The Unfortunates

by Laurie Graham

  Then Murray piped up.

  ‘That’s not seventeen,’ he said. ‘That one has eighteen.’

  And so an argument ensued between my stepbrother and my intended, as to the number of syllables in the word ‘purple’.

  I said, ‘I fail to see that it matters. Let’s go out for pastries.’

  I was a little concerned for the safety of my new Packard. It had attracted a deal of attention when I parked it in Minetta Lane, and keen as I was to meet artists and revolutionaries, I didn’t want my property ruined by envious vagabonds.

  Mr Casella, who had a hungry look about him, was all in favor of pastries and so was Murray, but first he wanted another verse, looking to catch Gil out, I suppose.

  ‘Okey-dokey,’ Gil said, and he composed one right there and then.

  Thin boy, gloved, hatted

  Counting syllables and cakes

  Is this haiku too?

  It didn’t rhyme, of course, which in my opinion is the very least a poem should do, and it led to a discussion on the number of syllables in ‘syllable’ but I was impressed by the way Gil could just conjure things out of his head, and I was gratified to see him getting along so well with Murray. They were destined to become kin, after all.

  We drove to Rivington Street, in the neighborhood of Orchard and Delancey and the unfortunates. Even the anarchist was persuaded to ride with us, and I treated everyone to apricot ruggelach. I asked Mr Casella how much he charged for portraits, having in mind that Gil and I might get our likenesses painted before the wedding, but he explained to me he wasn’t that kind of artist. He was something called a vanguardist, and vanguardists regarded portrait-painting as outmoded.

  Frederick agreed with him. ‘Portraits!’ he scoffed. ‘Nothing but a bourgeois conceit. What about the real people? Where are their portraits?’

  I couldn’t answer him. I said, ‘I’m sure anyone might like to have their portrait painted.’

  But I took note of what was being said, especially the word ‘bourgeois’ which was used frequently. Minetta Lane people seemed to have a fund of unusual ideas. They felt sorry for the unfortunates, but they didn’t wish them to get rich, because they regarded wealth as another kind of misfortune. As for the in-betweens, the little people who had jobs of work and were neither tragically rich nor tragically poor, they seemed to despise them above all. I wasn’t sure I understood the figuring behind this, but I did feel instinctively that if I couldn’t be rich, I’d sooner be poor than a dreary in-between.

  Having already promised myself to become a more interesting person, I now saw how this might occur. With the help of Gil and his friends I could easily acquire a set of new opinions.

  ‘Well?’ I said to Murray, as I drove him home. ‘Isn’t Gil a handsome and fascinating creature?’

  ‘He’s all right,’ Murray replied. ‘His house is rather smelly though. Shall we have to live there, after you’re married?’

  I said, ‘Certainly not. We shall live somewhere amusing and have the help put lavender in the linen press. And anyway, you shan’t live with us. You’ll stay in your own house until you’re old enough to find a wife.’

  ‘I’m nearly fourteen,’ he said. ‘I may just run away.’

  He fell silent for a while. I felt sorry for him, facing the prospect of another dinner with Ma and the uxorious Mr Jacoby, but there was little I could do. Gil and I were going to the Blue Ribbon Grill for ribs and dancing.

  ‘Your Step-Ma is really very fond of you,’ I lied. ‘And if you’ll promise to try and get along with her, I’ll take you out for a spin again soon.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ he said.

  Eating chicken soup

  Step-Ma Dorabel sounds like

  Draining bath water.

  He counted off the syllables on his fingers.

  ‘Seventeen!’ he said. ‘It’s a haiku!’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  At midnight on January 16, 1920, the selling of alcoholic beverages became prohibited, thanks to the efforts of Representative Volstead who wished to prevent the unfortunates from spending all their money on intoxicating liquor and beating their wives and failing to be reliable employees. Gil and I began that last evening at the Waldorf-Astoria but they soon ran out of liquor so we made our way to the Park Avenue. The snow was getting blown about in flurries and people were in a somber mood considering we were meant to be having a party. When midnight came, I even saw men weep.

  I said, ‘Now whatever shall we do?’

  I had laid in a quantity of gin and rye whiskey for consumption at home, but that wasn’t going to last forever. Gil replied that nothing on earth would keep Manhattan dry.

  ‘Ways and means, Princess,’ he said. ‘You ask Harry if I’m not right.’

  My brother-in-law Harry had taken to Gil, after an inauspicious start when he had been sent by Ma and Aunt Fish to investigate the Catchings family and prove Gil’s unsuitability as a husband. Here is how it all came about.

  Returning home from his second visit with me to Minetta Lane, Murray disturbed the concord of the Jacoby dinner table by calling his father a bourgeois pig.

  Questions were asked, I was summoned to give an account of the company we had been keeping, and Ma greeted my announcement about marrying Gil with a fit of palpitations so severe that Aunt Fish had to be sent for, with her bottle of Tilden’s Extract.

  ‘Poppy,’ Aunt Fish said to me, ‘why is it that just when a person thinks they may be allowed to enjoy a peaceful old age, you find new ways to trouble them.’

  ‘It’s not a question of my age, Zillah,’ Ma interrupted, surfacing from her attack of the vapors. ‘I’m sure I have never felt more vigorous. It was the shock that felled me. I’m almost resigned to Poppy ruining her life, but that she would expose Judah’s boy to such low company …’

  ‘You must be resigned to nothing,’ Aunt Fish instructed her. ‘If Poppy has taken up with penniless idlers we must act without delay.’

  I said, ‘Gil isn’t an idler. He writes poetry and looks into ways of changing society. Anyway, I have enough money for both of us.’

  My aunt turned pale.

  ‘This proposed union,’ she said. ‘Have letters been exchanged?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Only verses.’

  She made me feel like a child again with her interrogations. Mr Jacoby had absented himself from the room as soon as Aunt Fish arrived. Throughout my life I have observed that whenever a strong emotional tide starts running, men discover urgent business in another part of the house.

  Murray, though, had stayed for the spectacle. He had not yet learned manly ways. He knew if he sat quietly no one would notice him in his ringside seat, waiting for blood and teeth to fly.

  ‘But did you sign anything?’ she asked. ‘Anything at all?’

  ‘Only my account at the Hootsy Tootsy Club,’ I replied. I hadn’t intended to play Aunt Fish’s game and answer her questions. I had planned to laugh at her bourgeois anxieties and goad her with her powerlessness, but it all went wrong.

  ‘Who are his people?’ she wanted to know.

  I said, ‘I believe he’s an orphan.’

  Gil had always refused to discuss family. I took this to be because he had none, or because he was embarrassed by their penury.

  ‘A likely story,’ she said. ‘We must have this investigated, Dora, without delay. And who are his set? Whose teas have you been attending?’

  I mentioned Frederick the anarchist, and Casella the painter, and a women’s righter called Anne.

  ‘Well, these are certainly not people we know,’ she interrupted, ‘and you surely realize a girl cannot marry into the unknown? You must marry someone like Leopold Adler.’

  Leopold was one of the banking Adlers. He had hairy knuckles and his lips were always wet.

  I said, ‘But Leopold Adler is already engaged.’

  Aunt Fish said, ‘I give his name merely by way of an example. When, and if you marry, it will be to someone known to us. This is why I alway
s kept such a particular watch over you when you were growing up. But, of course, recent events have distracted me. That terrible war. And then your uncle. Perhaps I’m a little to blame in all this. Perhaps I didn’t do all I could to prepare you.’

  I was aware of the boy Murray watching me.

  ‘Well, Aunt,’ I said, ‘your preparations left me somewhat confused. First I was told I was marriageable, but only if my hair could be subdued and the yellowness bleached out of my neck. Then I was redirected to become an old maid and stay at home with my poor widowed Ma. Then, just as suddenly, I was released from that obligation and sent out into the world to try my luck, which is what I was doing when I met Gil Catchings.’

  ‘Marriage has nothing to do with luck,’ she said, ignoring my other points. Then she had another alarming thought.

  ‘Poppy,’ she said, ‘have you been … alone with this person?’

  I hesitated, measuring just how much I wished to scandalize her, and into the silence rushed Murray, eager to help.

  ‘Of course you have!’ he cried. ‘Remember? The day I came to your apartment and the doorman made me count to three hundred before I came up and you’d been drinking gin on the bed?’

  Ma let out a muted yelp.

  ‘We shall need a lawyer and a doctor,’ Aunt Fish murmured. ‘If only Israel would hurry up and recover. Perhaps Judah …’

  ‘Oh no,’ Ma said. ‘This is not at all the kind of thing Judah would undertake. Harry will do it. Send for Harry.’

  Harry traveled a great deal in those days, seeing to his diverse business interests, but as soon as he returned from Havana, Cuba, he was to investigate the background of Gilbert Catchings and devise a means of keeping his hands off my millions.

  ‘In the meanwhile,’ my aunt said, ‘Poppy must be kept here, under close supervision.’

  ‘I’m not sure …’ Ma began. It turned very much to my advantage that her new husband’s tranquility took precedence over everything else.

  ‘To forestall an elopement, Dora!’ Aunt Fish whispered frantically. ‘Until Israel can talk plainly with her.’

  I said, ‘I shall visit Uncle Israel tomorrow. It’ll be my pleasure. And tonight I shall sleep in my own home. There’s no question of an elopement. When I marry Gil you shall all be there to see it.’

  The truth was, I’d have eloped in a heartbeat, but he was in no great hurry.

  Murray accompanied me down to where my roadster was parked.

  ‘Poppy,’ he said, ‘I do hope they won’t prevent us from helling around with Gil.’

  I said, ‘If you repeat words like “bourgeois pig” they most certainly will, so we shall have to lie low for a while. But after Gil and I are married you’ll be welcome to come to our house and hell around as much as you like.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said solemnly. ‘And Poppy? I don’t think your neck is too yellow at all. I’d say it’s pretty much exactly the right color for a neck.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Moves were made to keep my money safe inside the New Amsterdam National Bank while Harry established sound reasons to have Gil run out of town, and I was sent for by Uncle Israel. He had been instructed by Aunt Fish to give me a stern talking to, although I don’t believe he ever was capable of that, even before his health failed.

  He had never made a complete recovery from his first seizure and over the next few years suffered a number of relapses that left him weak and lopsided. His working days were reduced to working mornings, and then only when he was judged strong enough to ride downtown to his office. This adjudication, made by Aunt Fish, seemed to have more to do with her condition than his.

  When the cask of benevolence was overflowing she kept him at home and fed him on dainties encased in aspic, a substance she believed to be fortifying, soothing and not far short of plain miraculous. Then, after a heavy run on her stores of compassion, she would find herself with nothing left to give and declare him sufficiently fortified and soothed to go to the office and do a little of whatever it was he did.

  ‘Your poor uncle wishes to see you,’ she told me.

  ‘Your poor aunt wishes me to see you,’ he told me.

  I said, ‘Uncle, I’m of age. I can marry Gil Catchings and there’s nothing anybody can do to prevent it.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ he said. ‘Now why don’t you get off your high horse and tell me about him.’

  I told him about Gil’s pale blue eyes and lion hair.

  ‘But what is his situation?’ he kept asking. ‘Didn’t I warn you, Pops, when you came into your money, against flatterers and adventurers?’

  I said, ‘Gil’s not a flatterer. He truly cares for me. Why he never leaves off kissing me.’

  ‘I don’t care to discuss that,’ Uncle said, pulling on his cigarette. ‘I leave that side of your education to your aunt, though why you weren’t better guided by your mother, I fail to understand. What I need to know is, have you given this rake money? Have you signed anything over to him or entered into any kind of binding agreement?’

  I assured him Gil had never asked me for a cent. Of course, he never needed to because I always offered it anyway.

  I said, ‘You seem to be fading away, Uncle. Are you sure your doctor knows his business?’ I thought I’d change the subject before he asked to examine my checkbook. And he was fading. Though his memory was improved and his ability to hold a thought and express himself, he wasn’t the same man.

  ‘I put it down to fewer good dinners,’ he said. ‘I don’t recall the last time I enjoyed a late supper at the Harmonie Club.’

  I said, ‘You know champagne wine isn’t so easy for any of us to come by these days? President Wilson has prohibited it for our own good. Twenty-five dollars a quart, if you can get it.’

  ‘Next thing he’ll be prohibiting cigars,’ he said. ‘Well, I make my own drinking arrangements. No one tells me what’s good for me.’

  Sadly this was not true. As far back as my memory stretched he had been taking orders from Aunt Fish.

  ‘And if you’ve developed the taste for good liquor,’ he continued, ‘you’d better start making your own arrangements, too. Talk to Harry.’

  This was my family’s preferred method of dealing with problems. Uncle Israel may have been recognized as nominal head of Minkel interests, but it was a mere courtesy, accorded him so he could then delegate. So Harry was deputed to warn off my fiancé and keep us all supplied with liquor, and Aunt Fish to test my knowledge of carnal relations. She, in turn, ceded the opening moments of this inquisition to my mother, who asked me nervously whether any unchaperoned embraces had occurred.

  ‘Dora!’ Aunt Fish cried. ‘Everything about this affair has been unchaperoned. That is precisely the problem.’

  Poor Aunt. She didn’t want to do the dirty work herself, but she knew in her heart no one else could be trusted to do it properly.

  I said, ‘We go dancing.’

  The word ‘dancing’ would, I knew, conjure for Ma a polite two-step. So far so good.

  ‘Have you … spooned?’ she trembled.

  I smiled coyly. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘when I’m driving him home.’

  Ma and Aunt Fish agreed that this was a very great danger with driving, but there were powerful arguments against depriving me of my motor. They were often very glad of me to run errands. Ma knew more hazardous terrain lay ahead. She seemed reluctant to proceed, and so just sat, hoping to bring me to heel with a look of hurt and disappointment.

  ‘The main point is, Dora,’ my aunt prompted, ‘has there been any … romping?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ma said, bracing herself. ‘That is the question.’

  And there my own courage failed me and I grew devious. I abandoned my plan to announce the loss of my maidenhood, and played a tricky caviling game.

  Romping? Wasn’t that what puppy dogs did in Central Park, or little children in the first fall of snow? Gil and I had certainly not done that. Our encounters had been earnest, resolute.

  ‘No,’
I said, ‘no romping.’

  Ma softened. Her ordeal was over.

  ‘There!’ she cried. ‘I knew Poppy had more sense. No romping. And neither must there be, Poppy. That is a privilege of the marriage bed.’

  This hinted at something unspeakable involving Judah Jacoby. I made a move to leave, before Ma grew even more indiscreet, but my aunt wasn’t finished with me.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ she said, ‘we cannot ignore certain things the boy mentioned. A gin bottle. A disturbed coverlet. Exactly the kind of looseness one associates with living in an hotel. She must leave the Belleclaire, Dora. Perhaps she should live with Honey. Or with me. This is not a burden I look for at my time of life, but something must be done.’

  Faced with the devil, I opted for the deep blue sea.

  ‘I have in mind to stay with Honey for a while,’ I said. ‘She gets so lonesome when Harry’s traveling and entertaining his floozies.’

  My plan was to go directly to Gil and invite him to marry me without further delay.

  ‘Poppy!’ Ma said. ‘I’m sure Harry is a very considerate husband.’

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Aunt Fish. ‘And don’t think to distract us by defaming others. It would profit you to study on your sister’s marriage, Poppy, and follow her good example.’

  So it was settled that Honey should be put in charge of my moral hygiene and living arrangements, until a suitable match could be made and I could be married out of harm’s way. Meanwhile her considerate husband tracked down Gil’s family to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where it turned out they weren’t paupers at all but the owners of two garment factories.

  ‘Tell me the worst, Harry,’ Ma said, when he returned. ‘I am braced for it.’

  ‘No need,’ he said. ‘Couple of nice little outfits they’ve got up there. The kind of thing it’d be good to get into, in the event of another war. Uniforms. Kit bags. Catchings himself doesn’t have a fortune, of course, but then, neither did I. He’s going to be a self-made man. Nothing wrong with that.’