The Tin Horse: A Novel (17 page)

A FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH OF
Harry Greenstein, handsome as a movie actor in his army uniform, hung in our living room. He was also in another living room photo, a picture of Papa’s whole family taken in 1911, the year after they moved from New York to the more healthful climate of Los Angeles. They made the move because our
bubbe
suffered from tuberculosis, but the change came too late for her. Seated beside Zayde at the center of the family grouping, Bubbe looked chalky and frail, and I knew she had died the next year. But the children! Impossible to believe that my pale, dull-eyed
bubbe
had ever produced these tanned visions of vitality!

Chubby and smiling, in dark dresses with white lace collars, nine-year-old Sonya and eight-year-old Pearl flanked the group. Bill—that was Papa—who was eleven, stood ramrod straight behind Bubbe; in his serious demeanor, I came to recognize myself.

Then there was Harry, dominating the photo with self-possessed grace. Although he was just fourteen, Harry displayed none of the gawkiness of adolescent boys, the resentful self-consciousness at being shoved inside bodies with which they’re at war. If there had been a war within Harry, he had won. At five-six or five-seven, he hadn’t yet reached his full height, but he’d clearly crossed the bridge from childhood to manhood. Standing behind Zayde’s chair and between Papa and Sonya, he held himself straight like Papa, yet with just a hint of a slouch that telegraphed assurance, humor. Next to whippet-thin Papa, Harry was filled out, and not just because he was older; he had a naturally powerful body with broad swimmer’s shoulders.

Harry swam his famous forty-two-minute mile in July 1914, which made it the centerpiece of an important summer, both for the Greenstein family and for the world. That June, Harry graduated from high school, and he and Zayde started the egg ranch. In August, Europe went to war.

Harry enlisted in the army a year later. The United States hadn’t yet entered the war, but he knew it was coming. When it did, he was sent to the heart of the fighting and killed almost the moment he set foot in France.

“Did you fight in the Great War?” I asked Papa, about the time I became aware of Uncle Harry’s ghost.

“I wanted to, but who would have helped Zayde with the egg ranch?”

A simple enough answer, but it concealed precarious fault lines that would deepen and slip and ultimately—at 5:54 p.m. on March 10, 1933—rupture.

FRIDAY, MARCH
10, didn’t seem like a day that would change everything. On our kitchen calendar, the tenth was merely a blank square, a day whose primary significance was that it fell in the midst of three other dates circled in red: the previous Saturday, March 4, when President Roosevelt was inaugurated, and Barbara’s and my twelfth birthdays, on March 28 and 29.

That Friday night, we would eat our first Shabbos dinner in an America led by FDR, an America that might emerge at last from the Depression.
Though the Depression shadowed everyone’s life, it hadn’t hit the Greensteins as hard as it hit so many others. Papa still had a job; Mr. Fine had had to lay two people off, but he had laid off single people, not a family man like Papa. And Papa had worked at Fine’s for seventeen years! Mr. Fine often told him he was like family. We had to scrimp, of course, and Mama and Papa no longer talked about buying their own house someday, but we’d been able to install a telephone; and we always had plenty to eat and even new or expertly mended clothes, thanks to Aunt Pearl. Pearl was actually prospering in the hard times. She’d begun designing costumes for the movies, and movies were a comfort that all but the most desperate allowed themselves. For Uncle Leo, too, the Depression meant business for his bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard. People parted with rare books to get by, and Leo needed only a handful of still-wealthy collectors—or the newly wealthy, for whom there was nothing like a shelf of moldy classics to make them look cultured—to have a market. Zayde did all right, too, gambling being a comfort that even the desperate didn’t give up.

We were the ones who felt sorry for
other
people. Papa gave money to charity, and Mama invited “less fortunate” families to Friday night dinners. Often that meant Danny and his father or—on that Friday—our next-door neighbors, the Anshels. Mr. Anshel, who worked as a printer, had gotten his salary cut in half, and with two small children to take care of, Mrs. Anshel couldn’t go out to work. The whole Anshel family, including three-year-old David and the baby, Sharon, had thick, pasty skin. Mama said it was because they ate almost no meat but had to fill up on potatoes and beans.

To make sure the Anshels got meat that Friday—and to celebrate Roosevelt’s inauguration—Mama was roasting two chickens, prepared by rubbing garlic, parsley, and oil under their skin and dusting them with paprika and her secret ingredient, a pinch of cinnamon. The fragrance filled the house as my sisters and I performed our Friday dinner chores. It was Barbara’s and my job to transform the kitchen table. We moved the table into the living room, added two leaves, and spread out the good white cloth Mama and Papa had gotten for a wedding gift from Pearl. Then we set the table with the rose-patterned Rosenthal china, a gift shipped from the relatives in Chicago, and the crystal wine and water glasses, which
were also wedding gifts. It seemed as if every wedding gift Mama and Papa had received was intended for Shabbos dinners, even though the only custom we followed was for Mama to light candles in the silver candlesticks and mumble a prayer. The candlesticks were a gift from Papa’s employer, Julius Fine, and polishing them was Audrey’s task.

Audrey had just placed the freshly polished candlesticks on the sideboard, Barbara and I were smoothing the tablecloth, and Zayde was relaxing in his armchair with a glass of whiskey when Papa came home. Was it after six already? We’d better hurry. But I checked the clock, and it wasn’t even five-thirty. Mr. Fine had let Papa leave the store early.

“Papa! Papa!” Audrey danced from one foot to the other like a puppy that couldn’t contain its joy. Poor Audrey. The harder she tried, the more Papa withdrew from her. She hadn’t figured out that there were times when none of us—not even me, his favorite because I did so well in school—should approach Papa. When he got home from work, you needed to wait until he’d put on his house slippers and had a few sips of whiskey.

Predictably, Papa ignored us and walked into the kitchen. A minute later, I heard Mama scream. Barbara, Audrey, Zayde, and I all ran toward the kitchen and crowded through the swinging door.

Mama sprawled in a chair as if her six-months-pregnant belly were a heavy beach ball that someone had flung at her and, catching it, she’d fallen backward. Her eyes were open, but her face was as pale as the Anshels’.

Papa stood over her, fanning her with a kitchen towel. “Water,” he said.

Barbara rushed to the sink and filled a glass.

“Should I call the doctor?” I said.

“No, it’s all right.” Papa took the glass from Barbara and raised it to Mama’s lips. “Mama just got a little too hot, with the oven going.”

Mama sat up straight and glared at him. “Tell them.”

Papa took a deep breath. He looked at the floor but spoke with his elocution-champion enunciation. “I lost my job.”

“Juli Fine cut your hours?” Zayde said, holding out against the full disaster of what Papa had said.

Papa shook his head. “Mrs. Fine has a cousin who got laid off three months ago. He hasn’t been able to find anything else.”

“Why does that mean Papa lost his job?” Audrey whispered to me. I pinched her arm to shut her up.

“Charlotte, why don’t you come sit in the living room and cool off?” Papa said.

“We’ll finish fixing dinner,” Barbara volunteered.

“How about I tell the Anshels someone’s sick and we can’t have company tonight?” Zayde offered.

“And let this chicken go to waste?” Mama said. “Barbara? Elaine? The chickens need another fifteen, twenty minutes. And can you boil green beans? I was going to fix them with bread crumbs, but …”

“I know how to do it,” Barbara said.

Papa helped Mama to her feet, and they went with Zayde into the living room.

“What happened?” Audrey asked with tears in her eyes. Barbara and I explained. Then Audrey really cried. I grabbed her shoulders hard and said we had to act brave for Mama and Papa. Barbara had her sit down to snap the ends off the green beans, and I returned to the living room to finish setting the table.

Zayde had poured glasses of whiskey for Papa and Mama, who sat at opposite ends of the sofa.

“How about some music, Charlotte?” Zayde asked Mama.

“All right.”

Every comment or gesture, however casual, felt stained by Papa’s news. When Zayde turned on the radio to the classical station, I looked at the Zenith in its handsome cabinet and wondered how long we’d be able to keep it before we had to take it to the pawnshop.

As Papa, Mama, and Zayde sipped their whiskeys, they engaged in terse bursts of talk.

“What did this cousin get laid off from?” Mama said.

“Advertising.”

“What does an advertising man know about selling shoes?”

“He’s been out of work since December,” Papa said. “He’s got two kids and a mortgage.”

“A mortgage! So he could afford to buy? Audrey, for crying out loud, put those candlesticks away.”

Audrey, who’d crept across the room to put white candles in the candlesticks, jumped.

“I’m not going to pray over candlesticks we got from Juli Fine,” Mama said. “I can’t even bear to look at them! Put them away, Audrey. Now!” She took a gulp of whiskey, then said to Papa, “So, where is this house Mr. Advertising Man has got a mortgage on?”

“West side.”

“Naturally. Did Fine at least give you severance pay?”

“Sixty dollars.”

We paid twenty-two dollars and fifty cents a month just for rent.

“Mama?” Audrey whispered. She had returned the offending candlesticks to their place within the sideboard. Now she stood miserably, holding the candles. “What should I do with these?”

“Oy, how can I think about … I don’t care, use other candlesticks.”

Tears glistening in her eyes, Audrey looked around blindly. I realized she might not know there were candles in cheap brass candlesticks in the linen closet, in case the power failed. I was going to tell her, but then she ran into the kitchen.

“Seventeen years you worked for him,” Mama said. “Long hours, overtime, any job that needed doing. You think Mr. Advertising Man with his mortgage on the west side is going to put in hours like that or get his hands dirty in the stockroom?”

“If it was your cousin and my business, wouldn’t you—”

“Don’t tell me you’re going to defend him.”

“Charlotte.” Papa put up his hand:
enough
. He got up to refill his glass.

“Bill’s right,” Zayde said. “Of course Fine is going to help his cousin.”

“His wife’s cousin.” Mama winced. “The radio. I don’t want to hear it after all.”

I leaped to turn it off.

How could they all be so silent? I was lifting each fork to put a folded napkin under it, oh so gently; still, the forks and napkins thundered onto the table.

“Where will you look?” Mama said after another minute.

“I’ll start with the department stores downtown.”

“To get another job selling shoes?” Zayde said.

Was it because Zayde was sitting under Uncle Harry’s photograph? Somehow, his simple comment implied not just
Why would Papa want another job as a shoe salesman?
but
Why would anyone ever settle for such a job?

“Maybe I should ask if they need someone to run the whole department store.” Papa gave a sharp, dry laugh. “Or I’ll just call the mayor and see if he wants me to help him run the city.”

“All I’m saying, Billy,” Zayde said, “is, this is an opportunity. You can make a fresh start.”

“A fresh start, Pa. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Mama should have touched his arm and said something; it was how she always defused fights between Papa and Zayde. But she just stared into her glass of whiskey. She almost never drank alcohol except for a Friday night glass of wine.

“There’s always money to be made,” Zayde said.

“A man who worked in advertising, a graduate of UCLA, is going to spend all day on his knees trying to force shoes that are too tight over Mrs. Scharf’s bunions. What do you suggest for a man who doesn’t have a high school diploma?”

“Feh, a piece of paper. You see how much good it did Fine’s cousin.”

Thank goodness, Mama finally opened her mouth. But all she said was, “His
wife’s
cousin. That Trudie Fine, I bet she was at him night and day.”

“You said it yourself,” Zayde said. “If it was your business and a family member needed help, you’d help. Isn’t that the idea, there’s nothing like being in business for yourself so you can help family when you need to?”

“What kind of business am I supposed to go into with sixty dollars, in a depression?”

“Not just sixty dollars. I’m talking about a
family
business.”

“Like the winery you wanted to get into, Pa. A winery, in the middle of Prohibition.”

“Did Prohibition last? If we’d started then—”

“What did we know about making wine?”

“What did Julius Fine know about shoes when he got started?”

“Jesus Christ, Pa! Fine wasn’t trying to make shoes, just to sell them.”

“Bill, Bill,” Mama murmured.

Zayde, to my amazement, grinned. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “That’s the kind of fight it takes to get ahead. Bill, I say this because you’re my son. You’re as smart as the next fellow; in fact, you’re smarter than most of ’em who make ten times what you ever made at Fine’s and live in fancy houses on the west side. There’s just one thing that holds you back.”

He paused, and I thought of doing something to distract everyone’s attention—dropping a plate? But I couldn’t break a good plate. And I couldn’t resist hearing what Zayde was going to say.

“Billy, you’ve always had a cautious nature. Nothing wrong with that, a little caution is good in business. But sometimes a man has got to take risks. To have a little—”