by Denise Dietz
What’s a mow-gull? Anissa wondered. A bird? A sea gull?
After their marriage, Jacob had launched a successful campaign for Republican State Senator.
Re-pub-lick-can. Birds again. Pel-lick-can?
Jacob would have been happy if his wife had died in childbirth, but she hadn’t. Those were the facts, as Joe Friday liked to say.
Who was Mr. Friday? How did he fit into Mama’s story? What a funny name. Maybe she’d call her doll Toni Saturday.
After Hedrich Deutsch passed away, after she inherited Hillhouse and the Chicago department stores, Jacob couldn’t find himself another wife and produce the desired heir, said Mama. Those were the facts.
“I’ve been thinking about sending Anissa to my Aunt Theresa in Milwaukee,” Helene said, following a stretch of silence. “Have you noticed how thin and sick she’s been looking lately? And that stuttering. Damn Jacob!”
“Good idea,” said Susan. “Hillhouse is too big for one little girl. In Milwaukee Anissa will have other children to play with and she can come home for the holidays.”
“To tell the truth, I’ve already called Theresa and she said yes. Jacob doesn’t care.”
Papa doesn’t care, thought Anissa, playing he loves me, he loves me not with her doll’s eyelashes. He loves me not.
* * * * *
Surrounded by suitcases, Anissa stood in the vestibule.
Bobby sneaked up behind and pinched her hard above her elbow. “I told you they don’t want you,” he said. “They don’t even want you to live with them no more. They want a boy, not some fucking girl.”
Anissa hung her head, trying to control her tears. From Mama’s bedroom on the second floor, she heard, “Kiss Bobby goodbye, dear. He’ll miss you so much.”
“Cook says your aunt’s a bitch,” Bobby sneered.
“How does Cook know th-that? What’s a b-bitch?”
Anissa’s heart thumped painfully. She considered running away, but where would she go?
* * * * *
The word spread faster than a gospel sermon by Aimee Semple McPherson. Theresa Deutsch was a you-know-what—rhymed with witch. Some women even said it to her face.
Truthfully, Terry inspired jealousy because she was so beautiful. But she hid her hurt feelings and set out to prove everyone right. To that end, she wore tight skirts and rolled-down stockings, smoked brown cigarettes, and slept with any man who looked like Ronald Coleman. Her gents had to be Jewish because they treated women nice and didn’t talk marriage with non-Jewish girls. Surprisingly, there were numerous men in Chicago who looked like Semitic movie stars.
Her own parents called her Jezebel, strumpet, floozy, tart, or in more generous moments, a woman of easy virtue.
Terry had inherited a large trust fund from her dead grandfather, doled out quarterly. Kissing her brother and new niece Helene goodbye, she took off for Europe. There, she wed an impoverished Italian count who looked like a Catholic Ronald Coleman. Terry attempted, with little success, to avoid her husband’s sadistic sexual abuse. The count had gambling debts. He decided to poison his young wife for full control of her money. Drunk, he mixed up their wine goblets and died in agony.
The count had been unpopular and the Italian police were sympathetic. Returning to the United States in 1930, Terry stood on the upper deck of the Queen Mary. As she stared into the dark, swirling water, she thought about the mess she’d made of her life. The moon’s glow shed its reflection on the ocean’s surface, a rippling spotlight. With a sigh, Terry lifted her leg up over the railing.
“You are planning to fly to the stars, yes?”
She turned and looked down at the man in his wheelchair. “Please go away.”
“You are German like me, yes?”
“I’m American, but my parents came from Germany. How’d you know?”
“How did I know, she asks. The rosy cheeks, blonde hair, blue eyes—”
“My eyes are gray.”
“Come closer so I can see. Yes, gray like smoke.”
“You tricked me. I was going to jump.”
“You cannot reach the stars by jumping, liebchen.”
“I was going to jump into the ocean!”
“The ocean . . . ach, that is different.”
“You won’t stop me?”
He nodded toward the wheels of his chair. “How could I stop you? It’s a nice warm night for a swim, yes?”
“A swim?” Terry glanced out over the vast expanse of dark water. Then she smiled. Then she laughed.
Albert was a Lutheran minister who had been wounded during the Great War. He was paralyzed from the waist down, but that didn’t stop him from playing shuffleboard, skeet-shooting, or joining Terry inside the glittering ballroom.
She’d sit on his lap while his strong hands maneuvered the wheels of his chair. A blur of motion, they would speed down the long deck, causing other passengers to scurry for safety. Terry fell in love with Albert’s strong hands, his craggy face, and his sense of humor.
“Can a Lutheran minister wed?” she asked. They were sharing a sumptuous meal in the ship’s opulent dining room.
“Of course, liebchen.”
“Will you marry me, Albert?”
“You swore you would never marry again.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“I do not look like your Mr. Coleman.”
“You look like Barrymore. That’s even better. Won’t you please marry me?”
“No.”
“Don’t you love me?”
“Of course I do, smoke-eyes.”
“Is it your legs? I don’t care, Albert, truly.”
“I know that,” he said with a sad smile.
“Then why?”
“Because I am dying. In a few short months I must take your journey to the stars.”
“You’re dying?” Terry stared at him with horror, hoping he was teasing, knowing he wasn’t.
“My body is wasting away.”
“But that’s not fair. Why would your God do that to you?”
“He is your God as well, Theresa.”
Terry’s half-nibbled chicken Cordon Bleu blurred. Blinking away her tears, she said, “May I stay with you until the end?”
“I do not consider my death an end. Would it make any difference if I said no?”
“No.”
Eighteen months later, standing over Albert’s grave, Terry vowed to immerse herself in church work. Throughout the years she carefully hid her emotions, believing she could achieve more positive results that way.
Eventually, her facade became reality.
* * * * *
Anissa had once overheard her father and mother discussing Aunt Theresa.
“Affairs? Marriage to an Italian count? You’re kidding,” Papa said.
“It’s true. My parents told me when I was little.”
“You must have misunderstood, Helene.”
“I didn’t misunderstand. Since she never remarried, her title is still Countess, even though she doesn’t use it.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. I never thought that dried up leaf could make it with any man, much less a dago aristocrat.”
“Hush! Lower your voice. Anissa might hear you and she remembers everything. What do you mean by dried up leaf?”
“Brittle, Helene. Theresa looks like she’d crumble at a touch. Anyway, she’s much too religious for my taste.”
“I didn’t know anyone could be too anything for your taste, Senator Stud.”
“Hush, Helene, your daughter might hear.”
Arriving in Milwaukee, Anissa was afraid to hug her great-aunt, afraid Theresa might crumble like a leaf.
Theresa was strict but fair. Although never openly demonstrative, she truly loved her sad-eyed niece.
Anissa followed every structured rule, afraid she’d upset her aunt and be sent home. Attending a Lutheran all-girl school, she maintained a straight A average and formed no real friendships, possibly because of her stuttering, probably because
of her outstanding beauty. Anissa’s gray eyes matched the color of her school uniform’s jumper, and her blonde hair swung down her back in braids that were as thick as a rope. She was both vulnerable and self-sufficient.
Just like me, thought Theresa, although there were no problems concerning her niece’s moral attitude. Could the child be unaware of her beauty?
“Now I lay me down to sleep,” prayed Anissa. “Please, God, let me wake up tomorrow morning with black hair and Elizabeth Taylor eyes. Amen.”
Anissa wasn’t sexually naive, her knowledge honed by movies, books, and the inevitable gossip of her peers. She formed crushes on Rock Hudson, Robert Redford and Jon Voight. Once she even fantasized a love affair with the minister who preached every Sunday from the pulpit of Aunt Theresa’s church.
The stupid boys who clustered outside her school’s iron fence made fun of her stutter. Had Anissa lingered with the rest of her classmates to strut and flirt, verbal torments would have ceased. She didn’t know this and treated every boy as a potential Bobby Hoffman.
She spent the generous allowance Jacob sent on volumes of poetry and movie matinees. Every Saturday afternoon she would lose herself in the action on the big screen. Later, she’d re-run the film in her head, playing all the roles. When she repeated the lines before her mirror, she never stuttered, never.
If Bobby was Anissa’s nemesis at Hillhouse, her Milwaukee enemy turned out to be a large white cat with a furry fringe of black directly beneath its nose. Aunt Theresa had named him Adolf, but Anissa nicknamed him Dolf. Anissa loved animals. Dogs, cats, even the friendly sparrows who nested outside her bedroom window, keeping their tiny heads cocked for the sound of Dolf. The cat, like Bobby, would hide behind furniture and pounce. Anissa became adept at avoiding Dolf’s needle-claws.
After years of scratches and hisses, an elderly Dolf clawed his way up Anissa’s cotton bedspread and mewed until she awoke. Then he rested his shaggy head on her arm, licked with his sandpaper tongue, gazed into her eyes, and died.
I’m a juju, thought Anissa, even while she understood that the cat had been very old. Was it better to die loved? Or to live lonely?
“ ‘And youth is cruel, and has no remorse,’ ” Anissa quoted to her reflection in the mirror.
T.S. Eliot’s words were apt, and although Anissa didn’t know it, her loneliness was about to end. Not with a whimper. More like a bang.
* * * * *
Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November . . .
“Happy Thanksgiving, Anissa. I’m sorry you couldn’t go home, but your mother has a mysterious virus and your father is spending the holidays in Chicago.”
“That’s okay, Aunt Theresa,”
“Would you like the turkey leg? I miss Adolf. He always nibbled my giblets.”
“Only s-seven more m-months of school before I graduate. I’ll m-miss you s-so much, Aunt Theresa.”
All the rest have thirty-one, except February . . .
“Anissa, did you remember to send your parents a Valentine’s card?”
“Yes, b-but they didn’t s-send m-me one.”
“Nonsense. There was a lovely card in today’s mail.”
“Do you honestly think I can’t recognize your handwriting, Aunt Theresa?”
* * * * *
Anissa graduated from high school with honors. Jacob made arrangements for her homecoming to Madison and registered her for classes at the University of Wisconsin. She returned to discover that Bobby, now twenty-six and a garage mechanic, had his own apartment across town. Bobby’s room at Hillhouse was occupied by Joseph Weiss, a pre-law student who attended the University on a Deutsch-Stern scholarship and worked part time for Jacob. Anissa thought Joe was a physical composite of her teenage crushes, Robert Redford and Jon Voight.
Other things had changed, as well. No longer active in politics, Jacob had established a Wisconsin branch of Deutsch Department Store. Warmer toward Anissa, he called her “daughter” and hinted that it was time for her to start thinking about a husband.
“The man you marry must agree to hyphenate his last name, daughter. You may select your son’s first name, but his birth certificate will be registered as Stern-whatever.”
“Yes, Papa.”
* * * * *
Anissa Weiss. Mrs. Joseph Stern-Weiss. She wrote the names over and over on lined paper, then shredded the paper before Joe could find it.
He liked her but did he love her?
Roberta Flack was heading the music charts with a song about the first time ever I saw your face. The first time Anissa saw Joe’s face, she knew he was the man she wanted to marry. He was handsome and nice and her father’s protégé. If she married Joe and had a baby, Papa would be so proud of her. She fantasized walking into Joe’s bedroom and sliding beneath his sheets.
She had seen Klute, starring Jane Fonda. Jane played a prostitute. Anissa practiced walking and talking like Jane, then decided to forget the whole thing. Joe wouldn’t react to the prostitute bit, especially from Jacob’s daughter. Besides, who in his right mind would respond to a stuttering prostitute? By the time she enticed him with sexy words, Joe would be sound asleep.
December twenty-fourth arrived. Overloaded with ornaments, an eight-foot tree struggled to wave its branches toward the vaulted living room ceiling. The angel on top resembled Anissa, who wore a white blouse and skirt above blue suede boots. Her entire outfit was a gift from Jacob, although the little To/From tag included Helene’s signature.
Beneath bristling pine needles, wrapping paper littered the carpet. Anissa’s open boxes included sweaters, accessories, and a soft brown faux-beaver coat. One small square Cartier box held diamond ear drops, sparking like tiny stars. The earrings, said Jacob, were a double-event present since Anissa would celebrate her twentieth birthday in thirteen days.
Wedged into a wheelchair, Helene had descended via a new electric staircase contraption, and she now presided over the assembled Christmas Eve guests—Dr. and Mrs. Karl Dietrich, their son, Karl Jr., Susan and Bobby Hoffman.
Anissa had selected her gifts with care. Proudly, she gave her mother a hand-knit pink shawl. With a rare show of defiant humor, she gave Joe and Bobby the newest recording by Helen Reddy, which included the feminist-inspired title song “I Am Woman.” Shopping for her father had been the hardest. Anissa finally settled on a gold tie clip with the engraved word SENATOR.
One unopened gift remained: a crudely wrapped box bound by what appeared to be an entire roll of tape. Small holes had been punched into the top. The tag read “From Joseph/To Anissa,” and she broke a fingernail trying to remove the tape.
Inside, a tiny white kitten slept, its head a little larger than the catnip mouse resting between its paws. Directly beneath its pink nose was a furry black mustache. “Oh, Joe, th-thank you,” said Anissa, awed. “Is it male or female?”
“Male.”
Anissa smiled at Joe. She had told him about Aunt Theresa’s cat, especially the part about Dolf eating her aunt’s giblets. “I guess I’ll call him Adolf, t-too. Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“Only if you do good deeds. Adopt homeless kittens or homeless students.”
“You earn your scholarship, Weiss,” Jacob muttered, puffing on a thick Cuban cigar.
Helene said good night, turning her cheek for Jacob’s quick company kiss. She was wheeled from the room by Susan. The Dietrich family left, then Jacob retired.
Lighting a cigar, Bobby plopped his wiry body into Jacob’s abandoned armchair.
“Papa won’t like that, Bobby,” Anissa said. “Those cigars were a g-gift from Dr. Dietrich, and very expensive.”
Bobby peered at her through brown eyes set close together, then grinned around a chipped front tooth. “Mind your own business, Nissa. Jacob don’t care. Did you see the tools he got me? Must be five hundred dollars’ worth.” Draining a full glass of whiskey, running a comb through his shoulder-length hair, he added, “Joe got a lousy jacket. Guess that’s because Jews don’t beli
eve in Christmas.”
“Haven’t you heard, Bobby? Santa Claus converted to Judaism last summer. He’s now called Santa Claustein.” Joe winked at Anissa and turned on the radio.
She placed her hands over her ears. “Change the station, please. If I hear one more Christmas carol, I’ll b-barf.”
“How’s this? Better?”
The radio now played the top hits of the week. Joe had cut in at number ten, “I’d Love You To Want Me.” With an exaggerated bow, he asked Anissa to dance, and they glided around the tree. She was tall, but her head fit perfectly into the curve of Joe’s neck. She pressed closer and felt his response. If he didn’t love her yet, he wanted her. She stifled the urge to rub her breasts against his shirt, aware that Bobby watched.
“I’m stayin’ over,” Bobby mumbled. He poured himself another drink and left the living room.
“Do you need help cleaning up?” Joe yawned and flicked off the radio. “Today was a big day at the store.”
“No, thanks.” Anissa nodded toward the kitten. “First, I want to feed Charlie Chaplin.”
“Charlie Chaplin? What happened to Adolf?”
“Naming a sweet little kitten for Hitler seems a tad perverse, don’t you think? Wait a sec. I’ll call him Tramp. You said he was homeless, and Chaplin played the little tramp.”
“Tramp. I like that.”
“He’s so precious. Thank you, Joe.”
Anissa Stern kissed Joseph Weiss. He tasted like cinnamon. Her legs felt like the jelled cranberries served at their Christmas Eve dinner. Wow!
“Wow!” Joe stepped backwards. “Next year I’m going to give you three kittens.”
“Papa would have a fit. He’s always wanted a large family, but I don’t think kitties are what he had in mind.”
“Anissa, have you noticed that when we talk you hardly ever stutter?”
“That’s because you’re so easy to talk to. Want to hear a secret, Joe? When I quote poetry or movie dialogue, I never stutter. It’s almost as if, inside my head, there’s an iron pressing out wrinkles.”
“Too bad real life isn’t movie dialogue.” He yawned again. “Sweet dreams, Christmas angel.”
After Joe had left the room, Anissa tossed her new fur jacket toward a chair, placed Tramp inside the large, puff-papered box, and carried her kitten into the warm kitchen. She filled a bowl with milk, then walked through the downstairs, turning off lights until only the tree glowed. “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” she sang, “kiss-ing Joseph Weiss.”
