Aunt Fish took up the cudgel Ma was on the point of dropping.
‘But Harry,’ she said, ‘are the Catchings the kind of people one would visit?’
‘Don’t see why not, Zillah,’ he said. ‘But Scranton’s a fair old way to go for tea.’
To tell the truth, I felt let down. I had been looking to elope with as much money as I could stuff inside my bust bodice, start life anew as a revolutionary and create a great scandale. Instead I had to make do with the pleasure of seeing my mother and my aunt sheathe their claws and prepare to be kissed on the hand by my fiancé.
Gil and I were married at City Hall on March 10, 1920.
I wore one of my own originations in peppermint shantung, and a silver fox jacket with full sleeves and a johnny collar, a gift from my stepfather. He had offered me the run of Jacoby Furriers. I could have picked out the finest mink in the showroom, but then I would have felt certain obligations to him, such as to spare my mother any further shocks and anxieties. I could have had the silver fox hat, too, but I declined. Give in to one inducement and you may find yourself considered bought. Besides, I had had my hair styled à la garçonne and I had no wish to hide it.
Since becoming Mrs Judah Jacoby, Ma had succumbed to a light form of Jewishness and she would have liked to see me married under a chuppah, but Gil wasn’t made of the right stuff. I heard her remark that Gil might pretend to be Jewish and who would know the difference, but Mr J replied that he would know and anyway it would be a bad show to start off a marriage with a fraud. So it was arranged that we would go to City Hall and afterwards to the Elysée for lunch.
Two days before the ceremony, I bought myself a platinum wedding band from Tiffany and I received some words of sisterly advice from Honey.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘are you ready for married life?’
I said, ‘If you’re talking about squeezes and thrills I already know about all that. What I’d like to know is, how do you stop a person staying out all night with showgirls?’
I wanted to believe Gil would stay true to me, but I had heard so many warnings. It appeared that men could never get enough candy, until they moved into the candy store, upon which they developed a taste for saltines instead.
My sister stared at me.
I said, ‘Do you and Harry still spoon?’
She said, ‘Poppy, you have developed an ugly, modern way of talking.’
I said, ‘And I’ve seen changes in you, too. You never smile anymore or act gay.’
I held back from remarking that Harry seemed to spend his nights out of town attending to business, except when Honey was away, taking Sherman to the shore or getting her magnetic fields corrected. Then you could guarantee Harry would be back in town. They were like the little figures on Aunt Fish’s weather house. If one was out the other was in.
I said, ‘When did it stop being like it was before you were married? Does Harry thrill you anymore?’
I wasn’t convinced she understood me.
I said, ‘It seems to me men get their thrills faster than we do. Sometimes I haven’t even started getting mine …’
‘Poppy!’ she gasped. ‘Have you really … given yourself to Gilbert Catchings?’
‘What if I have?’ I said. I loved to see her so scandalized. I was looking forward to a scene. But she refused to make one. Didn’t have the energy for it, I suppose. She just looked sad and shook her head.
‘I fear I’ve let you down,’ she said. ‘There are things a girl might expect to be told by an older sister, but I’ve been so busy since Sherman Ulysses came along, and now you’ve gone and grown up without correct guidance. You’ve been led astray by a bounder and, of course, he’s only done it for your money.’
I said, ‘Don’t think of trying to stop the wedding. We’ll elope and then you’ll never see me again.’
‘Stop the wedding?’ she cried. ‘On the contrary. The sooner you’re married to him the sooner you’ll be safe from shame and dishonor. Uncle Israel has mounted a guard on your fortune. The only other thing we can hope for is that Mr Catchings is clean and careful. Would you say he is?’
I thought I would. It was hardly Gil’s fault he lived in such disorder. He had no help at all at Minetta Lane.
The day before the wedding Mrs Catchings came by railroad from Scranton and took accommodations in the Louis, a hotel that had been the scene of a shooting. There was really nothing more I could do to break Ma’s heart.
Only seven guests witnessed our ceremony and that included Simeon from Uncle Israel’s office. Uncle Israel insisted no one could push his invalid carriage as smoothly as Simeon. Pressure of business prevented Harry and Mr Jacoby from attending. Sherman Ulysses was in school, Bernie overslept and Yetta Landau remained in the country keeping watch over Oscar and his dark thoughts. Gil gave me a kiss and a red rose and Murray presented us with a piece of card.
‘I wrote you a haiku,’ he grinned.
Wedding March. Here Comes
The Bride. I Hope We Get Shrimp
At This March Wedding.
Mrs Catchings and Murray rode with us to the Elysée. The way it turned out was that Gil sat behind with his mother. I heard her ask him if we were Hebrews.
‘Not enough to bother about,’ he whispered.
We did have shrimp. Then Bernie turned up in duck-egg taffeta with a dropped waist and annoyed Honey by mistaking her for Ma, and Ma by mistaking her for Mrs Catchings. I guess she had had a late night that morning. We followed the shrimp with steaks and peach melba and a little rye in hip flasks provided by Harry, and Uncle Israel hardly dribbled at all. I believe he enjoyed the occasion in spite of the fact I was ruining my life, and I’m glad he did because it was probably the last time he went to a restaurant and smoked a cigar.
Gil and I prepared to drive away to our new life. We had taken a five-room apartment in the Ansonia building and intended creating a love nest there until we were ready to sail to our honeymoon in Paris, France.
My mother-in-law instructed me to call her Elizabeth and to visit with her sometime. I acceded to her first request and ignored the second. Wherever Pennsylvania was, I had no desire to see it.
Uncle Israel squeezed my hand, Aunt Fish gave me a begrudging kiss and Honey looked at me quite tenderly. ‘My little sister!’ she said. Then Ma took me stiffly in her arms and stretched up close to my ear.
‘Remember, Poppy,’ she whispered. ‘Always use the Lysol after any … romping.’
We emerged from the Elysée to face the first problem of our marriage. Murray was in the front passenger seat of the Packard, quite convinced he would be joining us at the Ansonia, for our wedding night, and for the rest of his life.
It took a good deal of cajoling, followed by violent tugging, threatening and hauling to remove him to the sidewalk.
‘But I like you,’ he sobbed.
He cried for the rest of the day, so I was told.
‘That boy is way too sissified,’ Gil said as he climbed into the seat unwillingly vacated by Murray.
I kept to myself the thought that my stepbrother had just been dealt another unkind blow. He had lost his mother, he had effectively lost his brother and, as a consequence, his Auntsie, and now he had gone and lost me. I owed him nothing, of course. And I had never said he could live with us. It had never even been discussed. That was the problem and that was the reason something settled on my chest like a stone. Gil said it was very likely the second helping of shrimp, but I knew it was to do with Murray. I knew the kind of plans and ideas that can run unchecked in the mind of a lonely, longing child.
TWENTY-SIX
The Ansonia Hotel occupied a whole Broadway block between 73rd and 74th Streets. It stood seventeen stories high with corner towers and copper lanterns. It had a chop house and a Child’s restaurant and a swimming pool, and the apartment walls were three feet thick which meant we were protected from fire and also from anyone overhearing our fights.
Married life was hard on Gil. I had taken him uptown, a
way from his friends, and although he shopped a good deal, time hung heavy for him. All the other men I had known, my Pa, my uncle, Mr Jacoby, even Harry, seemed obliged to go to the office most days, or to inspect their subsidiaries, but Gil had neither an office to go to nor subsidiaries to inspect, and he was having a tough time of it composing his haiku verses. In fact, it appeared to me that Murray dashed them off more easily than Gil did and it was my tactless remarking on this that first provoked him to strike me. It was a glancing blow that left no lingering mark on my face, but the surprise of it caused me to lose my balance, fall against a chair and bruise my arm. This was an inconvenience to me. I had a new set of coral bracelets I’d intended to wear to the Hootsy Tootsy Club, but I was forced to change my plans until the bruise had faded.
Gil was broken-hearted over what had occurred.
‘I haven’t been sleeping well, Princess,’ he said. ‘I’m so fatigued I’m just not myself.’
I had already observed that the people in life who appear the most weary are the ones who are least active, so after we had made our peace I suggested to Gil he might take some kind of position, perhaps in one of the family concerns. I was sure something could be found for him at Uncle Israel’s office.
‘Don’t know that I’m cut out for sitting behind a desk,’ he said.
I said, ‘Or Judah Jacoby might find you something. You could go to the fur market for him. Ma would like it if he could stay home more and play cards.’
‘I’ll give it some thought,’ he said. But he continued to languish. While I was always up and about by ten o’clock, hurrying to Elizabeth Arden to get my nails done, then onto lunch with Bernie, Gil remained in bed, awaiting inspiration, or sat around in the lobby, hoping to say how-de-do to our neighbor Mr Babe Ruth.
Gil didn’t especially follow the sport of baseball, but he did love to think of all that mustard getting consumed every time the Yankees played a game.
I stayed away from Murray for a while, to allow him to get over his disappointment. Then, two weeks after the wedding I drove across to Schiff’s Academy, parked outside and waited for him to emerge from afternoon school.
He made a big performance of putting his nose in the air and disregarding me, but I drove alongside him calling to him that I missed him, until he relented and climbed in beside me.
‘Does this mean I’m coming to live with you?’ he said.
I said, ‘No. Honeymooners don’t have boys living with them. But you can visit us. Hell around a little.’
Murray was far too young for helling around, but he liked it when I pretended he was my peer.
‘I suppose soon a baby will appear,’ he said gloomily. ‘That’s generally what happens.’
I took him to the Tip Toe for cake and he told me there was brighter news from the country. Oscar’s spirits had lifted and if the improvement was sustained he might return to the city.
‘And what will he do?’ I asked. I saw a threat to the prospect of Gil’s joining the Jacoby enterprise.
‘Perhaps he’ll be an anarchist,’ he suggested. ‘We could introduce him to Frederick. He could tell him how it’s done.’
I said, ‘I don’t believe anarchy is a paid job of work. Does Oscar have an allowance?’
Murray didn’t know what an allowance was. This was congruent with what I knew of his father. Judah Jacoby believed everyone needed a job of work, even if they were rich as Croesus.
I said, ‘Should you have preferred it if I’d married Oscar instead of Gil?’
‘Oscar?’ he said. ‘Hardly. Anyway, Oscar doesn’t care for girls. Step-Ma Dorabel says Gil keeps bad company. I think that’s rather fun, don’t you? I never knew bad people before.’
I said, ‘They’re not bad people. They’re interesting.’
‘That’s what I told her!’ he cried. ‘But she said it amounted to the same thing. People who were just wishing to get dragged off to jail. I must say, Poppy, you’re looking pretty peaky since you got married.’
It was true. The air in our new suite seemed stale and going out dancing and drinking wasn’t so much fun since Gil was there before my eyes every minute of the day. He hardly ever visited Minetta Lane anymore since his friends there called him a poodle.
The first time I canceled lunch with Bernie she came round to the Ansonia post-haste. Gil was out, selecting new shirts.
‘When did you last have your monthly visitor?’ she asked. I suppose growing up in a house full of sisters she was accustomed to that kind of discussion, but I was not.
I said, ‘I don’t know. It’s not a thing I pay attention to.’
‘Well, you should,’ she said, ‘or how else are you going to know if you’ve fallen?’
She sat me down and explained in quite shocking detail the workings of a woman’s body. Then she asked me certain questions, and from my replies she deduced that I had begun to have a baby. If it had been left to me I would simply have lain down and wept but Bernie insisted there was no time to be lost. She poured me a large measure of our precious prohibited gin and told me I better start jumping off a stepladder.
Of course, we didn’t possess a stepladder, so I just drank a second tumbler of gin and jumped repeatedly off a Windsor chair until I turned my ankle. The baby, though, showed no sign of leaving. I had thought Harry’s special gin might be cut with water, and this confirmed my suspicions. When Gil returned he found me on the couch, stone cold sober with a pregnancy and a severe sprain.
‘Don’t worry, Princess,’ he said. ‘I know a person who can take care of things.’
And indeed he did. Gil knew an accoucheuse who made house calls. She came the very next day, and again a few months later when the same misfortune had befallen me. On her second visit she presented me with a package of Trojan prophylactics and advised me to persuade Gil to try them.
‘They’re the latest thing,’ she said. ‘I don’t generally talk myself out of future business, but you’re a nice young woman. Some day you’ll start wanting to keep one of these babies, and I’d hate for you to have any difficulties. Hygiene procedures can have consequences, you understand?’
I neither understood nor cared. I was more concerned to keep Gil happy until we arrived in Europe, a place he felt sure would be conducive to finding himself. Our passage was booked for early October on the Berengaria. Then my dear Uncle Israel passed away in his sleep and we were forced to change our plans.
My aunt was desolated by her loss. Uncle’s lopsided dribbling and his occasional forgetfulness had brought a new fire to their marriage. Aunt Fish enjoyed nothing better than a patently hopeless case to nag and bully, and suddenly she had none. Had I not married and removed myself safely beyond her reach I have no doubt she would have renewed her efforts with me.
She turned first to Ma for comfort, but there was little on offer. Ma, who had leaned so heavily on her sister at the time of her own bereavement, was busy attending to her new marriage. Perhaps, like me, she was concerned to keep her husband out of the clutches of chorines with delicate upturned noses, though she really had no cause for anxiety. Judah Jacoby was a carpet slipper man. He was also a man who liked regularity, and opening one’s home to a grief-stricken shrew is a sure recipe for chaos.
Prayers were said at East 69th Street and light refreshments provided. Seven days of this was recommended by the rebbe, but Ma deemed three days to be ample. As it was, a quite enormous quantity of brisket was consumed. Mrs Schwab came, and the Misses Stone, and even Mrs Lesser. Her bunions now kept her at home, but she never allowed them to keep her from a good funeral. By special request to the head of Schiff’s Academy, Murray was given extra math which confined him to his room longer than usual each evening, until the practicalities of death had been dealt with. Uncle Israel was laid to rest in Pinelawns, Brooklyn, in a section with a good class of person.
‘Well now,’ Ma began, that evening, ‘what are we to do about your aunt?’
I said, ‘What is there to do? She’ll be lonely for a while and then
perhaps she’ll find another husband, like you did.’
‘I was strong enough to bear such a blow,’ she said. ‘But Zillah is quite different. And older than I was, too. I was blessed with the resilience of youth.’
This wasn’t at all my recollection, but Ma insisted that she had only permitted Aunt Fish to move in with us after Pa’s death and take over the daily running of the house so as not to offend her.
‘But circumstances are different now, Poppy,’ she continued. ‘I can’t go to her, and she cannot possibly come to me.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. The Jacoby house was certainly large enough.
‘Because it would discommode Judah,’ she said, ‘and furthermore Oscar may soon be coming home. I cannot be expected to run a hospital.’
Ma made the presence of a bereaved sister and a delicate stepson sound like the challenge Miss Nightingale had faced at Scutari.
‘I believe,’ she continued, ‘she might benefit from the company of younger people. And now you’ll be staying on, now you have come to your senses about the risk of traveling on oceans …’
I saw, clearer than ever, that my plans would never count for anything. When it suited them my family would always regard me as a kind of above-stairs Irish. Expected to be available on a moment’s notice to pick up unpleasant chores, otherwise to be silent and invisible, and never ever to be trusted with the good silver.
I said, ‘But we won’t be staying on. It seems to me Honey is the one you must turn to here. Aunt Fish always did favor her, and Honey gets lonely with Harry traveling so much.’
In my eagerness to offload my aunt I almost added that she might do us all a service and make a project of Sherman Ulysses, but at the last moment common sense persuaded me this would do nothing to strengthen my case. For one thing, in our family anything connected with Honey was held to be flawless. And in particular, Ma would not have welcomed the suggestion that Sherman Ulysses, her own special little Abe, was a suitable candidate for improvement. I held my tongue. Honey was informed that Aunt Fish would be moving in with her until she recovered her spirits, and Ma and I both prepared to resume our married lives.
The Unfortunates Page 15
