Portraits

by Cynthia Freeman

“Seventeen thousand dollars. Papa and I are giving you the down payment and the rest you’ll pay out like rent.”

  “And how much will the payments be?”

  “I don’t know. You’ll talk to papa about that. The important thing is you’ll be living like I always wanted for you.”

  But what about me? And why do you want me to live this way? To show off to the world how good you’ve been to your children? Or is it because you and papa can’t stand living together and you need us to fill up the void in your life?…

  On the first Sunday in June, Sara’s help, Otto and Helga, were at Lillian’s house for the housewarming, and several waitresses had also been hired. Sara planned the whole affair. All of Lillian’s friends from the city had been invited. And, of course, Nadine, Jean and the Blums—Sara especially wanted them to see the house. The only disappointment for Sara was that Rachel had been invited down to Pebble Beach, she said, and couldn’t make it.

  When Doris arrived with her two children, Sara was rather irritated. “Doris, don’t you think you could have gotten a baby sitter—?”

  “No, mama, I couldn’t afford it…I’ll be sure they don’t step on anybody’s furniture.” There were no words to describe her feelings as she looked through the house, and no one was more aware of her pain than Lillian—nor felt more guilt…

  Shortly after Doris had arrived, she said she wasn’t feeling well, and mama had felt badly about that and said she’d call in the morning…Doris was silent all the way home. It was true…mama hadn’t wanted her and was still busy proving it. And Lillian? What price would she pay for allowing mama to run her life? The way she’d tried to run hers…

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  WHEN CANDICE WAS A year old, Lillian had another little girl. Cindy was just as beautiful as Candy, but she looked exactly like Jerry, which greatly pleased Lillian. Lillian and Jerry were as happy a couple as ever, but the Sanderses were a continuing presence in their lives—a presence that was less and less bearable.

  Jerry had become a salesman, and the promotion had made Jacob more demanding than ever before. Finally Jerry just couldn’t take it any longer…

  “Lillian, I don’t know if I can go on with your father. All he does is complain, no matter what I do. The only peace I have is when he’s away. And I’m getting damned tired of never having a moment to ourselves. They’re either here for dinner or we’re over there almost every night of the week. And your mother’s always letting us know how much she does for us and how they bought the house for us and how little we appreciate it, and so forth…I’m very sick and tired of the whole damned thing, if you want to know the truth.”

  Lillian sighed. “Honey, I know, I agree with everything you say. But you tell me—what choices do we have?”

  “Look, we don’t need this house. I don’t even feel like it’s ours anyway. Your father makes me feel like he’s supporting me. If I want to take my family to Tahoe for a week he makes me feel like it’s his money I’m spending.”

  “Jerry, you just got a little off the subject. What can we do about it?”

  “What we can do is sell this damn place and move somewhere further away from them, back to the city. At least they won’t be able to drop in so often—”

  “Jerry, you know what this means, don’t you?”

  “You bet I do. It means your father’s going to fire me and your mother’s going to go off like a rocket because I’m taking away not her daughter but her companion…You once said I was a coward, right? Let’s see how brave you are…Are you ready?”

  “I don’t know how my ulcer will take it, but I do know you’re right, absolutely right…”

  “Okay, shape up the kids. We’re going over and have it out with your dad tonight.”

  “But what are you going to do for a living?”

  “Look, I can always go back to Roos Brothers. In the meantime, property values are better and we’ll make a little profit on the house. I’ll give back the down payment to your father and with the rest…well, I thought I’d look around for a little store, maybe open up a haberdashery shop. Maybe Nat and Mike will go in as partners.” …

  They found Sara and Jacob sitting in the library. Jacob beamed when he saw his grandchildren. Candy climbed into his lap, just the way his daughters had done when they were young. Candy even reminded him of Rachel at the same age…

  “Oh, I’m so glad you brought the children over,” Sara said—as though she hadn’t just seen them this afternoon.

  Lillian and Jerry looked at each other. Who would go first?

  Jerry sat down in one of the leather chairs, cleared his throat nervously. “Jacob, Lillian and I have talked this over very carefully and the truth of the matter is…we feel we’re living above our means.”

  Jacob set Candy down from his lap and stood up. “What are you saying, you want me to give you a raise?”

  Trying to keep calm, Jerry answered, “No, as a matter of fact, I think you give me far too much money for the amount of work I do…Lillian and I have decided we’re going to sell the house—”

  Sara dropped four stitches and Jacob found full voice. “You’re absolutely right. You don’t earn half of what I pay you. And as far as you’re concerned, Lillian, you don’t deserve parents like us. What do you do for us? The only pleasure we have is in seeing our grandchildren, and now you want to deprive us of that? As far as I’m concerned, Jerry, you just gave me your notice.” With that, he stormed from the room and went upstairs.

  Sara went on where Jacob had left off, and she was shaking visibly. “Everything your father said is absolutely right. You’re unbelievably unfair to take our grandchildren away. And as far as I’m concerned I don’t want to have anything to do with either one of you—”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, mama…”

  “You were never sorry about a thing in your whole life. See how it’s going to feel, being on your own. We’ve just made life too good for you…”

  Without another word, Lillian got up and put the children’s coats on, and the four of them left…

  After putting the children to bed, they sat in the living-room, silent for a moment.

  Then: “Jerry, I think we really burned our bridges.” Lillian was trying to hold back her tears, but she was very frightened.

  “Maybe, but I’m not going to let them control my life. I’m sorry it’s so hard on you, but it had to be done.”

  “What are we going to do in the meantime, until the house is sold?”

  “I’ve still got this month’s salary coming, and we’ve got a few dollars in the bank. I’ll start looking for a job tomorrow.” …

  The house was sold a month later. Jerry sent Jacob a check for the original down payment, paid off the mortgage and netted out twelve thousand dollars in equity and profit. Lillian thought it would be far better for the children if they remained on the Peninsula, so instead of moving to San Francisco they bought a lovely two-story Spanish house on Row Hampton Road in Hillsborough, with the minimum of ten percent down and a four-and-a-half-percent thirty-year loan.

  Jerry commuted to the city by train and was working at Roos Brothers while he looked for a small store. His salary was three hundred dollars a month, which barely paid expenses—but they lived very frugally…

  Finally Jerry took what little money they had and invested it in a tie shop on Powell Street. He was happy to be finally working for himself and at first he had been certain he could make a good living—until the daily receipts showed differently. If he took home twenty-five dollars at the end of the day he was lucky. The unit sales showed that the average customer bought three ties at the most, so he knew that he’d have to expand stock to include men’s shirts. But he didn’t have enough capital, and as a result had to ask his best friend Nat Fried, whom he’d grown up with in the Bronx, to come into partnership with him. At first Nat resisted. He had a fairly good job and two thousand dollars saved, and to invest in a business that was barely making it didn’t quite make sense. But
Jerry hammered away. “So, okay, Nat, you saved two thousand dollars. Tell me, how long did that take you? Five years? What kind of future do you have working as a salesman?”

  “What the hell future do you have in a tie shop you can hardly make a living in?”

  “A big one if I had the money to stock up better. Sure, I can’t make it just on ties. But if we expand I know we can make it.”

  Nat thought carefully. The location was very good, he couldn’t argue about that. And if Jerry knew anything it was how to buy, and he had good taste. Maybe this was his opportunity.

  “Okay, Jerry…I’m a little nervous about taking the plunge, but you just got yourself a partner, partner…”

  It wasn’t too long afterwards that Jerry was to regret taking Nat in…As soon as the business was beginning to show a small profit, Jerry’s best—and most trusted—friend commenced to tap the till. When Jerry found out, he hit the ceiling and the fight they had ended in Jerry saying, “You and I are through. I should have listened to you when you said you didn’t want to come into the business. Now I want you out.”

  “Really? Okay, buy me out.”

  “Fine. I’ll raise the two thousand dollars you put in and that’s finished.”

  “How are you going to raise the money?”

  “I’ll take out a personal loan.”

  “You better take it out for five thousand, because that’s what I want.”

  “You bastard. I have ninety-five hundred dollars invested. I started the business. The lease is in my name. I took you in for two thousand and you want five?”

  “You asked me, remember?”

  Jerry slowly shook his head. “I would never have believed in a million years that you’d do this to me…”

  “Friendship is one thing, business is another. I want to survive, same as you. You forgot I left a good job.”

  “You left a good job? You were president of Macy’s, right? Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll get a loan of three thousand dollars and you can go to hell.”

  The partnership had largely been dissolved when the lease on the store came due and the landlord raised the rent. Jerry sat in his small office with his head in his hands and knew it was over. He couldn’t make it, no matter what. The competition was too great. The merchandise he sold could be bought in every department store in the city, where people could charge and pay their bills off later. He couldn’t compete with that.

  The next day, “Going Out of Business” signs were plastered across the windows. Lillian came down to help, and there was tension between them for the first time since their marriage…but it remained unspoken. Lillian just couldn’t help feeling angry that Jerry had been so impulsive in leaving his job with papa. At least he’d made a good and dependable salary, and if need be she could always have gone to papa for help. But where did they go from here?…

  Jerry’s thoughts were no different. Damn it, he guessed he should have overlooked Jacob’s tirades for the sake of his family…When the last day of the sale was over, he came out with a whopping four thousand dollars. What now? What, indeed?

  After Lillian moved away Sara and Jacob refused to have anything to do with her. At first Sara turned back to Doris, but Michele was now in nursery school, which made it impossible for Doris to go along with Sara’s requests that she come to stay for long periods of time. After a while Sara was reduced to calling Rachel more often, but there too she found only frustration. Rachel and Jim had bought a house in Palm Springs, where they spent the winters, and Sara knew it was a deliberate attempt on Rachel’s part to divorce herself from the family. So Sara had lonely hours to spare in the huge empty house…thinking about the people who had passed through her life, and left her…Mollie, Louie, Jacob, and now every one of her children…

  It was through Doris that she heard about Jerry’s failure, and after a week thinking about it she finally was ready to call Lillian. Maybe now she would realize how important her parents were…

  Lillian could not hold back her tears over having to admit Jerry’s failure.

  “Look, Lillian,” Sara said, “don’t feel it’s the end of the world. After all, I’m not going to allow you and the children to starve. I’ll talk to your father about having Jerry come back to the plant…”

  Except the task that lay before Sara was not quite as simple as she’d thought; Jacob’s anger toward Jerry was far from appeased. Still, with Sara’s pleading, he finally relented and allowed Jerry to come back to work—but not as a salesman. His salary would remain the same, of course, but Jerry had to realize that Jacob was in command.

  Once again, the husband of the heiress was back at work as a truck driver.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  DECEMBER 7, 1941: THE bombing of Pearl Harbor. It not only changed the course of world history, it even changed the course of Doris and Henry Levin’s life.

  Doctors were being inducted into the armed forces and Henry went down for his physical, but to his great surprise he was rejected. When he was given the eye test, it was discovered that he was color blind—which immediately put him into the category of 4-F. With the shortage of doctors in civilian life, Henry now hit a bonanza. Almost overnight he was deluged with patients. He not only expanded his office space and acquired a nurse, but also a house in Seacliff.

  It was love at first sight when Doris saw the fifty-year-old Georgian two-story house. The moment she walked into the octagonal foyer and looked at the spiral staircase, she knew this was the house she had dreamed of all her life. She moved on to the sunken livingroom, spacious and filled with sunlight. The oval diningroom with wood molding and the large old-fashioned kitchen charmed her, as did the paneled library. She walked slowly, softly, up the stairs, went from one bedroom to the next. Michele would have the canopy bed she’d wanted so, and Gary would have all the room he could use for his pennants and books and the drum set would stand in the corner. The master suite had bay windows and seemed as large as some of the apartments she had lived in. The fourth bedroom would be a guest room. The only thing she found superfluous were the maids’ quarters, but she would use those rooms for storage, shut them off, or maybe use one for an office…She walked back to the livingroom and began to visualize how she would furnish it. What a job it was going to be to shop—and she was not going to have a decorator. She wanted her house to be invitingly elegant—not like mama’s where one felt as though there was an invisible rope saying, “Do Not Enter,” nor like Rachel’s, where you felt you really ought to remove your shoes. Her house would be filled with spring blossoms and big informal vases of flowers. And this time everything was going to be her choice, reflect her personality…

  They furnished the house, paying it out on terms, and for once Doris didn’t worry whether Henry was able to afford it, and Henry, for the first time, was a man who felt a sense of accomplishment.

  Doris’ life seemed complete. In more ways than one the best part of her time was spent with the children. She took them to and from school…her days were filled with the PTA, the Brownies, Sunday School, piano lessons, the orthodontist. Henry bought her a Chevrolet coupe, which gave her life a new horizon—she was able to acquire friends and keep up with them socially…

  Her mother was not so happy. Jacob traveled more and more as his business expanded to enormous proportions, and she was left for even longer periods of time in the isolated mansion. Otto and Helga, the live-in help, were the only human beings she had any contact with, and she clung to them as though they were not only her family but her redeemers. She carefully furnished their apartment above the garage. If she thought something would please Helga, she bought it for her. In fact, Sara meticulously went through her closets and gave armloads of clothes to Helga to send back to her sister in Germany by way of Switzerland.

  When Doris heard about it she was horrified. Millions of Jews had been annihilated or were struggling to put their lives back together, and mama was helping Helga’s sister fill out her wardrobe?

  “Mama, don’t you re
alize what a bad thing you’re doing?”

  “What Helga does with the things I gave her I don’t know.”

  “But of course you do, mama.”

  “The only thing I know is that I could live and die here alone if it weren’t for them. They love me better than my own children.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, but the point is—”

  “I don’t want to discuss it anymore. What I do with what’s mine is my business. Now I want you to go home. I’m very tired and want to rest.”

  For mama, the big war was still inside. And she had no planes or tanks to fight it with…

  Yes, Sara thanked God for Helga and Otto, but they hardly filled the void in her life. The more time she spent alone, the more the old fears and angers haunted her…“What can I do with my life, my days and nights? Please…help me.” She had finally broken down and called Doris.

  Doris all but begged her to become involved in the community. There was so much that needed to be done, especially with the war effort. Sara thought maybe that could be a solution to her problem, so she joined the Red Cross. But she really hated it. She made brief attempts to get involved with other activities, but nothing seemed to satisfy her for long.

  Her unhappiness grew so unbearable that finally she decided anything would be better than the way she was living…She confronted Jacob when he returned from one of his trips. “I can’t go on this way, Jacob. I want you to sell the house. There’s simply got to be more to my life than this…”

  She begged him to understand her reasons but one word led to another and the argument left her in such a state that she issued an ultimatum to end all ultimatums. Unless he sold the house and moved back to the city, she was going to get a divorce.

  Jacob was stunned into silence, then said that was craziness, that she couldn’t just walk out. Would she…? But he didn’t say he would sell the house—and he didn’t say how much he needed her. In the end, she packed her luggage and left…

  Doris opened the door to find mama standing surrounded by her suitcases…Sara simply moved in.