by Jan Cherubin
The unveiling was scheduled for October 25th. Would it be safe to come back to Baltimore by then? Everyone I consulted, including Anne Brighton and the executor, believed the cops would not raid a cemetery over a domestic dispute that occurred months ago.
Meanwhile, Brenda was busy making sure the headstone was perfect, going over the brunch menu with Aunt Shirley, and, as it happened, swearing out a well-timed warrant for my arrest. All she needed to trigger an aggressive pursuit by the police was one eyewitness willing to identify the suspect. Fortunately, Mrs. Rollins couldn’t identify the tall middle-aged man she saw placing items in a late-model blue car, but she recognized Mr. Aronson’s younger daughter carrying out several bulging garbage bags. She remembered me from the snowstorm. Mrs. Rollins was a good neighbor, and naturally wanted to help Brenda, the grieving widow who lived next door, so Mrs. Rollins agreed to sign an affidavit to justify an arrest. I was charged with felony breaking and entering, and grand larceny.
CHAPTER 55
We recited the mourner’s kaddish under the chestnut trees, the leaves a riot of color, the ancient syllables like pebbles in our mouths. Shep Levine followed the Hebrew with Yeats’s “The Wild Swans at Coole,” against a soft blue October sky. How unimaginable not to exist. Never to see a winter sunset, the trees in their autumn beauty, or even conceive of swans. To awake some day to find they had flown away. I could hear my father. “Lost tribe of Israel, the Irish,” he was saying. Susan and I peeled the veil from the stone. And now my heart is sore.
At the brunch, my uncles were furious. “You broke the promise you made to your father!” Uncle Harry yelled. What changed? Uncle Harry had been my lookout. Brenda got to him, that’s what changed. She told him she felt violated, which was understandable. I was sorry about that. Brenda also reminded my uncles of the promise they knew damn well I had made to their beloved brother. Loyalty was big in their small-time underworld, although to whom was often up for debate. So they switched to Brenda’s side. I was full of righteous indignation. I thought they would appreciate my noble and heroic deeds, saving my father’s poetry from the ash heap.
But no, that was wrong. I wanted it both ways—to be a good girl and to be free—and I couldn’t have it both ways. What I’d done was not noble. It was exquisite in its selfishness, and that was OK. I was no longer an obedient daughter. I had never been a saint. I was a real person, lit from within, full of myself.
Red lights flashed in front of Aunt Shirley’s house. Fred was out in the street demanding to see the warrant and stalling for time. For somber ceremonies like funerals and unveilings, Fred took time away from work. I appreciated him stepping up for me. He was really letting the cops have it. Shep Levine bolted out of the den and grabbed me in a bear hug. No wonder Brenda was missing from the unveiling. She would have been attacked by an angry mob for calling the cops on me. As soon as my uncles saw the police pull up, they switched back to my side. Alvin Aronson was no stoolie. No one ever called Harry Aronson a rat. And Evie Braverman, my revolutionary mother, was no snitch either, with her FBI file as thick as a deli sandwich.
“Joanna Aronson?” Uncle Alvin said to the cop on the front porch. “She was here, but she’s gone now.”
“My niece Joanna?” said Uncle Harry. “You won’t see her no more.”
Shep pointed me toward the kitchen door and gave me a push. I burst into the backyard like I was on fire. “Joanna! Come sit with us,” Darleen called. She was at the table under the umbrella with Travis, Uncle Lou, Uncle Nat, and Shana Bloom. I kept going. There was no time to explain. When I got to the retaining wall, I hiked up my skirt and hoisted myself onto the ledge ripping my new tights, which bothered me way more than it should have under the circumstances, but they were fresh out of the package. I stood up shakily. My heels kept sinking into the mud when I tried to gain footing on the hillside, so I got on my hands and knees and clawed my way up. I could buy another pair of tights. Men with guns were after me. When I was deep into the neighbor’s yard, I looked back. The picnic table mourners had put down their bagels and were staring at me on the hilltop. I continued on, walking quickly around to the front of the strange house on the unfamiliar, deserted street, and stood waiting on the lawn. I half expected my father’s Torino to come nosing over the hill. He would hand me a striped towel. We’d bump over the railroad tracks. He’d say he was sorry. But it was Shep’s silver Jaguar cresting the hill. He raced toward me and screeched to a stop. I got in and we sped around the winding streets of Mount Washington, past old houses and old trees and down into a gulley and parked and went into the Mount Washington Tavern where we ordered drinks and waited until the coast was clear.
Brenda couldn’t believe I got away. I wasn’t sure what she had imagined or hoped for. Money for herself, yes. But prison time for me? Anne Brighton had the warrant quashed and turned into a subpoena and a court date was set for March, which was a few months away, and for which I received a summons in the mail. The whole State of Maryland vs. Joanna Aronson. Brenda did not show up in March on the appointed day and so, lacking any courtroom drama, I was given a kind of probation called a “stet.” Cease all burglary for one year and the charge would be expunged from my record. I did not have to return anything I took from the house. It was a relief, but also an anticlimax. After court, my mother and I met Shep back at the Mount Washington Tavern. Shep and I ordered vodka tonics and my mother got her usual champagne cocktail. She told us she heard the house on Cedar Drive was up for sale, which was not a surprise, and that Brenda gave away Hoffman, which I hadn’t expected. The National Dog was an orphan. So many losses. Sometimes I thought I’d made the wrong choice. What might I have in my possession now if I had handed Brenda the money she wanted? I never even got a chance to look into the attic. I’d left so much behind, secrets I would never know.
I told my mother I finally felt a kinship with Brenda. Wasn’t it ironic, after everything we’d been through? Darleen had been to the house and Brenda proudly showed her a Pendaflex file Brenda had labeled “Warrant.” I had the same file, same label. Brenda and I shared an obsession. Brenda, mon semblable, mon frère. My mother said I was being ridiculous. Brenda and I were nothing alike. My mother, possibly trying to make up for the past, was sticking up for me, finally, and I was glad. I didn’t bother arguing with her about the dark part that exists in all of us.
Shep said he had a present, ordered another drink and went out to his car. He came back with the City College yearbook of 1958, his first year teaching, my father’s fifth. Shep said the yearbook was mine to keep if I wanted it. I flipped through the pages until I reached “Clubs and Activities” and found the section on the Collegian newspaper. Tears came to my eyes the second I saw the photograph, and then a shiver went down my spine. In the picture, my father stands over a seminar table surrounded by clean-cut boys, raising a cane above their heads. The caption reads: “Efficient work combined with a touch of humor produces an outstanding publication.”
It wasn’t the familiar face from the past that stirred me most—his black-framed glasses, the private smile—or even the connection I made between the threatening cane my father is wielding in the photograph and the Colonel’s punishing cane. What shocked me with recognition was his handwriting on the blackboard behind him.
Who would I be if I’d had a seat at that table? I closed the yearbook and took a long swallow of my drink. I had to step out of my father’s shadow, and Fred’s shadow too. It was time to start living my life. The joys and glamour of the wider world awaited.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to my editor and publisher, Mike Sager, for being all action. I am grateful for his professionalism and inspiration. Heartfelt appreciation to my early editors and readers: David Hirshey, Daphne Merkin, Susan Squire, Sarah Steinberg, Marilyn Johnson, Lisa Land, E. Jean Carroll, Ellen Hoffs, Naomi Firestone-Teeter, Joy Horowitz, Linda DeCrane, Janne Keyes, Michael Pollan, Thaila Ramanujam, Rachel Brau, Gil Schwartz, Laura Svienty, Carol Patchett, Tom Patchett, Linda
Burstyn, Adam Taylor, Annie Stein, Diane Leslie, Ellen Stern, Rina Freedman, and the late Jerry Levin.
For help with research on Jewish orphanages, thank you to Rick Safran and The Hebrew National Orphan Home Alumni Association, as well as the Jewish Child Care Association and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The Hebrew National Orphan Home, Memories of Orphanage Life, edited by Ira A. Greenberg with Richard G. Safran and Sam George Arcus, and Déjà Views of an Aging Orphan by Sam Arcus, were invaluable resources.
I am indebted to The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center for their community and validation, and to Judi Barker, a real patron of the arts, for providing me and other writers and artists studio space at the Santa Monica Air Center.
My love and thanks to my daughter, Chloe Director, for her close reading and constant encouragement. And finally, unending gratitude and love to my partner and consigliere, Roger Director, for taking this long journey with me.
About The Author
Jan Cherubin is the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She has an MFA in fiction from Bennington, the college where she first studied writing with Bernard Malamud when she was an undergraduate. Her journalism has appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles, New York, The Forward, and other publications. Cherubin also does stand-up comedy at clubs in Los Angeles. The Orphan’s Daughter is her first novel.
About The Publisher
The Sager Group was founded in 1984. In 2012, it was chartered as a multimedia content brand, with the intent of empowering those who create art—an umbrella beneath which makers can pursue, and profit from, their craft directly, without gatekeepers. TSG publishes books; ministers to artists and provides modest grants; designs logos, products, and packaging; and produces documentary, feature, and commercial films. By harnessing the means of production, The Sager Group helps artists help themselves. To read more from The Sager Group, visit www.TheSagerGroup.net.
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