Ragtime (33 page)

Poor Father, I see his final exploration. He arrives at the new place, his hair risen in astonishment, his mouth and eyes dumb. His toe scuffs a soft storm of sand, he kneels and his arms spread in pantomimic celebration, the immigrant, as in every moment of his life, arriving eternally on the shore of his Self.

Mother wore black for a year. At the end of this time
Tateh, having ascertained that his wife had died, proposed marriage. He said I am not a baron, of course. I am a Jewish socialist from Latvia. Mother accepted him without hesitation. She adored him, she loved to be with him. They each relished the traits of character in the other. They were married in a civil ceremony in a judge’s chambers in New York City. They felt blessed. Their union was joyful though without issue. Tateh made a good deal of money producing preparedness serials—
Slade of the Secret Service
and
Shadows of the U-Boat
. But his great success was still to come. The family found tenants for the house in New Rochelle and moved out to California. They lived in a large white stucco house with arched windows and an orange tile roof. There were palm trees along the sidewalk and beds of bright red flowers in the front yard. One morning Tateh looked out the window of his study and saw the three children sitting on the lawn. Behind them on the sidewalk was a tricycle. They were talking and sunning themselves. His daughter, with dark hair, his tow-headed stepson and his legal responsibility, the schwartze child. He suddenly had an idea for a film. A bunch of children who were pals, white black, fat thin, rich poor, all kinds, mischievous little urchins who would have funny adventures in their own neighborhood, a society of ragamuffins, like all of us, a gang, getting into trouble and getting out again. Actually not one movie but several were made of this vision. And by that time the era of Ragtime had run out, with the heavy breath of the machine, as if history were no more than a tune on a player piano. We had fought and won
the war. The anarchist Emma Goldman had been deported. The beautiful and passionate Evelyn Nesbit had lost her looks and fallen into obscurity. And Harry K. Thaw, having obtained his release from the insane asylum, marched annually at Newport in the Armistice Day parade.