Mitla Pass (40 page)

When the old codger wasn’t hawking or singing opera, he was making eyes at the ladies.
Nu,
Hannah thought, a little flirting from an Italian was better than no flirt at all. Twice a week she stopped at the Abruzzi Brothers’ stall, and in no time at all they were exchanging friendly banter.

Old Angelo and his brother Tony had seven sons between them. Six of them worked two family fishing boats in the bay, while he and his brother ran the stall. Angelo had retired when the war broke out, but when his sons started going off to the service, he returned to the market.

Hannah opened the locket she wore about her neck. Angelo wiped his hands and put on his glasses, aware of the proximity of the locket.

“My son, Lazar.”

“Hey, lemme see. A Marine! Now, thatsa somethin’.”

“He was wounded at Belleau Wood.”

“I pray for him.”

“He’s recovered quite nicely. Married his nurse. A French girl.”

“Oh, datsa great. Frenchwoman”—fingers to lips—”lika beautiful
vino.
”

Angelo returned the compliment, showing Hannah a photograph of a sailor boy. “This is my
bambino,
Dominick.” Now a confidential whisper, as though the Kaiser’s agents were listening from under one of the piles of fish. “He’s a submariner. His boat is in dry dock. Even comes down and helps his poppa at the stall.”

So! That was the culprit
potskying
around with Pearl!

“Thisa boy, he give his old man lotsa trouble. Fishing boat is good enough for my other sons, for Tony’s sons, but not Dominick. He was a rookie policeman when the war come.”

Abruzzi gloried in his knowledge of submarines and went on to explain that the United States had four submarines in service patrolling the European coast, namely, the L-l, L-2, L-3, and L-4. Earlier that year, the L-5 had been launched and commissioned at the naval shipyard in Newport News. Dominick Abruzzi was a member of the crew.

The L-5 started for Europe, but developed trouble two days at sea and sped home. The dry docks at Newport News, at the opposite end of the bay, were filled with ships. The L-5 was towed to the yard at Sparrows Point for repairs and modifications and the crew assigned to temporary duty in Baltimore.

That was where Dominick met Pearl, who was a lady welder assigned to work on the sub. Every night, Dominick would go to the Jewish servicemen’s canteen to meet her under the name of Charlie Goldberg. Nature then began to take its course.

P
EARL TOOK OFF
her shoes to make her feet quiet, turned the key in the front door lock, and closed it ever so carefully. She went up the stairs with her feet pressed against either side to avoid creaking.

Hannah sat in a rocker in Pearl’s room, knitting.

“Momma! You startled me. You’re up late.”

“I could make, perhaps, the same observation.”

“Oh ...”

“What are you carrying your shoes for, Pearl? They’re too heavy on your feet?”

“I didn’t want to wake up the babies.”

“That’s very considerate.”

“Momma, what’s wrong?”

“So, maybe you’ll tell me.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You haven’t been home a single night all week.”

“I’ve been ... at the canteen. You can kind of forget what time it is. So much fun and all.”

“I’m your mother, Pearl. You shouldn’t lie to your mother.”

“Momma, what are you talking about?”

“One Mr. Dominick Abruzzi.”

“Oh!”

“Momma already knows,
shaynele.
This is not a good situation you’re getting yourself into. It would be better if you didn’t see this boy again. I want you to promise.”

“No, Momma, I won’t ... I can’t.”

When Hannah read her daughter’s expression, she realized. “Have you been to ... have you, God forbid ... have you?”

“We’re married!” Pearl wept, putting her hands over her face.

“Married? Married? Does his father know?”

“No, no one knows.”

“But you’re a child.”

“I lied about my age.”

“So, who would marry you? I demand to know.”

“A priest. He did it secretly.”

“A priest! A Catholic priest!
Vay iss mir! Oy,
let me think. Your cousin Gilbert knows a lawyer. It can be annulled.”

“No, Momma. I’m going to have a baby.”

“Gevalt!”

S
UCH A MAJOR
transgression was not to be easily forgiven. There was a tear-soaked banishing, as Pearl moved two blocks away to the huge three-story house belonging to the Abruzzi family on Albemarle Street. The place was filled from top to bottom with family. As though there weren’t enough kids already, they spoiled Pearl as if she were the Virgin Mary carrying little Jesus.

Pearl fared well and got plump like her mother-in-law and sisters-in-law. Italians, she learned, could be extremely affectionate when they weren’t fighting one another. Even the fights were largely playacting. Pearl never knew that people could devour so much wine and food and music. Caruso records and operas played day and night on the windup gramophone.

Moses, recovering from his stroke, learned what had happened and broke his silence. “That girl will not die a natural death!” he condemned.

Good, Hannah thought, serves Moses right. Look, the
momser
is happy! He’s got something terrible to get his teeth into. The son of a bitch is taking to this tragedy as though it were a joy!

Hannah expected Pearl to come crawling back on her hands and knees, but such was not the case. After a few months, Hannah established an oblique, secondhand liaison. She would have neighbor friends just happen by the Abruzzi Brothers’ stall and make innocent, offhand inquiries. Old Angelo sensed what was going on and he knew, in his heart, that Hannah was a fine, fine person and it would only be a matter of time until she made peace with the situation.

Hannah caved in when word got back to her that Pearl’s water had broken three weeks prematurely. She plunged headlong into the strange world of Mercy Hospital, with all its crosses and somber nuns and candles and chapels and kneeling and God knows what else, to be at her daughter’s side.

She met Dominick, her Italian son-in-law, for the first time, pacing the corridor with Angelo and a half-dozen Abruzzi women.

For such an infant as Anna Maria Abruzzi, only an animal could not find forgiveness. What a baby! From the absolute minute of birth she was a ravishing beauty, little Anna Maria with the huge deep dark eyes and a head already filled with little black curls. What normal grandmother could reject?

When push came to shove, one would have to admit that Dominick was not so much of a disaster as she first believed. A regular masher, just like his father. Dominick certainly seemed head over heels, crazy in love with Pearl. Likewise, a policeman in peacetime was nothing to be sneezed at.

After an overheated discussion between Dominick and his father, it was decided that, out of respect for Hannah, the baby need not be christened in St. Leo’s. This endeared Dom to Hannah. What the hell, Dominick reasoned, his old man would get over it in a few years. They weren’t Sicilians, after all, who kept a feud going forever.

1919

I
T WAS OVER
, over there! The boys came home. After the initial jubilation and victory parades, a more somber judgment was passed on the price of glory and victory. A wiser America withdrew into a shell of isolation and vowed it would never again become embroiled in a European affair. Let them fight their own wars from now on.

So Al Singer claimed his bride and daughter and repaired to Cleveland.

Joe Kramer had suffered a poison gassing and would never take another pain-free breath in his life. He, too, went west, to Joplin, Missouri, with Leah and Molly.

Hannah Balaban was left with a new French daughter-in-law, Simone, and her little son, Pierre, and Dom and Anna Maria Abruzzi. Hannah would sigh and shrug and say, “Well,
kinder,
this is America.”

S
UCH A FUSS
the family was making over the returning soldiers. Gilbert Diamond harbored deep resentment about the veterans. Like maybe it was his fault he was physically unfit to serve. Maybe the family would be happy if he were dead in the ground under a Star of David, in some French cemetery.

Gilbert was frustrated, and who better to take it out on than a genuine certified war hero who had been with the United States Marines. Gilbert didn’t like Lazar, even before the war when they both worked in his father’s drugstore. Lazar was the super-salesman, always ready with the bullshit and the smiles to the old ladies. Johnny-on-the-spot, ready to help just to impress Gilbert’s father.

Now Lazar comes home with a fancy braid around his left shoulder, a decoration awarded the Marine Brigade by the French Government for valor, and everyone treated him as though he were the messiah.

Lazar’s wife, Simone, likewise was as glamorous as her husband. She arrived on a special ship filled with French war brides. Her picture and story were on the front page of the rotogravure section of the Sunday Baltimore
Sun.
By contrast, Gilbert’s wife, Minnie, was a
shmatte,
a human dishrag.

Lazar had become everything Gilbert longed to be but wasn’t and couldn’t. Together with a shyster lawyer, Gilbert made it a living hell for his cousin to collect the four thousand dollars from Hyman’s will. In trust and innocence, Lazar signed a half-dozen documents that guaranteed he’d be indebted to Gilbert for years.

“If your father, Hyman, God rest his soul, had lived to see this, he would turn over in his grave,” Hannah declared.

“Business is business,” Gilbert retorted.

“So, didn’t I tell you?” Hannah moaned later to Lazar, wringing her hands in disgust. “Gilbert Diamond is a cockroach with the flat feet and bifocal eyes and the limp handshake. Not even the Czar’s army would have taken him.”

Lazar found a drugstore for sale in a good location, across from the trolley car barn, at the intersection of North Avenue and Pennsylvania. It was a transfer corner for the number 8 and 31 streetcars, and at five o’clock business was brisk in cigarettes and magazines. Along with active foot traffic, it had a nice six-stool, two-table soda fountain and a couple of
shvartzers
with bicycles for home delivery. It could have been a first-class money-maker, except that Gilbert cut himself in as the 51 percent partner before he would release any funds. Lazar was in for a struggle.

Gilbert’s own inheritance from his father had been a bitter disappointment. Hyman had given away too much. Always with the relatives. No matter what the
mishpocha
carried out of his father’s store, no one ever got a bill. Gilbert convinced himself that Lazar was lucky to get what he did: As for himself, he’d help the family only as a last resort.

No one took Moses into account, so Lazar became the titular head of the family. But if he had returned from France with Joan of Arc as his wife, she wouldn’t have won Hannah’s approval. Phew! What they’d heard about those Frenchwomen. Enough to make a cat stand on its tail. The Frenchwomen were all you-know-whats. Hannah prayed that their offspring didn’t have congenital deficiencies.

It was traditional that the entire family, over twenty-five strong in cousins, aunts, uncles, and brothers and sisters, made a duty call to Hannah’s house on Sunday.

Even Hannah’s older sister, Sonia, and her no-goodnik husband, Jake, and their kids attended. Gilbert and Minnie and their pasty-faced children usually arrived late, so they could leave early and avoid a fight. To miss a week’s homage at the matriarch’s was unconscionable. When Lazar and Simone and her son, Pierre, failed to show up two weeks in a row, Hannah got the message. She was clever enough not to make a big
tsimmes
about it, for fear that Lazar might really leave the fold.

Simone’s pregnancy, that agony shared by all women, was plenty enough reason for Hannah to worm herself into the good graces of her daughter-in-law. After a while the two women developed a genuine affection for each other, and also genuine respect.

As a war veteran, Dominick was given a choice of a number of “soft” beats. He took the first opening as a motorcycle cop for Druid Hill Park and the placid surrounding neighborhood. Moving out of Angelo’s home was not accomplished without a major Italian family brawl. Dominick bought a small row house of his own, near his precinct station. As his reward, Pearl became pregnant again.

Hannah’s two new
eynikles
were born a few weeks apart, one in Mercy Hospital and one in Sinai. Hannah muffled her consternation that Pearl had a boy. After all, little baby boys should not be condemned for the sins of their fathers.

O
UT OF
C
LEVELAND,
the Singers were not faring so well. Al was no go-getter. He hung out at the Jewish Veterans’ Club, playing acey-deucey and cribbage day and night, between jobs. For Fanny, one winter in Siberian Cleveland was enough. Fanny nagged, the baby screamed, home had become a nightmare.

Al was no tower of strength. Faced with the loss of the only woman he ever loved, he gave in sheepishly. He gave up his neighborhood where he had lived since birth, his old gang, his beloved Cleveland Indians, and moved Fanny and the baby to Baltimore, to Hannah’s home on Fayette Street.

“It’s all for the best,” Hannah assured her daughter. “What’s the matter, Al, there’s no houses to paint in Baltimore?”

The family was almost in place now, where they should be, Hannah thought. If only Joe Kramer would see the light. What was the great honor to live in Joplin, Missouri?

O
N AN EVENING
late in 1920, it was raining cats and dogs outside and turning to sleet and hail. Hannah was suspicious of such weather. It was usually a harbinger of bad news.

Moses, upstairs, had become almost completely useless. His big thrill in life came from helping to make up a
minyan,
a quorum, when needed, to sit
shiva
and pray for a dead soul. He thumped on the floor with his cane when he needed attention. This evening he pounded in tune with the falling hailstones.