sand. Rosalie remains silent while she polishes the candlesticks, she’s not humming today, and not drinking coffee. And wouldn’t it be better if she changed her mind? Because the coffee is good. Because Sadie does not know what else to offer.
CHAPTER 17
Lillian
1943
Friday evening at Sabbath services no one looks askance at Abe and Lillian: years of fresh scandals have replaced the scandal of their relationship, of Lillian herself. And now there is the war. Women who used to shun Lillian are strangely mild and kind, and Lillian finds the temple surprisingly comforting. Who would have predicted she’d attend by choice? At times she gives over to the hushed separate realm of the synagogue, and feels in some way protected. Abe is calmest in synagogues, and now v
isits daily, but outside the temple he’s anxious and obsessed, burying himself in newspapers, constantly listening to war broadcasts—even tinkering with shortwave. He falls asleep to late news coming in from overseas. And with Irving enlisted, Abe’s ever more fervent.
Bertha too attends services now—earnest, subdued, but fragile. Calm, too, for the moment. Lillian kisses her and brings her packages of writing paper, asks after the toddler grandchildren, steers conversation away from news reports and speculation about her Polish cousins. Lillian would like to speak with Bertha directly about them, but Moshe would certainly shush her. Lately he’s secretive—as is Abe. Before services, the two of them consult in the corridor outside the chapel, clamming up when Lillian and Bertha appear, or when Abe’s daughter Sadie arrives with her husband and daughters. Then they sit together, all of them sharing a pew. The rabbi begins. Hebrew comes back to Lillian in bits, though mostly she listens to the rhythms and phrases and waits for the cantor’s heart-strung tenor to pull emotion from the stream of sounds. Perhaps it’s better not to understand: in the melodic chant, there’s a swell of hope, a release of grief. Lillian invents her own meanings, her own way to pray.
These days, there’s a mild trembling in Abe, a weariness, prayer absorbing his bluster. He does not speak about the past in the ways men of his age tend to do—or at least not in ways she expects. He never mentions his parents; he does not speak of Rebecca. Instead a childhood neighbor’s goat. A writing tablet. A winter of no shoes. He will mention these things in a sentence and say no more about them, but in the silence surrounding them they take on weight and resonance, like small bells echoing goat goat goat before the silence swallows them again.
Beyond the synagogue, the city bustles and hums, livelier than it’s been in years. How strange that business is good, Lillian’s store more trafficked than ever, filling up with women. They buy writing paper and pens and envelopes. Some of them are determinedly cheerful, some very quiet; a few of them cry. Lillian has come to prepare herself for this, the occasional woman breaking down over thin blue sheets and linen stock and plain envelopes in packets of twenty. Unlike Abe, she does not keep the news on in her store: she tunes the radio to music broadcasts or turns it off. She’s taken to keeping a pitcher of water and a small bowl of fruit drops on the counter, facial tissue by the register. In the back office, a bottle of sherry, and after five, when the worried and crying women are gone, she pours herself a glass. Lillian herself does not cry. Hasn’t for years, though she remembers plenty of crying, a decade or two stained by crying, now far away, like a faded star, still identifiable but so remote you cannot dream of touching it. Perhaps if she’d had children she would cry. If she’d married? Certainly if her father had lived. Even now she feels a weakening at the thought of him, a hot blurriness. He would have admired the shop, wouldn’t he? Despite the chipped paint on the east wall, which she’s covered with a calendar from the insurance company.
She does write letters, a few to Irving in Georgia, brief notes, with listings from the theaters and nightclubs and bits of Hollywood gossip. He would not have been drafted, at least not yet— too old—and he is not a patriotic man. He’s a charming truant, and the military might squash him, Lillian thinks. He’ll run his games and he’ll be squashed by the army or, worse, by someone else’s army. But he did volunteer.
Stupidly, Leo told her. Irving signed up when he was drunk and panicked about a gambling debt. He signed up knowing he would be whisked away not only from his creditor but also from some woman he was trying to shake off: for six inebriated hours Irving repeated to Leo that this was the perfect solution. Then there was the inevitable sobering, the inevitable awareness of transport to the Pacific or to Europe, the many opportunities to be killed. And Abe oblivious, patting him on the back, believing Irving was off to defend his family, to save Jews, his relatives and Bertha’s and everyone else’s. “Irving surprises me,” Abe said. The sisters were more skeptical, but plainly worried.
Take Jo. Yesterday at the jewelry store Lillian tried to talk with her—“How have you been, Jo?”—and instead of answering with a curmudgeonly “Fine” Jo seemed rattled by the question. She emitted something like a squeak and excused herself. A squeak, the last response Lillian would expect from Jo, whose tongue has remained sharp as she’s become an overstuffed matron. Maybe it was about Irving; maybe Jo actually loves her brother, fears for him. His absence is unnerving—it seems any minute he ought to stroll into Abe’s store, but he does not. And Jo is hardly a replacement—she must know that—Irving so handsome and lighthearted, Jo plain as shaved wood, nothing sensuous about her. That she sells anything amazes Lillian, although Jo could pass for a soldier’s suffering mother, and some people like that sort of thing.
Celia is faring better, and in Lillian’s rare company she has not squeaked. She’s been volunteering at the Red Cross. Keeping herself well, Abe says, which means she’s clean and presentable and not wandering. The war is good for her. She has, now, a place and purpose: the Red Cross, where she writes letters with beautiful penmanship or rolls bandages or does whatever else the Red Cross will give her to do.
Lillian does not volunteer at the Red Cross. Comforting the crying women seems enough, though her own family—Bertha— she does not know how to comfort. The better moments at temple fade quickly, and Bertha is otherwise skittish and reclusive, as obsessed as Abe. It’s unlike any state Lillian has seen her in, unlike her difficult pregnancies, unlike Isabel’s death, when Bertha was subdued and spoke little. After the mourning she returned to herself, helped Lillian find a house. Now, with the war, her fragility seems degenerative and permanent. A few times a week she mails letters to her cousins in Poland, from whom she has not heard in four years. She sends letters to home addresses in Warsaw and Cracow, to the children’s schools, the pharmacy where her cousin Max last worked. She mails the letters from the post office downtown, where one particular clerk takes them without warning her they won’t get through. A balding man named MacKenzie. She patiently stands in MacKenzie’s line, and he accepts the letters like any other foreign-bound mail and sells her more stamps. A few letters have been returned. And the rest? Moshe can’t say. “It’s terrible to watch,” he tells Lillian. “But who knows? What if something gets through?” The writing seems a kind of prayer, a wishing on stars. How can you ask someone not to pray?
ON WEDNESDAY, when Sadie Feldstein shows up at Lillian’s shop, it’s nearly closing time. A young woman buys a notebook and bundles up and braces herself for the street. Often Lillian has a last-minute rush, women and sometimes men on their way home from work, but the cold today is sharp, Main Street already icy and dark. Below Sadie’s fur hat there’s worry in her face: Abe?
A tentative, almost plaintive “Hello, Lillian”—Lillian, not the “Miss Schumacher” Sadie still upholds in public situations. Sadie’s hat matches her fur-collared coat, she’s wearing sleek boots, careful makeup and under the heavy coat a knit suit, and yet in the store entrance she appears a blown leaf, distracted and unaccountably ragged.
“Come in,” Lillian says. “I was just going to lock up and have a sherry. Sadie, would you like a sherry?”
“Sherry? Oh. Yes, please. That would be nice.”
So. If there’s an emergency, it isn’t one Lillian can do anything about, at least right away. Abe is at his store, Irving in Georgia. For a moment she lets herself feel the weariness: it’s exhausting, isn’t it, to perch on the brink of emergency? You need the sherry and the fruit drops and the radio orchestras. Some days Lillian wonders if they’ve all been swimming through emergency itself, and for so long they can’t distinguish it from ordinary life. But no. Perched. Europe is the emergency, leaking incomprehensible news. At night before sleep you check the walls of your bedroom, the ceiling, the floor: solid and there. Solid. The city is thriving, steel plants in full production, all day and night, money flowing downtown.
In the office Lillian pours sherry into glasses like inverted bells, offers Sadie a seat
at the oak table from the house on Brunswick. Sadie’s face is too-white, pinched, perhaps from the cold, perhaps from all the perching.
“This should warm you up,” Lillian says. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Thank you, no.” Sadie takes a sip and sits quietly for a moment. The gusts of wind against the building remind Lillian of trains, of travel motion, though it’s the world that keeps moving, and just now Sadie and Lillian are sheltered in the solid office with their sherry, obliged to go nowhere. It is not unpleasant, and Lillian has become better at tolerating silence and waiting patiently, instead of rushing to fill the space with talk. There is beauty in patience, Abe used to say, a motto he often did not live by.
“Something’s come up,” Sadie says.
Lillian nods, lets the sherry warm her throat. It’s good sherry, not the best, but nice and dry.
“My eldest sister lives in California,” Sadie says. “Goldie. This is something I’ve just learned.” She’s the model of poise, Sadie, but still there’s a frantic undertone, an incredulity that might explain the paleness. As if for her a ghost has risen.
“I see.”
“You don’t seem surprised,” Sadie says.
And Lillian isn’t, not really. For a time she’d thought Goldie might be dead, victim of something bizarre and random, but she couldn’t hold to that story, not without proof. Why believe such a thing? Even from a distance you could see how smart Goldie was, and how estranged. “I remember her as a capable woman,” Lillian says. “The type to get herself to California.”
And now Sadie is peering into her sherry glass, as if it might illuminate a mystery, and her voice is like a young girl’s. “Did Irving tell you?”
“No,” Lillian says. “Irving’s very private about the family.” Which is one way of putting it. But there was something once, wasn’t there? A curious phrase? Some mention of the money my sister sent instead of his previous, relieved money from Sadie. He’d been betting on the horses. “I suppose he knew?”
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