*
Only with the promise of a hot dog and Coca-Cola was Delia able to extract Alex from the elephant exhibit. She theorized why such a tiny boy was so infatuated with the biggest land animal on the planet. Maybe it was wishful thinking.
She watched him devour his hot dog and half of hers. She could hardly eat anything, particularly meat, since she felt there was something repugnant about biting into flesh after looking into the mournful eyes of so many animals, especially the big cats. A cigarette was what she wanted, but not while the boy was eating.
She sipped stale zoo coffee and listened to Alex recite encyclopedic information regarding Asian elephants, rhinoceri and hippos. Occasionally she broke into his descriptions with a “you-don’t-say” or a “my word.”
When he wound down a bit, she said, “So you like wild animals, huh?”
“Yes. I like Pudgy, too.”
“Who?”
“Pudgy. Hannah’s dog.”
“Oh, her.” Abe hadn’t mentioned Hannah’s name for weeks, and she hadn’t asked. “But Alex, don’t you think wild animals are, well, don’t you think they’re more fun? You know, the elephants and bears, they’re more fun to look at, right?”
Alex nodded his head yes and shoved popcorn in his mouth.
“So anyway, honey, wouldn’t it be fun if you could see elephants and horses and lions and bears every single day?”
“But I go to Hannah’s house every single day. Except Saturday and Sunday.”
Delia pursed her lips. Maybe the kid was stuck on this Hannah. Better not try to get in the way of that—what was the expression, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar? “Yes, I forgot. So, you like her?”
“Yes.” He said it in a way that made her think that maybe he really didn’t, that he said it because he was supposed to say it, but she decided not to press the issue.
“You like me, too, right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I like you, too. And guess what? I know a place where you and me and your daddy, and Benjamin, too, we could see wild animals every day, and you could even touch them and maybe even ride them. Would you like to ride a horse? Or a zebra? Would you like that, Alex? Wouldn’t that be the berries? Maybe you could even ride a camel!”
“A camel!” Alex bounced up and down.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t jump, honey, you’ll spill your drink. Now, this place I’m talking about, it isn’t the zoo. Oh no, it’s much better, it’s much more fun. It’s called the circus. Do you think you’d like to go to the circus?”
“Yes yes yes.”
“Would you like to go with me?”
“When can we go? Can we go today?”
She wiped his mouth. “Not today, sweetheart, but pretty soon. Just a couple of weeks and you can see all the animals you want.”
“Giraffes?”
Delia hadn’t the faintest idea. “Sure, giraffes. Absolutely, kiddo.”
Alex stopped jumping. He frowned. “But in a couple of weeks Daddy says I have to go to kindergarten.”
“Oh, but that was before I told him about the circus.” She took his hand. “Now, if you really want to go to the circus, I mean really really
really
, I want you to promise me one thing. Don’t tell Hannah or anyone else about it, because it’s just for you and me and your daddy.”
“And Benjamin.”
“Yes, of course, Benjamin, but don’t tell him, either, see, he doesn’t know yet. It’s going to be a surprise. Do you like surprises?”
Alex nodded his head.
“Now pumpkin, do you think you can you keep it a secret about going to the circus? Can you?”
Alex thought about how Arthur had asked him to keep a secret, and when he didn’t keep it Daddy got mad at him for telling it, so it must be a bad thing to tell a secret and he didn’t want to do a bad thing. “Yes.”
“Are you sure? Because if you’re sure, repeat this after me: I won’t tell anyone we’re going to the circus.”
Alex repeated it perfectly.
“It’s our secret.” Delia put her index finger to her lips, and Alex did the same. “Good boy. Now, let’s get the sticky stuff off those hands of yours.”
They walked hand in hand toward the rest rooms. Off to the left, several yards away and beyond their line of sight, two guards yanked a man by the elbows to the security office.
*
As Hannah watched Abe take a second swallow from his flask, the memory of liquor rose in her mouth. She thought about the summer evening three years earlier, at her parents’ 25
th
anniversary party, when she and the handsome older boy she had a crush on snuck away with a bottle of Cherry Herring liqueur from the cordials table. They went down into the cellar and closed the door to the workroom behind them, and drank from the bottle, and she began to laugh at the silliest things he said. They began to kiss and it felt good for a while, until he began to touch her underneath her dress and pulled her hand inside his open pants front. She shocked but curious at how his thing felt alive in her hands, and how when she tried to pull away from him he told her no, she couldn’t leave him like that, and she wondered, like what,, and she started to cry out but he put his hand over her mouth, and then he put a pair of garden shears to her neck and told her that if she ever told her parents about what was going to happen he would sneak into her house late at night with a butcher knife and kill her parents in front of her and then kill himself. She should just relax and enjoy it, he said, and then he forced her legs open and pulled down her underwear and then there was a sharp pain and he was inside her and she felt wet and nauseated as her head spun, and then he grunted and pushed away and held her head down as she vomited into a tin pail.
“Hannah?” Abe shook her shoulder. “You all right? We better go home now, huh? Let your aunts give you some ginger ale, put you to bed.”
She opened her eyes. There was Abe, looking so concerned. The contortions in her face dissolved into a smile. “No. Please. I’m all right now. It must have been the eggs. I’m partially allergic to eggs. What was I thinking? But I’m better now. Gosh, I must have given you a terrible scare. But I’m fine now, really.” She stood and twirled around. “See? Right as rain.” She took his hand. “Let’s go for a walk, down the path to the pond.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“I’ll bring some bread for the ducks. I love ducks, don’t you? We have so much to talk about. Where will we live, where will Alex go to school? Won’t it be grand?” She tugged his wrist, and they strolled toward the path that led to the pond.
Belle was all for starting after them, but Lillie said, “She looks all right now. Wait until he gets her home.”
*
The Highland Park Zoo chief of security, retired Pittsburgh Police sergeant Joseph Conroy, spilled the contents of Dr. Malkin’s medical bag on his desk. Buried amid the stethoscope, speculum, rubber gloves, tongue depressor, screwdriver, bottles of patent medicine, gauze, pinking shears, tack hammer, meat thermometer, blood pressure cuff, flyers and half-eaten salami sandwich was a train schedule with the Pittsburgh to Philadelphia connections circled in red.
Conroy held the schedule up to Malkin’s nose. “Going somewhere, my friend?”
“Oh, that, yes, I am planning it a future trip to Philadelphia to see it the Libertine Bell.”
“You mean the Liberty Bell.”
“Yes, of course, I meant to say it the Liberty Bell. Sorry.”
Conroy’s assistant muttered, “Greenhorn.”
“You can put your things back, except for these.” Conroy dumped Malkin’s flyers into the trashcan. “Next time you come to the Highland Park Zoo, leave the fliers at home. Folks here want to see the animals, they don’t need you to pester them. Capische?”
“I am begging your pardon, what is the word ‘capische’ meaning?”
“Greenhorn.”
*
They walked down a twisting path. The trickle of water they heard in the distance sounded like a gentle brook, but was in fact runoff from a water treatment plant. Abe helped Hannah step around the bigger rocks. They stopped at a small clearing where a low wood sign pointed to Lindenwood Pond.
Abe brushed leaves and twigs from a large flat rock and they sat down, hips touching. “Feeling better now?”
“Yes, very.”
Abe was ready for a cigar, and he’d brought two along, but he was concerned that she might get loopy again from the smell of smoke, although the color was back in her cheeks and that vacant look was gone from her eyes.
Two cardinals lighted on a tree branch above them. Abe, eager for a diversion, said, “Hey, look at them redbirds.”
“They’re a beautiful couple.” She nudged a little closer to him. “We’re like them, Abe. We’re birds of a feather.”
“Yeah?” Abe smiled. Here he was, a workingman Jewish boozer with calluses on his palms and three sons by the time he was twenty-eight and a wife dead and buried and a sometimes mistress, and here
she
was, pretty as a picture, ripe as a peach, a young Jewish girl, probably educated, sometimes a little, well, unpredictable, that’s for sure, but mostly gentle and loving. “You think so?”
“Oh, of course. We share a religion. We both need someone else to complete us, to make us whole. And we both dearly love Alex. Abe, can’t you see, this is what I’ve been saying, that we belong together?” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, gently at first, but with increasing passion, and he found himself pressing back, feeling her breasts against his chest, and he felt as if he were being pulled into her, and though he wasn’t sure where this was going, she was so lush, she tasted so sweet he couldn’t pull himself away.
As she let his hands explore the small places around her waist and over her thighs, Hannah thought about the desk on the second floor and how as soon as she got home she would destroy all the papers once and forever.
Chapter 24
By three o’clock they had seen all the zoo had to offer three times over. Delia’s feet hurt, Alex’s head hurt, and so they decided to call it a good day.
Delia pushed her way to a forward-facing seat on the trolley. Alex rested his head against her side. The trolley filled up with parents and children that ranged from excited and happy to tired and cranky, their energies as deflated as their helium balloons.
Alex clutched his stuffed elephant. His head had been bothering him since late in the morning, but the excitement of the zoo had dimmed the pain. Something else was on his mind, too. He tugged on Delia’s elbow.
“What, pumpkin?”
“What’s adoption?”
Delia thought, the damnedest things come out of this kid’s mouth—one minute he’s asking her who could win a fight between a lion and a tiger, and now this. “Adoption?” She explained as simply as she could how sometimes children didn’t have a mother and father. Alex interrupted her, telling her that he didn’t have a mother because she was dead, only a father, and did that mean that if his father died, would he be an adoption, but Delia assured him that wasn’t going to happen. She didn’t describe the scenario of children born out of wedlock. “Nice people that want to make an adoption become the child’s mommy and daddy forever. But why do you want to know?”
Alex wanted to tell her the story of Male Child, but now that he knew what adoption was it was even harder to understand everything on the paper. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about it, maybe it was a secret only for Hannah to know, like going to the circus was his secret, so he answered, “I read it in a book.”
She hugged him. “Stick to animals, smart guy.”
The trolley, which had been waiting at the stop until it filled up with riders, lurched forward. A man in a dark hat and black frock coat banged on the door, and in jumped Malkin. He bumped up against every leg in the aisle as he made his way to the back of the car. He stopped two-thirds of the way. “Oho, it is Miss Novak and the little Alex.”
*
By four o’clock that afternoon the sky had become overcast, the air had turned cooler and Abe and Hannah had left the park. They made it back to the aunts’ house before the first plops of rain began to fall.
Hannah seemed happy, but spoke little and walked quickly on the way home, pulling Abe along. As soon as they went inside, she dropped his hand and bolted up the stairs. Abe watched her go and thought it was a nice view from where he stood, the way her rear end bounced.
He still wasn’t quite sure what to make of her. She’d been acting perfectly normal for weeks, but today, well, one minute she was planning their life together and the next minute she looked as she was in some kind of trance, and the minute after that she was the warm, willing girlfriend men dreamed of having. It was puzzling, yes, and yet he was feeling pretty full of himself, proud that evidently his looks and personality, if that was the right word, were good enough to just about charm the panties off her. It was amazing that a widower with three boys had not one but two good-looking women after him—well, Delia wasn’t exactly after him, it was more like he was after her—but hell, what hen-pecked family man wouldn’t trade places with Abe Miller, ladies man?
A finger poked him between the shoulder blades. He turned, and there were Belle and Lillie staring at him, arms akimbo. A cigarette hung from the corner of Belle’s mouth, like a tough cop.
Christ, he thought, they looked as if they were ready to take him out and skin him alive with a potato peeler, no questions asked. He was about to ask them what was wrong, since obviously something was, when Belle said, “Got a drink for me, Miller?”
“What?”
Lillie tapped Abe on the front of his coat, pushing his flask against his ribs. “You wanted to get our niece drunk, didn’t you?”
“Now hold on.” Abe tried to explain how he never intended on letting her have any liquor, it was only when she looked so out of sorts that he was going to give her just a little taste to shake her out of it.
“You give your kids booze when they’re sick?”
No, he explained, but Hannah wasn’t a kid, in case they hadn’t they noticed. He only offered her a nip when she got a little pale, on account of her allergy to eggs.
Belle said, “Eggs?”