Property Of, the Drowning Season, Fortune's Daughter, and At Risk

by Alice Hoffman

  The cottage had been chosen for Phillip’s recoveries because it was the only house in the Compound without a water view. But Phillip still struggled to see the harbor, although he could see only the beginnings of the eastern section of the Compound, where there were no flowers, only weeds—honeysuckle and orange wood lilies—and where the pine grove towered above the sea wall. And there, standing in front of the grove, was Phillip’s daughter. For years Phillip had lied to himself; he told himself he had been given the name for his daughter in a dream he had the night after the girl was born. But, in fact, he knew what his mother’s reaction would be; he knew that when Esther the Black’s name was written permanently, in ink, on the birth certificate, Esther the White would shudder. He knew that even though Esther the White had given up all things of the past, even her surname, she still believed in ghosts, and he wanted, more than anything else, to haunt his mother, even after he himself was dead.

  And now he watched: Esther the Black walked across the lawn; she was readying herself for a meeting with Ira Rath. She wore jeans and a red-and-black striped T-shirt, and when she finally stopped pacing on the wide green lawn, she stared in the direction of Phillip’s window. Her dark hair hid her face, and Phillip could not see her eyes, but he knew where she stared. He thought how cruel it had been for him and Rose to have both used the girl in their fights against Esther the White. And he wondered if Esther the Black was haunting not only her grandmother but Phillip as well. They watched each other for some time, they stared across the yards as Rose continued to speak of the bluejays outside Esther the White’s window, who were so tame they were not afraid to snatch crusts of white bread from the palm of the old woman’s hand.

  Esther the Black stood with her hands on her hips. She could see only Phillip’s shadow, or the movement of the curtain as it swayed behind the glass. For a moment she imagined that there was nothing she could not do; if she wanted, she could speak to him, across the lawn, through the glass, the locked door, the hard wood. Even though they rarely talked, she now imagined that she could reach him. But, instead she turned, quite suddenly, as if she had heard something call from beyond the pine grove. There was no use standing and staring; she had to meet Ira Rath, she had to make her plans. So, Esther the Black turned and left Phillip alone at his window. And he was still watching as she began to walk over the pine needles, feeling them crush beneath her sandals as they sent out their fragrance into the full air.

  Esther the Black walked out of Phillip’s sight; believing that her father wanted to be saved, when he only wanted not to be haunted. And she walked as quickly as she could to St. Fredrics, where she would meet Ira Rath.

  When she walked into the Starfish Lounge, Ira Rath was already there, sitting at a rear table, drinking dark beer. Esther had not seen him since he had first gone off to college, and Ira had changed, he had let his hair grow wild, and his bluejeans were faded and tight; a safety pin hung from his earlobe, dangling nearly to his collar.

  “Ira?” Esther the Black said, wondering if she had mistaken someone else for the accountant’s son.

  Ira Rath rose. “Esther,” he said, taking her hand. “What took you? I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes, and the place you chose for our rendezvous is a dump.”

  They sat together and ordered beer. Esther the Black examined him. “You look different,” she said.

  “I am different. I’m totally into my music. I’m about to move into a loft apartment with my band, The Quick and the Mad. I’ve even legally changed my name, but I haven’t told my father yet; too much of a shock.”

  Esther the Black narrowed her eyes; if Ira Rath had been a stranger, if she hadn’t remembered Friday-night dinners where Ira, dressed in a blue suit, had sat between Solomon Rath and Esther the White, spooning up his second helping of pudding, Esther the Black might have found him attractive. “What is your name now?” she asked.

  “Pagan. Pagan Rath.” He swallowed beer. “It’s a name that’s more consistent with the style of music I play.”

  Esther the Black wrinkled her brow; the family would never approve of marriage to someone with a name like Pagan. “We won’t mention your name change to my family,” she said.

  “Punk,” Pagan Rath said to Esther. “That’s my sound. Punk Rock.”

  “Well, never mind,” Esther said. “Music is music.”

  “I’ve got a song,” Pagan Rath said. “Once my song catches on, I’ll have it made. That’s why I’m willing to consider tricking your family out of some of their money. ‘Nova Scotia Avenue’ is the name of my tune,” he smiled. “Remember that title; it’ll be at the top of the charts.”

  Esther smiled tightly. She did not own a radio, and she had difficulty sympathizing with the Ira she had always known as a rock musician. He had grown up in a brownstone, he had A.T.&T. stocks in his name.

  “What about your stocks?” Esther asked.

  “Sold,” Pagan told her. “To buy leather outfits for The Quick and the Mad and a skunk-fur coat for myself.”

  “Well, we’re both broke,” Esther the Black said. “But I have a plan that we could both profit from.”

  Pagan’s eyes were closed; quite suddenly he began to pound his palms on the table top in a simulated drum roll. He sang the opening bars of “Nova Scotia Avenue”:

  “There’s ice on the streetcorners / and tears on your face / but don’t worry baby / I’ll soon win that race.”

  “Ira,” Esther the Black interrupted, “this is my plan. We work together. We announce that we plan to marry right away. My grandparents should be good for at least a thousand dollars for the wedding dress, the trousseau, the rabbi’s fees. Only none of their money will ever get to the bridal shop or the rabbi—we’ll split it, you and me. Eighty percent for me, twenty for you.”

  “Fifty-fifty,” Pagan Rath said.

  “Ira, please,” Esther sighed. “Don’t be difficult.”

  “The name is Pagan,” he corrected. “And the ruse isn’t worth it for twenty percent. Maybe I can raise the cash to cut a record, but I still have to hire a promoter, an agent, a couple of roadies. And I don’t have time to fool around, Esther, because one thing I know for sure: I’m slated for immortality, and your grandparents’ cash can help me out. You’re my oldest friend, kid,” Pagan shrugged, “but when destiny calls, then it’s business. Then it’s fifty percent.”

  It was nearly dinnertime, and Esther the Black and Ira Rath were expected at the main house. Esther did not have much of a choice; without Ira, she was without a plan. So she agreed to the bargain the accountant’s son offered, and she called a taxi to pick them up at the Starfish Lounge. In the taxi, Esther the Black persuaded Pagan to comb his hair and remove his safety pin and worn aviator’s jacket. These, Esther assured him, would be quite safe under the rhododendron bush near the Compound gate.

  As they got out of the taxi and walked toward the gate, Pagan Rath spoke of his musician’s life; he boasted of oral sex and cocaine and put his arm around Esther. “Listen,” he said, “maybe we can get it on after dinner.”

  Esther the Black frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know,” Pagan smiled. “Love.”

  “Oh, Ira,” Esther said, as she leaned her head on the window, “this is business. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Pagan Rath threw up his hands. “All right,” he said. “But some day you’ll beg me for some loving, and you won’t be the first.”

  Esther the Black paid the taxi driver, and she watched as Pagan hid his punk clothes in the bushes. Now that it was nearly time to put her plan into action, Esther was afraid. She wondered exactly where she would go once she had rescued her parents from the Compound, once she was free. And as Esther the Black walked up the path which led to her grandparents’ house, she tried to convince herself that all her fears were unfounded; she had walked up the same path thousands of times before, she had eaten at their table every night of her life, and her plan to deceive them was foolproof; before she knew it she would
walk out of the Compound gate for the last time. There was really nothing to be afraid of. All the same, when they walked up the stairs to the wide wooden porch, Esther the Black swallowed hard; and she was not practicing any sort of deception when she asked Pagan if she could hold his hand.

  Chapter Three

  THAT evening, as Esther the White began the Friday-night meal, as she prepared the salmon with lemon juice, scallions, and parsley, she looked out the kitchen window and saw Mischa speaking with his brother, the dwarf. Mischa’s arm reached down to encircle Max’s shoulders, and the dwarf spoke with a great many furious gestures. And as Esther the White slipped the salmon into the oven, as she began the cold, uncooked lemon mousse, cutting lemons at the sink and pouring the cream into a brown wooden bowl, her face grew pale. She looked out of the window again.

  Out there, where the honeysuckle was as thick as the air, Max was waving his hand, pointing to the sea wall and the large, green lawn. Esther the White held the empty cream carton in her hand: she strained to look out the window; she wished that she could read lips, but she could only stare from her window, and worry. She did not trust the dwarf; he was her enemy, who, for years, had been trying to convince Mischa to sell the Compound, the land that Esther the White had always dreamed of, even before the night she left her old village. Before, in other years, she might have been certain that Mischa would not listen to his brother, but now their finances were poor, and no one knew that better than Esther the White, who kept close tabs on the accountant, Rath. So, now Mischa might listen. Now, in the honeysuckle air, he might lean close to his brother’s mouth; and Esther the White had never trusted Max, she never regretted leaving him with the circus.

  For his part, Max had not pined long for Mischa and Esther the White. In his first year with the circus he traveled to Spain, to Finland, to Denmark and Holland. He had enjoyed the circus exhibition, where he stood on a detachable wooden platform alongside the circus manager, Solo, the tattooed man, and Thea, a woman from Munich, who sang like an angel and was covered with hair like a bear.

  Max asked that the greyhounds be fed larger portions of meat each week, so that they would not be quite as vicious. He had many ideas for the circus, which Solo put forth to the owner, Jules, as his own. Max began to attend the cinema in every city the circus visited, and he particularly loved the films of Fred Astaire. He elaborated on the steps he had learned from Madame Laverne in Marseilles, and taught himself to tap dance; soon he became one of the largest attractions in the circus. In under a year, Max had completely forgotten what Esther the White looked like; he hadn’t cared much for her anyway.

  Quickly, Max taught himself bookkeeping, and he became invaluable to Solo, the manager, who never paid close attention to the books he was supposed to keep, as he preferred to spend his days in a cloud of opium. The crowds loved Max and his bold tap dancing to new American tunes. Thea from Munich let him snuggle close whenever the circus traveled from one city to another by train; so he was almost never lonely, and, if he ever was, Max would find his way to the sea turtle’s cage. Here he would lie in the sweet-smelling sawdust, bringing carrots and grains as gifts. He whispered and sang, and rested beneath the fin of the huge turtle he named Miriam. Protected by Miriam’s leathery green arm, beneath her gray veins, Max was comfortable, at ease. He would stroke her shell back, and speak of his sexual longings, and he would whisper about his jealousy of Solo, who worked the dwarf without praise or recognition, and who never had a kind word for anyone except for the ladies, who fell in love with him quick as a sigh.

  In time, the circus owner, Jules, discovered that Solo was the cause of his financial woes. The tattooed man had been slipping a third of the circus profits into his own pocket; he needed money, gold, and jewels to buy opium and to impress the women who followed him into bed in every city he visited. Max was stunned when he heard of Solo’s treachery; the manager had been a hero of sorts, for Max’s imagination had been fired by the stories Solo told of breasts and thighs. Solo claimed to have sired two dozen children, and he was certain there were more, that he had left his mark in Germany and France.

  And so, when Jules discovered Solo to be a thief, and the tattooed man disappeared in the south of Spain, with several thousand dollars of the circus money and a pair of silver salt shakers which had belonged to Jules’s mother, Max was convinced that the circus would disband, and he would be left without a career, without a home. But his despair lifted when Jules asked him to become the circus manager. The financial troubles diminished, and the troupe acquired a small, but glowing reputation. After some years, Max became a partner; Jules wondered what he had ever done without the dwarf, and he blessed the day Solo disappeared.

  And so, Max had little time for tap dancing; he was concerned with business matters now. To replace his own act, he bought, from a grieving couple in Hungary, their tiny daughter, Jenna, whom Max taught to dance. Yet Max remained a man of solitude; he spent hours in Miriam’s cage; after a day at work on the financial receipts, he would hurry there to smoke cigars, and stare at the sky. He had plenty of candy—chocolate cherries and sweet molasses babies. His small suits were made of linen, silk, and fine wool. The entire troupe respected him; Jules called him sonny. Still, he was unhappy.

  His real worry, at that time of his life, when he had been with the circus for nearly fifteen years, was that he had never had a woman. He missed Solo’s stories of love and of passion; he feared he would live his whole life without feeling his blood pulse. He began to walk through the circus crowds, searching for someone to fall in love with.

  Jules shook his head. “That’s not the way to do it,” the circus owner told his small partner. “You’ll never find a woman that way.”

  But, outside Vienna, where the circus had set up cages and tents on a large circular village green, Max saw Lisa. He fell, instantly and with no trouble at all, in love.

  Lisa was years younger than Max; she was just twenty-five. Her legs were long, the legs of a dancer. When Max finally approached her, after hours of soul searching on the floor of the sea turtle’s cage, the top of his head reached Lisa’s waist. He asked if she were a dancer, and Lisa was stunned; that was exactly what she wished to be. Max pulled no punches, he wasted no time; immediately, he admitted that he believed Lisa was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. True, he was a dwarf, but he had traveled all over the continent and he had learned his smile from the tattooed man. Lisa was flattered. They dined, that night, on veal, calves’ liver and onions. Later in the week he sent her violets and opals. On the day the troupe was to leave the village, Max offered Lisa the chance to become a dancer with the circus. She accepted. Some months later, in a town in Bavaria—which particularly depressed Max, for it vaguely reminded him of his own childhood village—the two were married.

  Max lost all signs of depression. He rarely visited the sea turtle’s cage, and when he did it was only to lie in the sawdust and sing Lisa’s praises. He spoke so often of how Lisa’s eyes were like two black berries that the sea turtle rolled away in boredom and disgust. Max could not have been happier. Lisa, however, was crushed when Jules decided that her dancing was inappropriate for the circus.

  “She tries to dance beautifully,” Jules whispered to Max. “If they want to see beautiful, they don’t come here. That’s not what they come to the circus to see.”

  To cheer Lisa, Max and Jules devised a plan for an American tour. Each night, before Max made love to Lisa, he would repeat the names of American cities which Jules had decided to include in their tour.

  “Minneapolis,” he would whisper to her as he slowly kissed her knees, both thighs. “Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Trenton, New Jersey.”

  The American tour was neither a success nor a failure. One of the greyhounds froze in its cage as the troupe crossed the Atlantic; but the minute the ship docked in Boston, Jules hired a Yugoslavian shipman who was a juggler, and so all losses were covered. Lisa began to cheer up: she loved traveling on the super highways in the troupe
’s yellow truck; when they reached Miami she pinched Max’s nose, kissed him, and sighed. Miami was paradise to Lisa, but the circus could not stay, they had barely scratched America’s surface. The surprising thing about the tour was its length. After several years, it seemed they hadn’t covered a third of the country. So they kept on, playing American towns and cities, finishing up the Southeast and the Midwest. At the beginning of the northeastern route, Max began to read newspapers, hoping to polish up his English so that he would no longer embarrass Lisa in restaurants. On a Thursday, in a truck traveling through New Jersey, Max was reading an issue of the New York Times which the fat lady had lent him. A small article in the real-estate section described the Compound; and there in black and white, in English, was the name the brothers had allowed Esther the White to choose for them in the stable at Marseilles.

  “My brother must be a millionaire. It says he has his own housing development. He is a millionaire,” Max whispered hotly to Lisa as the circus traveled down the New Jersey Turnpike, in search of a campground.

  The two began to whisper conspiratorially, although the only one who might have heard them was the Yugoslavian juggler.

  “This is America?” the juggling sailor asked, in Yugoslavian, a language no one in the troupe understood.

  When they pitched their tents in southern Jersey, Jules cried out, “What’s here? Swamps? Quicksand?”

  Max approached his partner. “I’m getting out, my friend. I’m leaving the business.”

  “Look,” Jules tried to pacify the dwarf. “We won’t be in New Jersey for more than another week. It’s not that bad; you can take it.”

  “No, no. It’s not New Jersey that’s getting to me. I found out I got a brother here.” Jules shrugged. “A rich one,” Max continued. “And I’m staying in America.”