Too Jewish (11 page)

"We're going on a picnic," she said.

"It's Shabbat," I said.

"Oh."

I thought about it. "If we walk, I could go. The levee's only a few blocks. I've seen trees on the levee. We could find shade."

Letty waited in the living room while I cleaned myself up. I trusted the landlady to do the right thing. As I was going up the stairs I heard her say, "Now make yourself comfortable. I'll be in the kitchen if you need me." That was the right thing.

* * *

Letty proposed to me on the levee.

Everything in the basket was so cold and fresh, sandwiches and Cokes and even chocolate chip cookies and potato chips, and we were under an oak tree, and for some reason I was telling her about my thoughts of despair on the streetcar, and she said, "If you marry me, everything would make sense."

Suddenly I was happy. There's no other way to describe how I felt. I had cookie and Coke in my mouth, I saw Letty against deep green, and I had good reasons for everything. Happy. "Why didn't I think of that?" I said, and I started laughing until I had to reach out and hold her.

"Does that mean you're asking me to marry you?" she whispered into my shoulder.

I held her away from me at arm's length. I looked into her eyes. "Letty Adler, will you marry me?" That was how they did it in the movies.

"Yes, Bernie Cooper, I will marry you."

I can say she asked me to marry her, but we have that one exchange to make it official that we did it right.

We finished our picnic as an engaged couple. We talked about Letty Cooper. We talked about children. We talked about the apartment we could have and Letty imagined everything except the kitchen. I didn't mention my dietary rules. They were easy to work into another life. I had worked them into the United States military. I could work them into one sweet young girl. We talked about New Orleans. Only I talked about Axel and New York, but I didn't care. It was not until we were walking back to my place that we stopped talking about the marriage and had to face getting married.

"You have to tell me the tradition here," I said as we walked up Broadway. I was swinging the empty picnic basket, heavy in the belly and light in the head. "In books I would ask your father for your hand."

"Oh, damn," Letty said. Letty didn't cuss unless she injured herself accidentally or she was full of rage at her mother.

On the Sabbath, no less.

* * *

I didn't need to make a formal appointment with Mr. Adler, I was relieved to know, but her parents needed to learn that we wanted to get married. We were going to do something right, I told Letty that day, and on Sunday we drove to a quiet café across Lake Pontchartrain. We had to go all the way around the lake to get to the other side, but Mandeville was the real South, unlike New Orleans. People spoke with southern accents. Spanish moss hung from the oak trees the way it did in the park in the city, but the trees were closer together, creating more of a canopy, and the streets were barely paved, more like clamshell roads. It smelled like pine. We drank white wine, and I gave Letty my mother's ring. It was wrapped in tissue paper because I had no box. I wanted a box. "I wanted a box," I said when I handed it to her.

"That's what I'll tell our children," she said, staring at the diamond which was so large on her finger. I was glad she had tiny fingers, so it didn't look the same as it had on my mother's hand. "When you asked me to marry you, you said, I wanted a box,'" she whispered. I leaned over and kissed her.

"Do I want to know how you have this ring?" she said. She had no accusation in her voice, and no doubt, just fear of knowing. I told her everything about saying goodbye to my mother. Now that she owned the ring, she said, "You should have disobeyed her. You should have sold it."

Once Letty had quit crying over her own failure to save my mother by raising money when it was probably too late anyway, we prepared ourselves to see her parents. She wanted to barge in that afternoon. I thought an appointment was better. She thought it made no difference. Respect never penetrated with her parents. We compromised. As soon as we were inside the city line, we found a pay phone, and she called to say she was coming home within the hour and needed to talk to them. Please.

When we walked in through the kitchen, where there was no Louise or cook because it was Sunday and the Adlers toughed it out on Sundays, Letty called out for her parents. I heard one, then two sets of footsteps coming down, and I felt the fear of battle. Letty took my hand and tugged me through the swinging door that led into hallway to the solarium.

Her father took one look at me and said, "Hell, no."

Letty had been poised to present her ring finger to her parents, and she pulled back her hand. "Excuse me?" she said. I stood behind her. Mrs. Adler came up behind her husband. No one sat.

"You called to say you wanted to talk to us. You bring in this boy. It doesn't take a genius to know what you want to talk about," Mr. Adler said. "If you're here to do some kind of polite announcement that you want to get married, then that's what hell, no' means."

"Or if you
have
to get married," Mrs. Adler said. "Nobody with connections
has
to get married."

"I'm not pregnant," Letty said.

I could see the route to the front door from where I stood. "I think it would be better if I left now," I said.

"To quote my daddy, hell, no,'" Letty said. "Everybody sit down, please." She was trying to be polite, for herself or for me, I didn't know.

Her parents moved to the chaise lounge, leaving us to take the chairs that were on opposite sides of the breakfront. In a solarium there is not a lot of space for furniture because of all of the windows. The chairs each had a footstool, and no sooner had Letty sat down in her chair than she got up and moved over to sit on the little stool at my feet. She leaned against my legs, wrapping her arms around her knees. I couldn't see what she was doing with her left hand, but I had a feeling she wasn't concealing her ring.

"Bernie has a job, and we want to get married," Letty said. "That's all there is to it. I came hoping you'd be happy that I'm happy."

Mr. Adler turned to me. I noticed he'd seen Letty's finger. I'd been following his eyes. "Tell me about this job," he said. He said "job" the way one might say a word for a piece of excrement.

I told him I was handling inventory in the piece goods department at Krauss's. I thought the word "inventory" sounded impressive, even if I hadn't started yet.

Mr. Adler turned to his wife. "Inventory is a fancy word for warehouse."

"Excuse me, sir," I said, "but this is a desk job on the floor."

Letty leaned forward. "This is all beside the point. Bernie can take care of me just fine."

"Sweetie, you have a year left of school," her mother said. ""Will he be paying your tuition next semester?"

Letty was silent. Her little backbone against me seemed to lose some of its rigid, straight determination. I hoped only I could notice. "Why would you do that?" she said finally.

"I'll tell you the truth," Mr. Adler said. "Nothing personal, son, but college is important. We want Letty to recognize how important it is. Not just for her, but for the man she marries. You can come in here and tell us you went to Düsseldorf College or somewhere, but we're not stupid. We know what went on over there. You probably don't have more than an eighth-grade education. What are you going to do for the rest of your life, sell taffeta at ten cents a yard?"

I wanted to leave, but I realized that Letty was sitting where she was in part to block my exit. I saw no reason to have to defend myself, and yet I was going to have to explain myself.

"Bernie is the most educated man I know," Letty said. "He read James Joyce in English, and most English speakers can't do that. He knows mythology, so he didn't even need notes."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," her father said. "I think he was just amusing himself and trying to impress you."

"Are you crazy?" Letty said in spite of herself.

"Don't talk to your father like that," her mother said.

Now Letty was stiff with rage. "Listen, Bernie can't help his circumstances. How would you like it if you were twenty-three years old, and all of a sudden they started killing the Jews? Including probably your mother?"

"I'd become an Episcopalian in a heartbeat," her father said.

I was sure Letty could feel my legs pressing to walk out.

"Daddy!" she screamed.

"No skin off my nose," he said. "Literally." He looked at his wife to see whether she was laughing. She was giving him a dirty look. "Okay, enough," he said.

"Listen, son," he said to me. "I know we're being a little rough here. I'm sure you're a very nice guy. But Letty is our only child, and we have everything invested in her. The trouble is, she's been a handful practically since the day she was born. The harder we try to show her what's right, the harder she tries to do what's wrong. "

He looked at me for sympathy, but I didn't have any to give. Letty was not someone who had shown me a contrary streak.

"Of course you don't believe me. I'm afraid you're part of the problem. Letty always brings home strays to shock us. It was mangy kittens when she was little. Then it was that dreadful girl Shirley. I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're probably just her way of punishing us."

I looked at Letty, who rolled her eyes. Of course she would roll her eyes even if what he said was true, but I trusted her. She turned to her father, and her expression turned to just the angry petulance he claimed he always saw. "I wasn't going to say this, but I really don't care anymore. It was bad enough that you wouldn't help Bernie get his mother out of Germany, and she's probably murdered now, but I happen to know you sabotaged his business."

"What?" I said in spite of myself.

She turned around and looked at me. "That's right. They didn't think I'd go around and try again, but I did. You want to hear Mama's word?
Recherche.
That woman"

"Don't you dare call your mother that woman,'" her father said.

"Okay,
sorry
. My mother went to every shop and every department store she shops at, and you can believe me when I tell you that she and her friends practically singlehandedly support Canal Street and Magazine Street, and she was laughing behind our backs. She'd go in and say" At this Letty's voice became falsetto. "'Oh, you won't believe this poor little immigrant who's trying to go out with my Letty. Too Jewish for words. And he comes down here from New York, and look at what he's trying to sell. You've seen him, haven't you?' Now you know what the message was there, don't you? You want my business, then I dare you to place an order with this poor little immigrant." Letty spoke directly to me. "Your big mistake was ever giving her that matchbox. She used it against you." Then she spoke to her mother. "You want to give me one good reason? Never mind. I know. He's too Jewish."

"What are you trying to prove here?" her mother said.

"That you deliberately ruined any chance of Bernie and me having a good life together," Letty said. She took in a deep breath. "You know, I let it go by that you wouldn't help him save his mother's life. You realize you're practically murderers?"

Her parents didn't flinch.

Letty got louder. "Just think about this. You're going to have grandchildren, and when they ask why they don't have any other grandparents, I'm going to tell them, oh, because grandma and grandpa were too anti-Semitic to save your other grandmother from being murdered. How do you like that?"

"I think we've had quite enough," Mrs. Adler said.

I could feel Letty calming down. She'd made her point. I wasn't calm at all. I could not see any way in which she and I were going to get married.

"All right," Letty said. "Now can we talk about my getting married?"

"What?" I said before her parents could open their mouths.

Letty turned around and looked at me. "My parents aren't going to stand in my way," she said to me. "I'm almost legally an adult. And if they don't want me to finish college, it's their problem."

"Of course we want you to finish college," her father said. "Why don't you plan on getting married in the summer?" She had called their bluff, and possibly for the first time.

Over her shoulder I could see Letty holding out her ring finger, first to admire it herself, as if thinking about a long engagement, then flipping her hand around to flaunt it in front of her parents. "I don't want to wait almost a year," she said. "Unless you want to have a huge ceremony and reception at the Roosevelt that would take a lot of planning."

"Let me see that thing," her father said. "Take it off." Letty was more than happy to do so; it wasn't part of her yet. He examined it closely, held it up in the light, looked inside the band. I hadn't ever looked in there myself. "Where'd you get this, fella? I know you didn't buy it on whatever Krauss's is paying you."

"I don't think that's any of your business, Daddy," Letty said.

"That's no way to talk to your father," Mrs. Adler said.

"Sorry," Letty said, with what might have been an edge in her tone if someone was looking for one.

"Listen, Princess Elizabeth, I bet when Bernie was in the Army, he stole this off a dead body. I hear soldiers took every souvenir they could get over there."

"For your information, he was on Eisenhower's logistics staff in London, where pretty much everybody was alive. But his
mother
happens to be dead, probably in a concentration camp. No thanks to you. And that's who gave it to him." Letty grabbed the ring and stormed out of the room.

Mr. Adler said to me, "If you really had a ring, why didn't you sell the damn thing?"

The logical move would have been to walk out the front door, but I must have caught the contagion of Letty's determination, because I didn't move. I didn't speak. I tried very hard not to allow myself to process what Mr. Adler just had said. I loved the girl who right then was in the kitchen, probably fuming, probably not crying, and if I was going to be with her, I needed to put her parents away. I had regions of memory I never allowed up, and now I was going to have regions of the present that I couldn't hear or see. And so I sat. The house was silent. After less than a minute, Mrs. Adler said, "Well!" and got up and walked out through the same door Letty had used. That left me with Mr. Adler. I said nothing. I was comfortable with him, because I knew he wasn't going to speak.