The Hours Count (25 page)

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” the woman said. “But I can take a message and get it to him.”

A message. I wasn’t sure who this woman was or what I could say to her. “Tell him I have his baby. His son,” I finally said.

“His baby,” she repeated, and I could hear the sounds of typewriter keys in the background.

“Yes,” I said. “And I’ll bring him to Mr. Bergman’s butcher shop, Kauffman’s Meats, on Friday morning. Ten a.m.”

“Is that all?” she asked. The noise of the typewriter keys had stopped, and now I could only hear the sound of her breathing on the other end of the line.

“Yes,” I said. “I think it is.”

On Friday I woke up before dawn, my breath suspended in my chest, as if in the few hours of sleep I’d gotten between Henry’s feedings I’d forgotten how to breathe. My incision ached and made it hard to get out of bed, though Henry’s small cries, and the thought of Jake meeting us at Mr. Bergman’s shop in just a few hours, all pushed me to stand.

I brought Henry into the living room and smoked a cigarette while he sucked on a bottle. David still slept, and the world outside turned slowly from black to pink to orange. And then David kicked the wall, and Henry dirtied his diaper and began to cry, and I didn’t know which way to go first.

I’d asked my mother not to come today. Yesterday, she’d brought Bubbe Kasha with her and Bubbe Kasha had spent the day on my couch, asking me every twenty minutes or so who the children were, why David wasn’t speaking. “She’s gotten so much worse,” I said in a hushed voice to my mother in the kitchen as she prepared Henry a bottle.

“You haven’t visited us much this year,” my mother said, shaking her head and tsking as if it were my fault for not noticing sooner. Maybe it was. The lines of my mother’s face were ragged, her double chin heavier than it once was, and she, too, was beginning to look and sound older to me. “I don’t feel right leaving you all on your own tomorrow,” she said, “with your husband off to god-knows-where.”

“I’m doing better,” I told her. “I’ll be fine on my own tomorrow. And I’ll bring the children to your apartment for the Sabbath, all right? I’ll bring a brisket. I’ll stop by Mr. Bergman’s in the morning. You need to take care of yourself, too.” I put my hand on her arm, and for a moment she stopped fiddling with the bottle and stared at me.

Then she frowned. “That will be a lot for you, Mildred.”

“It’ll do me good. Keep me busy,” I said. And finally she agreed.

She was right, though. It would be difficult on my own today, with my incision still aching as if it were on fire and two tiny people with me. But it would be worth it to see Jake again. I hoped he’d gotten my message, and I hoped to god he would come.

I changed Henry’s diaper and got David cereal for breakfast, and then I tried to find something suitable to wear. Nothing fit me still. I was so much bigger than usual, and none of my nicer dresses would button. I ran my finger down the dress I’d worn that day in the Catskills so many months earlier. The buttons Jake had unbuttoned. I shivered a little, remembering that night. And then I reached for the large-flowered housedress I’d been wearing all week. I wished I could wear something nicer today, but it couldn’t be helped.

After I dressed, I put Henry in the carriage. I was leaving early, but I wanted to give myself plenty of time to manage both the boys and my aching body.

Just outside the apartment door, I realized again how difficult this would be, as it was impossible to push the carriage and hold David’s hand at the same time.

“Darling, hold on to the carriage handle,” I implored David, but he’d already run off, toward the elevator. The possibility of getting out of the apartment was overexciting him. David had seemed not at all interested in Henry and had been quite discontented with our new life trapped inside the apartment all day long these past few days. Now that we’d left the apartment, David was full of pent-up energy, and I worried I couldn’t contain him and keep track of Henry.

“Darling, wait for Mother,” I called as David rushed onto the elevator without me. I ran down the hallway with the carriage, and when I reached the elevator door, I saw that Julie was inside, holding on to David with one hand, the elevator door with the other.

I exhaled. “Oh, Julie. Thank you.”

He nodded, and I noticed that his face seemed strained today—new lines of worry creased around his spectacled eyes, and his thin mustache matched the shape of his frown. Another unfamiliar, suited man stood in the elevator next to Julie and he frowned, too, as he watched me struggle to pull the carriage onto the elevator and then grab David’s hand. “Sorry,” I said to both of them.

The stranger ignored me, and Julie said, “No need to apologize.” Julie reached across us for the ground-floor button, and I shot him a grateful smile.

“Is everything all right?” I asked him. “Has all the nonsense with—”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Let’s not talk about any unpleasantness now.” The unfamiliar man leaned in closer, and I suspected he was a business associate of Julie’s.

We began to ride down, and the strange man put a hand on Julie’s shoulder and said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend, Mr. Rosenberg?”

Julie pulled out of the man’s grasp, opened his mouth a little, tugged on his mustache as if considering what to do, and then he looked me straight in the eye and shook his head. “No,” he said, “I don’t think I will.”

He must be embarrassed to introduce me, looking the way I did in this terrible large dress, and David already clearly acting up. And I looked down at my feet, unwilling to meet his eyes for the rest of what seemed like an extra-long ride.

At last the elevator door opened on the ground floor and David immediately yanked away from my hand and ran toward the front door and the street. “David,” I cried, and tried to manage the carriage. “Wait.”

Julie stepped off the elevator and ran after him. The other man ran close behind Julie, and as Julie caught David, he turned to the man and said, more gruffly than I’d ever heard him speak, “Give me a minute, would you?” The man hesitated, but then he walked out to the street and stood just on the other side of the door.

Julie leaned down to David’s level and held on to him while I got off the elevator with the carriage as fast as I could, which wasn’t very fast at all. “David,” I heard Julie say. “You’re a big brother now. You have to help Mother out. You have to listen, son. You have to stay
close to her.”
Son.
He spoke to David so kindly, the way he would speak to Richie or John. He reminded me of Jake. I smiled at him.

“Thank you,” I said, and I took David back from his grip. “Sorry if I embarrassed you back there in the elevator in front of your associate.”

“Oh, Millie, is that what you thought? No.” Julie put his hand on my shoulder. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, but then he didn’t.

“Is everything all right?” I asked him. “With David—your brother-in-law, I mean.”

“Of course,” he said. “Nothing I can’t handle.” He gave me a half smile as if he wanted to reassure me, but he couldn’t quite get there. “I would walk you wherever you’re going. But I’m afraid I can’t keep him waiting.”

“That’s very kind of you,” I said, “but we’ll be fine. David is going to stay with me now. Aren’t you, darling?”

David didn’t look at me. Julie waved and walked out onto the sidewalk. Once outside, he put his hat atop his head, and he seemed to make an effort to stand up straighter as he walked down Monroe Street, his business associate walking next to him.

“Listen to me,” I said to David. “We’re going to walk to Mr. Bergman’s shop, and he’s going to have gumdrops for you. And Dr. Jake might meet us there,” I added, though I immediately wished I hadn’t in case Jake didn’t show. But all at once David stopped pulling away from me, and he reached for the handle of the carriage and held on.

We walked out onto the street. The fog had cleared, the morning was warm and muggy, and I was sweating as we made our way to the butcher shop.

“
MILDRED
,
BOYCHIK
!” Mr. Bergman shouted above the din of the Friday morning rush. “And is that the baby boychik?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I struggled to push the carriage through the crowded shop, and Mr. Bergman left his station at the counter to walk around all the women demanding their Friday briskets and over to where we stood by the door.

Mr. Bergman peeked in the carriage, where Henry slept. “What a beauty,” Mr. Bergman said. “How proud your father would’ve been, bubbelah.” Suddenly I wanted to cry, imagining what my father would’ve really thought if he knew everything about Henry, about me, about Jake. He wouldn’t have been proud at all.

I shook the thought away as Mr. Bergman took David’s hand, led him to the counter, and rifled around back for gumdrops. I pushed the carriage closer to the counter, and all the old women waiting for their meat peeked inside and oohed at Henry and smiled at me. It seemed there was nothing quite like a baby to make everybody love you, even the impatient old hens who needed their Sabbath briskets right now.

I glanced at the clock behind the counter. It was quarter to ten. We’d gotten here early, but my heart thrummed in anticipation, and I looked through the crowd of women to the door. “Mildred, is everything all right?” Mr. Bergman asked. I gave him a weak smile and tried not to appear as anxious as I felt. “I worry about you with your . . . good-for-nothing husband, vanished.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

“It’s going to be okay,” I told him, and I glanced toward the door
again. With no sign of Jake, I leaned in closer to whisper to Mr. Bergman. “I’m meeting a friend here this morning. He’s going to help me.”

“A friend?”
Mr. Bergman raised his thick gray eyebrows.

“Yes,” I said, not wanting to divulge any more about Jake. I heard the bell chime on the door and I hoped it was him.

Mr. Bergman’s frown creased deeper. “What is he doing here?” he muttered.

For a second, I wondered how Mr. Bergman knew Jake and why he had such dislike for him in his voice. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I knew instinctively whose hand it was even before I turned around.

“You have brought my baby?” Ed’s Russian accent resonated in my ear, so familiar, and now so unexpected, that I couldn’t help but cry out a little.

I turned and there he was, looking as he always had, though did he appear angrier? Or was it my imagination? I wondered if he’d been drinking vodka this early in the day. But I couldn’t smell it on him. His hand tightened around my shoulder. “We will talk outside,” he said gruffly into my hair. “And bring the baby.”

My breath caught in my chest. What were the chances of Ed showing up here when I was supposed to meet Jake? And what would Jake do when he arrived and he saw me talking to Ed? He would leave, certainly. I would miss my chance to see him. But Ed would not let go of my shoulder. He held on so tight that it hurt, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out again in front of Mr. Bergman, who most certainly would make a scene if he thought Ed was hurting me, which would be bad for business. “Can you watch David for a minute?” I asked, and Mr. Bergman agreed. I could feel
his eyes on us as Ed led me through the crowd of hens and out onto the street.

I was sweating, from the heat of the June morning, from nervousness. I glanced around the street for any of sign of Jake, but all I saw were women heading to Mr. Bergman’s shop.

Ed let go of my shoulder, and I reached up to rub it a little. He peered into the carriage. “He is a very beautiful baby.”

“Henry.” I resisted the urge to pull the carriage back away from Ed as he reached in and gently put his finger to Henry’s bald head. “His name is Henry.”

“Henry,” Ed repeated, a note of tenderness in his voice. I tried to remember if Ed had ever looked at David this way, and I thought that he had, before it was clear that something was wrong, back when David lay beautiful and perfect and sleeping inside his carriage in much the same way Henry was now.

“How did you get the number?” Ed asked.

“The number?”

“You called for me the other night and told me to meet you here. But I never gave you the number, no?”

The number?
I couldn’t breathe again. I felt I was gasping for air and I couldn’t get enough of it. How did this make sense? I’d called the number Jake had left for emergencies. How did Ed even know about the number? How had Ed gotten the message? Had he been listening in somehow on the party line? Jake had told me to ask for him when I called the number. Had I done that? Now I couldn’t remember.

“My mother gave it to you?” Ed was asking a question, but he didn’t wait for me to answer. “It must have been her.” He muttered
something in Russian and sighed, and then he stroked Henry’s head again with a gentleness I could barely comprehend coming from him.