The Other Traitor (10 page)

The days of tasting the forbidden fruit.

* * *

Yitzy held Mari’s and Flossie’s hands the entire walk away from City College, up Amsterdam Avenue. Flossie laughed and spoke in a high-pitched, excited voice, but Mari remained quiet. She wished her friend would disappear, but of course, that wasn’t possible. Maybe if Yitzy had at least acknowledged that he and Mari had once known each other, she would have felt less unsettled, but for some reason, Yitzy wanted to keep their past a secret from Flossie.

“Here we are,” Yitzy said. He guided Mari and Flossie into a coffee shop that smelled like coffee and cigarettes. A couple of people were sitting at the counter, but the tables and booths were empty. Yitzy led the way across the cracked black-and-white-checkered floor to a booth in the back. Mari and Flossie sat on one side and Yitzy across from them.

After they ordered three cups of coffee and one piece of apple pie to share in the interest of saving money, Flossie took out her steno pad. She twirled one of her pin curls with the point of her pencil and asked him a few questions about his background. Where he lived. Not far from City College. Why he chose engineering. Because he was good in science and math and probably couldn’t get a job as a singer.

“My goodness,” Flossie said. “You sing?”

“Not for a few years,” he said. “I lost my best audience.” He exchanged a look with Mari, perhaps to see if she remembered their week at Camp Kindervelt.

“So, Yitzy,” Flossie said, “our readers are curious to know. Are you a communist?”

Mari was aghast. “Don’t ask him that, Flossie. You know he can get in trouble if you write that he is.”

Yitzy played with the brim of his cap, which he’d taken off when they sat down. “May I ask what prompted the question?”

“When you were on the stage, you said something about our brothers, condemned by an imperialistic society. That’s Red talk.”

He smiled at Mari. “Or maybe I’m just someone who has the courage to protest wrongdoings, like Mariasha.”

“Fair enough,” Flossie said, clapping her hands together. “But can you at least tell us what you think of communism?”

The waitress put three coffees and a slice of apple pie down on the table, then went to take another table’s order. Yitzy stuck his fork into the pie and sawed off a big piece for himself, which he promptly shoved into his mouth.

“Here’s what I think,” he said, his mouth full. “In this country, we have a problem with freedom of speech. If someone dares speak out against the government or its policies, that person is branded a communist. The American government has tried to turn progressive views into heresy. They want people to associate communism with evil and to fear it.”

Flossie was scribbling on her pad.

“So you don’t fear communism?” Mari asked.

“Fear it? I embrace it. Why should we fear trying to free the slaves? Isn’t that what Moses did in Egypt? Isn’t that why your parents chose your name, Mariasha?”

His eyes held hers. Her heart was beating so loudly, she could hardly hear anything else.

“There’s so much unfairness in the current system.” His voice trembled with conviction. “Terrible working conditions—that’s if you can even find a job. Unfair trials because people are immigrants or don’t have the right color skin. Sacco and Vanzetti. The Scottsboro Boys. The Herndon case. When will it end?”

It had gotten noisy in the coffee shop, now filled with other students who had been at the rally. Mari noticed that Flossie had stopped writing and was staring at him, mouth open like a hungry puppy.

Yitzy continued talking, his words turning to music, one flowing into the next like a rousing anthem. But this new Yitzy was consumed with the passion of his mission. Sure, he remembered her, but he had also forgotten her. And it was better that way. She had made a deal with God and she wouldn’t break it now. What the two of them had started a few years before was over.

Yitzy had stopped talking and was studying her. His fork was extended. On the tip of the tines was a piece of apple. Mari’s heart began to pound. She felt like that fourteen-year-old girl on her first day of camp falling in love with a blond, blue-eyed boy with a red apple in his mouth.

“I was wondering, Mariasha,” Yitzy said with a smile. “If you would like to take a bite of my apple.”

Julian studied Annette out of the corner of his eye as they rode the elevator down from his grandmother’s apartment. She was tugging on one of her braids, chewing on her lower lip. She had appeared fascinated by Nana’s stories even though they didn’t have much to do with her sculptures. He wished Nana would have talked more about Saul, but he had a feeling she would tell him her brother’s story in her own way.

The elevator came to a stop with a bounce and they stepped into the overheated lobby. Annette glanced around as though she was trying to memorize every detail. The large gold-framed mirror above an old scratched mahogany table. The Egyptian-pattern border surrounding the cracked tile floor.

She caught him watching her. “Thank you for letting me meet your grandmother,” she said. “She’s a remarkable woman.”

“She is that.”

“What a wonderful coincidence that the young man at the college rally was a boy she had met at camp,” Annette said.

“The best week of her life.”

“That’s right. She did say that. I would have loved to hear the story of how she and Yitzy first met.”

“Maybe she’ll tell us tomorrow.”

“So I can see your grandmother again? Does that mean I passed my test?”

“The multiple-choice section,” he said. “You still have to complete the essays.”

She smiled. A good sign. He didn’t want to frighten her off like he’d done the day before.

“Do you want to grab a beer?” he asked.

She ran her fingers over the zipper of her ski jacket. “I don’t do well on tests when I’m drinking,” she said. “How about we just walk around for a while?”

“Sure.” He held open the door for her and they stepped outside. He blinked against the sharpness of the sun in the cloudless blue sky.

Annette stretched her shoulders back, as though waking up. “
Il fait beau! Magnifique
!”

Yes,
you are.
“There’s a park along the East River,” he said.

“Did your grandmother take you there when you were little?”

“No. My dad did a few times. Then when I was older, I’d go by myself.”

They started walking in the direction of the park. The air had warmed up from earlier and smelled like hotdogs, Cracker Jacks, and orange soda. Or was he imagining that because of the association with his dad?

“It’s hard growing up without a father,” Annette said.

Julian felt a tightening in his gut.

“I was very young when my father left,” she said. “Only six. I kept asking when is Daddy coming home, but my mother would clam up. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or hurt. I decided he must have done something wrong and I stopped asking about him.”

Something Julian certainly understood.

“My mother and grandmother pretty much raised me,” Annette said. “My Grandma Betty loved plaiting my hair.” She gave one of her braids a tug. “Maybe that’s why I still do it.”

“You miss her.”

“
Oui
.”

“And your father? Did you see him again after he left?”

“Occasionally, during vacations. But he seemed more like a friendly stranger than my dad.”

“Do you see him now?”

“Not for a few years.” She rubbed the beauty mark over her lip. “Not since he remarried.”  They walked beneath a scaffold, in shadows for the moment. The mounds of snow near the street curbs were melting and the sidewalk was wet. “It’s not that I’m angry with him, or anything. It’s just, he has a new family now. A wife and a couple of kids. Besides, he hasn’t tried very hard to see me.”

Julian felt the urge to put his arm around her, but held back. “I was ten when my dad died.”

Annette slipped her hand through his arm, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. They reached the curb and the sunlight.

“My mom never remarried,” he said. “I guess that’s a good thing.”

“You guess?”

“I don’t know where she’d have found time for a husband. She works a lot. It was pretty lonely at home.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining. Nana’s always been around for me. I went to high school near here. Stuyvesant. So after school, I’d go to Nana’s apartment. We usually had dinner together.”

They stopped at a red light on the corner of Columbia Street. The massive government-project apartment buildings across the street blocked the sun and cast a shadow over them.

“My grandparents and mother used to live there,” Annette said.

Julian felt a sudden chill in the air. “In the projects?”

She shook her head and let go of his arm. “No. Way before. In an old building.”

“They knocked down many of the tenements back in the fifties,” Julian said. “Is that when they went to France?”

She nodded.

“Not a bad move,” he said. “Interesting coincidence though. I wonder if they knew my grandparents.”

Annette shrugged. Her cheeks were flushed like she was too warm, or maybe embarrassed.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “That’s one of those dumb things people say. New York has like eight million people, but we always ask if someone knows someone else.”

The light changed and a dog walker holding the leashes of half a dozen small dogs hurried past them. Julian sensed that Annette’s mood had shifted. She was glancing around, as though she wanted to bolt. Had he said something wrong?

“We don’t have to go all the way to the park if you have to be somewhere else,” he said.

She met his eyes and seemed to be weighing something. “I don’t have any place else to be.”

“Good,” he said. They continued walking. He wanted to get her out of this funky state. “Do you like being a journalist?”

She gave him that child’s bright smile again. “I love it. I pick and choose what I want to write about and get to learn all about subjects that interest me.”

“Like New York Depression-era art,” he said, before realizing she’d probably think he was teasing her again. “Wait. I think I get it. Your roots are here. You’re looking for connections to your family, aren’t you?”

She stared ahead at the Williamsburg Bridge that stretched across the East River toward Brooklyn. “That’s right.”

They crossed the wide avenue to the park. Neither of them spoke. Snow-covered fields spread out to the north and south, and benches lined a jogging path. They chose a bench beside a towering oak tree that had probably been here even before the park, and watched the joggers and bicyclists pass by on the waterfront path. Beyond, cars crossed the bridge. The low-rise apartment buildings and warehouses of Brooklyn and Queens formed a purple skyline.

“You’re lucky,” she said softly.

“How do you mean?”

“You have your grandmother, your mother, a sister. You know where you came from. You feel loved.”

“Don’t you?”

“I think my mother loves me,” she said. “But she has a tough time showing it. She never even hugs me.”

Just like his mother.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She gave her head a shake. “Please, don’t be. I’m used it. But then when I was walking around this neighborhood earlier, I felt something. A sense of family. Of belonging. And then your grandmother’s stories really touched me. I could totally imagine my own grandparents having similar experiences.”

“Don’t you have stories from their past?”

She rubbed her beauty mark. “My mother and grandmother never talked about the past.”

“Well then, I’m glad you got to meet Nana.”

She turned toward him. “But why do you look so sad? You have real roots. You don’t have to imagine someone else’s stories are your own. And you have a wonderful grandmother.”

He looked out toward the Circle Line boat, which was slowly heading up the river. Several people were on the outer deck pressed against the railing. A child leaned over and waved. An adult pulled the child back to safety. “I do have Nana,” he said. “But I never really had my mother.”

“No?”

He met her eyes. “When you said your mother has a tough time showing her feelings, well, my mother does, too.”

She twirled a braid around her finger. “So you and I are the same.”

“Yes,” he said. “I believe we are.”

Mariasha could still remember how that bite of apple tasted. Sweet, but tart, as though the apple pie hadn’t been completely baked through. But once she had swallowed the piece of apple that Yitzy placed on her tongue, she knew the promise she’d made to God was meaningless. There was no way she would ever give up Yitzy again. Not for Saulie, not for anyone.

Yitzy would remain a part of her from that day on. They shared the same ideals, the same pleasures, the same dreams. Equality for all. Nathan’s frankfurters. Coney Island when it was too cold for ordinary people.

And that was probably what attracted her most to Yitzy. When she was near him, she never felt ordinary. She was daring, dazzling, a risk-taker, even. Like the Campfire Girls in the books she’d read as a child. All she cared about was shining in his eyes. She hadn’t appreciated until much later that he had felt the same about her. And she should have seen it right from the start.

She got up from her chair and went over to the ancient Victrola. It was one of the few things she still had from her girlhood and she had kept it because no other record player would ever be right for playing their song.

She tried to move the leather box of records from the shelf beneath, but it was far too heavy. When did that happen? She used to pick up the record container with very little effort. She managed to open the lid and pulled out several large, heavy records, which she set on the floor. Then, she felt around until her fingers touched a record that was smaller and lighter than the others. She lifted it out, and carefully removed it from its plain brown paper wrapper.
Whatever You Choose
was the name of the song. It had been popular back when she was a college student, but the words took on an entirely different meaning for her once it became her and Yitzy’s song.

Her fingers trembled as she set it on the turntable, wound up the Victrola, then placed the needle in its groove.

His voice came to her, a cappella. It was as though he was here beside her once again, grinning as though the world would be theirs forever.