Lotte, the “Elastic Lass” Henderson
PS: Dee, don’t forget to write, like I did!
A harsh voice from across the lawn yelled, “Novak! Break’s over!”
Delia’s cheek was wet with tears. She folded the letter. Her friend was pulling down seventy bucks a week for what, being a freak? Boy oh boy.
Sure, she’d write back to Lotte. She’d tell her a good story, a true story about a tiny little boy that could throw darts and knives with incredible accuracy. They had knife throwers in the circus—hell, people would pay money to see a child throw, wouldn’t they? But someone would have to make the introductions, do the negotiations. Seventy dollars a week? If she played her cards right, there would be a place for her in the circus, too.
“Novak!”
In began to rain in fat, cold drops. She ran back to the house with the letter pushed deep in her pocket.
Chapter 18
The yellow brick, two-story, foursquare house was the largest on the block. It had a dining room, foyer, kitchen and pantry, a sitting room, a cold cellar and four bedrooms. The front porch ran the width of the house, and in back, the yard occupied nearly a half-acre, with forsythia and lilac bushes, a vegetable plot and a forty-year-old honey locust tree with a tire swing.
The Gerson sisters, Belle and Lillie, used the kitchen and the dining room and shared the large master bedroom, where they slept together as they had since they were children, born eleven months apart in 1868. Two of the smaller bedrooms were stuffed to the ceilings with their deceased parents’ furniture and keepsakes from the old country, covered with sheets and two decades of dust. The second-largest bedroom was Hannah’s.
Belle weighed fifty pounds more than “little” sister Lillie. She smoked two packs of Chesterfields every day and drank black coffee from morning until night, except during meals, which were, at Lillie’s insistence, always served with wine. Despite her age, her hair was carrot red. She dressed in bilious black housedresses no matter what the weather or the social occasion.
Neither Belle nor Lillie ever married, although Lillie, the petite, pretty sister, once had entertained a proposal from a gentleman ten years her senior, a respected, reserved Jewish mortician named Irwin Kalmenstein, who, to sweeten the pot, pledged that Belle could live with them once they tied the knot. Lillie thought it was a generous offer, but Belle, who called Irwin “Old Gloomy,” felt the offer was
too
generous—did he think he was in for a two-for-one deal, and anyway, what kind of man would want to live with his wife’s sister? Ultimately, Belle and Lillie agreed that it was better to enjoy life with each other, as they’d always done, rather than outlive and bury a mortician.
Moreover, they didn’t need his morgue money. Both had worked as bookkeepers in the payroll department at Union Switch & Signal and, because they lived with their parents, they were able to save most of their salaries. Their frugality, combined with inheriting their parents’ moderate savings and paid-off house, allowed them to retire at the ripe young age of fifty-five and live the life they wanted. They had orchestra seats at the Pittsburgh Symphony, two sets of China, Irish linens, a Polish maid, and two high-holiday seats at the synagogue they rarely attended but annually supported. They treated themselves to annual trips to New York to see the sights and take in a Broadway play or two, always musicals, and vacationed at fancier resorts on Lake Erie or in the Laurel Mountains. They contributed generously to the suffragette movement, since they’d been working women themselves.
They also took in their niece Hannah after her parents had basically disowned her. It wasn’t exactly the arrangement they’d planned for in their retirement, but since they were her only relatives, and she their only niece, where else was the poor 20-year-old girl supposed to go, with no job, no friends and virtually no self-esteem?
That had been two years earlier. Hannah had toed the line thus far—no men, no alcohol, no late nights out. True, she’d lost every job the sisters had managed to find for her in six months or less, but they were forgiving, far more than her parents, for they could see the flighty girl was still traumatized by the past and might remain so for some time. It was all she could do to keep up with her shorthand correspondence school courses, but at least she was neat and most of the time cordial and was not a financial burden, as her father, their brother, sent the sisters money every month for Hannah’s keep.
Lillie was reheating Friday night’s chicken, soup, roast potatoes and green beans for Saturday’s lunch, when Hannah banged through the front door. She turned to Belle, who was filling water glasses. “Guess who.”
“Belle, Lillie. I’m home. I’m starving.”
Lillie said, “She wants lunch? She never eats lunch.”
Belle looked up. “Something’s gotten into her.”
Hannah called from the stairway. “I’m going to wash my hands. I’ll be down in a minute. I have wonderful news.”
*
Abe and Alex arrived home to an empty house. Benjamin had gone to the Pirates game, not to attend—although he would have loved to watch his heroes Honus Wagner and Babe Adams—but to hawk peanuts and pennants on Bouquet Street outside Forbes Field for Nunzio Fiore of Fiori Importers. Nunzio paid him two cents a bag on the peanuts and ten on the pennants. On the days when attendance was low, Benjamin and his fellow vendors would slip past the sleepy ticket takers to catch the game from the seventh inning to the top of the ninth, at which point they’d have to rush back and try to sell merchandise to the meager post-game crowd. Benjamin relished these brief ballpark interludes, and he imagined himself chasing down fly balls on the vast green lawn and smacking high arcing drives over the right field fence.
Arthur normally worked alongside his brother, but not on this particular afternoon. Instead, he was at Jack Walsh’s house, his former enemy and current co-conspirator. The boys, barely sixteen, were in Jack’s basement, composing letters to their parents. Their birth certificates lay open on the workbench.
Alex pushed the stepstool up to the icebox. “I’m hungry, Daddy.”
Abe looked inside. There wasn’t much: a half empty bottle of milk, a jar of pickles, a crumbly hunk of cheddar cheese and a salami that had a green tinge to it. Christ, now he’d have to go food shopping, and the day would be shot, which meant no Delia once again, unless she was working late and he could figure out a way to get the older boys to stay home with Alex. He poured some milk.
Alex dunked an oatmeal cookie. “Am I ever going to be big, Daddy? Like you and Arthur and Davy and John the bartender?”
Abe’s eyes got watery. How many time had he had this conversation with him? “Well listen, when I was your age I was little, too.”
“Little as me?”
“No, but they used to call me ‘shrimp’ until I got my growth.”
“But when will I get my growth?”
Abe thought that maybe he should go back to that synagogue and ask God to give him the answer, for sure as hell he didn’t know. He rubbed Alex’s hair. “Why, it could be any time. Anyway, we talked about this before. Why are you asking me now, son?”
“If I got big I wouldn’t need to go to Hannah’s house.”
True, Abe thought, but then, that would take a miracle, and he couldn’t wait around for one. What else could he do now, under the circumstances, but take Hannah’s offer? Hell, it was only natural the boy was a bit nervous about this new deal, but he’d get over it in a few days. He patted Alex’s hand. “Don’t worry, son. Hannah’s gonna take good care of you.” He hoped it was as true. He needed a break.
*
“Slow down, Hannah.”
“We can’t understand a word you’re saying when you talk with your mouth full of food.”
Hannah kept talking anyway. “You know how you always say we’re supposed to do mitzvahs, good things for other people, that good deeds are the best way to please God?”
“Do I always say that, Lillie?”
Her sister shrugged.
Hannah stood and began to pace around the table. Pudgy the dog, a Boston Bull/cocker spaniel mix, pranced on her hind legs, doing her best to get some scraps to fall her way. “Well, even if you don’t say it, it’s true, don’t you think? I do. Anyway, this morning, after services, I met this poor man and his darling little boy who stumbled into the synagogue.” She went on for five minutes straight, describing in detail how Abe’s beautiful and loving wife had taken care of her three boys, especially little Alex, only to sacrifice herself to diphtheria to protect her sons. “And just a month ago, his mother-in-law Mrs. Murphy died in a horrible fire.”
Belle said, “Murphy? Are these people Jewish?”
“What? Oh, Abe is Jewish, absolutely. What was I saying?”
Lillie sipped her wine. “The fire, dear.”
“Yes, it was horrible.” Hannah described the fire in far more detail than Abe or even the newspaper had described it, adding how a courageous fireman had rescued Alex from the flames in the nick of time. She opened the two top buttons of her dress. “Just talking about it makes me warm.”
The sisters exchanged a quick glance. Belle said, “So what’s the mitzvah?”
For a second Hannah looked perplexed. “Oh. Well, because now Abe has no one to look after Alex while he’s at work, and the synagogue can’t help him, I said I would take him in. He’s so cute.” Her eyes flicked back and forth from Belle to Lillie. “It’s all right, isn’t it? He has nowhere to go.”
“You mean bring him here?” Lillie said.
“But he wouldn’t be any trouble. I’ll watch him every minute. You don’t have to do anything.”
Belle said, “A little boy running around the place? I don’t know.”
Lillie put her hand on Belle’s shoulder. “Hannah, sweetheart, don’t you think you should have asked us first? A boy—how old did you say he is?”
“Oh, he’s six, but he’s tiny, as tiny as a toddler.”
“Why, is there something wrong with him?”
“No, not at all. I think he had a childhood disease, but he’s all better now, perfectly healthy, he’s just little.”
Lillie began to clear the plates. “Well, dear, we’re glad you were nice to this man and his little boy, but that’s a big responsibility, taking in someone else’s child.”
Hannah stopped pacing. “You took me in.”
The sisters looked at each other. Finally, Belle said, “But that was different.”
“How? How was it different?”
Lillie cleared her throat. “Belle, would you hand me the gravy boat?”
“Anyway, they’re coming for dinner. I invited for tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow?” Belle reached for her cigarettes.
Hannah gulped down some water. “And please don’t smoke. It’s not good for Alex.”
*
On Sunday night, Benjamin plowed through a plate of Saturday’s leftovers, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, pausing every so often to cock his wrist and swing his knife in an imitation of Pirate shortstop Honus Wagner, the future Hall of Famer who’d recently entered the downward arc of his career. Arthur pecked at his food, which was unusual since he normally out-consumed his father.
Abe didn’t notice his oldest son’s lack of appetite. He had other things on his mind—getting Alex’s suit ironed and overcoming his uneasiness toward Hannah Gerson and her offer. She seemed genuinely interested in caring for Alex, but there was something else, she seemed interested in him, too, judging from how she pressed herself against him. He thought of the old maxim, if it seems too good to be true, it probably ain’t, even though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was that didn’t seem right.
He wrapped a dishtowel around the handle of the iron, which had been heating on the stove. Alex’s checked suit lay stretched on the ironing board. Abe tested the flat surface of the iron with his finger the way he’d seen Irene do it a hundred times. He yelped, “Son of a bitch, that’s hot.”
Alex said, “Son of a bitch.”
Benjamin laughed so hard that mashed potatoes blurted from his mouth. Arthur barely smiled.
“Alex, you watch that mouth of yours when we’re at Miss Gerson’s house. None of that swearing, you hear me?” Abe pounded the iron on Alex’s pants, as if he could beat the wrinkles into submission, wondering how Irene used to get their clothes so smooth.
“But you swore.”
“Well, do as I say, not as I do.” He flipped the pants over. “Hey Arthur, you ain’t said a word all night.”
“I was just thinking about something.”
Benjamin said, “He’s thinking about how many Germans he’s going to shoot.”
Arthur punched Benjamin in the shoulder. Benjamin kicked him under the table, which earned him an even harder shot to the ribs.
“You two cut it out. Alex, get over here.” Abe handed the pants to him.
Alex slipped his short pants over his shoes with a flick of his long arms. He climbed up on a chair next to Arthur. “I want Arthur and Benjamin to come, too.”
That’s all I need, Abe thought, traipsing into her house with these two animals at each other’s throats. “They weren’t invited. Go get your coat, Alex.”
*
At about 5:30, Lillie knocked four times on Hannah’s door. She called her name and tried to enter but the door opened just a few inches. She had to put her shoulder to it to force it open against all the clothes scattered in front of it.
Every dresser drawer was wide open, and every article of clothing Hannah owned lay strewn around the room. Hannah sat on her bed in a camisole and underpants, with her arms wrapped around her sides. Her hair was loose. Her toes clenched and unclenched on the Oriental rug.
Lillie picked up three dresses and draped them over the chair in front of the dressing table. “Your company will be here any minute, dear. Don’t you think you ought to get dressed now?”
“I have nothing to wear. I need new clothes.”
“Perhaps you do, dear, but for now, let’s see if we can make do with what you do have.” She held up a white embroidered tea dress. “This is so lovely.”
“I hate it. It’s ugly. It makes me look ugly.”
“What about this one?” She held up a teal blue velvet dress. “You look so wonderful in it. It shows off your beautiful figure.”