The Witch and the Borscht Pearl

by Angela Zeman

  She gained the open doorway of my shop and paused, her figure outlined by the crimsoning gold of the setting sun. Since my shop resembled a jungle exhibit, crammed with plants from the rafters down, the doorway was often the roomiest spot in the place. (I conduct business on the sidewalk in cooler weather.)

  “Rachel. Remember how I’ve been wanting you to meet Pearl Schrafft? She’s giving herself a birthday party next week and said I could bring you.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. “We took a huge order for that party an hour ago! And you’re invited?” He glanced warily at Rachel before adding, “I could get Mom’s Altima. We could put the flowers in the back and take you two and the flowers in one trip.”

  Mrs. Risk laughed. “Don’t tease, Daniel, I might take you up on it.”

  “No I mean it! I’m dying to see her house!”

  “Okay, if you’d rather go in Daniel’s car, that’s fine,” I said loftily, ignoring the totally undeserved insult. See, Mrs. Risk doesn’t drive. So I’m often drafted for transport, a kind, unselfish service on my part that nevertheless fails to plug a Niagara Falls of ungrateful criticism of both my Vette and my driving skills. “Isn’t Pearl Schrafft retired?”

  “Not anymore. This party’s not just for her birthday, it’s also to announce her comeback! And I for one can’t wait to see it!”

  … And so began my first real adventure with Mrs. Risk, the one that I think of as The Witch and the Borscht Pearl.

  2

  IT WAS ABOUT FIVE-THIRTY in the afternoon. The sinking sun had begun to stain the white shingled walls of Pearl Schrafft’s sprawling Cape Cod a blushing gold, an appropriate color, I thought, estimating the money required to support this place. The neighbors on Pearl’s either side had nothing so elaborate. This section of Long Island had a friendly habit of accommodating all incomes willy-nilly, which had always appealed to the non-conformist streak in me and was one of the reasons I liked it here.

  Like Mrs. Risk’s cottage, Pearl’s four acre estate edged the Sound, although it lay farther up the road from ‘downport’ Wyndham and on higher ground, topping a cliff that loomed thirty feet over the beach. Thickly wooded even taller hills effectively fenced the sides of the estate, and tall iron gates blocked off the winding drive that looped at Pearl’s front door. Her house contained about fifteen large square-ish rooms (I’d gotten a swift tour), buttressed on the west end by garages. Outbuildings flanked a tennis court near the woods, while closer in, massive cement urns of red geraniums surrounded a pool shaped like a natural pond. Carved marble nymphs peeped coyly through shrubbery at male mythological characters, also marble. From the center of the pool, a fountain sprayed diamonds into the sunlit air through a nautilus shell held aloft by a chubby naked boy. All in all, a baroque scene, fun to look at but dated.

  The pool and water view, while spectacular, were wasted on Pearl’s guests, who clustered near the caterer’s tables set in the grass below her stone-flagged patio.

  Mrs. Risk and I had spent much of the party’s first two hours milling aimlessly on the manicured carpet of grass behind Pearl’s house, socializing as best we could with Pearl’s show business friends. Among the guests, we knew only Pearl, and incidentally, Pearl’s doctor, who was also ours and a good friend. The rest seemed to have known each other intimately for decades. Admittedly, Mrs. Risk and I don’t often blend into many places. I didn’t care. I mostly listened, entranced by the, to me, exotic conversations.

  The breeze from the Sound ruffled the women’s sheer tropic-colored skirts and teased at the remnants of hair (and hairpieces) on the men’s skulls. I was the youngest person there by at least twenty years, a fact that bothered me far less than it did a few of the women. At this moment, Big Band music was playing on Pearl’s outdoor sound system, surging into audibility between the bursts of laughter and clinking glasses. Tuxedoed waiters dashed about.

  And then she crashed the party.

  It couldn’t have been easy at 48, slim and fit as she appeared, to climb the rough hills that ringed Pearl’s estate. I know how old she was because later someone mentioned she was ten years younger than her sister, Pearl, and this was Pearl’s fifty-eighth birthday.

  Later I wondered if she’d paused at the top of the hill to catch her breath before descending the other side. Had she gazed down at us, her sister’s friends, and thought about her sister’s life and obvious prosperity? Compared them to her own deprivations? She must have fought through the dense gingkoes, the pines, the thickets of forsythia and dogwood, because I know there’s no path. The prickly hemlocks must have snatched at her thin cotton dress and gummed her bare arms with resin. Her pathetic pink heels were caked with mud, a testimony of that day’s brief summer shower.

  I remember Mrs. Risk said at the time it was a melodramatic trick, to pop out suddenly from that thickly wooded spot to crash Pearl’s party. From her tone, I think she admired the idea. Of course, the way Pearl’s estate lay, it was the only way in if she wanted to avoid the front door. Which I believe was the point.

  Roselle Lutz, a sharp-featured woman dedicated equally to convincing the world that her cropped flaming auburn hair was colored by nature and that the Chanel knock-offs hanging from her emaciated frame were genuine, was the first to spot the intruder. Her shrill demand pierced the party noise and interrupted her friend’s monologue. “Viv, you know everyone, who’s that woman!”

  Vivian Steiner, a woman of slower synapses than Roselle, halted in mid-word and blinked down at her short friend in annoyance. Refusing out of pique to look where Roselle pointed, she yanked a handkerchief from her sausage-roll clutch purse (covered in fuchsia rayon to match her vintage Diane Von Furstenburg wrap-around sheath.) Then, still silent to emphasize Roselle’s offense, she dabbed at the perspiration roiling down between twin puffs of half-exposed breasts. I admit, I’d been shamelessly hanging close, eavesdropping.

  Vivian shifted her plump hips, carefully re-aligning heroically restrained curves, then resumed explaining to an exasperated Roselle and her other listeners why she needed a maroon Mercedes. “The color is so deep. The richest maroon I’ve seen. Almost the color of blood. Picture it, Roselle. A blonde looks dramatic in a maroon car, especially one with green eyes like mine.” She touched her pale blonde pouf coiffure which had been cemented against disturbance from a force ten gale.

  Roselle snapped, “I thought your eyes looked green today. Your blue contacts look more natural.” Roselle reached around Vivian and shook her husband’s elbow. “Simon! Who’s that woman?”

  Simon Lutz, jerked from his own conversation, muttered around the cigar dangling from his lips, “That’s no woman, that’s my wife! Insert rim shot! Leave me alone, Roselle, I’m having a good time.”

  Roselle gave her husband a sharp smack on the arm. He turned back to his friends, unperturbed.

  Leeann Horstley, receptionist for Simon Lutz’s theatrical agency for thirty years, was Roselle’s best friend, and like Roselle, a short sixtyish woman emaciated from constant self-starving. She patted Roselle’s arm. Unlike Roselle’s cutting-edge pitch, Leeann’s voice rasped deep from decades of cigarettes and Scotch. “Let him go, Rose. Viv, listen dear. A Mercedes is fine for shrinks and plastic surgeons, they can afford it. A Chevy Cavalier is more your price range. Maroon is maroon, already.” The red dye self-applied monthly to Leeann’s hair was less convincing than Roselle’s auburn, but her income couldn’t cover a salon colorist.

  Vivian’s green eyes narrowed as she considered Leeann. Roselle stifled a chortle.

  Behind the women, Simon applied a match to a fresh cigar, scrutinized the tip, puffed until satisfied, then offered a light to his three friends who became similarly occupied. They were fellow theatrical agents in their late fifties or early sixties. All clung to cherished cigars.

  Simon continued, “So Jesus takes a good look at the repaired robe, doesn’t even find a seam! He’s really impressed with the tailor’s work. He says, ‘Y’know, I travel with twelve guys. Tough life being on t
he road all the time. They got rips and holes in their robes you wouldn’t believe. Give me a good price and I’ll let you fix all their stuff, too.’ The tailor says fine, they settle on a price. Jesus brings in this stack of robes and the tailor repairs ’em all. Takes him just two days. When Jesus sees what a superb job the tailor did, he’s so impressed he says, ‘You’re the best tailor I’ve ever run into! You know, I meet a lotta people in my work. How about a partnership? I’ll send you business and we’ll split the profit. What do you say?’

  “Well, the tailor thought that was a good idea and agrees. Jesus says, ‘Fine! We can call ourselves Lord & Tailor’s!’ Tada—boom!”

  Simon’s friends groaned. Simon chuckled. “Heard it the other day. Pearlie didn’t want it in her new act, so I took it.”

  One man finished swallowing his bourbon and said, “You did her a favor, keeping it.”

  Another man asked in a hushed voice, “How’s her new act coming, anyway? You seen it?”

  Simon shook his head. “Solly won’t let anybody watch her rehearse. That’s okay. Whatever Pearlie does, it’ll be good!”

  The first man nodded. “That’s why she didn’t use your joke.”

  They all laughed.

  “If she hasn’t lost it,” murmured the third man. “Off stage for two years. Her husband dying suddenly like that, and then her own heart attack. People change in tough times.” He was hooted down by his companions.

  Simon bristled. “Change, shmange! I spit on your ‘change.’ Hah, I remember when her parents died. She supported her baby sister by swabbing dressing rooms at the Odeon, just a kid, herself. Even then, her jokes cracked up acts waiting to go onstage. Natural talent. Y’never lose that!”

  “Now wait, Simon,” put in the second man, “I saw her once up the Catskills, way back. Forget which hotel. But stinko! Whew!”

  “Yeah. Looked like everybody’s cousin Sadie then, didn’t she?” agreed Simon, grinning. “Homely, pudgy, wearing those awful dresses. You wanted to take her home and find her a doctor husband. But that’s when she was swiping those gawd-awful jokes from acts in the Village. That Wasp stuff sounded weird coming out of that Yiddishe pisk. Just hadn’t found herself yet. You could tell, though, there was funny stuff in her just dying to pop out.”

  “She had something.”

  “Yeah!” Simon chuckled. “Nerve. And her car parked motor running behind the fire-door exit. Ever hear about that when she was doing the Catskills? After each act she’d race from one resort gig to the next. Faster than the manager could call ahead and tell the next guy not to let her onstage with that lousy act.”

  “I remember! She used to let my dance acts hitch rides. They hopped it together! I never missed my commission when she was driving! What a woman!” The second man crowed with laughter. The other two joined him.

  While Simon wiped helpless tears from his eyes, he said, “She zipped from hotel to hotel, three shows a night, one each place, coffee and bagels halfway home at the Red Apple Rest with the other acts. Brooklyn and bed by sunup!”

  “God, what a life,” said the man with the bourbon. “Hard and hungry.”

  Simon snagged a martini from a passing waiter’s tray. “And you worry she isn’t tough? If you weren’t tough and half crazy, you never made it back then. And in spite of cable TV and the other electronic shmutz, it’s the same break-ass atmosphere today. Thank God a few Catskills resorts still give raw recruits a friendly place to learn their craft. Not every hotel up there has gone ‘Atlantic City’ with red velvet walls and naked girls and no heart. Yet.”

  “It’s profitable, that red velvet shtick,” sighed the third man. “The Borscht Belt Circuit, it’s dying. That style of entertainment,” he scrutinized his companions wryly, “is as old as we are. And in about as good a shape.” He patted his swollen, richly clad belly with liver-spotted hands. His pinkie ring diamond winked in the dying sun.

  Simon gazed around contentedly at the party-goers, most of whom were connected one way or another with either the live entertainment business or the Borscht Belt venues. “Well, it was a good time with good people. We’re still around. Maybe Pearlie’s come-back will keep it going until we’re all ready to stop together. Pearl’s one of the few Catskills comics to break through to mainstream success. If anybody can keep the Circuit alive—”

  “Hey,” said the man with bourbon. “Who’s that woman? Know her, Simon? Looks familiar.”

  The men all turned.

  Seeing her husband’s movement, “Oh, now he looks,” complained Roselle to Leeann and Vivian, hands on imperceptible hips.

  Hearing his wife, “So ask Pearlie,” Simon told Roselle, shrugging.

  Roselle marched over to their hostess and tapped her on the shoulder. “Pearl, who’s that woman? Hi, Ilene. Nice dinner suit. Ungaro?”

  Ilene Fox, a slim dark woman in her forties, smiled in acknowledgment but, true to my expectations, didn’t answer. I had learned earlier that Ilene rarely spoke. In the midst of this boisterous group she was a fragile aging beauty occupying an island of silence. Ilene returned her attention to Pearl, her eyes glowing with an uncritical adoration that paired oddly with her sophisticated appearance and manner. Mrs. Risk had told me about her, that she was a noted mainstream jazz singer who in the past had often opened Pearl’s shows. It was taken for granted she would open Pearl’s big come-back in November.

  Pearl, with a welcoming wave at Roselle, continued chattering to the group around her, “Sure, I take life easier now that I’m, what. Fifty-eight? Oy, God! Seems like I was 29 just yesterday. Well, I was. For 29 years I was 29! But Tony, after my heart attack—Tony Savoia, he’s my doctor,” she said in an aside to a man, who nodded. “He made me quit running after the milkman. Said I had to walk.”

  Roselle tittered, hand at her mouth.

  Pearl shook her head. “Ooh, don’t laugh, Roselle! You get an eyeful of Wyndham’s milkman yet? Name’s Charlie. Yowie-zowie! Roselle, poor darling, living in Manhattan without a milkman! Ah, he’s too young, anyway. Like a son. Well, a cousin. But I’m taking vitamins now. To slow the aging process. I drop half of the little devils on the floor, though. Under the refrigerator they roll, every time, notice that? But life is too short to spend crawling on a kitchen floor. I leave them there. Some night I’m going to turn on the kitchen light and find a six foot cockroach saying, “I feel good!”

  Roselle chimed in impatiently, disrupting the laughter. “Who’s that woman, Pearl? I think you’ve got a gate-crasher!” She pointed.

  Pearl turned to see, then froze.

  I searched the crowd for Mrs. Risk, but not too strenuously. I knew where to look. As expected, she and Dr. Savoia were monopolizing the bartender, no doubt in an intense discussion about wine. I caught her eye and tilted my head towards Pearl. One quick look and she detached herself from the doc to begin sauntering my way.

  “Pearlie! What’s wrong?” shrilled Roselle. “My God, Simon, look at Pearl!”

  Simon plucked his cigar from his mouth to tell Roselle to lay off, then picked up on the tension that had spread among the guests and hesitated.

  Chatter trickled away. Pearl’s friends gradually turned to stare at the slowly approaching newcomer. In the silence, the music could now be clearly heard to be a recording of Kenny G playing soprano saxophone. The pure clear notes mingled with the humming wind that skimmed the nearby water and made the tree branches dance. The party guests resembled a collection of Lot’s wives, frozen in paradise.

  Old Dr. Savoia, the first to rouse himself, sidled closer to Pearl, looking alarmed as he examined her face.

  Those nearest the advancing woman gave way, opening a path to what they instinctively sensed was her goal. Like Moses marching across the dry Red Sea bed between menacing walls of water, she approached Pearl with resolute steps right down the middle of the divided guests. When only six feet remained between herself and Pearl she halted.

  “Hallo, Pearl.” Her tone was soft. “Happy birthday.”

 
Pearl stood transfixed.

  “I don’t blame you for not recognizing me.” The woman laughed, a low self-deprecating sound, tight with nerves.

  “Bella?” shrilled Roselle, her voice cracking on the second syllable. “Bella Schrafft? Or I mean, Fischmann. Or did you marry some other shmuck after Stanley killed himself?”

  “Shut up Roselle,” her husband said automatically, not taking his eyes from the small form. Her elegance transcended the cheap ill-fitting cotton dress she wore. The leather of her pink shoes might once have been good, but was now cracked with age and caked with drying mud.

  “By God, it is Bella!” exclaimed Viv slowly, her voice louder than necessary in the silence. She retrieved her handkerchief and blotted again at her moist décolletage as she frowned, green eyes narrowed.

  Others within the crowd began muttering. I heard someone exclaim, “What chutzpah!” Pearl said nothing.

  Bella scanned them. “I understand how you feel,” she said. “I am amazed to see some of you again. How you’ve changed. But then, thirty years is a long time. It is possible I have changed the most.” Her words, revealing a faint French inflection, were uttered carefully, as if it had been years since she’d last spoken English.

  She looked back again at Pearl. “You’ve kept so many of your—our—old friends, all this time.”

  “Yeah, well,” snapped Roselle, “that’s because she didn’t run off with anybody’s fiancé. Treat people right, they stick by you.”

  Simon grabbed her arm and gave it a shake. “Roselle! This is family business, nothing to do with you.”