The Great Husband Hunt (42 page)

“In factories,” I said.

“Yes, but how?”

I said, “I don't know. I'm a collector and discoverer of important art.”

“Don't you ever go to see your factories?” she said. “Where are they? Do they just make the mustard and send you the money?”

“Maxine!” Em warned her.

“I'd like to see your factories,” she said. “I've seen Daddy's and Grampy Boon's. I'd like to see how mustard gets made, so I know where I came from and where I'm going…”

“To bed, if you don't watch your step,” Alan muttered.

“Because if I don't know that, I'll be nothing but an unfortunate. Isn't that right, Daddy?”

“Seconds anyone?” Angelica asked. The twenty-servings beef pie had been all afternoon in the coal oven, but I had found an icy lump at the center of my slice.

59

Maxine didn't want to come to Paris. She wanted to remain at Stoke Glapthorne and go horseback riding every day, but Emerald and Mortie insisted. They said it was part of her education and I believe she would now agree with them. During that week she learned a great many things, including the story of my life. I took her out beyond Charonne and showed her where I used to keep my Curtiss Oriole.

I said, “I used to fly Humphrey Choate to the racetrack. I flew him all the way to the Mediterranean Ocean, too, and that's where I met your grandpa Merrick.”

“You did not,” she said, and I hadn't expected to be able to prove it to her, the St.-Blaise airdrome now being a flying school run by a foreign person, but in the front office they had a fine display of old photographs, and there I was, parked outside the sheds. It was difficult to make out my features, and there was no sign of Choate or Beluga, but it was clearly labeled. “Mrs. Poppy Catchings,
circa
1923.”

Maxine did her wonderment whistle.

She said, “Could you fly us home?”

“I could,” I said, “but I choose not to. There's no style to being an aviator anymore.” We also went looking for Coquelicot which, as near as I could say, had become a
chocolaterie,
and to the Athenée to inquire about my lost property. A leopard and two foxes. The concierge had an inflated opinion of himself for a man who stands behind a desk all day handing out keys.

“Madame?” she said. “Since 1940? This a joke?”

I said, “It certainly is not. And what about my shoe trees?”

There was something about the words “shoe trees” that caused Maxine to dissolve into a silent, shaking type of laughter that reminded me greatly of Emerald. The concierge did no more than turn his back on us and start paying lavish attention to a pair of darkies in bright orange robes.

I said, “Now see what you did? How d'you expect this important monkey to treat me seriously when you're sniggering at my side?”

I called to the darkies. I said, “Your robes are adorable. I've a mind to get something like that myself.”

They smiled most vivaciously.

I said, “Never mind, Maxine. The Athenée Hotel is welcome to my old furs. There are plenty more where they came from.”

“Grandma!” she said. “You're shouting.”

Sometimes she was a real Goody Two-shoes. When I was buying her a faux pony skin jacket she said, “I don't know if I'm allowed. Maybe we should ask Mommy?”

I told her, “Of course you're allowed. Give people the opportunity, they'll start prohibiting things. Make the least move and there'll always be a line halfway round the block waiting to catch you out. This has been my experience in life.”

Meanwhile Alan roamed the city with his bar-mitzvah camera. Maxine didn't think that was allowed either but I figured sixteen was old enough. The way I looked at it, he might even meet a pretty girl and open his account. Then we'd be spared having another Murray in the family.

Alan usually came and found us when it was time for dinner. Chartier was their favorite. I tried showing them a fancier side of Paris, but they liked the way waiters wrote your order on the tablecloth. They liked the way dinner arrived fast.

“Know something, Grandma?” he said one evening. “Nobody in this town talks about our people. About what happened to them.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

I knew what he meant, but I didn't want him turning tragic on me, like Sapphire.

“Before the war,” he said, “there were Jews here. And after the war there weren't. There are Jews here now. I've seen three temples today. But they're not the old Jews come back. They're a new lot. And nobody talks about where the old ones went.”

I said, “People don't care to dwell on those things.”

“So I see,” he said.

I said, “Hitler sent them away.”

“I know that,” he said. “We learned all about that in school. I've seen pictures.”

“What pictures?” Maxine wanted to know.

I shot him a warning look. I didn't want to be up all night with questions and nightmares.

“Camps,” he said.

She said, “Like Seneca Lake Summer Camp?”

He was a sensible boy.

“Not exactly,” he said. “Yeah. Kind of.”

I dreamed I was eating dinner in Chartier. Aunt Fish was there, and Ma. They were trying to erase the writing off the tablecloth. And Neville Merrick was there, too, laughing at regimental jokes. Then a telephone began ringing but I couldn't pick up because my arms were tied to my side. It rang and rang until suddenly it wasn't a dream anymore and my arms were free and I answered.

“Mom?” Emerald said.

They were staying at the Lygon Arms Hotel in Cotswoldshire, at my expense. There was a cheap side to Mortie and I wanted my girl to have the best.

I said, “Did you get a bed with drapes?”

“Mom,” she said. “We have to go home. Something terrible happened.”

Then Mortie came on.

“Poppy,” he said, “I don't know an easy way to do a thing like this, so I'll just come right out with it. Sapphire has passed away.”

How few are the moments we remember precisely, long after they are past. I recall perfectly the color of the sky as the
Carpathia
came home without my pa. But I can't remember his going away. I recall exactly how it felt to have to go to the ballet wearing black day shoes with a borrowed Directoire gown. And the feel of Gilbert Catchings's fist against my jaw. I don't at all remember the moment when Sapphire was first placed in my arms. But I remember when she was taken from me.

Our room had a marble mantelpiece and a complimentary bowl of fruit and Maxine's clothes left in a heap where she had stepped out of them. I listened into the telephone and saw an old lady's hand on the celadon coverlet, plucking at the machine embroidery with a fleshy finger. Maxine was still sleeping and Mortie was talking about airplane tickets, and someone had slipped in unseen and placed the heaviest weight around my heart.

60

We were met by Sherman and Murray.

I said to Murray, “I thought you couldn't travel anymore.”

“I gave myself a talking to,” he said.

Mortie drove Alan and Maxine home. Sherman took us directly to see Honey.

“She's beside herself,” he said. “She's having tranquilizing pills, one three times a day, to be taken with food, but she's still beside herself. It doesn't matter what anybody says, she's determined to blame herself.”

Sapphy was meant to have been going to dinner. But when she didn't show up Honey didn't think too much of it. Sapphire was partial to the cocktail hour and sometimes it drifted on and she never got as far as dinner. Neither was she a person you'd call up with a little reminder, not unless you were willing to get your head bitten off. So some time passed before the neighbors complained that the television had been playing against their bedroom wall for two full days without a break and the police were sent for.

Like her predecessor, for hired help Coretta II had a lot to say for herself.

“Miss Honey brought very low by this,” she said. “She bin passed the bitter cup, no mistake.”

But I found my sister quite composed.

“Poppy,” she said. “I let you down.”

“Mother!” Sherman said. “No one let anyone down. Sapphire was a grown woman.”

“No!” she said. “I should never have handed her back. She was a darling happy child until she went to Europe and came back all crazy and mixed up. Poppy's life was no life for a child.”

Em said, “Well, hang on there, Aunt Honey. I turned out OK.”

“That was sheer luck,” Honey said. “Sapphy was never right from the day I let her go and now I'm judged. Do you think it's just chance I was the one she went and died on? It isn't. She paid me back.”

Sherman said, “It was a simple case of erroneous self-medication. Pills and rye. It's easily done.”

Em said, “Did she leave a letter?”

“No,” he said. “No letter. Ask me, she just neglected to read the accompanying leaflet.”

“Ask me,” Murray said, “she just lost count.”

“Well,” Em said, “that's something. I was afraid we wouldn't be able to give her a proper burial.”

We all looked at her.

“You know what I mean,” she said. “S-u-i-c-i-d-e.”

“Don't!” Honey cried. “Oh please, don't!”

I said, “Was that what was bugging that husband of yours all the way back here? You'd have thought he was the one had lost a child.”

“It's a serious thing, Mom,” she said. “A person's soul isn't theirs to extinguish. Mortie and I discussed this. But, anyway, there wasn't a letter, so we're in the clear.”

I was thinking I would have liked a letter. I'd have liked something.

Honey said, “It's of no significance anyway, Emerald. West End Collegiate will be happy to have her. We'll take her over to New Jersey and give her a good Christian burial.”

Em said, “Are you crazy? We're Jewish.”

Sherman said, “I don't see why you two are arguing over this. Aunt Poppy's next of kin after all.”

“On paper, perhaps,” Honey spat out. “But I was the only real mother that child ever knew and I haven't been Jewish in years.”

I caught Murray trying to slip away.

I said “Where do you think you're going?”

“To find a glass of milk,” he said.

I said, “Take me with you. I think I'm liable to faint.”

He took my arm and we walked slowly to the Broadway Yum-Yum.

I said, “I meant to be a better mother. I'd been thinking a great deal about her. Seeing Kneilthorpe again and Paris, she'd been on my mind and I'd decided I'd come back and be a better mother to her. She never forgave me over Gil, you know? She was always waiting for Gil Catchings to walk into her life and make up for lost time. And she never forgave me over that French boy. There's truth in what Honey said. I could have given her up, let Honey raise her. Then none of this might have come to pass.”

“I think,” Murray said, “Sapphy was just Sapphy. She'd have ended up miscounting her pills whoever raised her.”

I said, “I did love her.”

“Of course you did,” he said. “I loved her, too. But she was a pain in the neck. Never happier than when she was miserable. There was something at the heart of her…maybe it came from her father's side. Do you know, I wrote her a page or two most weeks but I never heard back from her, not once in fifteen years. Do you want to go to the viewing chapel? I'll go with you if you like.”

I said, “Do I have to?”

“It's recommended,” he said, “but not compulsory. Leave it another half hour and Em and Honey'll have decided for you.”

I said, “Do you think she should be buried Jewish or buried Church?”

“Church,” he said. “But that's because I like the flowers. How was England?”

“Pointless,” I said. “Never go back.”

He had a mustache of milk. Murray never did learn to drink tidily.

I said, “Neville Merrick has a screw loose. They built houses over Kneilthorpe. Angelica's old.”

“We're all old,” he said. He drained his glass, started to make a move. “Better be getting back,” he said, “unless we want a multiple funeral on our hands.”

I said, “Angelica told me something. A person called Susie Manners saw you in England in 1947. Flicky Manners's sister.”

“Don't remember,” he said.

I said, “You were in Epping Forest looking for someone. She was Red Cross and she told Angelica it definitely was you.”

“Well, then,” he said, “if Susie Manners said it I suppose it must be true.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“If I tell you something,” he said eventually, “will you promise never to repeat it?”

I promised.

“And no questions. No coming back for more.”

I promised again.

“I had a friend,” he said, “after I went away. I went to the Netherlands and I had a friend. We grew things. Scillas and hyacinths, dwarf tulips, paper narcissus, and then potatoes, after the war came. It was pretty quiet, considering. Just sky and good earth. It's called the polder. We didn't bother anyone and nobody bothered us. But you never know. You might think you have good neighbors, but…who's to say what a person will do when it's his door they're knocking on? We were sent to a place called Vught. And then one day I had a choice, to go with my friend to Westerbork or stay where I was. I had a job at Vught, making soup. I had somebody watching out for me. People didn't usually get choices in Vught, so I grabbed at mine with both hands. And my friend went to Westerbork without me. Did you ever hear of Westerbork? Nobody ever heard of Westerbork. They had a restaurant there and a hairdresser and a train that left every Tuesday at eleven. But, anyhow, I never got to see it for myself. I saved my own scrawny neck, Poppy, ducking and diving till the Canadians came and set us all free and then I went looking for my friend. Hoping for the chance to explain. Or something. There were a lot of places to look. I don't remember any Susie Manners, but if she said she saw me, I'm sure she did. I just went looking in too many places to recall them all. And that's that.”

I said, “Where did the train go? Every Tuesday at eleven?”

“No questions,” he said. “You promised. We have to go, Pops. We have to go and arrange a burying.”

61

United in grief, Honey and Emerald reached an accommodation. Em and Mortie burned a shiva candle for Sapphire and made a donation in her memory to the United Jewish Appeal. A reverend minister of the Dutch Reform Church conducted her funeral service, and she was laid to rest in Flushing not so very far from her daddy Gilbert.