Too Jewish (14 page)

"Bernie met me in a bar," I said. I was instantly sorry. "I was with a friend of Ted's." That didn't help. "Look, what I mean is, I didn't look rich. I didn't say whose kid I was. He liked me for me."

"You have a lovely complexion," my mother said. "Anyone can tell you come from money. And Lord knows your clothes aren't cheap. Besides, he saw you in temple."

"He's from Germany," I said. "If you're not dead, you're rich."

I expected my father to play his violin in the air. Thank goodness he didn't because I would have screamed. "Now calm down," he said, but he had let my words hang for a while.

"Honey, please don't believe that horse manure about his mother," my father finally said.

Daddy had to be crazy. I'd taken a risk mentioning his mother. Bernie hadn't known that Ted had told me Bernie's mother was trapped in Germany. Ted only knew because he hung around at mail call. Bernie kept it a secret.

"You think it's not true?" I said. "If it's a lie, why didn't he tell me?"

"You found out, didn't you?" my mother said.

He didn't want me to know," I said. "Ted's the one who told me."

"Your Bernie's a clever one," my father said. "But scam artists have to be."

"What?"

"He wants money from you, right?" my father said.

"No."

"Why do you think he gave me that piece of junk?" my mother said.

"To be nice!" I said. "You just never met a nice boy before."

My parents went two against one. They were certain Bernie was meeting dozens of girls, giving them gifts, persuading them to help him with his business. Surely he was getting them to give him cash to set him up. A Ponzi scheme, even, my father guessed eventually. "He'll get all these girls to invest, tell them they can save his mother, pay the first ones profits, get more girls."

"You're dead wrong," I said.

"Then he just wants to take advantage of you and us," my mother said. She didn't want me to believe a nice boy was interested in me because of how I talked to him.

My parents liked to tie my mind up in so many loops that when they unloosed them into one I might believe them. But this time I knew Bernie. Bernie was ingenuous.

"You're dead wrong," I said again. I wished they'd play their old game of antagonizing each other. But lately they'd been teamed up against me.

* * *

I don't know which I learned more about, my parents or Bernie. Probably both. Actually I learned about myself, that I was a girl with terrific judgment. Bernie shipped out, and I said I loved him, and I was right. I was in school. Boys in school then were 4-F. Conscientious objectors might have existed, but not in New Orleans. Wrong-headedness wasn't in great supply in New Orleans, at least not in younger people. Nobody was right-headed, either; nobody was using his head at all. Anyway, if I met boys, they were soldiers like Bernie, on their way through. But they weren't Bernie. I compared everyone to Bernie, and I missed him. I was his girlfriend by the time he left, and I was still his girlfriend.

So I went out to get his business going. I used my own name at first, Letty Adler. Yes,
that
Adler. Though later just saying I was Letty had the same effect. There were no other Letty's. I started with small shops. I had all Bernie's samples, which were only five, plus my mother's matchbox, which she never missed. I started out small, going to small shops. I wasn't a salesman, so I had to teach myself. "Who handles purchasing?" I would say. It was a compliment. A store would be no bigger than my bedroom, so it would be the owner, standing there at the counter. Of course she handled purchasing. And sales. And sweeping the floor.

Each and every one would light up when she saw Bernie's line of gifts. And each and every one would cloud over when I said my name. It took a while to see the pattern. Finally I asked. "Has my mother been in here?"

"Oh, I just adore your mother," the owner-floor sweeper would say. "She is one of my favorite customers. Please tell her Harriet sends her best."

My parents never let it go, neither of them. My mother was out in the field, but my father had the money, and he could do the worst damage. My mother had failed to deter Bernie. Through the war, into the peace, three years. They had no choice. We were getting married, but they didn't give up on ruining us. Daddy chose the best time possible, the day of our wedding.

Mercifully, Bernie knew very little that day.

He said he was better not knowing about his mother. By then the war was over, and he'd had no word about his mother. He had many possibilities as to her fate, but none good. So he chose not to find out. He chose not to know about what was happening to him, either.

He went to see the rabbi before the wedding. He came back to me battle-shocked. Pale, with his blue eyes in the middle of many concentric circles.

"What did he do to you?" I said. The rabbi didn't suffer fools gladly. He rarely had a chance to catch one, though. His fools usually only showed up in a pack twice a year. And Bernie was the least foolish person who'd ever crossed this rabbi's path.

Bernie smiled. A sort of wistful smile. "I think if he didn't restrain himself, he would have said, Run.'"

I put my arms around him. "Aw, Bernie," I said. "That's no surprise. If I didn't love you, I'd tell you to run, too. Ted probably told you that first thing, huh. I bet you a dollar."

He kept on grinning. "Before I even called you," he said.

"Just show up for the wedding," I said. "Try to ignore what's happening to you."

"That's what I seem to have to do all the time lately."

We actually talked about why I didn't make it easy for him to run. If I ran, if I left home, too, everything would be all right. But I had something to prove. I couldn't leave. I realized how true that was right after the wedding. Bernie never knew how ruined our wedding was.

We had a reform rabbi and a reform ritual. He thought that was ruined enough. He was fine with no witnesses. He had Ted, who was all he could offer, unless Axel could have come. I had Shirley. And Louise the maid. Louise was dressed in her best, but afterward my mother made her serve canapés and champagne. I whispered to her, "Mama could have paid somebody today." "Shoot, she could've paid me," she whispered back. Eight people total, if you include the people who had no choice.

The crowd wasn't big enough for Daddy to take me aside. So he waited until I went upstairs. Bernie and I were going to the Edgewater in Gulfport just for the weekend. I needed to change my clothes.

"I want to get some things straight with you before you go in your room," Daddy said. He caught me in the hallway.

"Please don't ruin this day," I said.

"Oh, I think you'll find I'm giving you very good news." I stopped moving toward my room. "I'm concerned about the life you're going to have to live with a man who works in piece goods at Krauss's."

I folded my arms in front of me. It didn't matter that I was wearing a beautiful dress. "It's not his fault about his business."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You know you helped Mama wreck all his chances. Maybe not directly. But you knew." I looked him right in both eyes. It's possible to do that.

"Has he learned his lesson?"

I felt like tearing something. I think I'd have torn my dress, but I wanted to keep my dress. There was nothing in the hallway to throw. "You're ruining my wedding," I said. I didn't scream because there weren't enough people in the house. I put my fingers in my ears. "I'm not going to listen to you."

Something about my relationship with Bernie had made me more capable of defiance. Open defiance. Usually I was quieter when I went up against my parents, but lately I'd been letting out my anger.

My father took my arm gently. He came up very close; I could smell his breath. He'd been drinking champagne, but his breath was still sour. He hadn't had enough to drink to be nice. I could see his mouth. "Shhh."

I took my fingers out of my ears. "All right, all right. Calm down," he said. "Look, tell him I'll set him up in a space on Rampart Street. He can wholesale. Prove himself. Or not."

I'd had champagne. I didn't understand business on a regular day, but this didn't seem possible. Bernie was already ruined. They'd already ruined him. Now I got it.

"I get it," I said. They wanted to pay for a showcase where they could watch him fail. His business had nowhere to go in the city; my mother had seen to that.

"Listen, I pay the lease for three years," Daddy said.

"So?"

"So he's set up for three years. Unless your marriage ends."

Now I got it. Double failure. "Well it's not going to."

"This is what you call protecting your interests," Daddy said.

Maybe that was something I should have told Bernie about. Maybe we should have proved my parents wrong by taking the money. But I was too furious. I was going to stick with my original plan. We were going to prove them wrong by making it on our own in New Orleans.

"Thanks a lot," I said. "Planning my divorce on my wedding day is great. Just great." I went into my room and slammed the door. I could hear him anyway. He had a laugh in his voice. "You'll thank me one day!"

I hollered back. "You'll eat your words one day!"

* * *

I was in labor with Darby for twenty-one hours. She wasn't due for another week, but my mother had planned this trip around the world a year ago. It was finally payback for coming home early in 1939. The war hadn't convinced her that my father was right. "You made me come back. Period." My mother had gone to school with Dr. Hershfield's wife, so she called him up and told him her circumstances. He thought her trip was a perfectly good reason for me to deliver a week early. When I raised an objection, Dr. Hershfield gave me a lecture on the importance of grandmothers. I was induced because Mama was tired of waiting, and Dr. Hershfield was in charge. "I'll cancel the reservation if it's mongoloid or crippled," she said. "Otherwise, at least let me go with a picture of a boy or a girl."

My parents knew when I went to the hospital. After all, they put in the order for the birth date. Bernie was supposed to call when it was time, but Bernie was no fool. He told the nurse, "When the kid looks back at you, let me know." He didn't want to sit in the waiting room with my parents. I learned later they were there for three hours anyway.

They came into my room. I was all cleaned up, tired but too excited to fall asleep. I saw Bernie first. He looked like he was the one who had given birth: he'd been up all night. Maybe he'd napped, but I didn't think so. That wasn't it anyway. He'd probably gone three rounds with my parents.

"Thank God it's a girl," was the first thing my mother said.

"Yeah, Bernie wanted a girl," I said. I hadn't cared either way. I planned on a spunky child. A boy would be easier to make spunky, but a girl would be more fun.

"I'm surprised to hear that," my father said.

Bernie looked beaten up. "They think I have some barbaric need to have a bris." Bernie and I had talked about a bris: if we had had a boy, we'd have had one. A lot of Jews had them, not just extreme Jews. All Jewish boys were circumcised. I was sure my father was. I didn't want to know it, but I was sure he was. Daddy might have had a bris; Jews in New Orleans were different when he was born. A prayer and a skilled cutter made no difference to me.

"It's moot, Mama," I said. "Darby's a girl."

"Darby," my mother said.

"We've been over that, too," Bernie said.

"Well, I think it's morbid," my mother said, "naming babies after dead people."

Bernie's mother's name was Dora, and in Jewish tradition you name a baby after a relative who's died. You use the first letter of the name. We didn't consider her dead exactly, we considered her gone from life.

A nurse was in the room. "I'm named after my dead grandmother Annie in Ireland," she said. "Never even knew her. I think it's kind of nice."

"She'd enjoy it a lot more if she was alive," my mother said.

"So would Bernie's mother," I said.

Bernie left the room. My parents didn't. But he was only down the hall. He waited for them to go, then he came back, and he stayed until visiting hours were over. But he wasn't the first to see his own child, unless you counted the fact that my parents never really looked at Darby. "Babies all look alike," Daddy said.

* * *

. Now we had a baby and less money. A baby slipped away nickels and dimes until they added up. Bernie was frantic because he needed to do something about money. So he needed to use his vacation. Krauss's was a kind place to work. Bernie got paid if he was out sick, and Bernie got one week of paid vacation every year. He could save it if he didn't use it. Bernie sometimes worked six days a week, so he had extra vacation saved up. "At this rate, when I die Mr. Kern is going to say I can't be buried until I take my vacation," Bernie would say. He would go see Axel with me and baby Darby in the car. We would take half our savings.

I couldn't say no given that I'd made Krauss's his only option on our wedding day.

My car was still running well. It was all I had left from being an Adler. My father never took me off his charge account at the gas station, so I kept it up. Oil changes. Tire rotations. Going nowhere. We could go round-trip to New York a dozen times if need be.

Traveling with an infant was easy, and Darby was an easy baby. I put her bassinet on the back seat of the car; I sat next to her and nursed her when she fussed, changed her when that didn't work. And Bernie drove. He was a good driver. He said he felt very American when he first learned. Ted taught him, thank goodness. Anyway, it was April, so the South was perfect for windows cracked open. The East Coast was cooler. We stopped two nights, once in Georgia, once in Virginia with no rain either night. So diapers dried out after I washed them. They were so small.

I had a lot of time to think. I didn't know what I wanted. I was pretty sure I couldn't move to New York, but I wasn't going to tell Bernie that again because for all I knew I'd fall in love with New York. My mind was open but closed. I'd never been anywhere besides New Orleans, except all over Europe, of course. I loved Paris and Venice, but I couldn't live in either place. They were too far from home. That was it. New Orleans was home in a strangely cold way; it was where I needed to be. It was the place where I could make changes that counted, and I needed to stay there for those changes. I had learned a new drugstore and a new grocery store after we got married. That had been good change. Living in a one-room apartment was good because I was with Bernie. We shared a bathroom with another couple, and it didn't matter. What counted was that I was happy. We were on our way to doing so well that we would be above reproach. I needed to show I knew how to make a good choice. Bernie was a man I could be proud to walk around New Orleans with. Everyone would know him as a person of integrity and intellect. My parents would see that they had judged me wrong. They always had judged me wrong.