Electric City: A Novel (22 page)

A secular celebration such as Thanksgiving gave Miriam, Magda, Rose, and Reena a rare opportunity to collaborate on their inspired interpretations of American food, turning the Levine kitchen into a communal space for the entire day.

“I’m doing something extra special this time,” Miriam had announced on the phone to each guest the previous morning, already eager to welcome her friends into the house with their arms full of ingredients. “We’re having duck!”

Sophie didn’t have the heart to explain that turkeys were intended to be the main course. She was both amused and fascinated to realize that this menu was framed by an immigrant story far different from that of the Pilgrims. Irving didn’t enjoy the taste of duck, so his wife prepared his favorite beef and cabbage stew. None of her parents’ friends
liked pumpkin, so the pie would be Reena’s elegant apple, to be offered alongside Rose’s signature coffee cake, known as babka. Sweet potatoes didn’t make any sense when potatoes were much more flavorful (and familiar); no one made stuffing (what for?) but Magda brought homemade challah that contained no milk products (since David and Miriam were keeping kosher and therefore didn’t combine dairy products with meat). This also meant no butter on the table at all, not even for the potatoes. And dessert could only be served three hours past the end of the meal, so as to allow the meat to be fully digested before any consumption of milk.

Daniel, Irving, and Benjamin all took their places in the living room to await the serving of the feast, while David served and refilled small glasses from the Levine liquor cabinet, the one Sophie knew had been holding the very same bottles for years. They snacked on bowls of tuna fish with chopped celery, herring in sour cream, cucumber salad, carrot salad with raisins, sliced tomatoes with red onion. They swapped jokes in lowered voices so that Sophie couldn’t quite hear and critiqued the national economy in their accented English.

At one point, a reference was made to the previous year’s blackout, giving Daniel a chance to repeat yet again the story of his starring role in restoring power to the entire Northeast.

Sophie leaned against the open doorway to the kitchen, polishing her mother’s favorite silver candlesticks, inhaling the tapestry of aromas filling the air. She watched the men clink their glasses and give Daniel the congratulations he deserved.

“Someone had to fix it,” he said, smiling.

And in that moment she had a powerful wish to have Henry standing next to her, wanting him to see how her own family and their friends had so carefully and earnestly woven their lives into the fabric of this
Company town, this electric America. There might be a duck in the oven and some colorful misunderstandings about the meaning of the day, but there was no mistake that one choice to live here had brought them all together.

Sophie looked back at the quartet of women in their flower-printed aprons. Her mother was arranging the duck on a platter garnished with sprigs of parsley, its crisp skin decorated with thin slices of orange.

“A masterpiece,” pronounced Magda.

Although it wouldn’t be eaten until much later, Rose was sprinkling powdered sugar onto her cake so that it looked as though it had been dusted with snow. Reena dipped a spoon into the pot of stew she had made especially for Irving, offering a taste to Sophie.

“Delicious?”

“Yum,” Sophie said. It was.

M
ARTIN HAD ONCE
again politely declined an invitation from Midge to join her annual gathering of “holiday orphans” at the Mohawk Club. He knew she meant well, and that she would have sincerely cherished including him as well as Annie around the extravagant table overlooking her favorite golf course. But there was simply no way he could manage the irony, expecting Annie (and himself) to serve as “real live Indians” on display. Working a night shift with double-pay overtime at the Company seemed a far preferable alternative, giving him the excuse of needing to sleep all of Thursday.

As Wednesday night wore into day, it occurred to him that Sophie was the only person he could imagine capable of relating to his attitude about the so-called holiday. She had recently told him of her respect for his refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and then shyly asked if he had noticed that she no longer spoke the words? He hadn’t. But now their silent solidarity touched him more than he dared to admit.

Annie told him when he arrived home exhausted that a girl named Sophie had called but didn’t leave any message except her number. He slept a few hours with a bandanna tied over his eyes to block the daylight, and then took a walk along the edge of the river with Bear, sorting through his thoughts about returning her call. Knowing that Henry was out of town somewhere with his family, Martin wrestled with the idea
that he was Sophie’s second choice, her backup plan. A part of him was tempted to drive over to the Castle Diner and see if by some long shot the place was open. But when he was back in Annie’s kitchen, he picked up the phone.

“Interested in an all-new and not entirely American version of Turkey Day?” Sophie wanted to know. “I should mention that the main meal is already over, but we had to take a break before dessert. There’s pie.” The sound of her voice made him inexplicably happy. He held the phone away from his ear and looked toward Bear, who was wagging his tail.
Yes
.

“What does someone like me bring to something like that?” Martin asked.

Sophie laughed and Bear wagged even harder. “I was kind of hoping you would bring your dog,” she said.

Although Bear was instructed to stay on a folded-up blanket near the front entryway to the house, Sophie had managed to make up a foil-wrapped gift to send home with him, sneaking a few small pieces of beef from the stew, along with a bit of burned duck that her mother had scraped into the trash. She introduced Martin to the group of women, first her mother and then the others, all back in aprons with their now-smudged lipstick and pot-scouring gloves. The dishwasher was full and the stove was empty.

It felt good to say his name out loud,
Martin Longboat
, and to see their slightly puzzled but nonetheless warm expressions as they repeated their own names in return.
Magda Rosenthal, Reena Selinger, Rose Hollander
.

Miriam was the one who pointed to a chair, asking if he wanted “both a slice of pie and also a piece of the babka?” Martin nodded, grinning.

A coffee percolator was puffing on the counter; Sophie carried cups and saucers into the dining room, where the men were once again seated. Ties had been loosened during the relaxed pause between the end of dinner and the start of dessert. David was offering schnapps.
It’s like Passover
, Sophie thought, and then she was amazed at the correspondences, realizing why she had suddenly felt compelled to include Martin. A ritual meal with symbolic foods, commemorating a passage through a narrow place; a celebration of freedom, shared with a stranger at the table. A feast to honor the sacredness of enough.

Seated beside Sophie, Martin waited for questions that never came, the ones about his Indian name or his long hair, the ones about his skin. He wondered if Sophie had told them about his grandfather being a close friend of Steinmetz, and which of the men would ask which division employed him at the Company. Something about the way she studied him in sidelong glances made it clear that Miriam was trying to sort out if Martin was Sophie’s boyfriend. David, on the other hand, was doing everything possible to ignore him. There was a stretch of reminiscing about growing up in Holland, about canals and ice skating and stockpiles of firewood for the winter. Daniel and David took turns predicting the newest scientific discoveries that were about to change the world, the room-size computers that could calculate the distance between stars in a matter of seconds.

When Irving said that the diseased elm trees were just one of the warning signs for the future, Martin cleared his throat and told them what he’d heard on the truck radio while driving over.

“There’s been ‘killer smog’ today in New York City,” he said. “Breaking all records.”

Sophie immediately thought of Henry, there with his family and caught in what she imagined to be a choking soup of air. Maybe while trying to defend against the dangers of nuclear fallout, scientists like her very own father had forgotten to pay enough attention to what was right in front of their faces. If only Henry would call and tell her he was all right. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep without knowing.

“And here?” Miriam asked. “What about our city?”

Martin looked around at the concerned faces, embarrassed to be the bearer of such grim news. For years now, much of his life, he’d been watching his beloved river turn more gray and filthy, losing its shorebirds and its fish, growing a sickly sheen on its surface. Every time Annie heard from Martin’s father in California, she worried out loud about Los Angeles, where the dangerous air was given ratings on its degree of difficulty to breathe. Perhaps a day of “killer smog” could wake people up before it was too late. Maybe the messages would be unmistakable now.

“Progress has its price,” David said, with nods around the table. “Every time we create a new problem, we get to find a new solution.”

Martin remembered what Sophie had said about her father’s religious observances; now he could see where else he placed his faith. The echoes of Steinmetz were so palpable Martin was about to say his name, but that was when David rose to his feet and suggested they go to the den for the evening broadcast.

All the chairs were pushed back at once. Plates could be stacked in the sink while the dishwasher hummed through its cycles. Unable to catch David’s eye even for a moment, Martin thanked Miriam for dessert. Sophie whispered that now would be a good time for them to slip
away, take Bear for a walk, or better yet, a drive. She told Martin what a relief it was, that her father wasn’t performing his usual interrogations.

“Because I’m Indian?”

“Because you’re not Jewish.”

Martin heard the television volume being turned up in the den. “I still don’t get it,” he said.

“If he expressed actual interest in you, that would be equivalent to endorsing your being part of my life,” Sophie said.

He started to laugh but saw that Sophie was perfectly serious.

“That’s what a tribe means to
him
,” she added.

She grabbed her coat, wanting to be out the door quickly and yet worried about missing Henry’s promised phone call.

“I’ll be back soon,” she shouted downstairs.

Being in the truck with Martin was so different than it had been just a few months before; the season of freezing darkness was upon them, with much worse yet to come. Bear sat between them on the cracked leather seat, radiating his body heat in both directions. Sophie suggested driving out to the airport, to a place Simon had once shown her after buying his used Mustang. She relished the idea of taking Martin to discover a pocket of home he didn’t already know.

“Thank you for sharing the pie,” Martin said.

Between Bear’s enormous head blocking her view and the dim light of the dashboard, Sophie couldn’t make out his expression. “Did you like it?”

“Yup.”

“I usually don’t invite anyone over,” she admitted.

“You mean Henry hasn’t been there yet?” He couldn’t help asking.

Sophie sighed, almost groaning.

“They’re just a clan of people who want the best for you,” he said. “What
they
think is best.”

“Easy for you to say,” she said.