Bess and Frima

by Alice Rosenthal

  “These are songs sung by young teenage girls at a public school just outside of Madrid that was established by the Republic. I’ve carried them with me since I left as a teenager. The school was later completely razed—bombed by the Fascists. I don’t know if there were students in it—probably so. I can’t listen to these recordings, but please play them sometime when I’m not here. The songs are lovely. He picked up a paper insert that had lyrics. I’ll translate these for you, if you like, but I can’t listen to the music.”

  When she was alone she did listen to them once, and they were lovely. She wondered briefly if an adolescent Eduardo had been in love with one of the singers. She liked that romantic notion, somehow. The songs were not love songs, however, but playful children’s songs: sweet ballads and folk songs about flowers, shepherds, animals. They were totally innocent, without any political content; and the singers were devoid of any of the slick polish and sentimentality of Hollywood child stars, singing and parading as short adults. That Eduardo cherished this music taught her a lot about this man she loved.

  In Eduardo, Beth felt she had found a rare combination of support and freedom, intimacy and space. Secure for a lifetime? Oh, come on, that could only come with time, if ever. They had both felt like they belonged together almost immediately, but they waited almost a year before she moved into his home on Bedford Street. He owned a whole townhouse, but used only a small part of it for an office and living space, which had been furnished sparely. To Beth it was the height of luxury. She had never experienced living in such lavish light, air, and space. She kept her job until Eduardo tempted her with a studio in the wonderful light-filled attic apartment of the house. And she worried not at all if her family approved of her new life.

  CHAPTER 25

  Frima hung up the phone gently but with a drawn out sigh. So, Beth was busy building a painter’s studio for herself, happy as a pig in you-know-what, and she, in contrast, was thinking about having her beloved piano shipped up to the hotel, where it would sit unused and faithful, waiting for the spare half hour that Frima had to make a little music during the summer and maybe a few weekends out of season. To Jack, the piano was in the way in their city apartment. That had been increasingly clear, since the birth of baby Rosalie, and the interesting little conversation they’d had yesterday pretty much settled its fate. She slammed her way about the kitchen, and expelled her breath rudely in a Bronx cheer. Well! At least her husband’s sudden yearning to fight for Zion was over, and with any luck permanently.

  What an improbable Zionist he would make. The ones Frima knew of were socialists of sorts; not Jack’s type at all. Of course every Jew she knew personally wanted to see a homeland established for Jews, especially for all the refugees and displaced persons in Central and Eastern Europe. Everyone knew someone who had immigrated to Palestine before the war or knew of people desperate to get there. Even Frima, whose entire extended family had come to the United States well before the rise of the Nazis, felt a kinship with these poor displaced souls. They looked like her grandmother or great uncle in those faded family pictures. Except for the ultra-Orthodox Jews, none of whom lived around here, everyone admired David Ben-Gurion and dropped spare change into those little blue donation cans for the Jewish National Fund. No one she knew had any intention of emigrating themselves. They were Americans and felt their luck. But her husband, she discovered, had an itch.

  He had begun quite casually, perched on a kitchen chair. “You know my old high school buddy Lou Kurlansky?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I met him on the subway on the way home last week and then again yesterday. I asked him what he was doing in this neck of the woods because he lives further east, near the zoo, and would ordinarily take the Pelham line. He was carefully dressed, if you know what I mean, and I thought maybe he had a girlfriend around here. He was pretty good with the girls when we were in high school. I start to kid him about this, so he sets me straight. He tells me he’s having supper with Mrs. Sussman; you know, who lives on the other side of the building from us? Her granddaughter goes to kindergarten with Lena? He visits with her when he has time these days. He likes to talk with her, and she’s a good cook.”

  “A bit long in the tooth for him, isn’t she?” Frima said this affably enough, but silently she was wondering what issue Jack was circling about and just when he would home in on it.

  “She is a very interesting, intelligent person, as it happens,” he said testily.

  “We have no argument there. So?”

  “I would really appreciate it if you would just listen without comment. It interrupts my train of thought.”

  Frima just rolled her eyes.

  “It happens they are connected by marriage. Mrs. Sussman’s youngest son married Lou’s sister. Anyway, she has some important relatives over there in Palestine—archaeologists of international reputation, actually—who are Zionists, of course, and also very high up in the Haganah. You know, the paramilitary organization fighting for establishment of an Israeli state?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, one of these men, a famous archaeologist, is visiting here, and Mrs. Sussman invited Lou to meet him. What a lucky guy, don’t you think?”

  “I didn’t know Lou was interested in archaeology. Nor you, for that matter.”

  “It’s the Haganah that interests him. Especially their determination to smuggle displaced Jews from the European camps to Palestine. I’m sure he wants to be a crew man on one of those boats. He didn’t say this directly, of course. The operations are secret and illegal.”

  “Then it seems to me you shouldn’t be talking about them, either.”

  “It’s only to you, for God’s sake, Frima!”

  “Well, why are you so sure that’s what he wants?”

  “He cares a lot about all those poor people. He joined the Navy when he was seventeen, trained as a frogman, but the war was over before he could be in combat. He wants to do something for the Jews. He calls them ‘my people.’ I admire him, and I envy him for being able to do this. It would make up for a lot!”

  “Are you trying to tell me that you want to do the same?” She was instantly enraged, could hardly get the words out. “Lou has no wife and children, to say nothing of parents, and he is a trained seaman.”

  “And I, if you remember, am a trained medic!” He stopped himself right there. “Of course I know I have obligations that he doesn’t. I know I can’t do what he can do, and I would never do anything to hurt the family I love. Where are you going?”

  “Be back in a jiffy,” Frima said. “I think the baby’s up from her nap.”

  The baby wasn’t, but she needed those few minutes by herself. It took a mighty effort in that brief time to stifle the scorching words she felt like saying, including, of course, that his own first encounter with “our people” was not exactly heroic and that he wouldn’t be a prime candidate for that kind of perilous activity. Returning to the kitchen table, she kept her voice even.

  “It seems to me that if you need to support Zionist causes, you can do it from here in New York. If you want to help the Jews, you can do it right here. At least half the kids you’ll be teaching are Jews—probably more. You have a real talent for teaching and a way with kids. Teach them chemistry and good values. Teach them how to learn and think for themselves. Believe me. You’ll be doing your part.”

  Jack was silent for a minute or two, collecting himself while Frima pretended to busy herself at the sink.

  “You’re absolutely right, honey. And that being the case, I’d better hit the books.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked, seeing him put on a muffler and a jacket.

  “Just to the library at Fordham.” He glanced at the piano. “There’s barely any room to spread out my books here, to say nothing of the noise.”

  He said this smoothly, easily, and Frima, suddenly enlightened, made no reply. So this was the bargain he offered. She decoded it quite calmly. He was indirect, of course, but the t
erms were clear. The thing that crowded him so much was her piano. It wasn’t the first time he had made that known. The thing that was noisy (damn him) was her piano. He couldn’t make it clearer: If I’m to put away my chance to be heroic and redeem myself of my feelings of cowardice, you can put away your dreams of being a musician. If I sacrifice for my wife and children, you sacrifice for me.

  She thought again of Beth’s news. How ironic that Beth, in a perilous relationship by conventional standards, feels loved and secure because she can be honest with Eduardo and is free to express herself—encouraged to express all she is. And she, Frima, married to the good catch and possessed of a picture-perfect loving family, can only be safe and secure by suppressing a big part of herself. She stood silently for a few minutes. Did she accept the terms of Jack’s bargain? Well, yes, sort of. What choice did she have?

  So, here she was, getting ready to hang her wet laundry on the roof again, escaping the steaminess and heat of an apartment full of infant demands and adult rancor. She stood quietly for a moment gazing out at the city view with its water towers to mourn her lost dreams. Looking anew at the closest water tower, the one on the roof of her own building, it no longer appeared to have the inviting contours of her youthful daydreams. Now it was a big awkward structure, looming and forbidding, seeming perhaps too heavy for its flimsy supports. So much for adolescent fantasies. The only ones that had come close to realization happened in bed; not in a lofty studio, not even on a rug before a fire or in a rose garden.

  You really have only a couple of alternatives, she told herself with grim humor. You can strangle yourself in this clothesline, jump off the roof—that would certainly make a splash—or you can go downstairs and take care of your two priceless little girls who love and need you and for whom there really is no substitute, and also your handsome, desirable husband who loves you and works his head off for you. And he is mostly a decent guy, as husbands go, she thought, even if she was tempted to go after him with the first handy blunt object from time to time. She would have to—what were Jane Austen’s words?—learn to be a philosopher.

  The phone rang as she entered her apartment again. It was Mama in Ellenville. By the time she got off the phone, Frima had forgotten all about Jack’s latest. Grandpa had died. He went peacefully in his sleep, evidently. When he hadn’t been seen by midmorning, they went to check on him. It was his heart, the doctor said. It seemed to have just stopped; there was no sign of struggle. “As if he were ready,” Mama said. “His affairs were all in order, his burial wishes clear.”

  “He seemed so hale and hearty last time I saw him,” Frima said. “Joking and cooking up schemes for a Western trip with Moe Ginsberg. Maybe he was depressed or sick and didn’t want us to worry.”

  “I don’t think so. He wasn’t exactly thrilled with the way things were developing up here—not at our place, but in general. Still, he wasn’t a man who got personally depressed. It wasn’t his nature. So I wouldn’t worry that he was hiding anything from us. He and Moe were still plotting their trip, up to the last. All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to go, I suppose. Looking forward to some excitement, and then the lights just gently go out. No suffering.”

  CHAPTER 26

  June 1950

  “Go West, old man! Arthritic knees, Yiddish accent, and all. Now I’ve heard everything!” Jack’s laugh was good-humored.

  Oh, no, you haven’t, Frima thought, but she remained silent. A lot of her spontaneous responses to Jack were silent these days, she was finding. Still, his amazement was understandable at this latest bulletin from Ellenville: Moe Ginsberg had announced that he would soon move out to California for good. This was no pipe dream. Moe’s two sons had settled their families north of San Francisco, and he had spent some of the cold months with them. He loved the country out there. He had no intention of retiring in the sun, however, under the care and supervision of his sons, “like some geriatric kindergartener,” he announced, but it was time for a change. There were stirrings on the coast that intrigued him. He was excited about a community of pensioners, as yet small, but with the potential to expand in a progressive direction. According to Mama and Leon, the old light was in Moe’s eyes again; the one that had been missing since the violent death of his wife, Judith. Her unknown assassin—for that’s what they all called him—had never been found, and that no one in authority had looked very hard was a bitter truth to Moe, augmenting his abiding sorrow. But now he seemed once more to be the genial, shrewd mover and shaker of the old days.

  “And why shouldn’t he move on?” Mama commented. “He sees the handwriting on the wall.” Frima knew what she meant. The community he loved of small farms, boardinghouses, and modest country hotels was vanishing. Soon kosher style food and a few old jokesters would be the only remnant of the older rural Jewish settlement.

  “Still, I hate to see him go,” Mama said.

  “Me, too,” Frima said. “And what if he gets sick on the train or dies out in the middle of nowhere with no one to take care of him—like Grandpa Joad in The Grapes of Wrath?”

  “What a comparison! He will not be buried on the side of the road. He’s off to see a new part of the world, with money in his pocket and renewed enthusiasm and curiosity. If he should die in the process, well, that would be very sad, but he knows that is better than to sit still and molder. You are too young to think this way, but Moe isn’t. Believe me, I worried also, but he convinced me that this is what he wants. It’s a great gift at his time of life to be able to seek something new with that kind of enthusiasm and energy.”

  Moe had decided to take a long train route through the Canadian Rockies and down the West Coast. He wanted to see something of North America. Frima was seeing him off at Grand Central Station, and she was happily surprised to see Beth there also. Moe stood tall, eager, full of excitement.

  “Ah, my two beautiful young ladies, how can a man leave you? Yet I have always longed for the romance of trains, especially fancy-schmancy train travel, and I hear the food is terrific. Bacon and eggs for breakfast tomorrow, hmm? And cocktails in the bar before dinner, and perhaps after,” Moe added, “if I find I have trouble sleeping in a Pullman car.”

  “No scandals, please. And write, you hear?” Frima was suddenly very happy for him.

  “For you, my dear girl, I will keep a journal better than Mark Twain,” Moe assured her.

  Beth wrapped her arms around him. “If you don’t write to me, I’ll haunt you,” she said. She had tears in her eyes. Beth, who was not a weeper.

  “I didn’t know Moe meant that much to you, Bethie.” Frima said after the train departed.

  “I love that man. I can’t really explain it. But I hate crying, and the only remedy is lunch. Do you have time? My treat.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “We’re here at Grand Central, so do you want to go to the Oyster Bar?”

  “Oysters! You? I don’t believe it. After your early experience? When did you get so adventurous?”

  “I’ve learned a thing or two,” Beth said.

  —

  Now, far from feeling adventurous herself, Frima sat in the hotel station wagon, which was almost splitting its seams with clothes and supplies and their family of four. The kids were singing and horsing around in the back seats, but she and Jack were quiet. He whistled absent-mindedly between his teeth as he drove, his ear tuned to the radio, waiting for the Yankees game to begin. She was silent, fanning off the heat from the road and the crowded car. Again she was fleetingly reminded of the Joad family, but, shamefaced, she dismissed any comparison. The Joads had packed their family and possessions into that old wreck of a truck to face a desperate unknown. She and her family were just going up to Ellenville to their hotel for the summer. More accurately, she and Lena and Rosalie were spending the entire season at Eisner’s. Jack was teaching summer school and would only be there weekends. Frima was fine with that. No use kidding herself, they needed some time apart from each other. Still, she noted dryly, both the fiction
al Joads and the real Eisners were bidding a permanent farewell to a farm they loved.

  As long as Grandpa was alive, Mama would have continued managing and living at the hotel, but since he was gone, she really wanted time to relax and do some traveling with Leon. Running a family vacation farm was exhausting work, especially when your own family spent so little time working there with you. Frima was abashed when she looked honestly at how little time she and Jack had spent in Ellenville in the last few years since Rosalie’s birth. It was easy to tell herself that the weekends and holidays they had spent in the city rather than the country were just breaks in their routine. She loved being up in the country, and she’d thought they could at least spend summers there, which would have been a help to Mama and would have given her a chance to be with her grandchildren. In truth, Frima felt she could be quite happy there all year round, but evidently she was the only one in her household who felt that way. The kids had no real attachment to the place; they were too young. Lena was just as happy to go to a city day camp with her school friends, while Rosalie was too little to care where they spent their time. And Jack, she had discovered to her pain, didn’t miss much about the hotel at all. His affection for their “little haven,” as he had called it during their courtship, had worn away. He had more than once offered a whole lot of reasons why they shouldn’t commit any time to the hotel or property.