First Papers (36 page)

“You simply have to write it down—I could make my sister read it. She has one child, oh God, a brat you want to kill.”

“Please—a book.”

So last summer had not been a fluke after all, Alexandra Ivarin thought. There did seem to be some unchanging response to her from these poor souls of Delancey Street and Rivington, of Gouverneur Street and Orchard, of Avenue A and East Broadway. Street by street, tenement by tenement, they were asearch for the ultimate difference between life in America and life in the ancient ghettos from which they had fled. And many also searched to keep up with their children, “American born,” at home from birth in the great and beloved land.

Alexandra looked off at the shining sea and loved it. Foaming, leaping, curling, it was nevertheless a bridge for the hopeful. It would always be a bridge and she would always love it.

She had walked the entire length of the beach and the girls were still nowhere in sight; they must be inside somebody’s tent, and Shag, who often gave her a clue to their whereabouts, must be inside with them. Sharing things was best while the impulse was warm, but now she would have to wait until evening to tell them about Stiva’s letter and his not waiting to copy out his editorial before mailing it to her. Disappointed, she walked home.

“Mrs. Ivarin, I decided you flew away in an aeroplane!”

It was Anna Godleberg, waiting for her return. Alexandra was delighted, as if Mrs. Godleberg had magically changed into the most desired friend on earth. As she invited her in “for a few minutes,” she heard an extra cordiality in her own tone, and a gong of warning sounded in her mind. But Anna Godleberg said she had come for the special rice-pudding recipe with natural brown rice and brown sugar, and the gong had a faraway tone, with no urgency.

Alexandra laid her husband’s letter on the table and as she wrote out the recipe her hand was only inches away from it. “And this cup of raisins,” she said at the end, “they mustn’t be white raisins. Those are bleached with sulphur and lose all their minerals. Be sure you get dark ones like these.”

She reached for a box on the open shelf which was the tent’s pantry, tasted a few raisins and said, “Simply delicious,” as she offered the box to her pupil. “Everything seems delicious right now,” she added in the same breath, “I’m so excited about something I just read.”

“In today’s paper? Can I borrow it if you’re through reading it?”

“No, it’s not in today’s paper.”

“Something by your husband?”

“An editorial.”

Mrs. Godleberg was electrified. “In yesterday’s paper then. I didn’t see that either. Could I please borrow that one? I’ll send my Morris back with it right after supper.”

“It hasn’t been in the paper at all yet.” Alexandra heard the gong more clearly, but Mrs. Godleberg looked confused, and she added, “It
will
be in the paper of course, perhaps in two weeks. I wasn’t supposed to speak of it. It slipped out.”

Her visitor’s face was transformed. Like a child with its first glimpse of an unheard-of toy, Mrs. Godleberg was radiant with discovery. “You said you just read it—you mean just
now,
in that letter?”

Her hand moved forward toward the letter so prominently in view, but Alexandra said, “I’m afraid I can’t. I promised.”

Mrs. Godleberg halted her hand and stood still, nodding in obedience, not speaking, as if she had been caught in some indecency.

“Sometimes, he sends me an editorial ahead of time,” Alexandra said, uneasy as she saw Mrs. Godleberg’s radiance give way to a somber look, as she watched her move back a step, away from the table.

Alexandra understood. It was the look of respect, a return to deference that was part of the uneducated European’s automatic posture to those in high places.

Oh, my goodness, Alexandra Ivarin thought in dismay. I made her feel she’s a nobody.

Suddenly she was miserable.
Why
had they started on Stiva’s editorial? Had she brought it up herself? She hadn’t, she was sure; she was on her honor to confide in nobody about it.

Yet somehow they
were
talking about it. Had Anna Godleberg asked her what Mr. Ivarin was writing? She often did ask questions about “the great Mr. Ivarin”; perhaps it was all Mrs. Godleberg’s doing.

“I didn’t mean to butt in,” Mrs. Godleberg said, wretchedly nodding at the letter as if she were indicating a third person with whom she had found Mrs. Ivarin involved. “I wouldn’t have asked—if I had even dreamed—Excuse me, Mrs. Ivarin, please.”

“No, no,” Alexandra said contritely.
“You
must excuse me. I feel ridiculous, embarrassing you over something which, after all, is public property.”

Hope shone forth again in Anna Godleberg’s face, and eagerness, but she said nothing. She was waiting for the rest of the reprieve Mrs. Ivarin was going to give her. Alexandra added, “I mean will
be
public property when it is printed.”

The niceties of this retreat were lost on Mrs. Godleberg, who still looked expectant. Alexandra suddenly thought, There’s no way out now. I can’t hurt her again and send her off empty—how I ever got so tangled up, I’ll never know.

Aloud she said, “Let me read you a bit here and a bit there, but you must promise first—”

“Not one word. Wild horses couldn’t drag it out.” She leaned toward Alexandra, whispering. “I’d be so, I’d feel, I’m so excited
already,
even to see you open the envelope, see you take it out, and know it hasn’t even been in the paper yet. Oh, thank you.”

Alexandra read the headline, and the first paragraph. She would skip everything after that, go straight to the end and read another line or two from the last page. That would give Mrs. Godleberg enough to restore her, and still permit her own conscience to stay calm.

But at the end of the first paragraph, she somehow could not skip. It would mutilate Stiva’s beautiful piling up of effect, his way of moving inexorably from point to point, his perfect interplay of cold fact, icy sarcasm, hot wrath.

She read the second page to Mrs. Godleberg, and the third. With each one her heart felt an anchor of guilt unwind and sink through fathoms to hold it firm to a dark regret, yet she was helpless until the last syllable Stiva had entrusted to her.

“God in heaven, he is the most brilliant writer in the whole world,” Anna Godleberg said then. “What a privilege!”

Her rapture almost repaid Alexandra. But as Anna Godleberg took her departure, Alexandra detained her for one final word of caution.

“Remember, I read it only as a real secret,” she said. “I think my husband wanted me not to speak of it to anybody.”

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Ivarin. I’m like the grave.”

W
EBSTER
M
ARTIN
E
AVES, AGED
a year and a quarter, proceeded on plump legs toward his Aunt Fee.

His right hand clutched four orange-yellow asters which he had just pulled from a round flower bed in his front yard, and he held his hand stiffly toward her during his journey, as if he were pushing the flowers through the air against stubborn resistance.

“Annie Fee-fee ha!” he said.

Fee laughed. “Ha” meant “have” and she kneeled on the dry grass, her arms out, ready for his final lurch. “Come on, Webby, all the way to Auntie Fee.”

His last steps were a stagger and she caught him, took his flowers, and rolled him on the ground like a smaller Shag. “Say ‘Auntie Fee,’” she said, stressing the T.

“Annie Fee-fee,” he said amiably.

“Not Fifi,” Fee said. “That’s like a French novel.”

“Webby wants.” He got up and lunged for his orange-yellow asters and Fee moved them just beyond his reach. “Webby wants,” he said again, and stamped his foot so that a flurry of white powder flew up from his square-toed shoe. “Indian giver,” she said, returning the flowers as she watched the white flurry. It reminded her of the soft puff from a dandelion, after it stopped being a yellow disc and became a ball on a greeny-grey stem, and she said, “Stamp your foot again,” and laughed.

Everything made her feel good today. She had come all the way to Brooklyn by herself, to stay with Webby while Eli was at the hospital with Joan and the new baby, Alexandra, that they had been so scared about, and when Eli got home it would be too late for her to start back to Barnett, so she was going to stay overnight, even though it was a school night when she was supposed to go to bed early.

She never did go to bed early when she stayed overnight at anybody else’s house, and certainly not to sleep early. Even when she was allowed to spend the night at Trudy’s, it was such fun she never felt sleepy at the right time, and for Trudy’s she didn’t have to take a trolley and then a train.

But sleeping in any house that wasn’t yours was exciting. There was an adventure-feeling from the moment you packed your toothbrush and nightgown to the final moment of getting home the next morning.

Nobody could explain why it was so special, but they admitted it was. People loved change, Mama said, new surroundings, getting away from the humdrum. But Mama warned her not to get “Wanderlust” too soon, and not to be in too much of a hurry for life. If she was too
much
in a hurry, trouble was sure to strike.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked, but her mother went vague and pretty stupid and so did Eli and Joan. As for Fran, she was now so crazy about herself and being sixteen and a senior at High, and she had such a crush on a new boy, Tom Ladendock, that she wouldn’t say a thing you could make any sense out of.

Actually it was perfectly clear what her mother meant; she had uttered a thousand solemn warnings all their lives about the White Slave Traffic, and they both knew perfectly well that if
that
happened to you, trouble certainly had struck.

But of late, other people said she shouldn’t be impatient to grow up and be independent, and they weren’t all thinking of the White Slave Traffic. Trudy said her mother thought Fee was restless, and predicted she would want to leave home for good when she was sixteen or eighteen, and then that would give Trudy ideas, and Trudy would leave home too.

That was stupid too, Fee thought. She wasn’t restless or in a rush or anything—she always had loved staying at Eli’s house, and sleeping on the sofa and eating from their thin blue and white dishes. Pot roast or chicken or meatloaf that Joan made always tasted so much better than the same things at home; having white bread and white sugar, just being away from Mama and Papa and their accents and their principles and protests and wild ideas about everything—all together it added up to a feeling that was wonderful. Like riding a bike downhill without the handlebars, with the wind whistling through your hair and your skirt pressing back against your legs and past them. Or like being on roller skates and going faster and faster and then suddenly standing up straight, coasting along on the spinning wheels with no effort of your own.

“Auntie Fee loves you,” she suddenly said to Webby, who had been busy pulling the four flowers apart.

“Webby did it,” he said, pointing to the wrecked asters.

“Webby’s a bad bad good good boy.” She scooped him up, staggered a step under his surprising weight, set him back on his feet and started for the house.

“No,” he shouted. “Webby stay here!”

“Look at that,” she said, “the way the sun is going down right behind Webby’s back.”

He wheeled. “Where?”

Just above the roof of a neighboring house, the orange-yellow sun seemed motionless, but in a tick of an instant, its bottom edge was clipped straight across, then another slice of it, and another after that.

Fee watched her nephew. His total attention was on the sinking sun, his total life given over to it. When at last its uppermost edge disappeared Fee took his hand and said, “Now it’s gone, so we can go inside,” and Webby trotted along happily beside her.

Miss Montessori, Fee thought. She felt happy too. Feeding Web and bathing him and putting him to bed was an adventure also. Joan had written out step-by-step instructions, but everything seemed so natural and easy. When she was married she was going to have a lot of children and never do one thing to make them feel awful like the black bunting or being socialists. Damsie and Josie she would do, but absolutely nothing else.

She wasn’t too sure about Damsie and Josie either. Once a letter came from Lawrence, with a friend putting down words Damsie and Josie’s mother had spoken aloud in Polish to say thank you for what you did, and it didn’t have one interesting thing in it. Papa translated it, and Mama said Fran and she ought to keep in touch with them, and answer soon, or else, with their resiliency and youth, they would forget all about each other.

Resiliency and youth, Fee thought, as she listened to Webby making spit noises in his crib, nice sleepy spitty noises that she liked when he made them but hated if somebody old sitting next to her in a trolley made them. Resiliency and youth—the two words had a sound she loved, a springy bounce hidden inside that made her tingle and stretch as if she were reaching up toward something on top of something high.

Down the street, Eli whistled and she ran to the door to meet him. He would praise her and say she was dependable and grown-up and she would love that.

“How did it go, Fee?” Eli said. “Everything jake?”

“He’s fast asleep. He’s an angel.”

“So are you,” he said. “Joan never worried and neither did I.”

“Is she still red? I mean Sandra.”

He shook his head. “She’ll be a real beauty, Joanie says.” He slumped into a chair. “Whew, Sis, I’m worn out, and starving.”

“It’s in the icebox. Just a jiffy.”

He hardly ever called her Sis. As she went for the platter of cold ham and potato salad Mrs. Martin had prepared that afternoon, the word “Sis” said itself over and over. It also had a sound she loved, secret like a word in a private code, different from just a regular name.

“They might let them come home this Saturday,” Eli said as they began to eat. “Three weeks in that place already—can you imagine how good home will seem?”

“What
is
a breech birth, Eli?” She kept her voice careless. Joan’s mother had left tiny rolls too, and a raisin gravy that was better than candy, and when Eli didn’t answer, she hoped it was because he was helping himself to everything, too.