The Other Traitor (14 page)

“Mariasha Hirsch,” the booming voice called out.

Beneath the billowing black graduation gown, sweat ran down Mari’s back as she crossed the stage to receive her college diploma.

She turned to the audience’s applause and searched the smiling faces of proud relatives. For one crazy instant, she was certain she spotted Mama dabbing her eye with a lace handkerchief, her new straw hat perched jauntily in her upsweep. Then Mari blinked, stabbed by the cold blade of reality. Of course it wasn’t Mama. No one who meant anything to Mari was in the audience.

Despite the heat, Mari walked home from the graduation ceremony. She was filled with a desolation she had never known before. This should have been an occasion to celebrate. A chance for Mama to dress in her best, wearing the hat she had so lovingly made for the occasion. They would have gone to an ice cream parlor—Mama, Mari and Saul—and talked about Papa. How proud he would have been. Yitzy would have joined them afterwards. Maybe he would still come. He had his own graduation from City College today, his own family to celebrate with, but surely he knew how important it was to Mari for him to be with her today.

She climbed the stoop of her apartment building. Several neighbors were sitting outside on folding chairs, fanning themselves, drinking lemonade, rocking baby carriages. Freshly washed clothes hung from the clotheslines between the buildings, motionless in the absent breeze. She heard the thwack of a stick connecting with a rubber ball. Several little boys shouted and jumped up and down as other boys raced around in the street.

Was there a God? If there was, why had he forsaken her?

Mari went up to her apartment and let herself in. The windows were open, just as she’d left them, but the air was stale and heavy. She first checked on Saul in the small bedroom. He pretended he was asleep, as he’d been doing whenever she entered his room. She took out the tray of uneaten food and left a fresh glass of water.

Melancholia,
the doctor had reported after she’d called him when Saul had refused to leave his room after three days.
It’s how some people deal with bereavement. He should come out of it soon.

But it had been two weeks, and although Saul would occasionally nibble at the bread and jam or egg-salad sandwiches she made for him, he would neither meet her eyes nor speak to her. It was as though he blamed her. And maybe she was to blame.

Mari stepped into the bedroom, where she still slept in the high brass bed, even though some nights she found the emptiness in the room unbearable. The room still smelled like Mama, lilacs and talcum powder, though less and less each day. And Mari feared the day Mama’s scent completely evaporated would be the day Mari could no longer face the world.

She picked up the wide-brimmed straw hat from the dresser, touching the green velvet ribbon Mama had tied so smartly in a bow.

“I’ll wear this at your graduation,” Mama had said, placing it on her head at just the right angle. Her eyes were too bright, too sunken in her pale face.

“You’ll be the prettiest mother there,” Mari said.

Her mother looked at Mari in the mirror. “I wish I could have given you more.”

“Don’t talk that way. You’ve given me everything, Mama.”

Her mother turned and faced her. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be in this world, Mariasha.”

“Mama, please.”

Her mother held up her hand. “Let me speak, child.” She took off the hat and ran her finger over the velvet. “I’m dying, Mariasha. You know that. The cancer has eaten through my insides. But I need to talk to you about when I’m gone.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Mari said.

“You’re the strong one,” Mama said. “You’ve always been the strong one, even when you were a little girl. You held the family together when Papa was gone.”

Mari went to the window and stared out at the diapers hanging from the neighbor’s clothesline. She recalled her father’s words.
Promise me you’ll always take care of your mama and little brother, Mariasha.

It was too much responsibility for a little girl.

“Saul doesn’t have your strength,” Mama said.

“Saul is fine.”

“Promise me,” Mama said. “Promise me you’ll always take care of your brother.”

“Oh, Mama.” Mari threw her arms around her mother’s thin shoulders and hugged her tightly. She could feel her bones, smell the lilacs and talcum powder.

“Promise me, Mariasha.”

“I promise, Mama.”

Mari put the hat back down on the dresser. Mama never got to wear it outside this room. Was it destiny, or could Mari have somehow saved her?

Maybe if Mari had gotten a job instead of going to college. Maybe if Mari had done the cooking and the washing and the ironing, Mama would have had the strength to fight the cancer. Or maybe if Mari had been paying more attention to her mother’s failing appetite, the pallor of her skin, and the way she sometimes grimaced in pain, she could have gotten Mama to a doctor sooner.

Maybe if she had tried harder and done more, Mari could have kept her promise to her father and Mama would still be alive.

Yitzy came by later that evening in an exuberant mood, talking about so many things that Mari could hardly process what he was saying.

They sat on the stoop, while Mari turned her mother’s straw hat around and around in her hands.

“The world is falling apart,” Yitzy said.

Yes, it is, Mari thought. The heat surrounded her like the mist from a boiling teakettle.

“It’s our responsibility to stop the Fascists.” Yitzy had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. His forearms were covered with golden hairs. “We’ve lost Spain to Franco and now Hitler and Mussolini have banded together with their ‘Pact of Steel’ and who knows what that will lead to?”

Fascists. Her father once spoke out against the Fascists and that didn’t help anything. Papa was dead. Mama was dead.

“Hitler is already occupying Czechoslovakia, and Poland is very likely next,” Yitzy was saying. “Thank god that Churchill has agreed to support Russia. But even with France, their alliance won’t be strong enough to withstand our enemies.”

“Saul still won’t get out of bed,” Mari said. The edge of the green velvet was starting to unravel. “I can barely get him to eat anything.”

“He’s grieving,” Yitzy said. “Like the doctor said. But soon he’ll be back on his feet. We need every able-bodied soul to take up the fight. That’s why we’re going to California.”

Mari studied the edge of velvet. She would cut it and stitch it with tiny stitches. Would that work? Mama would know. She looked up suddenly. “What? Who’s going to California?”

“We are,” Yitzy said. “You and me. You’ve read the new book by John Steinbeck.
The Grapes of Wrath.
All the Okies have headed out west, looking for a better life, ripe for the Party. We can talk to them about uniting with their communist brothers to fight Fascism. For a better world.”

A stray dog walked down the street and sniffed at a garbage can. A broken stickball bat was lying in the middle of the street.

“You want us to go to California?”

“Yes. We can leave in a few days. Now that we’ve both graduated, there’s nothing to hold us back.” He took her hand. “Come with me, Mariasha. Let’s save the world together.”

“Come with you?” The heat was making her dizzy. Or maybe it was hunger. She didn’t recall if she’d eaten today.

“Yes, of course. We’re wonderful together. And Saul can join us when he finishes college.”

“What are you talking about? Saul won’t even get out of bed.”

“Saul will be fine. He just needs a fresh purpose.”

Mari shook her head, wondering if she was stuck in some nightmare. But there sat Yitzy, as real as ever, blue eyes wide with excitement, one eyelid drooping as though about to wink, a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“You want me to just pick up and leave my brother?” she said. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been going through the last couple of weeks? My mother is dead, Yitzy. Saul won’t eat, won’t speak to me.”

“Hey, take it easy.”

“I won’t take it easy.” The rage bubbled up inside. “My world is falling apart and you want us to run off and save someone else’s world?”

“I’m sorry, Mariasha.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “You know I loved your mother, but she’s gone. You have to move on.”

“Leave my brother? Leave my home? Don’t you understand, I’m still grieving and I’m scared.”

“You’re not listening,” he said. “Everything’s coming to a head. If we don’t pull together now, the world will fall to the Fascists. Sometimes you have to make a choice—the individual or the collective.”

“Stop spitting doctrine at me. You have a choice to make, too, Yitzy. I need you here with me. Will you stay?”

A car went down the street, making an ugly crack as it ran over the stickball bat.

“Oh Mariasha.” Yitzy closed his eyes. He seemed to be in pain. “I can’t stay.” He opened his eyes. “You know I can’t. Not when the world needs me.”

Mari stood up, clutching her mother’s hat against her chest. “And I won’t leave my brother. Not for the collective. And not even for you.”

Annette had just finished paying for her basket of groceries at the Grand Central Market when her phone rang. Caller ID displayed Julian’s name.

She stepped aside, as people rushed past her to root through counters piled with fresh produce, dried fruit, bread, cheese.

“Hi,” she said, realizing she wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding her delight. “I just picked up our lunch. Baguettes, camembert, and fromage de Meaux, which you’d probably call brie. I hope your grandmother will forgive me if I bring wine. It’s a pretty good cabernet from the Limoux region.”

He didn’t answer right away. The smell of cheese and smoked fish drifted toward her.

“Julian?”

“I’m sorry. I just left Nana’s apartment.” His voice sounded down.

“Oh no. Is she okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, she’s fine. It’s just, I went over a little early and she started talking about the past and now she’s exhausted. She was very apologetic, but she can’t see you today.”

Annette felt a tightening in her chest. He was giving her a line. Pushing her away. Well, maybe it was better this way. If not now, it would happen later. Men never stuck around.

“I feel like a jerk,” he said. “I should have waited for you. Now I’ve messed up your meeting with her.”

“It’s fine.” The tightness turned into a lump of chilly ice. This day was a disaster. First, nothing in Grandma Betty’s letters and now it looked like she’d also lost Mariasha Lowe as a resource. She had known from the beginning how things with Julian would end up.

“Can we still have lunch?” he asked. “I know it’s my grandmother you’re interested in, but I’d hate that food and wine to go to waste.”

So his grandmother really was tired?

“If you’d rather not,” he said, “that’s okay. I understand.”

Tell him no. Save yourself the inevitable heartache. “I’d love to have lunch with you,” she said.

He released a deep breath. “Good. Very good.”

“I’m at Grand Central. I was visiting my cousin in Westchester this morning,” she explained. “Where do you want to meet?”

“It’s miserable outside.” She could hear him make little puffs into the phone, like a motor trying to catch. “Do you want to come to my place?”

His place? Did she?

“I know the West Village is a hassle to get to from Grand Central. Take a taxi. I’ll pay for it. After all, you already bought the food.” His sentences ran into each other. “I can tell you more of my grandmother’s stories so it’s not a waste for you.”

“Give me your address.”

“You’ll come?”

“
Oui
. Why not? There’s too much for me to eat alone.”

The taxi let her out in front of a modern building and she ran through the rain to the black marble steps. A doorman held open the door for her. Low, pulsing music that she associated with the club scene filled the high-ceilinged lobby.

She was disappointed. This wasn’t the kind of place where she had expected Julian to live. It was too hip. Nothing like him. Or was it? Despite their candid conversation in the park the afternoon before, there was obviously a lot about Julian she didn’t know.

“Mr. Sandman just called,” the doorman said, after she told him who she was visiting. “He’ll be here in a couple of minutes. You can wait there.” He gestured to a backless gray sofa.

She sat down with her bundles. She had the food and wine in a shopping bag and Grandma Betty’s letters in her satchel. She had reread them on the train back to Grand Central after she’d left Linda’s house, but had found no fresh insights into Betty and Isaac’s marriage or her grandmother’s feelings about her husband’s guilt or innocence.

The outer door opened and Julian came into the lobby dripping with rain. As he walked toward her, he shook himself like a dog, a big smile on his face.

“I was afraid you might beat me here,” he said.

“You told me to take a taxi but you walked?”

“I always walk.”  He reached for the grocery bag. “Come on up.”

The elevator whisked them to the tenth floor, then Julian let them into an apartment that looked like it was out of an episode of
Cribs
on the coolest bachelor pads.

He slid off his wet hiking boots and jacket and held out his hand. “Do you want to give me your coat or are you still deciding if you want to stay?”

She shrugged out of her ski jacket.

“No torn leggings today,” he said, as he checked out her yellow sweater and corduroy jeans.

“I wasn’t summoned directly from my jog today. I actually had a chance to shower and get dressed.”

He hung her jacket in the front closet, but left his dripping wet coat hooked on the doorknob.

She took in the black sofa, high-back leather chairs around a glass dining-room table, a black wall with an entertainment center. In the corner of the room stood a white Christmas tree with a Jewish star at the top. Gray rain was beating against the balcony door behind an austere glass desk. There was a chess set on the desk that looked old and out of place.

“Not what you were expecting?” Julian asked, as he carried the groceries into the kitchen.

Through the pass-through above the granite counter, she could see him opening the bottle of wine. “Nothing about you fits with this place.”

He brought two glasses of wine back into the living room and handed her one. “So you pictured me living in a ratty old tenement walk-up?”

She took a sip of wine. “Something like that.”

“Honestly, I’d be a lot more comfortable in a place like that. In fact, I’m planning to move to Brooklyn.”

“So what are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “I made a mistake. I was living with a girl. This was all her idea.”

“Living? Past tense?”

“She’s gone,” Julian said. “That relationship is completely over.”

“What happened? Did she get fed up when she couldn’t change you to match the apartment?”

“Pretty good guess,” he said.

“Why would you become involved with someone who didn’t want you for yourself?”

“I seem to have a problem with trying to please others and not thinking about what’s good for me.”  He went over to the desk and picked up a chess piece, which he turned over in his hand.

“Do you still play?”

“Not since my dad died.” He straightened up abruptly and put the chess piece back down. “So, you hungry? I am. Let’s have that
fromage et pain
you bought.”

They sat on the sofa nibbling on the cheese and baguettes as they sipped wine and talked about themselves. Julian told her about the time he’d run away from home when he was eleven. He’d camped out by the carousel in Central Park but was found by a couple of concerned gay guys who promptly turned him in to the cops. Annette shared with him the loneliness she’d felt when she stayed with her father in America the first time. How she had called a taxi to take her to the airport to go home, but her father had intervened before she could sneak out.

“Sounds like you and I were pretty desperate to escape from our lives,” he said.

“Or maybe we were just looking for a place where we’d fit in.”

He poured the rest of the wine into her glass. “I’ll get another bottle,” he said, with a little grin. “It’s not from the Limoux region, but it isn’t too bad.”

He returned with the second bottle, topped off her glass, refilled his, and sat back down beside her on the sofa.

They’d been talking for over two hours and it was almost four, but she was happy that he didn’t want her to leave. “So what did your grandmother tell you about that was so draining for her?”

“She talked a little about her kid brother Saul.” He smeared camembert on a piece of bread and chewed it slowly. “She told me they went to meetings together.”

“What kind of meetings?”

“Well, it sounded to me like they were communist meetings.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “They went with that guy she’d met at the City College rally.”

“Yitzy,” she said.

“That’s right.”

Annette was moving into dangerous territory. “Did she become a communist?”

He rubbed his cheek. It was shadowed by a light beard. “Things were different back then. Communism didn’t carry the stigma it acquired later. Especially if you were a college student in New York.”

He hadn’t answered her question. Or maybe he had, by not answering. She decided not to press it.

“Anyway.” He poured more wine into their glasses. “Tell me about your morning. You said you were visiting your cousin.”

Her satchel was on the floor beside the sofa. It couldn’t hurt to tell him about the letters, could it? But only the part about what it was like for her mother and Grandma Betty to be in an alien place. Julian would understand that.

“I went to pick up letters my grandmother had written when she first moved to Paris.”

“Your cousin had the letters?”

“
Oui.
My Grandma Betty and Cousin Linda’s mother Irene were sisters. Irene lived in Boston and that’s how they kept in touch.”

“You told me your mom was a little girl when she moved to France.”

“That’s right. Only eight. In the letters I see what a difficult time she had adjusting. They’re very sad to read.”

“What made your grandmother move so far from her family? Was it just the two of them?”

“Yes. Just Grandma Betty and my mother.”  She looked out the balcony window. The rain was pummeling the glass. How much could she say without him realizing she had misled him and his grandmother?

“What about your grandfather?” he asked. “Did he stay in the U.S.?”

This was it. Would she tell him the truth? All of it? “My grandfather was dead.”

“Ouch.”

Her heart was pounding. Her mother had once told her, once you tell someone something, you can never take the words back. “My grandfather was Isaac Goldstein.”

Julian cocked his head. “Isaac Goldstein?”

“He was executed in 1953 for being a spy.”

“Oh my god—that Isaac Goldstein? He passed atomic-bomb secrets to the Soviets, right?”

“Allegedly.” She was breathless from her confession. What had she done?

Julian’s eyes focused on the black wall. “So that’s why you had that book.
A Soviet Spy in
America
.”  He frowned. “Interesting coincidence. My grandmother was hanging around at communist rallies and your grandfather was this notorious communist spy.”

“Not such a coincidence,” she said. “As you were saying, lots of young people were communists back then.”

“Especially the Jews who lived on the Lower East Side and in Brooklyn,” he said. “Nana told me how they were raised to believe in social democracy. She even called herself a ‘red-diaper baby.’”

“I’ve heard that term.” Annette’s heart rate was returning to normal. Julian had hardly reacted to her revelation. But then Isaac Goldstein’s execution had been so long ago that Julian probably viewed it as an interesting anecdote rather than as part of who she was.

“So your grandfather was executed, then your Grandma Betty and your mom moved to Paris. That makes sense now. They would have wanted to get away and start over.”

He tapped on the side of his wine glass. “Hey wait. They lived a few blocks from my grandparents. You showed me where their building had been.”

Her heart began pounding once again. She never should have opened this door.

“Is that why you came to see my grandmother? To find out if she knew your grandfather?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“I was hoping she knew some of the people he knew. To learn the truth about him. I don’t believe he was a traitor.”

His brow formed a scowl and he stared out at the dark rain. “But you said you were doing an article about her sculptures.” He faced her. “Why did you lie about it?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. I was afraid if I told her the truth, she wouldn’t talk to me.”

“But you could have told me the truth.”

“When we first met, I didn’t know what you were like so I told you the story I’d prepared. And then, it became awkward to tell you the real reason. I didn’t want you to think I was a liar.”

“You mean like now.”

Her abdomen clenched at the jab. “I’m sorry. I’m not like that. It just happened.”

“Just happened? You lied to me.”

She was startled by the sound of a key turning in the front door.

A gorgeous redhead in a black fur coat walked in. “Hey, big boy,” she called out. “I’m home.”

“Jesus, Sephora,” Julian said.

The woman stepped into the living room and met Annette’s gaze. “Who the hell are you?” the redhead asked.

Annette’s cheeks got hot. Not embarrassment this time. More like rage. She gathered up her things and turned back to Julian. “So tell me,” she said. “Who’s actually the liar here?”