The Great Husband Hunt (18 page)

I said, “But Leopold Adler is already engaged.”

Aunt Fish said, “I give his name merely by way of an example. When, and
if
you marry, it will be to someone known to us. This is why I always kept such a particular watch over you when you were growing up. But, of course, recent events have distracted me. That terrible war. And then your uncle. Perhaps I'm a little to blame in all this. Perhaps I didn't do all I could to prepare you.”

I was aware of the boy Murray watching me.

“Well, Aunt,” I said, “your preparations left me somewhat confused. First I was told I was marriageable, but only if my hair could be subdued and the yellowness bleached out of my neck. Then I was redirected to become an old maid and stay at home with my poor widowed ma. Then, just as suddenly, I was released from that obligation and sent out into the world to try my luck, which is what I was doing when I met Gil Catchings.”

“Marriage has nothing to do with luck,” she said, ignoring my other points. Then she had another alarming thought.

“Poppy,” she said, “have you been…alone with this person?”

I hesitated, measuring just how much I wished to scandalize her, and into the silence rushed Murray, eager to help.

“Of course you have!” he cried. “Remember? The day I came to your apartment and the doorman made me count to three hundred before I came up and you'd been drinking gin on the bed?”

Ma let out a muted yelp.

“We shall need a lawyer and a doctor,” Aunt Fish murmured. “If only Israel would hurry up and recover. Perhaps Judah…”

“Oh no,” Ma said. “This is not at all the kind of thing Judah would undertake. Harry will do it. Send for Harry.”

Harry traveled a great deal in those days, seeing to his diverse business interests, but as soon as he returned from Havana, Cuba, he was to investigate the background of Gilbert Catchings and devise a means of keeping his hands off my millions.

“In the meanwhile,” my aunt said, “Poppy must be kept here, under close supervision.”

“I'm not sure…” Ma began. It turned very much to my advantage that her new husband's tranquility took precedence over everything else.

“To forestall an elopement, Dora!” Aunt Fish whispered frantically. “Until Israel can talk plainly with her.”

I said, “I shall visit Uncle Israel tomorrow. It'll be my pleasure. And tonight I shall sleep in my own home. There's no question of an elopement. When I marry Gil you shall all be there to see it.”

The truth was, I'd have eloped in a heartbeat, but he was in no great hurry.

Murray accompanied me down to where my roadster was parked.

“Poppy,” he said, “I do hope they won't prevent us from helling around with Gil.”

I said, “If you repeat words like ‘bourgeois pig’ they most certainly will, so we shall have to lie low for a while. But after Gil and I are married you'll be welcome to come to our house and hell around as much as you like.”

“Thank you,” he said solemnly. “And Poppy? I don't think your neck is too yellow at all. I'd say it's pretty much exactly the right color for a neck.”

25

Moves were made to keep my money safe inside the New Amsterdam National Bank while Harry established sound reasons to have Gil run out of town, and I was sent for by Uncle Israel. He had been instructed by Aunt Fish to give me a stern talking to, although I don't believe he ever was capable of that, even before his health failed.

He had never made a complete recovery from his first seizure and over the next few years suffered a number of relapses that left him weak and lopsided. His working days were reduced to working mornings, and then only when he was judged strong enough to ride downtown to his office. This adjudication, made by Aunt Fish, seemed to have more to do with her condition than his.

When the cask of benevolence was overflowing she kept him at home and fed him on dainties encased in aspic, a substance she believed to be fortifying, soothing and not far short of plain miraculous. Then, after a heavy run on her stores of compassion, she would find herself with nothing left to give and declare him sufficiently fortified and soothed to go to the office and do a little of whatever it was he did.

“Your poor uncle wishes to see you,” she told me.

“Your poor aunt wishes me to see you,” he told me.

I said, “Uncle, I'm of age. I can marry Gil Catchings and there's nothing anybody can do to prevent it.”

“Don't be so sure,” he said. “Now why don't you get off your high horse and tell me about him.”

I told him about Gil's pale blue eyes and lion hair.

“But what is his situation?” he kept asking. “Didn't I warn you, Pops, when you came into your money, against flatterers and adventurers?”

I said, “Gil's not a flatterer. He truly cares for me. Why he never leaves off kissing me.”

“I don't care to discuss that,” Uncle said, pulling on his cigarette. “I leave that side of your education to your aunt, though why you weren't better guided by your mother, I fail to understand. What I need to know is, have you given this rake money? Have you signed anything over to him or entered into any kind of binding agreement?”

I assured him Gil had never asked me for a cent. Of course, he never needed to because I always offered it anyway.

I said, “You seem to be fading away, Uncle. Are you sure your doctor knows his business?” I thought I'd change the subject before he asked to examine my checkbook. And he was fading. Though his memory was improved and his ability to hold a thought and express himself, he wasn't the same man.

“I put it down to fewer good dinners,” he said. “I don't recall the last time I enjoyed a late supper at the Harmonie Ciub.”

I said, “You know champagne wine isn't so easy for any of us to come by these days? President Wilson has prohibited it for our own good. Twenty-five dollars a quart, if you can get it.”

“Next thing he'll be prohibiting cigars,” he said. “Well, I make my own drinking arrangements. No one tells me what's good for me.”

Sadly this was not true. As far back as my memory stretched he had been taking orders from Aunt Fish.

“And if you've developed the taste for good liquor,” he continued, “you d better start making your own arrangements, too. Talk to Harry.”

This was my family's preferred method of dealing with problems. Uncle Israel may have been recognized as nominal head of Minkel interests, but it was a mere courtesy, accorded him so he could then delegate. So Harry was deputed to warn off my fiancé and keep us all supplied with liquor, and Aunt Fish to test my knowledge of carnal relations. She, in turn, ceded the opening moments of this inquisition to my mother, who asked me nervously whether any unchaperoned embraces had occurred.

“Dora!” Aunt Fish cried. “Everything about this affair has been unchaperoned. That is precisely the problem.”

Poor Aunt. She didn't want to do the dirty work herself, but she knew in her heart no one else could be trusted to do it properly.

I said, “We go dancing.”

The word “dancing” would, I knew, conjure for Ma a polite two-step. So far so good.

“Have you…spooned?” she trembled.

I smiled coyly. “Sometimes,” I said, “when I'm driving him home.”

Ma and Aunt Fish agreed that this was a very great danger with driving, but there were powerful arguments against depriving me of my motor. They were often very glad of me to run errands. Ma knew more hazardous terrain lay ahead. She seemed reluctant to proceed, and so just sat, hoping to bring me to heel with a look of hurt and disappointment.

“The main point is, Dora,” my aunt prompted, “has there been any…romping?”

“Yes,” Ma said, bracing herself. “That is the question.”

And there my own courage failed me and I grew devious. I abandoned my plan to announce the loss of my maidenhood, and played a tricky caviling game.

Romping? Wasn't that what puppy dogs did in Central Park, or little children in the first fall of snow? Gil and I had certainly not done that. Our encounters had been earnest, resolute.

“No,” I said, “no romping.”

Ma softened. Her ordeal was over.

“There!” she cried. “I knew Poppy had more sense. No romping. And neither must there be, Poppy. That is a privilege of the marriage bed.”

This hinted at something unspeakable involving Judah Jacoby. I made a move to leave, before Ma grew even more indiscreet, but my aunt wasn't finished with me.

“Nevertheless,” she said, “we cannot ignore certain things the boy mentioned. A gin bottle. A disturbed coverlet. Exactly the kind of looseness one associates with living in a hotel. She must leave the Belleclaire, Dora. Perhaps she should live with Honey. Or with me. This is not a burden I look for at my time of life, but something must be done.”

Faced with the devil, I opted for the deep blue sea.

“I have in mind to stay with Honey for a while,” I said. “She gets so lonesome when Harry's traveling and entertaining his floozies.”

My plan was to go directly to Gil and invite him to marry me without further delay.

“Poppy!” Ma said. “I'm sure Harry is a very considerate husband.”

“Indeed,” agreed Aunt Fish. “And don't think to distract us by defaming others. It would profit you to study on your sister's marriage, Poppy, and follow her good example.”

So it was settled that Honey should be put in charge of my moral hygiene and living arrangements, until a suitable match could be made and I could be married out of harm's way. Meanwhile her considerate husband tracked down Gil's family to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where it turned out they weren't paupers at all but the owners of two garment factories.

“Tell me the worst, Harry,” Ma said, when he returned. “I am braced for it.”

“No need,” he said. “Couple of nice little outfits they've got up there. The kind of thing it'd be good to get into, in the event of another war. Uniforms. Kit bags. Catchings himself doesn't have a fortune, of course, but then, neither did I. He's going to be a self-made man. Nothing wrong with that.”

Aunt Fish took up the cudgel Ma was on the point of dropping.

“But Harry,” she said, “are the Catchings the kind of people one would visit?”

“Don't see why not, Zillah,” he said. “But Scranton's a fair old way to go for tea.”

To tell the truth, I felt let down. I had been looking to elope with as much money as I could stuff inside any bust bodice, start life anew as a revolutionary and create a great
scandale.
Instead I had to make do with the pleasure of seeing my mother and my aunt sheathe their claws and prepare to be kissed on the hand by my fiancé.

Gil and I were married at City Hall on March 10, 1920.

I wore one of my own originations in peppermint shantung, and a silver fox jacket with full sleeves and a johnny collar, a gift from my stepfather. He had offered me the run of Jacoby Furriers. I could have picked out the finest mink in the showroom, but then I would have felt certain obligations to him, such as to spare my mother any further shocks and anxieties. I could have had the silver fox hat, too, but I declined. Give in to one inducement and you may find yourself considered bought. Besides, I had had my hair styled
à la garçonne
and I had no wish to hide it.

Since becoming Mrs. Judah Jacoby, Ma had succumbed to a light form of Jewishness and she would have liked to see me married under a chuppah, but Gil wasn't made of the right stuff. I heard her remark that Gil might pretend to be Jewish and who would know the difference, but Mr. J replied that
he
would know and anyway it would be a bad show to start off a marriage with a fraud. So it was arranged that we would go to City Hall and afterwards to the Elysée for lunch.

Two days before the ceremony, I bought myself a platinum wedding band from Tiffany and I received some words of sisterly advice from Honey.

“Well,” she said, “are you ready for married life?”

I said, “If you're talking about squeezes and thrills I already know about all that. What I'd like to know is, how do you stop a person staying out all night with showgirls?”

I wanted to believe Gil would stay true to me, but I had heard so many warnings. It appeared that men could never get enough candy, until they moved into the candy store, upon which they developed a taste for saltines instead.

My sister stared at me.

I said, “Do you and Harry still spoon?”

She said, “Poppy, you have developed an ugly, modern way of talking.”

I said, “And I've seen changes in you, too. You never smile anymore or act gay.”

I held back from remarking that Harry seemed to spend his nights out of town attending to business, except when Honey was away, taking Sherman to the shore or getting her magnetic fields corrected. Then you could guarantee Harry would be back in town. They were like the little figures on Aunt Fish's weather house. If one was out the other was in.

I said, “When did it stop being like it was before you were married? Does Harry thrill you anymore?”

I wasn't convinced she understood me.

I said, “It seems to me men get their thrills faster than we do. Sometimes I haven't even started getting mine…”

“Poppy!” she gasped. “Have you really…
given
yourself to Gilbert Catchings?”

“What if I have?” I said. I loved to see her so scandalized. I was looking forward to a scene. But she refused to make one. Didn't have the energy for it, I suppose. She just looked sad and shook her head.

“I fear I've let you down,” she said. “There are things a girl might expect to be told by an older sister, but I've been so busy since Sherman Ulysses came along, and now you've gone and grown up without correct guidance. You've been led astray by a bounder and, of course, he's only done it for your money.”

I said, “Don't think of trying to stop the wedding. We'll elope and then you'll never see me again.”

“Stop the wedding?” she cried. “On the contrary. The sooner you're married to him the sooner you'll be safe from shame and dishonor. Uncle Israel has mounted a guard on your fortune. The only other thing we can hope for is that Mr. Catchings is clean and careful. Would you say he is?”

I thought I would. It was hardly Gil's fault he lived in such disorder. He had no help at all at Minetta Lane.