The Puzzle King (37 page)

When she called out, “Flora Phelps,” she did so in a rounded tone and lifted her eyes to see who this woman was who had been jumped ahead of everyone else in line.

Flora stood up and gathered her things. She squeezed Edith’s hand and glanced at Seema. Seema turned away and almost imperceptibly nodded her head no. Then, with all eyes on her, Flora wrapped both arms around the envelope and the bundle that was wrapped in brown paper and tied up with twine and clutched them to her bosom. She was led into a poorly lit room furnished with nothing but a desk overrun with papers and a wooden folding chair next to it. Behind the desk sat a man who looked as if he hadn’t slept for days either.

“What brings you to this lovely place?” he asked, making no effort to conceal his irony.

They had all rehearsed the role Flora would play for him. No longer the haughty American, she would be sweet, vulnerable, and if called for, even flirtatious. She pictured Simon sitting in the back of the room, watching her and smiling the way he did when he didn’t mean to.
You were born to do this, my Floramor, I do adore you
. Her eyes filled with the thought of him; through the mist she thought she could almost see him.

“I’m here to try and help some relatives come to America,” she said lightly.

“Where are you from in America?” he asked.

She told him Yonkers. He told her that he, too, was from New York. “Upstate New York, Kingston. Have you heard of it?”

“Oh yes, I’ve been there often,” said Flora, drawing from the summer she and Simon took a house in the Catskills for a month. “The beautiful Shawangunk Mountains.”

The consul brightened. “Then you must have gone snow shoeing there.”

“Many times,” Flora lied.

“Nothing like it,” said the consul. “We used to set out at sunrise
and not come home again until just before dark.” He reminisced about Lake Minnewaska and Mohonk and the farms that were overrun with so many pumpkins during the autumn. Flora smiled and nodded, as if she, too, were nostalgic for the pumpkin fields. “You must be homesick,” she said.

He shook his head. “This place is far from Kingston, that’s for sure.”

“I brought you something from home,” she said, presenting him with the parcel she’d been holding so dear. “This is what everyone’s going to be talking about in a couple of months.” The consul kept his eyes on hers as he unwrapped the gift. “I wish it were a pumpkin from Kingston,” she teased, “but I hope you’ll like it anyway.”

It was a book with a yellow cover and maroon type:
Gone with the Wind
. “The word is that America’s going to go nuts for it,” said Flora.

The consul held the book in his hands. “Heavy,” he said. “Lots of pages. I can use something to read other than passport applications.” He looked up from the book. “Thank you. Thank you for this. No one ever brings me anything but troubles. You are a kind lady. Now what can I do for you?”

Flora flattened her skirt and folded her hands in her lap. She told him how she’d been born in Germany and moved to America as a child. “I have so many relatives still left here. I’m here to sign affidavits of support for all of them.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a lot of …”

“I know, it’s a lot of money,” she said, reaching into one of the envelopes Simon had prepared. “I can afford to do this.” She pulled out a bank statement and passed it to him. “My husband, Simon Phelps, maybe you’ve heard of him. He was known as
America’s Puzzle King.” She laid out Simon’s kingdom, explaining about the puzzles, the toothbrush premiums, and the games. “So you see, we have the money.”

“And how many people do you want to sign for?”

Now she handed him the list that Simon had prepared. “These people,” she said. “All of them.”

He whistled. “That’s asking a lot. There’s no way on earth I can possibly do this. You’ve seen the lines.” He pointed out the door.

“I’ve seen the lines,” she said. “If you help me with my list, there’ll be at least one hundred fewer people waiting.”

The consul looked taken aback. “The people on your list, are they ready to leave?”

“I’m working on that,” said Flora. “I think all of them will go except for my sister. But that’s a whole other story.”

F
LORA THOUGHT BACK
to the conversation she and Edith had had with Seema earlier that morning. Then, as now, she’d fought to stay calm: “Can’t you see? I need you to come with me.” Seema had stroked her face. “I can’t go to America. I belong right here with Karl.”

Flora had heard the harshness in her voice when she’d said: “Men can’t always save you, Seema. Sometimes they can’t even save themselves.”

Edith had watched silently until then. “For God’s sake, Aunt Seema. You’re still a Jew and they will kill you for it.”

The three of them stared at each other blankly, trapped by Edith’s words. Then Seema pulled a small item out of her bag: “Just promise me that you’ll think of me every time you look at those Greek boys at the museum.” She winked at Edith then
squeezed the item into her hand. It was the heart-shaped, hairfilled pillow that Edith had sent her after her trip to America.

F
LORA FORCED HER
mind back to the present.

“What about your husband?” asked the consul. “Is he with you?”

She took in a breath and waited until she was able to answer. “My husband died a few days ago.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” He started to reach for her hand, then reconsidered and patted it before pulling back.

Flora started to cry. “He came to America as a young boy. Left all his family in Lithuania and spent his whole life looking for them.” She blew her nose. “Never found them. He didn’t want that to happen to my family. He was the one who was supposed to come see you. I’m just here because he can’t be.” She dabbed her eyes.

“So if I can help you, how fast could you fill out all these forms?” He held up a stack of paper.

“I’ve got as much time as you need,” said Flora.

“We’re looking at six weeks, maybe two or three months even,” he said, still holding the fistful of papers.

“I’ll wait then,” she said.

“Okay, let’s begin.” He took one of the many stamps from a cardboard box on his desk and firmly pounded each page with fresh ink. Then he moved the papers into a file on the right hand side of the desk. “This is the ‘expedite now’ file.” He didn’t look up. “You’ll need to have these people get their visa applications to me as soon as possible, starting today.”

T
HE WAITING TOOK
forty-five days. When Flora wasn’t helping to prepare visas and visiting distant relatives trying to
persuade them to immigrate, she was having futile fights with Seema. But Seema wouldn’t be parted from her man or her country. Flora even tried talking to Karl, who, at first, sided with her but was eventually moved and even secretly pleased by Seema’s intractability. Flora spent hours at the kitchen table with Margot and Frederick gently, and then less gently, trying to convince them to leave Kaiserslautern. Other nights she would dine with Edith and Werner at his parents’ mansion. Most of the servants were gone now. Only one, a spindly woman named Kaetha, had stayed on, mostly because she had nowhere else to go.

During the waiting, Flora fought to stay above the grief. It helped to have so much work to do, so many people to talk with. But she took her greatest solace from Simon. She envisioned him watching her and listening to her. Had he ever seen her this determined or fierce? She could feel his pride and it made her smile every time she thought about how surprised he would be.

On the last day of the waiting, when all the visas were issued and the papers signed, Flora went back to the consulate. She had lost weight since her first visit, and though her clothes were still stylish, they hung on her now. Her face was taut and without makeup, like the faces of all of the other women in the waiting room. This time, only Edith came with her.

“Thank you for all you have done,” Flora said, taking the consul’s hand. They forged a friendship based on New York and what they’d each left behind. “You’ve been so kind and generous.”

“And you to me,” he said, looking at the copy of
Gone with the Wind
on his desk. “Good luck with your voyage, and say hello to New York for me if I don’t see you before you leave.”

Flora nodded. “I leave next week. You can’t imagine how I dread making that crossing by myself.”

“Yes, that’s completely understandable given the circumstances.”

“I only wish Simon had lived long enough to know that our family would be safe,” she said, her voice cracking.

“He knows. Somehow, I’m sure he knows.”

Flora raised her eyes to the ceiling for a few moments then turned back to the consul. “Listen, I hope you won’t consider me too forward, but I am going to ask another miracle of you. My favorite niece, who is here with me today, just got married. If you could see your way clear to issuing two more visas and approving two more affidavits so that she and her husband could accompany me back to America, it would mean the world to me.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m willing to give you whatever it takes,” she said reaching for her pocketbook.

He shook his head. “Money’s not the issue. Frankly, the more people I can get out of here, the better. Let me see what I can do.”

“I won’t ever forget you,” she said, rummaging through her bag. “Here, I want you to have this.” She handed him a tattered envelope. “Go ahead, open it.”

He pulled out the wrinkled sheet of paper and laid it flat out on his desk.

Flora leaned over and pointed to Simon’s old drawing of Mr. Blockhead and the lovely Miss Chatterbug.

“My husband made this picture many years ago,” she said. “This is who we were.”

A
LTHOUGH THIS IS A WORK
of fiction, parts of it are based on family legend. Most of that family is gone now, and though I was able to learn much about the real Puzzle King from research, the rest of the story is lost, found again in my imagination.

What is true is that the real Flora did sail for America with her niece and nephew, and by the time the war ended, she had signed affidavits of support for hundreds of German Jews, saving their lives and assuring a future for them and the children who came after.

I am one of those children.

A
NNE
D. W
ILLIAMS
, renowned puzzle expert and author of
The Jigsaw Puzzle: Piecing Together a History
, helped me with the first piece of this puzzle by answering my questions and generously offering up her own reference material.

The following institutions were invaluable in my research: the New York Historical Society; the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research; the New York Public Library; the Science, Industry and Business Library; the New York Society Library, and the Tourist Information Bureau of Kaiserslautern.

This novel and I would still be in many pieces without Kathy Robbins, Elisabeth Scharlatt, Lisa Grunwald Adler, Richard Cohen, Rachelle Bergstein, Karen Close, Miriam Brumer, and the watchful eyes of copy editor Courtney Denney. I am grateful to Brunson Hoole, Craig Popelars, Michael Taeckens, Christina Gates, Courtney Wilson, and everyone else at Algonquin for their extraordinary care and professionalism.

And always, Gary Hoenig, the final piece of my own puzzle, who urged me to tell this story and pushed me to get it as right as possible.

Behind the Book
The Puzzle King:
A Note from the Author

A Conversation with the Author

Questions for Discussion

My great-uncle invented Monopoly.

At least, that’s what I grew up believing. But then again, I was raised in a family where mythology and truth blurred. My parents were German Jews who narrowly escaped to this country during World War II, and in rebuilding their lives as Americans, they told their youngest child—me—an edited version of their past.

In hindsight, that is probably why I became a journalist. As a reporter and editor, I spent more than twenty years digging up other people’s stories and trying to fit together the pieces of their lives—all the while ignoring the puzzle of my own life.

After being a reporter for
Newsweek
, editing six magazines, and writing one memoir and two novels, I only recently began looking into my own past.

The first thing I discovered was that my great-uncle did
not
invent Monopoly. In real life, my great-uncle, Morris Einson, came to this country from Lithuania as a young boy. When he was twelve, in 1897, his career was launched on a city sidewalk,
where he drew a sketch of the famous James Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons heavyweight fight and someone commissioned him to turn that drawing into a poster. Soon after, he became a pioneer in window and store display advertising. Among his creations were jigsaw puzzles made out of cardboard.

The puzzles became a sensation.
Time
magazine dubbed him “America’s Puzzle King,” and he made millions. He married a beautiful woman, a German Jew named Flora Levy, who had come to America as a young girl and was my mother’s aunt.