The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane (26 page)

Afterward, she ran into Mrs. Mendelbaum in her building and recognized her from the Jewish community center. Sophie had kept Mickey in her heart all these years as her son, but now she saw that he was not. That truly she had no family. And Mrs. Mendelbaum had just lost the last member of her family. So they struck up a friendship and on Fridays went to the center to make bread together. When Mrs. Mendelbaum moved to the island, Sophie was frantic. She thought that Mrs. Mendelbaum had put herself in a very precarious position and she didn't know what to do. She was making herself ill with worry and had even gone to the police, but, of course, the police politely dismissed her, so she went to her priest, Father John Humdinger. Humdinger told Dr. Houseman that he thought Sophie half hoped he
would
find something wrong, so that Mrs. Mendelbaum would have to return to Vancouver. He promised to go to the island and make sure Mrs. Mendelbaum was all right, to check out the situation and have a talk with Marten Knockers without telling Marten Knockers that he was a priest. No one,
absolutely no one,
Sophie emphasized, must know that he was Father John, or Mrs. Mendelbaum would be furious.

It was going to be tricky, Humdinger thought, explaining his presence on the island to Marten Knockers. In desperation he had even thought he might tell Marten Knockers that he was there to sell encyclopedias. This, he later understood when he knew Marten Knockers better, would have worked just fine. But, fortunately, he never had to use it because Mrs. Mendelbaum solved the problem almost immediately by hiring him as the butler. He would let Uncle assume he had come for the interview and then decided not to take the job, and in the meantime he'd fulfill his promise to Sophie by ascertaining that all was well with Mrs. Mendelbaum. But all didn't seem to be well with Mrs. Mendelbaum. He looked around and saw the stopped-up sink, the near-hysterical Mrs. Mendelbaum, the two recently orphaned girls, and Uncle Marten, who seemed to be in over his head, and he decided that for a while, at least, perhaps the island was where he was needed. So he wrote his bishop and got permission to take the vacation time he had not taken for twenty years, and kept his collar turned, and stayed. He had a younger priest come and take over his duties at the street shelter for runaways where he worked part-time and from where he knew Dr. Houseman, who came in one morning a week to work in the adjoining free clinic. And when I got ill, he called her.

I asked Dr. Houseman why Sophie was so adamant about not revealing Father John's identity. Dr. Houseman said it was because Mrs. Mendelbaum hated how Sophie went on and on about wonderful Father John. She thought Sophie was besotted. One day she got fed up and banned any more conversation about him ever again. And Sophie did not want to lose the friendship. So Mrs. Mendelbaum must not find out that Sophie had sent the banned Father John to check on her.

The only question I had left was the bull. What about the bull, I asked Uncle Marten later. “What bull?” he asked abstractedly.

So I never found out about the bull. Or really knew much more about Humdinger than that, but I did find out that Uncle was right and Dr. Houseman had been in love with Humdinger. I finally got her to admit it to me when she said that soon she would be leaving the island and moving to help open clinics in small towns in Manitoba. “But won't you miss Humdinger?” I asked craftily. She said that I must promise never to mention it again, especially not around Humdinger, whom it might make uncomfortable if he knew, but because she was leaving soon she would admit she had loved Humdinger even though she knew nothing could come of it, but even that didn't bother her because she didn't attach to anyone that way. That when she was with them it was fine and when she wasn't that was fine, too. That it was a detached kind of love.

Several days later when I brought Mrs. Mendelbaum a tray as a favor to Humdinger, Dr. Houseman was leaving her room with a bottle of the cough medicine in her hand. Mrs. Mendelbaum was mad at Dr. Houseman, who was confiscating the cough syrup and meeting with Sophie to find out what went in it, because although she had dismissed it originally as just a harmless herbal home remedy, she was puzzled by why Mrs. Mendelbaum and Jocelyn continued to go about in a daze and before she left for Manitoba she was going to make sure that the medicine was indeed harmless and so tie up any loose ends. But even if Mrs. Mendelbaum hadn't been annoyed with Dr. Houseman about this, I knew she didn't think much of her.

“She has no understanding, that one,” said Mrs. Mendelbaum. “She has compassion but no empathy.”

I told her what Dr. Houseman had said to me about not being attached, and Mrs. Mendelbaum said, “That is not to love. To love, you make the pact with the universe that someday separated from this person you will be and destroyed by such loss but this you are willing to do, knowing that love comes at such a cost. If no other miracles we see, that we do this over and over, this agreement at such a price—shain vi di zibben velten, heldish. But detached love, ech, no such thing. Love is bound to this end, all else is only kindness.”

I went to Jocelyn's room after that. I was talking to her every day now. She was still pretty groggy and out of it most of the time, but I kept her updated.

It took Jocelyn a long time to get off the medicine. Mrs. Mendelbaum never did. She did not want a new beginning. She had had enough. She had not the energy for it. Her heart was left behind with her four dead sons and husband. The time when she had been so quietly happy. We tried to make things comfortable for her anyway, and I think we did. And at the end there was Humdinger, Jocelyn, Sophie, and myself beside her when she said, “Sof kol sof,” with weary decision and died.

Because I wanted to know what Mrs. Mendelbaum's last words had meant, it occurred to me that I could learn Yiddish. I was sorry I hadn't thought of this earlier, that year when I could not make new beginnings, but now I learned from Sophie, who was glad to have a hobby. I learned:

Ganz kaput—completely broken

Alter kucker—lecherous old man

G'vir—rich man

Gut far him—serves him right

Er zol vaksen vi a tsibeleh, mit dem kop in drerd—he should grow like an onion, with his head in the ground

Ich hob es in drerd—to hell with it

Farkuckt—dung-y

Meshugeh—crazy

Shmek tabik—nothing of value

Es past nit—it is not becoming

Kaput—broken, gone

Tsedrait—screwy

Es brent mir ahfen hartz—I have heartburn

Hert zich ein—listen here

Got in himmel—God in heaven

A feier zol im trefen—he should burn up

A brocheh—a blessing

Ahzes ponim—impudent fellow

Bal toyreh—learned man

Ganz farmutshet—completely exhausted

Me ken brechen—you can vomit from this

Goyishe—gentile

Shmaltz—fat

Loz mich tzu ru—leave me alone

Shtetl—village

Az a yor ahf mir—I should have such good luck

Kabaret forshtelung—floor show

Gelibteh—beloved

Sitzfleish—patience that can endure sitting

Ich zol azoy vissen fun tzores—I should know as little about trouble

Kaddishel—term of endearment for a boy or man

Maideleh—affectionate term for a girl

Es iz a shandeh far di kinder—it's a shame for the children

Tahkeh a metsieh—really a bargain (sarcastic)

Es vet gornit helfen—nothing will help

Pyesseh—a drama

Meshugener—crazy male

Shain vi di zibben velten—beautiful as the seven worlds

Heldish—brave

Sof kol sof—let's end it

And finally what Sophie said back to Mrs. Mendelbaum when she said sof kol sof: alaichem sholom—to you be peace.

Also by Polly Horvath

The Vacation

The Pepins and Their Problems
with pictures by Marylin Hafner

The Canning Season

Everything on a Waffle

The Trolls

When the Circus Came to Town

The Happy Yellow Car

No More Cornflakes

An Occasional Cow
with pictures by Gioia Fiammenghi

 

Copyright © 2007 by Polly Horvath

All rights reserved

First edition, 2007

www.fsgkidsbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Horvath, Polly.

The Corps of the Bare-Boned Plane / Polly Horvath.— 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: When their parents are killed in a train accident, cousins Meline and Jocelyn, who have little in common, are sent to live with their wealthy, eccentric, and isolated Uncle Marten on his island off the coast of British Columbia, where they are soon joined by other oddly disconnected and troubled people.

ISBN-13: 978-0-374-31553-5

ISBN-10: 0-374-31553-1

[1. Death—Fiction. 2. Grief—Fiction. 3. Uncles—Fiction. 4. Cousins—Fiction. 5. Airplanes—Fiction. 6. Islands—Fiction. 7. British Columbia—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.H79224 Co 2007

[Fic]—dc22

2006041281

eISBN 9781466863019

First eBook edition: December 2013