Sapphire said nothing. She refused cake or soda and when I tried to link arms with her, hers felt like stone. So we just walked, and I talked. For the longest time that night it seemed like I was talking to myself.
I said, ‘You see, there’s Jewish and there’s Jewish. Like some people go to the opera if they’re specially asked and some people go every week, even if they know they’re not going to enjoy the show. Like some people will take a whiskey with you if you offer it, but they’d never think of keeping a bottle on their own sideboard. Then, actually, there are hundreds of different kinds of Jewish. Your Uncle Harry was only Jewish in business. Hardly even that. Whereas some people are Jewish every minute of the day, like … well, we don’t really know any of that kind. Grandpa Jacoby is kind of medium Jewish. Anyhow, it’s not a major thing. It’s just about who your people were. You can be Jewish if you want to be. Grandma Jacoby’ll probably like that. When I was a little girl we didn’t act Jewish because my Aunt Fish thought it might … hold us back. But these days your Grandma goes in for it in quite a big way. It can be nice. I’d probably have been more Jewish myself but I’ve always been so busy. I always thought I might learn the Hebrew words. But you know how it is. Well, perhaps you’ll do it. You’re young. You have all the time in the world. And especially if you marry a Jewish person. Any Jewish person.’
‘How can I?’ she whispered. ‘How can I even face him again? You’ve made me look such a fool.’
Without even trying I had managed to change her mind. She had gone from searching for his face in every place we passed, to dreading that they’d ever meet again, and all because of a silly misunderstanding.
I said, ‘No one thinks you’re a fool, Sapphy.’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘I’m a fool ever to have trusted you. You told Em. Why didn’t you tell me?’
But I had told Emerald nothing.
She said, ‘I bet Reggie told her. He never liked me. Why didn’t you just send me to my real daddy? He’d never have done this to me.’
She was shouting by the end.
‘I hate you,’ she yelled. ‘I always hated you. And now you’ve completely ruined my life.’
It wasn’t me who ruined her life, of course. She always had that Catchings tendency. And then, eventually, there was the drink.
We finally boarded the Dixie clipper in October 1940. I wore a pair of wide-legged slacks in taupe, a kidskin jacket with a lightning fastener, and a black bandeau. Those were the kind of colors we were wearing in war-torn Europe.
We made Horta, our first stop, in five and a half hours and the wind was blowing so hard across that God-forsaken rock I remained on board and played red dog with an amusing boy from Chicago. He had found himself almost cut off in Marseilles and was disinclined to venture outside again until we were safely on American soil.
The next stage of the journey was the worst. Sixteen hours to Bermuda, with nothing to do but eat and drink and try to keep Emerald from tormenting Sapphire.
After Bermuda the whole tone of the party was quite changed. Many new passengers came on board, making it so much less comfortable for us, and causing long delays at the bar. Humpy was morose. My little card-playing friend attached himself to one of the new horde. And Sapphire, having chewed all her finger nails to the quick, developed the very irritating habit of nibbling at the ends of her hair.
I was relieved to hear we were nearing Jones Beach, and even more relieved to find no one had been sent to meet us. I had already decided to enjoy a decent night’s sleep at the Brevoort before I faced family.
In the event, I found I needed two nights and a trip to Bonwit Teller to replace some of our lost treasures. Never one to be defeated by adversity, I had improvised interesting skirts out of Portuguese tablecloths, but they were jarringly unsuitable for a New York fall.
On the third day I called East 69th Street.
‘Poppy,’ Ma sobbed. ‘Oh Poppy, where have you been? Such dreadful times. How I’ve needed you, and you weren’t to be found. Lady Bumpety said you were gone to Paris, and the hotel said you were gone to Spain, and Honey is too delicate to be of much help although, of course, she’s been angelic. And Murray is still gone. Oh Poppy. Please come immediately. I have new help, and she just doesn’t understand our ways.’
FORTY-SEVEN
My poor Ma. Judah had died, but the news had failed to reach either me, or Murray. There had been no warning. One moment he was enjoying corned beef and pickles with Ma and Aunt Fish, the next he was complaining of dyspepsia and then gone.
‘A broken heart,’ my aunt diagnosed, alluding to two sons and not a business head between them.
Oscar and Dear Yetta had hurried to town for the burying and hurried away again.
‘He still suffers so, with his nerves,’ Ma explained, ‘or they’d have stayed longer and been a comfort to me. The noise of the city brings it on, you see.’
Aunt Fish had a different story.
‘Yetta has never forgiven your mother for stealing Judah’s affection,’ she opined. ‘She ruled the roost, you see, until Dora came along. And now she has ruined that boy Oscar, out of spite. It’s my opinion she encourages his nerves.’
I said, ‘Yetta Landau was your greatest friend.’
‘She was an acquaintance,’ she corrected me, ‘and, anyway, that was when we were fighting a war.’
I said, ‘Well, now we’re fighting another. Shan’t you be serving on any of her committees this time?’
‘Poppy,’ she said, ‘as far as I’m aware we’re not fighting a war. Let those it concerns fight and let the rest of us mind our own businesses. Besides, I’m far too old for heavy committee work. Now, I know you’ll be expecting to move in, to be at your Ma’s side, but I have been here in your stead while you were gallivanting and not receiving your mail, so you must be patient until I find a place to go. I shall find a little room somewhere, with a cooking corner. Just enough for a widow.’
I said, ‘I’m a widow, too, you know?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re all widows now. By the by …’ She dropped her voice. ‘On the subject of husbands. A certain person has been seen. On Fifth Avenue. By your sister.’
I said, ‘Do you mean Gil? Well, whatever you do, don’t let Sapphire hear you mention his name.’
‘Poppy,’ she said. ‘I have never mentioned his name.’
I was able to put my aunt’s mind at rest on one point. I had no intention of moving into the Jacoby house with Ma.
I took an apartment on 49th Street at Turtle Bay and enrolled Emerald at the Levison School. Sapphire refused to go to any kind of school. She had learned, she said, that nothing was ever as it seemed and no one was ever to be trusted, and that was all she needed to know.
Honey became rather self-important at this point.
‘Let me have a word,’ she said, as though she had some special understanding of the case.
I said, ‘Have all the words you like. She’s determined to be wretched. And she’s determined to be Jewish.’
‘Why doesn’t she come to school then?’ Emerald asked. She had already learned how to read a whole line of Hebrew words and was top of her class, of course, in French.
‘I am surprised,’ said Aunt Fish, ‘to see Poppy allowing this. Emerald would profit from classes in deportment. I would never say this to your mother, but it’s just as well Judah is no longer with us. Learning old-fashioned languages is the kind of thing he would have encouraged. But the Plotzes didn’t come to America to be old-fashioned, and neither did the Minkels, so you’d best get to work on these girls, Honey. Especially Sapphire. Time is short. Encourage her in good grooming. Talk to her about gowns and making her debut. You always had a special way with her.’
And so began a battle for Sapphire’s heart and mind. Honey, with Aunt Fish firmly in her camp, hoped to lighten her hair, teach her to waltz and guide her into the arms of a husband with good silver. Ma though reopened the case for adding Dora to Sapphy’s list of names and teaching her th
e Sabbath berukas she had struggled to learn herself.
‘I haven’t found them to be disadvantageous, Zillah,’ she said.
‘That,’ said my aunt, ‘is because you studied them to oblige your husband, and not in order to acquire him.’
Sapphire submitted to all of this like a sleepwalker. She neither protested nor entered into the spirit of things, and nothing would stop her from chewing her hair and her nails. She read the newspapers avidly, an activity Ma and my aunt were unanimous in discouraging because of the way it deepened the furrow of her scowl and risked ugly deformities of her mind. Sometimes she remained in her room and drew sad faces with black ink.
‘That child is melancholy,’ Ma said. ‘As soon as Judah’s anniversary has passed I shall make a soirée. Leopold Adler’s boy is just the right age for her.’
I said, ‘Not Leopold Adler! Does he have his father’s lips?’
‘How easy it is to find fault,’ Ma said. ‘How much easier to mock another’s efforts than to take action oneself. And how different your life would be, Poppy, if you had had the wisdom to choose a Leopold Adler.’
‘We’ll both make soirées for her, Ma,’ Honey said. ‘Mine will be a lighter, more modern affair. And perhaps Poppy will design one of her originations for Sapphy, if she can spare us one moment of her time.’
I was busy, it was true. I had made Humpy a monthly allowance, as he’d found himself strapped for cash, and I was helping him with the décor of the little place we’d found on Tenth Street. At street level we planned to show interesting works of art. Some by unfortunates we had rescued, some by artists who had sought our help too late. Humpy himself was to live over the shop and so reduce the expense of hotel bills.
It was to be called Art from the Edge, and was sure to be written up in the newspapers. One of my tasks was to reacquaint myself with le tout New York and discover who were the most fabulous and intriguing people to invite to the opening.
It was many months before my path crossed Gil’s. I had gone to the Zanzibar Club with an amusing crowd from Humpy’s new set, and I was on my way to powder my nose when I ran right into him. He had a good deal more forehead than I remembered. I was disappointed to find myself blushing.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I heard the great mustard heiress was back in town. I heard we had some trash in the city no one else wanted.’
I said, ‘I’m a widow now’, thinking to lessen his spleen a little.
‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘Then I guess you’re looking for the next poor sucker. You here shopping for Number 3, Poppy? Or is it Number 4? You here getting up your next wedding list?’
I said, ‘I’m here with our daughters. Trying to keep them safe from the war.’
‘Your daughters,’ he said. ‘One by that English sap, and God knows where the other one came from.’
I said, ‘Sapphire’s yours, Gil, as sure as night follows day. She looks like you. She acts like you. As a matter of fact I believe she’d be on your doorstep tomorrow if she knew you were in town.’
‘I don’t have a doorstep,’ he said. ‘I stay with friends, since my wife robbed me of my home and my health and my livelihood.’
He never had managed to write that book.
‘I see you’re still congregating with faggots,’ he said.
Those were the last words Gil Catchings ever said to me, though not the last he said about me, I’m sure. I insisted Humpy take me home immediately.
In December 1941, just before we were to launch Art from the Edge, the Japs bombed our boys at Pearl Harbor. Around Times Square all the niteries put out their lights, and the harbor filled with gray ships. We really were at war.
Emerald brought her school atlas on our weekly visit to East 69th Street and we all studied the Pacific Ocean.
‘Perhaps it will come to nothing,’ Ma said. ‘Perhaps the President will smooth things over.’
Aunt Fish said that she for one would not be relying on Mr Roosevelt.
‘We must lay in a good store cupboard, Dora,’ she said. ‘And sleep with a weapon by the bed. I still have the stick Harry gave me when the Hun were at the door. Do you still have yours?’
Em flicked through the pages of her atlas and sighed.
‘I wonder where Uncle Murray is?’ she said. ‘I wonder if he’s somewhere with the goodies or somewhere with the baddies?’
‘He’s hiding out,’ Honey snapped. ‘Instead of stepping forward and doing his duty.’
She was anxious about Sherman Ulysses and this was making her unusually harsh. As for myself, I didn’t care to be reminded about Murray. He had never returned to Kneilthorpe, nor had I heard from any of the people who had been asked to watch out for him. Flicky Manners. Ava Hornblower. The concierge at the Lisbon Plaza.
I had had every expectation he would just turn up one day or write a letter at least, but war changed all that. Frontiers closed, letters never arrived and wires brought nothing but heartbreaking news. The only good news was Murray’s belongings had not been returned to any of us in a sad brown parcel.
I did feel for my sister, with her son liable to be drafted.
‘There’s no need for him to go,’ Ma said, grasping at reasons why Abe, as she still called him, might be allowed to sit the war out.
‘He always had a weakness of the ankles. And colic. Don’t you remember how liable he was to colic?’
But Sherman didn’t plead weak ankles or even wait for the draft. He enlisted for the navy, went to midshipman school and sailed away. Honey got a postcard, mailed from the Panama Canal. After that, things went quiet.
‘Our only protector,’ Ma wailed. ‘Why didn’t you tell them, Honey? Why didn’t you tell them he was needed at home?’
‘Ma,’ I said, ‘I’d rather have Sherman protecting us in the Pacific Ocean than from behind his desk at Title Guarantee and Trust.’
‘Yes,’ Honey said. ‘If we’re so in need of protection you had better send for Oscar Jacoby. If he can be spared from mending chair rungs. He’s family, too.’ This was unusually spirited for Honey.
‘This war,’ Ma said, to my aunt, ‘isn’t at all like the last one. In the last war people didn’t become disagreeable and contradict their mother.’
Emerald said, ‘What kind of family is Oscar, Grandma? I never met him.’
Ma said, ‘He is your elder step-uncle, who fought in the Great War and now makes very lovely things. Sewing tables. And pretty applewood boxes. Not chair rungs at all, Honey.’
He did sometimes mend chairs. Murray had told me.
Aunt Fish said, ‘And, of course, you’re very glad of him to take charge of Yetta, aren’t you Dora? Now she has grown so odd.’
Yetta Landau, once the brightest light in the Jacoby firmament, had become forgetful and difficult. I wished her no harm, but I was relieved to know she wouldn’t be marching into town at the head of a column of sock knitters. By an accident of birth I had been too young for the Great War and I was too old for this new one. I was forty-four and nothing had quite gone my way. My first husband had turned out a beast. My second husband was a fading photograph. My originations hadn’t brought me lasting fame, my Parisian soirées were forgotten, and I had never had the opportunity to be a heroine. My aunt still soured the air I breathed. My mother still defied me to do anything to her satisfaction. And when I walked into the Hawaiian Room no one turned to look at me anymore.
FORTY-EIGHT
War be damned. We opened the gallery anyway. I believe the rush to have the exhibition ready was what saved Humpy from a tendency to mope.
‘I should never have left Paris,’ he’d say, and I’d send him out immediately to pursue Tedeschi for the paintings he owed us.
‘I dream about them, Poppy,’ he’d say. ‘The ones we didn’t help. I can’t quite see them, but they keep grabbing at my clothes, and then I wake in a frightful sweat.’
I’d just put the telephone into his hand and a list of calls that had to be made. As far as I was concerned we had done more than
our share of helping and, besides, experience had shown me how quickly gratitude can turn to truculence. A person may be meek and mild until he’s through Ellis Island. After that he’s liable to start expressing opinions and declining to get out of bed before noon and apply a brush to a canvas.
Humpy also wondered whether it was appropriate to throw a party, but I insisted. No one can be expected to look at difficult art without a glass in their hand and we were showing recent work by Molinard and Straus, which is certainly my idea of difficult, as well as Tedeschi’s monochrome stripes and Bella Yaff’s stick people.
I said, ‘We’ll pass around a bucket, if it’ll make you feel better, in aid of the unfortunates.’
Which we did. By the time the liquor ran out it was filled to overflowing with dollar bills and someone mistook it for an exhibit and demanded to buy it. We got written up in The New York Times, although Humpy’s name appeared seven times and mine only once, and in just the first week we sold all our Tedeschi’s, two Yaff’s and a Straus to Tungsten Consolidated.
Everyone was most excited by our rescuees. Tragedy was suddenly in vogue, though quite what was so tragic about a person who had had his passage to America bought and paid for, I failed to see.
My sister found herself a wartime diversion too. She became a paid-up Dutch Reformed and a believer in the power of positive thought. She had begun to recognize though that even this had its limits with Sapphire, who was developing a taste for White Spider cocktails and boogie-woogie music.
‘I don’t know what more I can do for her,’ Honey said, ‘until she finds the kingdom of God within. I never saw a child so set on self-destruction.’
I said, ‘Do you think she’d like a new nose?’
Honey said, ‘Good governor, no! She cares nothing about her looks. She told me she considers herself a widow. A widow of the heart. She says she’ll never marry, and if she continues helling around and acting fast she’s guaranteed not to get asked. The Leopold Adlers certainly won’t want her.’
So I bought her a Duesenberg automobile instead of a trip to the beauty doctor and advised her against drinking on an empty stomach.
The Unfortunates Page 27
