Seymour placed his hands on the ledge and peered over into the park, where women held hands with their children as they walked along the path. Old ladies pulled their tiny dogs around, birds swooped in and out of the trees, and swans glided along the glass surface of the water. It was a tremendous day. The azaleas were blooming, also the cherry trees that bordered the park. Simply gorgeous, Seymour thought, instantly envious of any man who had this woman here, the plain one smiling down into a large blue pram.
Seymour, in his hat and a trench coat, walked out of the bright spring sun and into the Plaza bar around 3:30 and sat in a banquette in the far corner of the room. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror above his seat. I look like a gangster, he thought. He had to laugh at himself. I think I am a gangster. Look at me. Seymour remembered his mother bending at the waist to greet the patrons at the Joint, sticking their cash into the massive trap of her brassiere.
Celia was the first of the two women to come in, and Seymour had to note that she looked like a million bucks. Her printed dress hung just below her knees, and Seymour could see her pretty garters barely sticking out from under the hem, her stockings rolled just above the knee. A golden snake—something the Terrier would surely have coveted for his wife—encircled her upper arm.
Celia nodded at the bartender, who, as Seymour had requested, brought her to a seat near the front of the room, her back to Seymour. He brought her a drink right away. As he placed it on the table, she removed her gloves finger by finger, unpinned her hat, and leaned back in the seat.
Sarah came in about ten minutes later, placing her beaded bag on the table as she slid into the banquette next to her friend.
“A martini please, three onions,” she said, pointing to her friend’s drink and holding up three fingers.
“Lovely day, isn’t it?” Celia said.
“Oh, who gives a hoot,” said Sarah. “Spring. I can’t even bear to walk through the park.”
“Why not? I love the park. Especially this time of year. It’s like being in Europe!”
“Well, I know. I know I should want to walk through the park and look at all the blooming cherry trees, but lord knows, when I see those mothers bending over enormous prams cooing at their children, it simply makes me ill,” Sarah said. “I’m terribly sorry to say it, but it does.” She slammed back into the seat with a sigh.
Seymour watched her drink arrive, her bright smile turn to disdain, and her hand wave as she sent it back. “No, this is two onions and I said three,” she told the bartender, and he returned with a small dish of pickled onions. She shook her head incredulously at the man and dropped one into her drink.
“I’m sorry, darling. How are you?” Sarah said, licking her fingers. She looked as if she would lean in and pet her friend’s rosy cheek. It made Seymour a bit sad to see her even a little happy with someone else.
“Well,” Celia began. “I’m all right, I suppose. Ed has been busy lately. Extremely.” She raised her eyebrows.
Sarah nodded. “Seymour too,” she began. “What do you think he’s up to?”
“You should know,” said Celia.
“Oh, who cares. To tell you the truth, Seal, sometimes I positively hate him. Oh, how I hated him when he was a salesman,” Sarah said. “Because he wasn’t rich. He had no connections, Seal. I can’t tell you how this limited me. His mother is a hairdresser. A hairdresser, for Christ’s sake! And now, even though he’s making so much dough we can’t spend it fast enough, I still hate him because, well, he used to be a salesman.”
“But, Sarah,” Celia said. “Seymour is a divine man. He’s so tall and handsome, clean as a piece of chalk,” she said.
Seymour glanced in the mirror when he heard this and brushed his hands lightly over his face.
“Chalk?” Sarah asked, leaning down and taking another sip.
“Seymour has edges,” her friend said. “Not like Ed. Ed is…a blurry little man with a big gold ring.” Celia laughed. “And to top it off, he’s an attorney. No interest in the arts. None. Just craps and law. Seymour at least loves the theater.”
“It’s true, he does,” Sarah said. “Isn’t that strange?” She giggled.
The two women sat quietly for a moment, sipping their drinks.
“You know,” said Celia, breaking the silence of their drinking. “I should have married an actor. I had such plans. But my mother made me marry Ed. ‘Go to New York and be an actress? Over my dead body,’ she told me. I think the gin is getting to me.”
“Remember we were both going to be actors?”
Seymour couldn’t help rolling his eyes at this. He thought now how easy it was to blame someone else for something you just never did yourself. But what if she had and had failed? After all, who was to say Sarah would have made it past her stupid little college productions, her father clapping from the first row, a dozen roses waiting for her on the chair beside him?
Celia nodded as she sipped her drink, the gin dribbling a little down her chin, which she wiped with the back of her hand. “‘Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally.’” She paused for a moment. “What I have for a husband is more ink than chalk. His brutal effect washed everywhere.”
Sarah looked inquisitively at her friend, as if to place this last line somewhere in the Shakespeare. “Well, now Seymour seems to be in liquor,” she said. ‘’Liquor!” She held up her drink. “Ain’t that just a kick in the pants?”
The two women laughed into each other, and Sarah ordered more drinks with a twirl of her long finger.
“If Seymour was to leave me, where would all my anger go?”
“Hmmmm.” Celia nodded.
“What I’m saying is, don’t we need one place to put everything we despise? Perhaps I couldn’t live without my husband.”
“Because he’s gorgeous, that’s why,” Celia said. “And he adores the theater.”
Sarah nodded. “Of course I loved that he was so handsome. No one looked like that at Amherst,” she said.
Seymour could see immediately that his wife was progressing into a blue mood. Even from where he sat, he could see her eyes cloud and her head tilt with melancholy.
“Cheers?” Sarah said hopefully, holding up her glass.
“Chin chin,” Celia offered halfheartedly, meeting Sarah’s wobbly martini with her own.
Seymour watched as they drank two more martinis. Their talk moved to The Sound and the Fury, which Sarah thought was positively brilliant, though Celia much preferred A Farewell to Arms. Sarah insisted it didn’t have to be one or the other, but Celia felt you were either a fan of Hemingway or a fan of Faulkner, not both. Never. When they started talking about Mary Pickford and the Academy Awards, Seymour was sure the conversation would turn back to their dashed dreams. He glanced at his pocket watch, surprised to note it was nearly 6:30. What of Dulcy? Had Sarah completely forgotten she had a child? Did she expect Mary to raise Dulcy? What of dinner? Mary did the cooking, yes, but she needed guidance. It was true he had told Sarah he would not be home until late evening, but he did not realize that this meant she would not be home either.
That was when he heard Sarah slur loudly. “Celia,” she whispered, nearly licking her friend’s ear. “Shall we, just once for fun?”
Celia smiled cattily at Sarah and looked up, heavenward, Seymour thought, until he realized the look went aboveground, to the hotel rooms.
“Sarah Bloom, you are very naughty.” Celia laughed. She slapped Sarah’s hand and then took it, guiding her as she clumsily slid out of the banquette.
“I plead the Fifth!” Sarah squealed, raising her right hand.
The two women laughed.
Seymour watched them stumble out of the bar, two women, one flesh and curve, the other, straight, stretched bone. He sat completely still as they leaned in to each other, making their way to the lobby. He had a strange thought: Perhaps they will fit together well, he thought to himself as he touched the brim of his ha
t and tied the belt of his dark coat. He cleared his throat and went over to the bartender.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked. Nothing. Seymour had done nothing.
“I should charge a pretty penny for that show.” The bartender laughed.
“They come here often?” Seymour asked.
“About once a week. But they never leave together. Not like that anyway.”
“Like what?” Seymour looked at him sternly.
The man laughed. “Like nothing,” he said, wiping down the bar.
Seymour nodded his head. I am a gangster, he thought to himself. “That’s what I thought,” he said.
Seymour never discussed with his wife what he had seen transpire that Wednesday at the Plaza. He had seen quite enough, and yet still, two nights later, as he sat in his study looking at receipts, Mary insisted on handing him another balled-up letter.
“I thought you might want to see this,” she said.
“Why, Mary? Why would you think I would want to see this?”
The housekeeper shrugged. “I thought you might want to know what your wife was up to is all,” she said.
Seymour looked down wearily at the fine, wrinkled paper. “Thank you, Mary,” he said.
She stood over him, watching as he peeled open the ball of paper.
“Thank you, Mary,” he said again. “That will be all.”
As she turned to leave the room, Seymour began to read.
25 April 1929
Dear Celia:
I’m terribly under the weather today, Celia. All I can do is stare out the window. I can see the river—it seems like it’s running just beneath me. For some reason I am thinking of East Tremont Street on Long Island, where I grew up in my mother’s house. It was crawling with roses. I used to sit on the arm of my father’s leather chair as he handed me his spectacles, and I remember their delicate tortoise arms, like tiny, breakable icicles. And today, I’m remembering my mother’s parties on the shore, the way the moonlight shone off the water, those swooping beams of light. I never stopped to wonder if Mother had been happy. Do you think she was happy?
Sometimes, downstairs, I take these huge swigs of whiskey from the bottles Seymour has stored down there, for lord knows what. Is it strange to tell you it makes me feel like a man to drink that way? Or maybe it makes me not feel like a man, but for once not feel like a woman. The liquor burns right through, and I imagine it’s like light, that this beautiful light is caught in me—and who on earth will ever see it there? Sometimes I think I like to drink as a way of letting that light out into the world.
What I want to say is this: being with you yesterday was a true joy. Sadly, the great pleasures of my life have been in what is about to happen: the scratch of the Victrola needle at the very moment Joplin is about to play, the day’s very first sip, and watching you slide out of your dress. Hello, I wanted to tell you.
Oh, the melancholy of a morning after drinking. It’s positively adolescent. I am being silly and so dramatic!
See you soon I hope.
Your,
Sarah
Seymour put down the letter and peeled off his spectacles. He leaned into the upright wooden chair, which sighed under his weight, and rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb.
I’m so tired, thought Seymour. He thought of his mother, how easy she had been at the Joint, greeting all the people when they came in. He remembered her in her shop, talking to her clients about Harry Houdini, radio, the outrageous price of butter. She had a public face, it was true. Alone with her sons, the tone was harsh and efficient. She did not smile and touched them only when their hair had grown too long.
The misery, though, this misery was different. He was tired of his wife’s misery.
Rising from his chair, Seymour reached to the ceiling, stretching his long arms. He cracked his knuckles, tucked in his shirttails, and rolled down his sleeves. And then he walked across the hall to the bedroom he had shared with his wife, if sometimes tentatively, for just four years.
Sarah was curled up on the left side of the bed. When he got nearer to her, he could see her hands were clutched into fists, like those of a fetus or an old woman filled with rage. “Sarah,” he said. He touched her shoulder.
Sarah stirred and looked up at Seymour, who sat down on the very edge of the bed.
“Hi,” he said.
She rolled onto her back slowly and looked vacantly at the ceiling, her hands, still clenched, resting on her stomach.
“I was thinking,” he said, placing his hand back on her shoulder. “Why don’t we have another baby?”
Sarah didn’t flinch or say a word.
“Someone for Dulcy to grow up with,” he said. “A boy maybe, or even another girl, who knows?” Seymour felt suddenly filled with hope. “That will be part of the wonder of it. Will it be a boy or a girl?”
“No, Seymour,” she said, still not moving.
“Come on, Sarah,” he said. “It will be good for you. Good for us both,” he went on, rubbing her shoulder. “We’ll be a family,” he said.
Sarah was silent.
“Really,” Seymour said. “A family!”
“Uh-uh,” Sarah said, shaking her head and looking up, toward the ceiling, through it, beyond it somehow, toward the sky.
Chapter 9
Eyes: Frances Gold, 1929
SOME FOLKS FROM SOUTH Fifth Street who had watched Frances Verdonik grow into the neighborhood letter writer said she would have been happy sitting at the shaky table in Mr. Berkowitz’s store until long after Etta slid from her chair, clawing her chest as if to prevent her evil heart from ruining her old body. But by most neighborhood accounts, Frances knew, the very instant she saw Vladimir Zworykin in the candy store, that he would be the one to take her away. People said Frances knew from the moment she looked at him that he would make her famous: they said she saw her name in lights in the pupils of Vladimir Zworykin’s eyes.
The day after Frances stood from placing a stone on her father’s grave, she looked up from her letter-writing station to see him standing above her. Vladimir was from the same village as she. The last time she had seen him she was a three-year-old girl and he a young man off to St. Petersburg, for an education, her father had said, wagging his finger at Frances. Her father. Frances still sighed jaggedly at the thought of him.
Seeing Vladimir made Frances wonder about her village for the first time in many years. She thought by now that the shtetl must surely have fallen into the sea. It was a place she could hardly even consider any longer. She could remember it only by the people leaving. Frances remembered standing at the doorway: Pauline was tying a kerchief at the nape of her neck. Had she turned to smile coyly at Frances?
“Frances,” Vladimir said. He paused, scanning her face, as if, Frances imagined, on its surface was written an important text that he had studied long ago, one he had kissed as he closed its pages.
“I’ve heard you can tell my story.”
His voice was deep, and its timbre struck a chord in the pit of Frances’s stomach.
“I would like to explain myself to my father,” he said.
She felt a rumble that was either hunger or vibration, the resonance of nimble fingers moving over harpsichord strings.
“Does your father speak English?” Frances asked.
“I’m afraid he does not,” Vladimir said. “I can write in English myself. Also Russian, you know. But my father, only Yiddish.”
Frances looked disappointed as she pointed to Etta. “She’s the one you need to talk to.”
“That’s a pity,” Vladimir said, looking over at Etta and shivering. “I was hoping you could tell him that being called to science is perhaps not so different from being called to God.”
“I’m sorry, Vladimir,” she said. “Etta and I have an agreement. I do the English, she does the Yiddish.”
“Perhaps this is a story I could tell you somewhere else then.” Vladimir grinned. “Over tea, if you have any interest.”
“Perfect!” he said as he leaned over to ask her quietly for her address.
Frances thought of her mother meeting Vladimir at the door. Whether Rose was happy to see him or not, it would be a scene Frances could not endure. “Come for me here,” she said. “I’ll be waiting,” she said, smiling up at him.
The following Sunday, Vladimir came to the candy store to pick Frances up and take her out for bialys at Kossar’s Bialystoker Kuchen Bakery on Grand Street. Frances had suggested it. It was a place she had gone with her father and Pauline, Abraham between the girls, holding their hands as they walked over the Williamsburg Bridge. Frances felt tea with Vladimir was far too formal. And besides, she loved the pillowy softness of those bialys, the way she was comforted as she watched the baker throw flour wildly about the room.
As they walked over the bridge, Frances thrilled to the largeness of the structure, the immense cables suspended above the roadway, the enormous towers tethering the bridge to the bottom of the East River, to earth. The river caught the warm afternoon light, and the city rose in the distance. Had it looked this way when she crossed with Abraham and Pauline? Frances hadn’t noticed then. Even though they were only heading to the Lower East Side, the destination felt like the future, Brooklyn to her back, the past, just as Russia had once been. Frances realized how much the feeling of leaving delighted her as she and Vladimir talked about what he’d been doing since she had watched him put his chin to his chest and head for St. Petersburg.
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