Family Secrets (34 page)

New York had all the theaters, the good restaurants, the places to go. Lazarus could go to work on the subway the way he always did; it would just be a few extra stops. And there was the opera, she mustn’t forget that. They had season tickets as always. It would be nice to have dinner in New York and go to the opera, without worrying about getting there and back and without having her usual fight with Lazarus because she wouldn’t take the subway at night and he said a cab was too expensive. She always won, but they always had their fight, and she hated that they had to go to New York on the subway even though they came home in a taxi. If you got all dressed up to go to something like the opera it was depressing to have to sit on the subway with all those slobs. Oh, and they could go to the symphony all the time, and all those wonderful concerts. Rain and snow couldn’t keep them away if they lived in New York, it would all be so close and so convenient.

Everett would be going away to college next year, if any college was willing to take him with his bad marks, so there would just be the two of them. They could take a small apartment in midtown. When Everett came home for holidays he could sleep in the living room on a convertible sofa. Then Lazarus couldn’t complain about the high rent because New York apartments cost so much more than Brooklyn ones. And after all, Everett would be getting married someday and he would want to live in his own apartment. He didn’t seem to know any girls yet, or if he did he was too shy to ask them out, but when he went to college he would meet girls. He was still young, only seventeen. A seventeen-year-old boy wasn’t interested in girls yet it seemed. In her day, she remembered, seventeen-year-old boys were always hanging around her when she was seventeen, but today young people were different. Maybe that was because they had to go out on formal dates and the boy had to pay for things and act like a man. Maybe Everett was just scared. He certainly wasn’t either poor or stingy; she always gave him lots of pocket money, but instead of using it to take a girl out dancing he would just buy more and more electrical equipment, his junk as they all called it, or go to a movie all by himself. Everett would spend every cent she gave him on himself, and then beg for more.

It was a shame about Everett’s bad marks, but she really couldn’t blame him too much because she had been a bad student too. Everett said that the courses were too easy for him, too boring, and that he knew more than the teachers. He did know more than the science teachers, and he was good at math, but his English was terrible, even she could see that. His handwriting was illegible and he could hardly spell. She’d never seen such spelling on a grown boy from a good home and a good school. That was the trouble with sending him to that progressive school, they didn’t make him work hard enough. They said he had a very high IQ. They said he was a genius. But they let him write like a five-year-old. With that handwriting he’d make a good doctor, scribbling prescriptions no one could decipher, and Lazarus had always rather hoped that Everett would become interested in medicine, but Everett wasn’t interested in being a doctor at all. He was only applying to colleges because his parents were forcing him to. He said he wanted to be an inventor!

Did Thomas Edison go to college, he asked her. How did she know? She wasn’t supposed to know things like that.

One day a month, a Wednesday, Melissa always went to a matinee in New York with a girlfriend. This afternoon she was going with Stella Greenglass to see a new hit play,
Foreign Affair
, which they’d written away for tickets to about three months ago. Although Melissa preferred musicals she liked to see everything, just to keep her hand in. It seemed so long ago that she was a silly girl who wanted so badly to go on the stage. What a lifetime of misery she would have had! She was lucky she came to her senses when she met Lazarus. Lazarus had his little foibles, but he was a perfect husband. He was so brilliant, and he loved her so much, and she was so proud of him. He was still the best catch in her whole crowd.

Melissa and Stella arrived at the theater early so they would have a chance to read the whole playbill before the play started. Melissa particularly enjoyed reading the biographies of the players. Sometimes then, even though it was silly, she would daydream and pretend it was her, and make up a fantasy biography for herself, all the shows she had starred in.

Stella had bought a box of chocolate-covered peppermints, but Melissa regretfully declined one because she was watching her figure. It was funny how she used to be able to eat as many sweets as she wanted—and what a sweet tooth she’d had!—and now she had to watch every bite to stay thin. That was what growing older meant. She didn’t have a gray hair on her head, all of it was the same golden blonde it had been when she was a girl, and she had hardly a wrinkle that you could see, but she had to get on that bathroom scale every day to make sure the pounds didn’t sneak up on her. Lazarus had a doctor’s scale, of course, which was mean of him, because you could read every quarter of a pound and you
knew
it was accurate.

She had read nearly all of the actors’ biographies when she came to a short one near the end, of an actor with a small part. He was Scott Brown, and one of the first plays he had been in was
All My Daughters
. He was her Scott Brown! Oh goodness, she hoped she wasn’t blushing. It was so funny to think that here he was, after all those years, and she was going to see him right up there on that stage. She wondered if he was still handsome. It said in the biography that he had been in Canada for many years doing repertory. Was Canada good? He certainly wasn’t a star; he had a small part in
Foreign Affair
and she hadn’t even seen him in anything else. He’d always meant to be a star. Melissa could hardly wait for the play to start so she could see what Scott Brown looked like now, but at the same time she was afraid to see him because he might be a disappointment. He had been so handsome. She really had never considered throwing her life away on him. Why, it would have been a tragedy! She would never have been married to Lazarus, with her perfect life, and sitting here in her lovely pale green wool suit with the little golden fox around her neck, her nails all manicured and her hair all set, in an orchestra seat. She would have broken nails from scrubbing floors, and her hair would probably be all gray from worry and poverty.

She enjoyed the play, but Scott Brown didn’t appear until the end of the first act and then he had only two lines. He was in the second act again and had a short scene, but that was all. He was still handsome, only older and more dignified-looking. It was a shame he had never made it. It was because he looked like … just anybody. That was why, so many years ago, she’d thought he looked like someone she knew and had felt comfortable with him. Scott Brown looked like someone everybody knew.

She wondered if she should go backstage. No, she really didn’t want to speak to him. She tried to imagine Scott Brown at Windflower and the thought was so grotesque that it made her actually sick to her stomach. He wouldn’t fit in at Windflower at all. Lazarus would be perfect at Windflower. Lazarus deserved Windflower.

That night at dinner Melissa broached the subject of moving to New York to Lazarus. He was not pleased, but he was not as resistant to the idea as she had expected. If that schoolteacher Jonah could afford it, he certainly could. Melissa asked him if she could begin looking for apartments when Lavinia began looking, so maybe they could live in the same building, and Lazarus told her to go ahead, looking was free.

She could hardly wait to telephone Lavinia after dinner and tell her the good news. They were well into a good chat about the kind of apartments they would like to look at when the maid came into the bedroom.

“Can I talk to you, Mrs. Bergman?”

“Yes, Ruby. Lavinia, I’ll call you back.”

The schvartze was standing there looking both pleased and regretful, a little smile on her face. “I’m quittin’, Mrs. Bergman.”

“You’re leaving me?
Why
?”

“I’m gonna work in a war plant. Help the war effort. I’m gonna be a riveter.”

“A riveter?” Melissa said, horrified. “That’s a man’s job!”

“Used to be a man’s job. All the men in the Army now. I’m gonna get twice what I make here and help our country.”

“You want a raise?” Melissa asked.

Ruby shook her head. “No, Ma’am. Thank you, but I’m gonna be Ruby the Riveter.” She chuckled. “Maybe they’ll write a song about me too, huh?”

“Oh, Ruby, you can’t leave me! I need you too much.”

“I’ll come back after the war’s over,” Ruby said cheerfully.

“Well, that’s very kind of you.”

Ruby nodded, the sarcasm completely wasted on her. “I’ll finish my week and then go.”

“I can’t talk you out of it?”

“No.”

Melissa sighed. “Do you have a friend who wants your job here?”

“All my friends workin’ in the war plants. That’s how I got the idea.”

“Oh, Ruby.”

“You’ll get along.” She smiled and went back to the kitchen.

Melissa had developed a terrible headache. She took two aspirin and called Lavinia back. “Lavinia, you won’t believe it. My schvartze is leaving me to work in a war plant.”

“I’m not surprised,” Lavinia said. “They make a fortune there.”

“But what will I do?”

“You’ll make do. You’ll cook and you’ll clean, and Lazarus can help out too. He’s a man but he’s not a cripple. Jonah helps me.”

“Jonah’s a lot younger,” Melissa said indignantly. “I can’t ask Lazarus to do housework.”

“Jonah makes his own breakfast every morning and washes the dishes.”

“Well, Lazarus can’t cook.”

“He can eat cornflakes standing over the sink like he does anyway. It’s not such a tragedy.”

“Oh, I’m so upset,” Melissa said. “You know what I’m going to do? I just decided. We’re going to live in a housekeeping hotel, with room service and a hotel maid. We can live in the Edwardian.” The Edwardian was Papa’s hotel, he had finished it just before the war started and he owned it. “Papa can get us a good suite and a special rate. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Enjoy yourself,” Lavinia said.

“What’s the matter with a hotel?”

“A hotel is fine. And the Edwardian is a first-class hotel. But for myself, I’d rather be carted off than live in a hotel. I have to have a real home.”

“Well, that’s you. I like hotels.”

“Then enjoy yourself.”

“Lavinia, why are you always so negative?”

“Did I say you shouldn’t live in a hotel?”

“Oh, you’re so impossible, Lavinia!”

Melissa hung up. She went into the living room and pulled Lazarus away from his favorite evening radio program.

“What’s the matter, Toots?”

“Lazarus, I want us to live in a housekeeping hotel. I want to live in the Edwardian.”

He pondered that. “We can get a cut rate from Papa, and get rid of the schvartze. That might be a good idea, Toots.”

“I knew you’d like it.”

He nodded. “Yes, I think it’s a good idea.”

“Well then, instead of signing the lease and painting we’ll just move.”

“It’s all right with me.”

TWELVE

The family had worried that Hazel, with her limitations, might have trouble taking care of her little son, Richie, but everything seemed to be going along fine.

Now that Richie was four years old, Hazel could take him with her wherever she went. She most liked to take him shopping with her. All day long she would wander through the air-conditioned new stores, enjoying the coolness, buying whatever took her fancy, dragging Richie along by the arm. He was a docile and pretty little boy, with a sweet smile. Everything pleased him. It never occurred to Hazel that he should have friends to play with because in her mind, while he was her prized son, he was also somehow her little doll baby from her youth, and he belonged to her. He did whatever she told him to. He was a good doll baby.

She would stand in the fitting room for hours, trying on new gowns to wear to the dinners Herman took her to, having them fitted, and Richie would sit quietly on the chair nearby, watching her. Sometimes he fell asleep, if it was late in the afternoon. Since he could sleep anywhere, it never occurred to her to take him home for a nap. Doll babies went to sleep whenever you told them to—they just shut their eyes—and Richie was the same. She bought him lots of clothes too, because she liked to dress him up. He didn’t get dirty like other little boys she had seen on the street. His little sandals stayed white.

Sometimes she took him to the cabana club and let him dig in the sand. He liked grownups better than children, and always rewarded any admiring grownup with his sweet smile. Children seemed to frighten him. He would look at them as if he wanted to play with them, but he never got too close.

Hazel was looking forward to the summer when she would take him to Windflower, and they would spend the whole summer with the family. Herman was going to take them there and stay for a few days, and then he had to come back to Florida for business, but he said he would come to visit them once during the summer, or maybe even twice if he could get away. Hazel knew that Herman was very important, and that all the business he did bought her and Richie all their nice things, so she never complained if Herman couldn’t be with her even though she would have liked him to. For that summer she was going to take Richie’s baby nurse, who was still with him, so the nurse could make his meals and feed him and give him his baths just like she did here in Miami Beach. He was getting a little old to have a baby nurse, and Hazel felt she could do a lot of those things for him by herself, but nobody ever let her do anything. Herman said she should keep the nurse for this year anyway, but Hazel didn’t like the way the nurse tried to tell her what to do. The nurse said she shouldn’t give him Rice Krispies every night, that he had to have meat and vegetables. Hazel thought that was all right if the nurse cooked all those things, but on the nurse’s nights off she gave him Rice Krispies because he liked them and you didn’t have to cook them. Hazel knew that if the nurse would just mind her own business she could get along fine. She didn’t like being told what to do, and she decided to get rid of that nurse next year no matter what.