Family Secrets (26 page)

Adam had realized his dream of putting up a big office building, and he had become well known and respected in the Jewish community, and even, grudgingly, in the Christian one. He stayed with his own socially, but when it came to hiring he always chose the best man for his needs, regardless of social caste or religious beliefs, and everyone wanted to work for him because he was successful and paid well. His employees were mainly tall, handsome young WASPs, glib showpieces, who preferred Palm Beach to Miami Beach and were uncomfortable on their mandatory yearly visit to Adam’s home for cocktails. They overdressed, expecting Adam’s friends to overdress, and then found they were conspicuous. But they had been chosen to be good at business, not to be like him or his friends socially, and Adam was satisfied with his choices, who were all bright, hard-working, and ambitious although not treacherous.

None of them ever asked to date Rosemary, who had just turned thirty and was still single and looking, and she wouldn’t have gone out with them if they had. She was painfully self-conscious with any young man who seemed too different from what she was used to back home. On the other hand, she was a snob. And as she was not particularly pretty, although she had a trim, athletic figure, she spent many evenings at home with the family. During the day she took tennis lessons and went to the beach, where Papa had rented a big cabana. She hated cards and mah-jongg, and had not made any friends among the young married women of her age, whom she considered dull. In the afternoons she played the piano for several hours, and then it was time for dinner and the boring evening. She considered social work, but never considered taking a job, not that there was anything for her anyway. But the social work was dull, and the women who did it were all rich and dull too. Her favorite times were when Basil came to visit, for then they did things together. Sometimes they would take the cruise ship to Havana for the weekend, and visit all the night clubs. Once they were forced to take Hazel with them, because she nagged so, but luckily she didn’t nag after that one weekend. Hazel didn’t drink and she didn’t dance, so the night clubs weren’t much fun for her except as an observer, and anyway, Papa took them all out to dinner and night clubs every once in a while in Miami Beach, whenever a new hotel was opened, just so he could see it. And, of course, when Melissa and Lazarus came down there was always a round of restaurant going and night-clubbing. Everett was thirteen, and old enough to accompany the family, although naturally not old enough to drink. He was having a big fight with his parents because he was too shy to have his bar mitzvah, and they of course insisted that he go through with it after all those years of study. He didn’t want to speak in public, nor be the center of attention, and all Lazarus’ promises of watches and fountain pens did not convince him that it would be worth the agony of having people notice him for the first time.

Not have a bar mitzvah? It was like a Christian not being baptized: unthinkable. Terrible. What would people say? He would be a lost soul in the eyes of God, not to mention in the neighborhood. Everyone knew that Melissa and Lazarus would win, because a thirteen-year-old child never won, and of course they did win, and everyone said Everett’s bar mitzvah was lovely. It was held in Brooklyn, and they all went.

Hazel’s life in Florida went on as it had in Brooklyn, with one big exception. She was thirty-three now, and looked forty-five. She had nothing much to do at home, so she ate, and Henny was a good cook. Hazel was portly, matronly, although not fat, and with her slow ways she seemed more like a calm young grandmother than a single girl who still had private dim hopes of finding a husband. She dressed carefully every day in her boned all-in-one and expensive dresses, smeared on her lipstick, and purse in hand (filled with money Papa had given her) set out in Papa’s car, driven by Maurice, who had dropped Adam at the office and was not needed again until afternoon. She made the rounds of the stores. It was her favorite hobby now, more fun even than knitting or crossword puzzles. She loved to browse and window shop, go inside and touch and look, but she never spent much money. It was too hard to choose. If Papa had told her to buy a dress or a handbag, she would have dutifully bought a dress or a handbag, but since he had given her the money and told her to have a good time, she preferred to just look and come home with the money. Sometimes she bought a cheap little thing, a joke or novelty. She did not really wonder why they let her go out as she pleased here in Miami Beach, when she had spent her younger life kept in the house in Brooklyn unless she had a chaperone, but she supposed it had to do with the warmer climate. You wouldn’t catch a cold here. It never occurred to her, nor would anyone ever dream of discussing it among the family behind her back, that now that Hazel was a large, distinguished-looking matron, no boys would ever try to take her into the bushes. She still chatted with strangers—salesgirls, women she met at the cabana—but she didn’t speak to strange men. She knew men didn’t like to chat about the same things that women did, and she didn’t know how to talk about men things.

During school holidays Lavinia and Jonah and Paris came to visit. They always took the train, as did everyone else in the family except impatient Papa. Lavinia would ask Paris’ school to let her have several weeks off besides the holiday, and as Paris was so bright and always able to make up the missed work, the school would agree. Paris had a friend in Miami Beach, whose grandparents also lived there during the winter, and she and her friend Lucille drove everyone crazy with their pranks. The two little girls could stay out of doors for hours, endlessly inventing things to do, like putting a brick in Etta’s daughter-in-law’s pillow case the one time Etta’s son and his wife came to visit. It was already clear to Paris, at seven, that this tall, blue-haired lady whom no one ever let her call Grandma or even refer to among her friends as her step-grandmother, but only as Etta, Aunt Etta, or “my Grandpa’s wife,” held a special place in the family. She was the boss in the house, responsible for the menus and most of the household discipline (for example, she yelled at Paris all the time, but Grandpa never did), but nobody really thought of her as the boss. They were very polite to her, but they didn’t seem to like her at all. She wasn’t like a relative, she was more like a teacher they were a little afraid of because she represented the school. Paris thought Etta was pretty dumb for a grownup. She had a blank look in her eyes. She liked to play the horses with Henny. The bookie would come to the back door every morning and take fifty-cents or one-dollar bets instead of the two dollars you had to bet at the track, and Etta and Henny would always bet with him. Then they would listen to the radio to see who had won and get all excited. If you bet a dollar you only got back half of what the racetrack paid if you had won with a two-dollar bet. Paris could understand Henny betting only a dollar, because she was just the cook, but Etta was rich and Paris thought it was silly for her not to bet the whole two dollars and get twice as much.

Paris was not in the least afraid of Etta. Whenever Etta yelled at her, her mother got very angry, but Paris didn’t mind because she knew that some people just didn’t like children, and Etta was one of those. She didn’t take it personally. She didn’t like Etta much, nor did she dislike her; Etta was just there and you had to be very polite and nice to her because that was what everyone did in this house. You couldn’t kid around with her like you could with Aunt Hazel, who was very patient and like a child, or with Aunt Melissa, who was so sweet and pretty and loved Paris and Everett very much. The other person who didn’t like children was Uncle Lazarus. He couldn’t stand children, even his own son. He was always yelling at Everett, or else ignoring him. Paris thought Uncle Lazarus was the most boring person in the world and she kept away from him, which was what he liked. He referred to her as “that rotten kid.” That made her mother furious. But since he also called Everett, his own son, “that rotten kid,” Paris paid no attention.

Sometimes the grownups took Paris with them when they went out at night, and sometimes they left her home with all the maids. When they left her home she knew they were going to a very boring grownups’ thing called a charity affair, which she would hate. They went to a lot of those, and everybody ate dinner and then stood up and promised to give money to the charity. Why they all stood up and announced out loud how much they were going to give was beyond her. Why didn’t they just have someone go around with a bag and collect it, or else let them all stay home and mail it in? Some of the things grownups did that they thought were fun were so boring that Paris wasn’t sure she ever wanted to be a grownup at all.

Adam enjoyed the charity affairs, because he could see all his cronies and business associates and have his fine family with him. It was a part of life, he had taught his children: if you had, you gave to those who did not have. It was important to be a generous man, a philanthropist if possible.

The children, Lavinia and Melissa, Andrew and Basil, and Rosemary, were terrified of these charity events because Papa always stood up and pledged for them all, and he got carried away by the other people’s pledges and always pledged more than he had planned to, more than they could afford.

“It’s one thing to be generous, Papa,” Lavinia said, “but not to the point of making
us
charity cases.”

“Don’t be silly,” Papa would say calmly. “You can give it in installments.”

And there went the fur coat Melissa had been dreaming of, there went Everett’s camp (he would have to go to the Boy Scout camp again instead of Whip-poor-will, and everybody Melissa knew in Brooklyn sent their boys to Whip-poor-will), and Lazarus would worry himself sick as usual about his finances. There went the new dress Lavinia had been meaning to wear to her college reunion and Jonah wouldn’t be able to send any money to his family (although Lavinia wished he had stopped that practice a long time ago). There went Basil’s planned summer in Europe. As for Andrew, he would have to delay putting in the swimming pool for another year, and Chris would have to play under the garden hose.

When Adam Saffron stood up in the main ballroom of the new Neptune Palace and made his pledge to help the poor refugees from Europe, a buzz of admiration went through the room. What a pledge! What a generous man! He really must be rich to be able to give away so much. After the pledges were completed and the assembled guests had begun to dance to the music of the forty-piece orchestra and drink, and the old tired ones had begun to go home, yawning, friends came over to Adam Saffron’s table to greet him and express their admiration. Ah, the poor refugees would be so grateful to Adam Saffron, if they only knew he existed.

The first to rush over was always Herman Winsor. Fat, bald, paunchy Herman Winsor, with the ever-present cigar in his mouth, the fine dollar cigar from Havana that Lazarus disgustedly called his stinkadoro.

“Here comes Weinstein again,” Lazarus would say. “I can always smell his stinkadoros a mile away.”

Melissa would kick him under the table. “Shh!”

“What are you kicking me for, Toots?”

“His name is Winsor now,” Melissa would whisper.

“I know it.”

Lazarus couldn’t stand Jews who changed their names because they were ashamed of their ancestors. Having a fine family name like Bergman, which was often mistaken by Gentiles for Gentile, which he liked, made him even more intolerant of people who changed their names. “Thinks he’s the Duke of Windsor, ha ha,” Lazarus would say. “Couldn’t even spell it right.”

“Hello, Herman,” Melissa would say warmly, to make up for Lazarus. Lavinia would stifle a giggle. She didn’t like Lazarus, but she liked Herman even less.

Herman Winsor, né Weinstein, was in real estate too, like Adam. He was originally from Brooklyn, and everyone from Brooklyn knew about everyone else from Brooklyn, like Jews from a small town in Russia knew all about the other Jews in that town in Russia after they had emigrated to New York. Herman Winsor was very nouveau riche. But he was jolly and friendly. He paid his respects to Adam, greeted Etta and the children politely, and then managed to pull up a chair to sit next to the object of his heart’s desire, Rosemary. Rosemary would move her chair away, just an inch, but not subtly.

“Hello, Rosemary,” Herman would say, loudly. He always spoke loudly when he was trying to be particularly jolly.

“Herman,” Rosemary would say, nodding her head. Her voice would drip icicles. She was very good at that.

“How about this dance?”

“I hurt my ankle this morning playing tennis.”

“Oh. Better take it easy with that.” He would lay his cigar carefully in the glass ashtray and beam at her. “You’d better go to a good doctor.”

“I will.”

“My doctor is good.”

She wouldn’t answer, but would occupy herself with great interest in watching the dancers. Herman would search his mind for something to say to impress her.

“I’m thinking of turning in my car for a new one.”

“Oh?”

“It’s only a year old, but I like a new car every year. You’ll have to see my car when we leave.”

She would see the car, in passing, when she left with her family and Herman managed to leave at the same time. The whole family would admire the car, and Herman would be pleased. They would tell her what a grand fellow he was, he was sure.

If it was not the ankle and the auto the dialogue always ran to something of that same nature. Herman would pursue, in his own way, and Rosemary would retreat, in her own way, and because neither of them understood the other Herman thought he was making progess and Rosemary could not understand why he didn’t take a hint and go away. She wouldn’t be caught dead going out with Herman Winsor. She thought he was terrible. He, on the other hand, thought she was shy, strictly brought up, and a nice old-fashioned girl. The more she rejected him the more impressed he was. As a forty-three-year-old bachelor he’d had his share of chippies and good-time girls, and still did, but when he was looking for a wife, as he had decided to do now, he wanted a nice old-fashioned girl, quiet, docile, and very rich. Adam Saffron’s youngest daughter was perfect for what he had in mind. He liked that she was athletic, that was so goyish. It would impress his friends, all of whom were his age and spent their time playing cards, and of course their wives played mah-jongg too, but none of them would dream of playing tennis. Rosemary reminded him of a Jewish Katharine Hepburn: her lean sinewy legs, her freckles, her frizzy reddish hair. But he would never have considered any girl who wasn’t obviously Jewish. At heart he was much more religious than he pretended to be for business and social purposes. He really would have liked to light the candles every Friday night before supper, the way his mother always had in Brooklyn.