Israel (70 page)

One evening during dinner he asked her if she would mind accompanying him to a fund-raising luncheon on behalf of the Joint Distribution Committee. It was really more a business than social event, he confided, and besides, his wife considered daytime affairs dreary. She also did not favor the cause in this case, which was to fund a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine to absorb the refugees. Zionism had never been close to his own heart, Carl admitted, but he supported the JDC in memory of his uncle, who had been instrumental in its founding.

They left directly from the store on the day of the luncheon. Becky wore a cutaway suit and a shantung blouse Grace Turner had managed to find after scouring the city's most exclusive shops. The suit came from one of the fashion buyers; it was a sample from a manufacturer whose designs had recently been featured in
Vogue
. The seamstresses in the store's alterations department had worked late to make sure it fit properly.

Becky felt very much like Cinderella being readied for the prince's ball by an inordinate number of fairy godmothers. The store personnel were glad to do her these favors. Thanks to her ads business had increased, which in turn assured raises.

Becky's Cinderella aura was enhanced as she rode with Carl in his plush limousine and chain-smoked as she listened to him chat about the luminaries who would be attending.

The luncheon itself, at the Waldorf Astoria, was a sobering experience. Since the summer of 1942 reports that the Nazis had instituted what they were calling the “final solution” had been filtering across the Atlantic. To date millions of Jews were believed to have been destroyed. Despite these reports and the
Blueprint for Extermination
, a detailed account of the annihilation, President Roosevelt and the State Department still refused to admit Jewish refugees or endorse free immigration to Palestine. So awful was the situation that the American Jewish Committee reluctantly began a shift away from assimilation toward Zionism.

Mayor LaGuardia was the guest speaker. When he praised the name Pickman in the same breath as Schiff, Brandeis, and Marshall, Becky felt a thrill of pride.

There were other women in attendance, but they were generally there as wives or as board members of various Jewish philanthropies. Becky was the only working woman present. When Bernard Gimbel loudly complimented her on the job she was doing for Pickman's, Becky was ready to die and go to heaven.

The next day Grace Turner showed up in Becky's office with a newspaper clipping about the luncheon; Becky's name was mentioned. She immediately telephoned her father to make sure he read the article and sent out her secretary to buy half a dozen more copies of the paper.
The original clipping went on her bulletin board and Becky spent a large part of the rest of the day gazing at it.

She was very proud of herself. Not so long ago she had been a nobody on the Lower East Side, studying library books donated by some of the very people she had been hobnobbing with at yesterday's luncheon.

She wanted to do something that would show her appreciation to Carl for all that he had done for her. She decided to invite him out to dinner for a change.

They went by taxi to a West Side spaghetti house where Benny Talkin had taken her a couple of times. The place had red-checked tablecloths, drippy candles stuck in wine bottles and sawdust on the floor. Nobody recognized Pickman. When he asked for the wine list the waiter looked at Becky and asked, “Where'd you get this joker?”

Carl and Becky's eyes locked and they started to laugh, and that went on for so long that finally the waiter gave up and went away, disgusted.

Carl took one sip of the house Chianti and ordered a beer. While he was trying to eat his spaghetti, he got red sauce on his necktie.

Becky, her heart pounding, held her breath.

Carl took off his tie, shrugged and tossed it over his shoulder onto the floor.

“You brought up in a barn, bub?” the waiter sneered, plucking the tie from the sawdust.

At that the wine went right up Becky's nose as she surrendered to laughter. Carl, beaming, signaled for another beer.

Halfway through the evening he began to tell her about Bernard. He started by remarking how his uncle would have enjoyed a place like this, and that got him going about the good times they used to have and his own passion for horseback riding. Then he spoke of how he missed his little girls, away at boarding school by his wife's decree and of his favorite books, poetry, music.
Becky listened intently and made mental notes to search the library for the writers he mentioned.

When the check came, Becky paid it. Pickman confessed that it had been years since anyone took him out to dinner or he had so much fun.

Outside the restaurant he flagged down a taxi to take her home. He held the door for her, and as she moved sideways past him to get in, he kissed her.

Becky was caught off guard. It was a rather fatherly, chaste kiss, and he hadn't embraced her, but still, a kiss was a kiss.

“I've embarrassed you.” He looked miserable. “I'm sorry.”

“You.embarrassed yourself, I think.”

“I want us to be friends, but I went too far—”

Becky rose up on her toes to silence him with her lips. “There, now we've both gone too far. We're even. Good night, Mr. Pickman.”

At work the next morning Becky agonized over what to do. She had an appointment with Pickman to go over an ad layout. She briefly considered sending the boards upstairs with her secretary, but avoiding him would only aggravate an already awkward situation.

Last night had to be put into manageable proportions if she was to go on working here. She found Mr. Pickman very attractive, but she'd never made love, and her first time would not be with a married man. Nor was she willing to trade her body for her job.

She wanted to trust him, but her experience with Benny Talkin had soured her. Mr. Pickman always treated her in a gentlemanly fashion, but so had Benny—until he didn't.

If he asks me to make love I'll quit, she resolved as she carried the boards upstairs. Outside his office she ran
into Phil Cooper, who rolled his eyes and whispered, “Watch out. He's in a foul mood today.”

“Oh great,” Becky whispered back, trying to smile.

She placed boards on his desk and waited. He glanced at them, described some changes he wanted made and grumbled, “That's all.” The light was flashing on his telephone, his in-box was heaped with papers, and Millie's voice was crackling over the intercom with messages from buyers and suppliers.

Becky started out of the office.

“Miss Herodetsky.” He was standing. He leaned forward, resting his weight on his palms, as if he wanted to reach her, but his desk was in the way. “I've been mulling over last night. I want you to know that we are friends and that my definition of friendship goes beyond doing favors. It includes not asking for too much.” His eyes bored into her. “I hope you understand what I'm saying and that it puts you at ease.”

Becky nodded, smiled and took her leave. She tried to puzzle out her feelings on the way back to her own office. She could understand the relief, but not the vague but acute disappointment.

While the newspapers were still full of D-Day, two weeks before his eighteenth birthday, Danny Herodetzky took advantage of the fact that his family had come together for a Sunday night supper to announce that he had enlisted in the Army Air Corps for aviation cadet training. There was a stunned silence at the table.

“Hey, everybody,” Danny exclaimed, “I'm gonna be a fighter pilot.”

“Um—congratulations,” Becky said. “Danny, I thought a cadet had to have a college background.”

“Not anymore,” Danny replied. “They'll take anyone—”

“I'll bet,” Abe interjected.

Danny scowled at his father. “I was going to say that they'll take anyone who can pass the written exam. I got the second highest score that day at the recruiting office. I didn't do so well on the history and logic parts, but I scored real high on the math and engineering sections. I've passed my physical as well. I've got good eyes, and guess what? Being a shrimp is a plus with the air corps. It seems the fighter cockpits aren't designed for bigger guys.”

“But you had a defense job,” Abe objected. “They can't draft you.”

“Pop, you volunteer for the air corps.”

“Danny, you don't know what war is—”

Danny rolled his eyes. “I knew it'd be too much to expect you to be enthusiastic—”

“For once in your life, Danny, please listen to me.”

Danny nodded, intrigued by the lack of hectoring in his father's tone. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Man to man. First you talk and then I will.”

Abe nodded and smiled. “Man to man,” he began, “I've been in war. Someday maybe I'll tell you my adventures and how I was able to escape to America. Now you must trust me. You must believe me when I tell you that war is something to avoid at all costs—”

“Pop, I understand what you're telling me, but damnit, didn't you ever have a dream? All my life I've wanted to be a flier. You remember those aviation adventure stories I used to read? It's what I want, Pop. Weren't you ever willing to sacrifice, to gamble, in order to get what you wanted?”

Abe thought back to when he was a young man, when he had his health and the intensity of his dreams to drive him on. He remembered sacrificing to save money; he remembered studying and working toward his goal of a business of his own. But a store was a sensible goal. He would never have dreamed of risking his life in some stupid flying contraption.

The words were on his lips:
You will do as I say. I am your father
. But saying that had never done any good in the past, so it wasn't likely it would instill obedience in his son this evening.

Abe said, “I'm going downstairs to read.”

“To drink is what he means,” Danny whispered after Abe had left the room.

Becky chose not to reply to that. “When do you leave?”

“Right after my birthday.”

On Wednesday morning Abe was in his rocking chair behind the front counter discussing the headlines with Shumel Bloom and some of his other friends when he felt constriction in his chest. He managed to tell the others that he was having trouble breathing, and then he heard Shumel calling, “Abe? I don't think he's awake. Call an ambulance.” Abe wanted to say he wouldn't go to a hospital, but he couldn't speak.

Becky was in a meeting with Cooper and Pickman when Millie rushed in to say her father had suffered a heart attack and been taken to Saint Vincent's Hospital.

“Millie, call them back,” Pickman ordered. “See if he's well enough to be moved, and if he is, arrange for an ambulance to Mount Sinai.”

Millie nodded. “I already did. He should be on his way uptown right now.”

“Excellent. Go with Miss Herodetsky to the hospital. I'll call Sinai admissions.” He glanced at Becky. “I'll also call a cardiologist.”

“Thank you. You're all very kind,” Becky said.

“Not at all,” Pickman replied. “Our best wishes for your father.”

Becky called Danny at the Norden factory while Millie summoned a taxi. The ride up to Fifth Avenue and One Hundredth Street lasted an eternity. When they arrived Abe had already been admitted to a private room.

“Thank God they had space for him,” Becky told Millie as they hurried along the maze of corridors.

“Thank Pickman, you mean. Honey, Pickman money built this wing.” Outside Abe's door Millie said, “You go in. I'll wait out here for Dr. Swerdlove.”

“You know him?” Becky asked distractedly.

“Mr. Pickman has Swerdlove look after all his friends with heart trouble.”

There was a nurse standing watch over her bedridden father. Abe looked pale, frightened and very old.

“That's my daughter.” Abe tugged at the nurse's sleeve. “She works with Pickman, you know. Well, Becky, how do you figure this, eh?” His attempt at a laugh turned into a grimace of pain.

Becky's stomach lurched as she watched the tears spring to his eyes. She felt helpless and terrified; it was the parent who was supposed to comfort the child, not the other way around.

The door behind her opened and Jacob Swerdlove introduced himself. He was a middle-aged austere-looking man with a horseshoe fringe of dark hair, a bulbous nose and steel-rimmed bifocals.

“If you'll excuse us, Miss Herodetzky, we'll have a look at your father.”

“Yes, of course. I'll just be outside.”

“There's a smoking lounge at the far end of the hall,” the nurse said. “You'll be more comfortable there.”

Becky spent an anxious twenty minutes in the lounge, distractedly chatting with Millie. Danny appeared at the other end of the corridor, looking dazed and lost. She waved to him and he hurried toward her in his flapping overalls.

“I'm sorry it took me so long,” he said as he reached her. “I came right from work, but the trains were slow.”

“Danny, this is Miss Kirby.”

“Nice to meet you,” Millie said. “Becky, I'm going for a stroll. I'll be downstairs in the main lobby if you need me.”

“How is he?” Danny asked.

Becky shrugged. “The doctor is with him now.”

Danny sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Son of a bitch,” he seethed. “I can't enlist now, can I?”

Becky shrugged. “As far as I'm concerned you can, but that's not really what you're asking me, is it?”

“I don't owe him. He was never any good when I needed him.”

“That's true, but it's not really the issue.” She stopped as Dr. Swerdlove entered the lounge.

“Your father has suffered a relatively mild coronary, and he seems to be bearing up reasonably well for a man of seventy-one.”

“Holy cow,” Danny blurted.

Swerdlove's dark eyes blinked owlishly behind his bifocals as he regarded him. “Excuse me. Is there some error? Mr. Herodetsky did tell me he was seventy-one.”