The Hours Count

by Jillian Cantor

  I stood now and tiptoed to my small wooden dresser, a relic from Bubbe Kasha’s old apartment. I opened the top drawer and searched below my underthings. I felt it there—in the small, nondescript box where I always kept it—undisturbed. And last night felt like nothing more than a dream, Ed’s words nothing more than the ramblings of a drunk man. He knows nothing, I told myself, and then I said it out loud as if hearing the words would make them real.

  I walked into the kitchen and made myself some coffee and then I went to the window and watched the street below. The sunshine fell upon the men walking to work and the women pushing carriages, making everything appear ultrabright, and the world beneath me seemed a thing of excessive beauty, the unreal world of storybooks. I wondered if Ethel might want to take her boys outside to play with David today before the weather turned and got too much colder.

  The sound of knocking at my door startled me, and I nearly spilled my coffee. It was early, before nine, but maybe Ethel had had the same idea.

  “Coming,” I said, but not too loud so as not to awaken David, and I peeked my head in the back bedroom to see if he was still sleeping. It was so unusual for him to be this undisturbed that for a moment I wondered if he was ill. But then I heard the knock on the door again and I ran to answer it before the noise woke him.

  An unfamiliar woman stood in my doorway, her hand raised to knock once more. She was short and quite round, wearing a too-tight brown suit, her graying hair pulled back into a taut bun. She looked at me and she frowned, and I realized that I was still in my robe. I pulled it tighter across my chest. “Can I help you?” I asked.

  She tried to peer past me into the apartment, which was quite untidy. David’s blocks still scattered across the floor. And had it not been for the fact that I was in my robe, I would’ve stepped out into the hallway and shut the door behind me so she wouldn’t see our mess. Up on the eleventh floor we didn’t get wayward visitors, unexpected guests, or salesmen. So I felt certain this woman had knocked on the wrong door by mistake until she glanced at me, frowned again, and said, “Mrs. Stein?”

  “Yes,” I managed, startled that she had, in fact, come to the right place. I noticed she was holding a thick notebook and a pen. “Can I help you?” I asked again, my tone sharper than before.

  “I’m Zelda Weiss from the Jewish Children’s Home.” She paused. “Your husband called us.”

  “Yes?” I managed to say again.

  “He felt your son might benefit from being placed in our care.”

  I know what you’ve been doing, Ed had said, his fingers marking my arm with their forcefulness, and now he was exacting his revenge? Zelda Weiss was standing at my doorway at such an early hour because she wanted to take David. Ed wanted David sent away.

  I stepped back and slammed the door, latching the chain. I pressed my back against the door, and I could hear my ragged breaths rattling in my chest. I wouldn’t let her in. I wouldn’t let her near David.

  “Mrs. Stein.” She rapped on the door again. “I would just like to talk with you about your husband’s . . . concerns about . . . We can help you, you know.”

  I pressed my back harder against the door, and I watched my coffee cup tremble in my unsteady hands. From the back room I heard the sounds of David awakening now. Surely he would not have slept through my slamming of the door. I could hear him kicking the wall, the steady, uneasy thumps reverberating in my brain. It was his way. His way of saying that he was awake and he needed me. I understood it. I understood him. And no matter what Ed or anyone else thought, he would not be better off with someone else.

  “Mrs. Stein!” Zelda Weiss called again through the door, her voice sounding tighter, stretched by impatience. “I am going to slide my card under the door . . . I’ll be back later in the week. Perhaps it will be a better time for you. And we can talk then.”

  I watched the card come across the floor and then I picked it up. It would never be a better time and I would never talk to her. I ripped the card up and threw the ugly pieces in the trash, and then I walked into the bedroom and grabbed ahold of David.

  “Good morning, love,” I said into his unruly curls, my curls. My son. “Mommy is here.” I held on tight, even when he struggled to break free of my grasp.

  THOUGH IT WASN’T Friday and I didn’t need any meat, I got David dressed and walked with him toward Market Street and Mr. Bergman’s shop. If anyone would understand, or would have the desire to help, it would be him. I had considered calling my mother or Susan, but I worried they might agree with Ed, that they might tell me now, with David already three, I was holding on to nothing. I pictured the cool look in my sister’s hazel eyes as she might tell me that sometimes you had to be willing to let go. But I wasn’t. I wouldn’t. I never would.

  I held on to David’s hand extra-tight as we walked. And I talked and talked, enough for the both of us. I smiled and hugged him along the way as I thought about how Dr. Greenberg said I was too cold. That I was the reason David refused to be normal.

  I remembered Ed had been to see Dr. Greenberg for his yearly physical last week, and now I wondered what Dr. Greenberg had said to him. Had he told Ed what he had told me, that he believed David might do better in another environment, or had he simply told Ed about the diaphragm? Probably both. And I felt even more certain Ed had called Zelda Weiss to get even.

  As we walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that David and I were being followed, that someone—Zelda Weiss?—was watching us, judging me. I glanced uneasily behind my shoulder, and for a moment I thought I recognized a man on the street, that doctor from last night, Jake. But then I turned around again and he was gone, and I told myself no one was watching us. That now I was becoming paranoid.

  “BOYCHIK, what a wonderful surprise!” Mr. Bergman called out when we walked in his shop and up to the counter. But even his kind, booming voice couldn’t cheer me up.

  “Mildred,” Mr. Bergman said as he passed David a yellow gumdrop. David swallowed it hungrily, and I realized I hadn’t fed him breakfast yet, a thought that only made me feel worse. “I don’t have a brisket set aside for you today. Do you need something? I can go in the back and see what I can find.”

  I shook my head, but I didn’t realize I was crying until Mr. Bergman pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it across the counter. I used it to wipe my eyes, and Mr. Bergman put his hand on mine. The shop was quiet this morning, a Tuesday, unlike the pre-Shabbat bustle of a midday Friday that I was used to when I usually came in here. I worried that business wasn’t as good as it once was when my father was alive.

  “Bubbelah, what’s wrong?” he said gently. “Is it Ed?”

  I nodded, and I wondered how Mr. Bergman could be so wise. But he had never seemed to like Ed. Before our wedding he’d told me his concerns, that Ed and I had such different pasts, that Ed was so much older than me, that none of us knew Ed nearly as well as we knew Sam, but I had brushed them all away with a flick of my wrist and had chalked up his worries to a fatherly sort of overprotectiveness.

  He scowled now. “Damn Reds he’s got himself mixed up with.”

  I thought of the party last night at Ethel’s. Ed’s friends. Ethel’s friends, too. Reds, as Mr. Bergman said with disdain as if a simple color could be worthy of so much hatred. I thought of the way Julius had held on so sweetly to Ethel last night and the kind way that that doctor, Jake, had asked me if I’d needed anything as I’d stood out on the night street in the cold. “What do you mean?” I asked him.

  “He’s going to get himself in a whole heap of trouble with that crowd. You keeping up with the papers, Millie?” I told him I was, though probably not as much as I should. “All this business with Mr. Hiss.”

  “Mr. Hiss?” I asked, the name sounding only vaguely familiar to me.

  “Alger Hiss. Big government man. That Bentley woman called him a communist, and now they say he was a spy for Russia, too.
”

  I thought about what Ruth had said last night, that Bentley would say anything. “Maybe Miss Bentley’s lying,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter if she is or not. Alger Hiss is ruined now. I’m telling you, there aren’t many things worse than being labeled a communist these days.” He shook his head. “Look at the Hollywood Ten, rotting in jail.”

  I wondered what Mr. Bergman would say if he knew that I’d gone to Ethel’s party last night, that the Reds Ed was mixed up with had been so kind to me and were our neighbors. I wondered what would happen if anyone found out about the politics they were discussing. But who would care anyway? Sure, maybe it was unfavorable to be labeled a communist these days, but there were no high-profile government men or Hollywood types in Ethel’s apartment last night.

  I wasn’t planning on telling Mr. Bergman any of this now, though. It wasn’t Ed’s friends who were the problem, and I remembered why I’d come here and tears welled up in my eyes again. “It’s not the politics,” I said, wiping at my face with his handkerchief. “It’s . . .” I glanced at David. He stared at me intently as if he were hanging on to my every word. Was he? Did he know what I was saying even if he wouldn’t acknowledge it and respond yet? I lowered my voice and leaned in closer to Mr. Bergman. “A woman came to my apartment this morning from the Jewish Children’s Home. Ed called her.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, running his plump fingers through his thinning gray hair. I tilted my head in David’s direction, unwilling to say it out loud in front of him, that Ed wanted them to take David away, that he wanted to punish me and this was his way.

  Mr. Bergman frowned and reached beneath the counter for his bag of gumdrops. He sifted through it until he found three more yellows and he placed them gently into David’s open and eager palm.

  “Ed wants them to take him,” I whispered, once David was concentrating hard on the yellow candies.

  “Take him?” Mr. Bergman’s voice rose. “He is a happy boy. There is a shadow of your father in his eyes . . .” Mr. Bergman was right. David had my light brown eyes, my father’s eyes, and very obviously Ed’s square nose.

  I bit my lip. “Do you really think so, that he’s happy?”

  “I know so,” Mr. Bergman said. “If this woman bothers you again, you call me, okay? I’ll come talk to her for you. I’ll tell her what a good mother you are.”

  I smiled at him and he patted my hand. He was very sweet, but I didn’t want to tell him what I already understood, that I doubted there would be anything he could do to stop Ed if Ed set his mind on something. No matter how much he wanted to.

  9

  The day dragged on, and by midafternoon my stomach began to ache with worry. I worried about that Weiss woman coming back, about whether Mr. Bergman was right when he told me he thought David was happy. But most of all I worried about Ed coming home from work, about having to have a conversation with him after last night and Zelda Weiss’s visit this morning. I knew the hour would turn past five and Ed would walk down Monroe Street and ride the elevator up as always. My stomach ached even more at the thought.

  To make matters worse, David refused to nap, which was becoming more and more common these days, and every time I tried to lay him down on his mattress he would just kick the wall and kick the wall and cry until finally I relented and let him come back out into the living room, where I smoked a cigarette and he stacked his yellow blocks in a tower. I watched them go higher and higher. They would fall soon and he would cry again, but for the moment he was enthralled and I closed my eyes and took a drag on my cigarette.

  I heard a knock at the door. “Shhh,” I commanded David—unnecessarily, I thought, until, ignoring me, he toppled the blocks and began to kick the floor in frustration.

  “Millie, are you in there? It’s Ethel.” My whole body eased with relief and I put my cigarette out in the ashtray and walked to the door to open it. Ethel stood in the hallway with John, who immediately peered behind me, noticed David kicking the floor, and then ran into the apartment past me. “John!” Ethel called, shooting me an apologetic look. “It’s not polite to just barge in.”

  “It’s all right,” I said as I watched John pick up the yellow blocks, his movements calming David down. I felt an inkling of tenderness for John that I hadn’t before. It was like he was learning how to understand David, to care for him, as a friend. I opened the door wider and invited Ethel in, too.

  “We can’t stay,” Ethel said, her voice taking on that familiar nervous edge that had been absent for a little while last night while her boys slept. “Richie is napping. I don’t want to leave him for long.” She folded her arms. She was wearing a worn flowered housedress, a dress that might have been beautiful, once years ago before she’d given birth to her babies, maybe when she dreamed of being a Broadway star, America’s leading actress. But now the pink had faded to almost beige, the left sleeve was torn, and the shoulder appeared to be stained with baby food. “I’m sorry about John barging in like that.” She sighed.

  I glanced at him, now rebuilding the tower with David, whose face was suddenly calm and serious. “No,” I said, “not at all. David is glad for the company. And so am I.” I smiled at her. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? A quick one?”

  “No thanks,” she said to me. “John,” she said him. “Five minutes and then we have to get back to check on your brother.” John ignored her and continued building with the blocks. “I just wanted to check in with you, Millie. Make sure everything was . . . all right.”

  I wondered how she could know about Zelda Weiss, but she didn’t of course. She was asking because of the way Ed had treated me in her apartment and how I’d run out last night. “Everything is fine,” I lied, and even as I said the words I realized that I didn’t mean to, that I wanted to tell Ethel the truth. But I didn’t know how someone whose husband loved her so obviously and completely as Julie did would be able to understand what I was feeling now for Ed.

  Ethel held her shoulders up, uncertain. I sat down on our couch and patted the seat next to me until Ethel relaxed and sat down, too. Though I understood she wouldn’t—and couldn’t—stay long, I thought she felt the way I did, this rare moment when John and David were both content and happy, transfixed with blocks and each other, nothing more than normal little boys. And nothing less.

  Our couch was our only new piece of furniture in the apartment, the only thing Ed and I had bought rather than pillaged from Bubbe Kasha’s old treasures when she left her apartment and moved in with my mother just after we got married. I’d found the couch at Macy’s for fifteen dollars, and Ed had said he was happy to buy it for me as a wedding gift. This is love, I’d thought. A fifteen-dollar couch in the most beautiful shade of royal blue I’d ever seen. How stupid I’d been to believe that.

  I wanted to tell Ethel about Zelda’s visit this morning. I wanted to ask for Ethel’s advice. But Julie was Ed’s employer. Julie had been Ed’s friend first before I’d even met Ethel. And instead I heard myself telling Ethel about the silly couch and how Ed had bought it for me as a wedding present.

  “It’s a lovely couch,” Ethel murmured, paying no attention to it. “Did you have a nice time last night?” she asked carefully.

  “It was nice to get out of my apartment. To meet people . . . You know how it is.”

  “I do,” Ethel said. “I used to see them all the time when I was younger, when Julie and I were first married. Oh, I was so involved in the cause!”

  “Why were you so involved?” I asked her, wondering what had drawn Ethel, a woman now so involved in her children and her quiet life here in Knickerbocker Village, to this particular crowd of people. Reds, as Mr. Bergman had called them with so much disdain. I remembered Susan telling me about an article she’d read in Look magazine a while back that detailed “how to spot a communist” and her warning me to be careful and on the lookout, especially here in the city. But Ethel was not the k
ind of woman I’d imagined when Susan described what she’d read in the article—severe-looking people dressed in all black who seemed favorable to Russia. Ed, Susan had proclaimed, was excused because he’d grown up in Russia. He didn’t know any better. And besides, I’d told her he was distancing himself as time went on.

  “You know, I was only fifteen when I graduated from Seward Park,” I realized Ethel was saying and I turned my attention back to her.

  “Fifteen.” I raised my eyebrows, impressed that Ethel had graduated from high school so young.

  She laughed as if she were embarrassed by her own intelligence. “I got a job as a clerk at a shipping company and I saw the terrible way all the women were treated. I organized a strike of a hundred fifty women—I did that—and I was promptly fired of course. But boy, Millie, did I feel alive. Doing something to improve people’s lives. That’s when and why I joined the Party, to continue that kind of work, do some good in this country. Labor unions and fairness for workers. I thought I was going to change the world.” She laughed again.

  I thought about what Mr. Bergman said earlier. “But now I guess things have changed. No one wants to be a communist anymore.”

  “Oh, I don’t know that it’s the Party that’s changed, Millie,” she said. “It’s the whole rest of the world. Julie almost lost his first job with the Signal Corps before it even began because they drummed up some petition I’d signed years ago. And then he did eventually lose his job over his ties to the Party. It doesn’t matter that he’s a good man and a good worker. It’s all so silly. People are afraid. All this business now with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Honestly, what does it mean to be un-American?”