The Great Husband Hunt (2 page)

Honey and I were pasting scraps, just like old times, when Harry walked in, looking smaller and flatter and grayer than usual. He scratched his head.

“It's gone,” he said. “The
Titanic
has sunk, with heavy losses. A boat called the
Carpathia
is bringing the survivors home.”

It was eight o'clock. Up in Massachusetts Uncle Israel's train was stopped, directed into a siding and reversed. There had been, he was told, a change of plan.

My cheeks were hot from the fire, but something deathly cold touched me. My mother fainted onto a couch. My sister uttered a terrible little cry. And Harry studied the pattern on the parlor rug.

“Marconi stock closed up one hundred and twenty points,” he said, to no one in particular.

2

My grandpa Minkel and his brother Meyer arrived in Great Portage, Minnesota, in 1851 intending to set up as fur traders, but they were too late. The beaver pelt business was finished. They stayed on though and changed their plans and did well enough trading in lumber to build a fine house on top of a hill in Duluth. From Grandpa Minkel's house you could see clear to Wisconsin. So they said.

Meyer and his wife were never blessed with children. This was somehow due to the accidental firing of a Winchester '73, but I was never allowed to know the details. So when Grandpa headed south, looking to buy a spread and turn farmer, he left behind one of his own boys, Jesse, as a kind of secondhand son. Gave him away near enough, though he was a grown man and might well have had plans of his own. Grandpa took his other boy, Abe, to Iowa to be a mustard farmer. And that was my pa.

Uncle Jesse stayed where he was put, married one of the Zukeman girls and had a number of obedient children, plus Cousin Addie, the one who refused to knuckle down to marriage. Grandpa Minkel grew so much mustard he had to buy a factory. Grandma Minkel told him he should make mustard that had a fine flavor but a short life, and she was right. Folks just had to keep coming back for more and Minkel's Mighty Fine Mustard did so well Grandma and Grandpa had to send Pa to New York City, to invest the profits and keep his finger on the quickening pulse of finance.

My mother's people were Plotzes. They sold feathers and goose down in Cedar Rapids. She married Pa in 1890 and came with him to New York soon after, in a delicate condition with my sister Honey. Ma took to her new life as if to the city born. She sent directly for her sister Zillah and fixed her up with Israel Fish, and from then on a veil fell over the Iowa period of their lives. Cedar Rapids had been a mere accident of birth, and was never discussed. As far as Ma and Aunt Fish were concerned everything from the Hudson shore to the Pacific Ocean was nothing but a social wilderness.

Minkel's Mighty Fine Mustard was to be found on every discerning table and the profits were invested in railroads and mining, and the consequence was Honey and I were mustard heiresses, more or less.

Pa, though, kept his finger on more than the pulse of finance, and was often absent from his own table, indulging, as I had overheard discussed by my mother and Aunt Fish, in “a man's needs.” I understood these to be cigars and blintzes, two things that were not permitted at home. For these comforts Pa went elsewhere. We lived on West 76th Street. My mother bore the impediment of this address as bravely as she could. Pa and Uncle Israel Fish assured her that before too long New York society would abandon their houses on Fifth Avenue and follow her there.

“We're setting a trend, Dora,” Pa used to say.

But my mother didn't want to set trends. On the steep climb to good society, novelty was one of those hazards that could pitch us all back down where we'd started. Her plan was to keep us as unremarkable as possible. Correct and unremarkable. Let no Minkel be a protruding nail. I don't think Pa ever appreciated what a close watch Ma kept over our reputation and standing. And no matter how much she protested, he bought that rose pink low-stoop house and encouraged the architect to add as many turrets and finials as could be accommodated.

My aunt, who still lived safely within visiting distance of The Right People, should the call ever come, said, “Never fear, Dora. Marriage may be a sacred institution, but if Abe tries to drag you any further into the wilderness, you may depend on having a home with us.”

On evenings when Pa was home, a fire was lit in the library and I was allowed to sit in there with him and look at the things on the shelves of the vitrine. He had a beaver skull, and a rock of fool's gold, and an Ojibway Indian necklace, and a little silk cap, brought by Grandpa Minkel from Germany. There was a rubber plant, and a stuffed osprey, and books. I was allowed to take them down off the shelf and read them, as long as I sat in a good light and didn't scowl or screw up my eyes. Careless reading can cause the setting in of ugly, permanent facial lines. For this reason my mother never risked opening a book.

When the lamps and the fire were lit and Pa and I sat, cozily turning the pages, it was the best of times. I hated to hear him clear his throat and take out his watch. It meant my time was nearly up and he was preparing to go out into the night.

“Pa,” I'd say, “don't go for a blintz tonight.”

But he'd snap shut his watchcase and go anyhow. I wasn't altogether sure what a blintz was, but I knew Pa's favorite kind was cherry, and I liked the sound of that. I knew, too, that for the best blintzes you had to go to Delancey Street, a dangerous place teeming with something Ma called “the element.” I worried that one of those nights Pa wouldn't come home. Murdered by “the element,” and all for a cherry blintz.

3

It was Tuesday night when Harry brought the news. There was no sleep. Honey cried until she made herself sick. Aunt Fish said she had always doubted the flotation principle. Harry steadied himself with a hot buttered rum, advising us against plunging into despair before the list of survivors had been published. And the Irish, who could hardly keep her eyes open, was kept from her bed, letting out the side seams on Ma's mourning wear. Unaccountably, every gown had shrunk in the years since Grandpa Minkel's passing.

Wednesday, there was still no news and Ma was on her second bottle of Tilden's Extract, a tonic she usually only resorted to in order to face the rigors of giving a dinner. By Thursday our house was in a permanent state of receiving. Mrs. Schwab and Mrs. Lesser called, and the Misses Stone and Mrs. Teller. Maids came with soup. And Uncle Israel drove down to Broadway three times in search of information and came back with none.

Aunt Fish was exasperated with him. “Go back, Israel,” she said, “and stay there until they tell you something.”

My poor uncle. Sometimes he seemed to be as much of a disappointment to my aunt as I was. Once again, it was Harry who delivered the goods. He called by telephone, a device my mother had never wanted in the house because of the extra work it would heap upon her. She refused to answer it, and Honey would never do anything Ma wouldn't do, so I was the one to take the call.

“Poppy!” Ma chided. She was at a loss to know what to do with me. Two whole days had passed without my hair being straightened or my slouch corrected, but she was too distracted to insist. And now there I was, crossing the room at an unseemly pace, snatching up the hated telephone and chewing my fingernails.

“Tonight,” Harry said. He was breathless. “The
Carpathia's
expected tonight.”

Aunt Fish loosened Ma's collar.

“Bear up now, Dora,” she said. “Israel will represent you. There's sure to be a crowd and it'll take a man of Israel's standing to get to the head of the queue.”

“Harry will go,” was all Ma would say. “Harry will go.”

Harry didn't realize he had a passenger in the back of his automobile. I waited until he turned onto Columbus before I emerged from under the pile of blankets Ma and Honey had had brought out. They seemed to imagine Pa might still be wet from the sinking.

“What the hell are you doing there?” he said. “Get out! Get out at once!”

“Make me,” I challenged him.

“Oh please, Poppy,” he whined. “You're going to get me into hot water.”

For all his talk of turning around and taking me home, he carried right on driving. He knew who'd win if it came to a fight. Harry's trouble was he didn't have any backbone.

I said, “When Pa steps off that boat I want to be sure the first thing he sees is my face.”

“There you go,” he said. “Getting your hopes up. Well don't come crying to me. I never invited you along.”

Around 32nd Street we began to see people. Hundreds of them hurrying down to the Cunard pier. Harry parked the Simplex and we joined the crowds. There was thunder rolling in over the Palisades and the
Carpathia
was on her way up the Hudson, with tugs and skiffs and anything else that would float swarming around her and blasts of magnesium light flashing from the newsmen's cameras. She was making slow progress, and then word came up she had paused, down by Pier 32, so that certain items could be taken off. Lifeboats. Property of the White Star Line.

Harry whispered, “They'll fetch a pretty penny, as curios.”

But they didn't. As I heard years later, they were picked clean by human vultures before anyone could start the bidding, and the name
Titanic
was rubbed off them with emery paper and that was the end of that.

Slowly the
Carpathia
came home. Some people had cards bearing the name of the ones they were hoping to see. I wished I had thought to make a card. They held them up, praying for a wave or a smile, but nobody at the rail was smiling or waving.

It was half past eight by the time they began to warp her in, and then the thunderstorm broke. We waited another hour, in the rain, until she was moored and the gangplank was lowered, and lists of survivors were finally posted. That was when I got separated from Harry.

There was such a crush I could scarcely breathe and I was wet to the skin.

“Please,” I asked the man in front of me, “can you see if Minkel is there?”

But he gave me an elbow in the ribs and I never saw him again. A woman said she'd find out for me if I gave her a dollar, but I didn't have a dollar. And so I just found a place to lean, against the customs shed, figuring the best thing was to stand still and allow Pa to spot me easily.

Then a Cunard porter noticed me.

“Are you all right, Miss?” he said. “Is it First Class you're looking for?”

I said, “Mr. Abraham Minkel. I can't pay you though. I don't come into my money until I'm twenty-one. But my father will tip you.”

He touched his cap and disappeared, and I didn't expect to see him again. A sense of service was a thing of the past, as Ma and Aunt Fish often remarked, and everyone expected something in their grubby hand before they'd stir themselves.

And so I waited, shivering, wondering at the uselessness of Harry Glaser, trying to draw up a balance sheet of my standing at home. I believed my crimes of disobedience, ingratitude and impropriety might just be offset by the triumph of being the one to bring home Pa.

The ladies from First Class began to file into the echoing shed. There were children, too. Some were crying, most were silent, and the ladies still had on their hats. “How odd,” I thought. “A sinking must be a good deal gentler than I imagined.” And then this happened. I saw a face I knew.

The very moment I looked at her, she sensed it and looked back at me, quite directly. Then she turned her head away and disappeared into the crowd. I was still puzzling how an Irish, dismissed without references, could have sailed First Class and in such Parisian style, when the Cunard boy reappeared beside me.

“Miss,” he said, “I'm afraid to say I couldn't find a Mr. Abraham Minkel listed, but Mrs. Minkel is there, alive and well. You should be seeing her any moment now.”

But the women had all disembarked. The men filed through next, but my pa was not amongst them. They all had downcast eyes, and a hurried step, and somewhere in the crowd I heard somebody hiss. Being a survivor isn't necessarily a happy condition, I realized later. There would always be the question, hanging in the air, too awful to ask, “And how were you so fortunate? What other poor soul paid for your life with his? Or hers?” If you were an able-bodied man, it would have been better form to perish nobly.

“Not spotted her yet, Miss?” the porter asked. “Well, that's a mystery.”

He was now taking more interest in my case than I liked. He was like a stray dog, eagerly padding along at my side, on the strength of one brief expression of gratitude.

I said, “It's not a mystery. It was a cruel mistake. There was no
Mrs.
Minkel. Only my pa, but he's not here. Is there another boat? Are there more following on?”

He looked away.

“I don't think so, Miss,” he whispered. “I don't think so at all.”

People milled around us, plucking at him, wanting his attention.

“My pa's lost,” I said. I knew it.

And he was glad enough then to make his getaway.

A woman said, “There's to be a service of thanksgiving. Right away.”

What did I care? Thanksgiving for what?

“Not just thanksgiving,” she said, reading my expression. “To pray for the ones that were lost as well. A prayer is never wasted.”

The third-class passengers had been directed to another shed, and a group of them were leaving, and some first-class ladies, too, walking to the nearest church.

Over the heads of a hundred people I thought I saw the feather trim of the Irish's hat, and I decided at that moment to add another item to the list of my transgressions. I abandoned all thoughts of Harry Glaser and followed the throng, walking as quickly as I could so as to catch up, trying to remember whether I had ever known her name.

We had had any number of Marys, several Annes and a Videlma Teresa who broke, against stiff competition, all previous records for brevity of employment with us, but on the whole, their names disappeared. They were, to a girl, impertinent, uncouth and given to “carrying on” so that Ma often predicted her death would be certified as “caused by Irish.”