Family Secrets (2 page)

Yussel beamed. He was happy to see anybody who would be nice to him, and he was not a snob. A fixer was as good as a businessman because a fixer was needed too. How would life go on without those who worked with their hands? His father was a wealthy merchant of yard goods, and as Yussel saw it, how could he sell those yard goods if someone else hadn’t first made them? It was the only clever thing Yussel had ever thought of all by himself, and so he liked to repeat it to anyone who would listen, hoping they would think he was a philosopher.

“Please sit,” Yussel said. “Will you have tea?”

“Why not?”

Yussel laughed. “Why not? Yes, why not? There’s nothing else to do today but drink tea until a man floats away.”

“I have an idea for you and me to do a little business,” Adam said.

And so the first part of his plan happened. He persuaded Yussel to put up the money to buy a lot, and then Adam sold the lot at a profit to one of the dealers in the coffee house, and by the end of the day Adam and Yussel were three hundred dollars richer, half of it for each of them, and not one of them had gotten their hands dirty, not one of them had set a foot out of doors into the mud. Yussel was as delighted and proud as if he had done it all himself.

“We make good partners, you and I,” he said.

“We do,” Adam said.

“You have the gift of gab. When I talk, I put my foot in my mouth. With you talking and me being the financial power, we could do very well together.”

“That’s true,” Adam said. “But we could do more than trade one lot. What
is
a lot?”

Yussel looked blank. “What’s a lot? Everybody knows what a lot is.”

“I mean,” Adam said patiently, “what is it for?”

“It’s for … for trading.”

“But why do we trade it?”

Yussel brightened. “To make money!”

“But why, besides making money?”

“I don’t like it when you talk in circles,” Yussel said.

“We trade it,” Adam said, “because it is a piece of land that someone, some day, will build houses on. Now, we have been trading land that everybody wants, and it’s easy to sell a piece of land to a man who already has another piece of land next to it, because when he has enough land he wants to build on it and then he really makes money. So, my plan is this. Why don’t we buy some land that nobody wants, get it very cheap, and then
we
build on it?”

“Why do we want something nobody wants?”

“Because we have imagination. We see what it could be.”

“But who would build there, on this land nobody wants but us?”

“We would,” Adam said.

“I thought you said that,” Yussel said. “But would somebody want it after we built on it?”

“Of course. The people who would rent apartments from us.”

“You mean we would be landlords?”

“We would be landowners and builders and landlords.”

Yussel breathed a heavy sigh. “Oy, that takes a lot of money. Where could we get it?”

“From the bank.”

“What would we use as collateral?”

“The land.”

“What land?” Yussel said. “What is this magic land that nobody sees is wonderful but us, that we will get cheap and that will make us rich men?”

“Mudville.”

Yussel’s excited face turned glum. “You’ve been making fun of me.”

“I’m serious,” Adam said. “We buy a big piece of Mudville. You with all your bad luck, and me, a fixer with no brains, how could anyone do anything but laugh at us? They will sell us as much land in Mudville as we want and think good riddance. And the bank will give us money, not as much as we would like, because they will think we’re fools too, but enough. We won’t be building palaces, you know. We’ll be building good, cheap houses for people who have no homes to live in.”

“If you say it can be done I believe you,” Yussel said. “I’m willing to put up the money if you do the rest. But I wouldn’t tell anybody. I’d be too embarrassed.”

“They’ll find out soon enough,” Adam said.

With a hundred and fifty dollars in his pocket and wet feet Adam got off the streetcar and walked the two blocks to his apartment house. What a story he had to tell Polly tonight! First the story, then the doctor. No, first the doctor, then the story. He walked up the steps to his front door and suddenly there were women all around him—wailing women in babushkas and sheitels, crazy women, strangers, neighbors, all of them weeping and babbling like lunatics. He tried to push his way through them but hands grabbed at his sleeves. He recognized one of them at least, Tanta Yettel, his ancient aunt.

“Oh, my Adam,” she said, and burst into tears. Her eyes were red as if she had already been crying for hours.

“What is it?” he said, and the first thought that popped into his mind was that something had happened to his mother.

“Polly is dead.”

TWO

The day of the funeral the rain stopped, and Adam thought that life was strange because it was the rain that had started him on his great plan to become a success in life and it was that same rain that had taken his wife away. Afterward the small apartment was filled with friends and relatives. The women brought cakes and pies they had baked, platters of noodle pudding, chicken, beef, potato pancakes, cookies, bread. They sat and stared at each other and tried to think of things to say, and sometimes one or another of the women cried. They had every intention of sitting shiva for the entire prescribed time, and as far as Adam was concerned it was a waste of part of his life. Dead was dead. The dead lived on in the minds and hearts of the living. God had not made heaven and hell, the goyim had, and if they wanted to believe in such things and frighten themselves to death it was their pleasure, not his. Heaven or hell were here, on earth; he had seen plenty of evidence of both. He had seen plenty of devils who were human, without worrying about one with horns and a tail.

He left the apartment, and the women were sympathetic, thinking he needed to be alone with his grief. He went to the coffee house to find Yussel, and told him what had happened. Yussel was full of sympathy.

“I’m a bachelor myself, but I feel for your sorrow.”

“Ya, ya.” Adam nodded solemnly. “Now, you remember that we are still going to buy that land. Next week, on Monday, I’ll be here to meet you and we’ll start to work.”

Yussel nodded and clasped Adam’s hand. “Work is good medicine for grief. My mother used to say that, may she rest in peace.”

“Your mother was a smart woman.”

It was not so bad in the apartment in the evenings, for then the men came back from work and Adam had someone to talk to. He could never talk to women. He looked around at the faces of the people he had known for years, so many of them married to relatives, so many of the faces alike, all of them looking for security in a hard world and a strange land. A man should be married. A man should not live alone like a dog.

The baby screamed in her bed in the night. Polly’s younger sister, Lucy, rose immediately and went into the dark room to comfort her. She came out carrying the baby, soothing her with soft words and little kisses. Adam watched them. Lucy was so young and small, only twenty. She almost never spoke, which he liked, and when she did her voice was gentle and she never said anything stupid. She was small, but she was not frail looking. Polly’s height had been deceptive; she was thin and she had not been strong and she had died of an illness that took old people and babies. Looks could fool you. He followed Lucy into the kitchen.

“I’m making tea, Adam. Would you like some? Or would you prefer coffee?” She was speaking to him in Yiddish.

“You don’t speak English?” he asked.

Lucy blushed. “Oh, yes,” she said in English. “I studied at night school. But sometimes, with the family, I feel more comfortable when I speak Yiddish …” She smiled shyly and buried her face in the baby’s soft hair. She still had the child cradled in one arm, the child half-asleep now, her face cuddled in Lucy’s neck, drooling on her clean white shirtwaist. With the other hand Lucy kept on measuring the spoonfuls of tea. It was a small, square, capable hand.

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Adam said.

“I’ll put her back to bed soon,” Lucy said. “She had a bad dream. She misses her mother and she doesn’t understand what happened.”

“She needs a mother.”

Lucy nodded and hoisted the baby higher on her hip.

“She’s too heavy for you,” Adam said.

“No, it’s all right.”

“I’ll take her. You make the tea.” He took Leah Vania from Lucy’s arm and realized how heavy the child must have been for her. He liked a woman who loved children. The baby recognized him in her sleep and put her fat arms around his neck. Lucy smiled at them.

“What a pretty picture that makes,” she said.

“A sad picture,” Adam said. “A young man alone, twenty-four years old, and an orphan child. I suppose they’ll put her in an orphanage now.”

Lucy paled. “Oy, no! We would never let them do that!” She put her fingers delicately to her lips and made a soft puffing sound into them: her way of spitting on the floor to keep away evil, her gentle New World version of the coarse Old World custom she still believed in.

“I have to work hard all day to make a living,” Adam said, “Who would take care of the child?”

“We will! All of us. I promise you, Adam, they would have to kill me first before I would let them take away your child.” The color had returned to Lucy’s face and she was having trouble catching her breath. He hoped she wouldn’t cry. He hated women who cried. She didn’t cry: she turned to the kettle in which the water had begun to boil and deftly wrapped a dish towel around the handle, then poured the freshly boiling water over the tea leaves and put the cover on the teapot so the tea could steep. Then she looked at him again. She was breathing normally.

“I think I would rather have coffee,” Adam said.

“Yes? All right,” she said calmly, and took the tin of coffee from the shelf.

“No, don’t bother,” he said. He put his hand on her hand. He was glad that she didn’t recoil. Her hand was very cool.

“If you want coffee, of course you shall have it,” Lucy said matter-of-factly. He saw how quick and neat she was, without a wasted motion. She was shy, but she was not uncomfortable with him; she was, after all, his first cousin as well as his sister-in-law. She respected him and was fond of him, but Adam sensed that she was not afraid of him, and he liked that too. A shy, quiet woman was good; a frightened, silly one was a trial for life.

“So, nu?” he said pleasantly. “What are you going to do with your life?”

“Do?” She looked at him in open amazement. What else was there for a woman to do but hope to have a good husband and healthy children? Her look searched him to see if he was teasing her, and then she seemed satisfied that he was not. “I don’t know how to talk philosophy,” she said.

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

“Good.” She smiled almost mischievously. “See, the coffee is boiling already. Would you like a piece of cake with it? There is some which is fresh today and I put it aside for you.”

“Did you make it?”

“No.”

“But is it good then?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow is the last day we all sit shiva,” Adam said. “It will be lonely here.”

“I know,” she said softly. He liked the way her moods shifted along with his, as if she were his own shadow; instantly, instinctively sympathetic, following the lights and darks of his spirit. “Please will you come spend Shabbas with us?” she said. “Both Friday night and Saturday.”

“That is not what I want,” he said. “I will
not
live in other people’s houses.”

“We’re not ‘other people’—we’re family.”

“No.”

“Then no,” she said.

“Will you marry me?” Adam said.

She looked at him for a long moment and he noticed that her eyes were green. “Yes,” she said. “But on one condition.”

“A condition you’re giving me?”

“Yes. I know that in time, please God, we’ll have children, and I want them all to be equal. I want Leah Vania to be my child. She’s so young, soon she won’t remember her mother. I want all our children to be true brothers and sisters. I don’t want anyone to tell them.”

Adam felt a great wave of contentment wash over him. He had chosen well. “I promise,” he said.

Lucy held out her arms. “Now give me my daughter,” she said, “It’s time I put her back in her bed.”

When Adam married Lucy in six weeks, everyone felt it was a good move; it was the old, respected way for a man or a woman who was widowed to marry quickly, and preferably marry the next of kin, for it held the family together even more tightly, and the family was safety. In the meantime, Adam had begun to buy land in Mudville, using Yussel’s money, and there were very few in the coffee house who were loyal enough friends to come forward and tell them what fools they were. This pleased Adam, for he knew people were talking about him and Yussel behind their backs, laughing at them, and the more they laughed the easier the land in Mudville became to buy. Soon they owned enough to start a small community. Then he went to the bank, where the people told him it was a risky venture but seemed impressed by his confidence in himself. He knew which men were the best builders; they had to be fast and cheap, but their houses had to be safe. He would not build houses that fell down or burned down and killed people. A man did not have to be a killer to make money.

In August, when the land was dry and hard from the summer sun, the builders began to build on what had once been a sea of mud and now was nothing worse than a barren and ugly foundation which could be quite serviceable. The fact that there was nothing around it did not bother Adam. He would also build some suitable stores and perhaps even plant some trees. He would take out a few ads in the Yiddish language newspapers, and between that and word of mouth, the apartments would be rented in no time.

Lucy was pregnant, and remembering his promise to her, Adam moved their little family to a new neighborhood. No neighbor women remembered Polly in her stylish dresses walking down the street with Leah Vania, nor the funeral, nor his remarriage. Lucy was his wife, Leah Vania was their child, and he noticed with approval that the little girl was going to look exactly like him. She had his clever little eyes and his clear, intelligent forehead. She remembered everything she heard, like a little monkey, both English and Yiddish, and babbled and prattled away in both interchangeably.