The Tin Horse: A Novel (18 page)

“Chutzpah,” Papa said with a pinched smile. That’s when I got scared.

Chutzpah, I had heard many times by then, was something Uncle Harry had possessed in abundance, and it was the quality Zayde prized above all others. “Harry could walk into any room in this city and have ’em eating out of his hand,” Zayde often said. “Longshoremen or Torah scholars, didn’t matter, he had the chutzpah to look ’em in the eye and tell ’em what he thought. Even the men who run Los Angeles.” Or, more to the point, bankers who might have saved the egg ranch. Not that it would have needed saving. The ranch was Harry’s idea, and he had had brilliant plans for everything, from getting the most output from the hens to advertising to transporting the eggs to stores. With Harry in charge, Green and Sons’ Health-Wise Ranch would have been the biggest egg producer in the West, Zayde said. As I became aware of Zayde’s tendency to embellish, I took that boast with a grain of salt. Still, how could you look at photos of Harry and
not
see a man who would have flung himself into the ocean of life … and swum faster and harder than everyone else?

I also knew, though this was never part of Zayde’s stories, that Harry’s enlisting in the army had forced Papa to drop out of high school at sixteen to take his place on the egg ranch. Though, of course, no one could take Harry’s place.

And for all my uncle Harry’s charm when he was alive, I’d come to
dread the times when one of the adults—usually Zayde—brought him into a conversation. At the mention of Harry, Papa got tense and unhappy as he had that day at the beach, even if Zayde hadn’t brought up Harry for the express purpose of comparing Papa to him; often, however, the comparison was at least implied, and it was a contest that Papa could never win. I felt bad on Papa’s behalf. More than that, I sensed the story of Uncle Harry and Papa repeating between Barbara and me. I was studious, like Papa, and Barbara was a go-getter, a princess of chutzpah. There was a glow around her, as there had been around Uncle Harry.

And that afternoon, though no one had yet uttered Harry’s name, I knew that his ghost had entered the room.

“That’s it, chutzpah,” Zayde said. “But you’ve got a point. Better to have a business we know something about. A betting shop, for instance.”

“Pa.” Papa stood up and took a few steps toward Zayde—casually, with his hands clasped in front of him, as if he were delivering a lesson in history or poetry.

“I’ve got ideas Melansky can’t understand,” Zayde said. “He doesn’t know how to think big. But the two of us could—”

“Pa! Why do you think Harry enlisted in the army?”

Every nerve in my body crackled.

“Who said anything about Harry?” Zayde said.

“Why did Harry enlist?” Papa repeated.

“Why does anyone enlist? To serve his country.” Zayde shrugged, but he stood, too, and his accent got stronger, a sign that Papa had upset him. I had an impulse to throw myself between them, but they seemed to be talking reasonably, and how dangerous could they be, two men in house slippers?

“Two years before we got into the war?” Papa said.

“He knew the war was coming.”

“So he left a business he’d started just a year earlier. A business that was just getting on its feet.”

“Look, I know it’s hard to hear the truth about yourself. But don’t—”

“The truth?” Papa said, his voice loud and rough. He took a step closer to Zayde. “The truth is, Harry enlisted to get away from your goddamn egg ranch.”

“What are you talking about?” Zayde shouted. “The ranch was Harry’s idea.”

The yelling brought Barbara from the kitchen. We stood glued side to side as Mama, finally roused, cried, “Stop it! Both of you!”

“Harry hated the ranch,” Papa said. “He hated chickens. He told me when he left for the army he never wanted to eat another egg.”

“Your brother was a hero. Show some respect.”

“Know what he hated most of all? He hated getting dragged into your crazy schemes. He was afraid he was going to be stuck doing that for the rest of his life.”

“Crazy? Who doesn’t eat eggs?”

“Please, Pa, he doesn’t mean it,” Mama said.

“Why do you think I had to go to work for Fine?” Papa said. “Because there was nothing left after that.”

“Under this roof, I won’t stay one more night,” Zayde boomed.

“Harry couldn’t wait to get away!”

“Not one night.” Zayde skirted the table and pushed through the swinging door, toward his room.

“Bill, how could you?” Mama exclaimed.

Papa looked at his watch. “Girls, it’s ten to six,” he said firmly. “We have guests arriving soon. Is the food ready?”

“That’s all right, I’ll finish it,” Mama said, but she didn’t leave the room right away; she stood frozen, staring at Papa.

Barbara and I pretended to arrange things on the table; I was blinking my eyes, trying not to cry, and she squeezed my hand to calm me down.

Papa said to Mama, “How could I
say
it? Or how could I have
not
said it all these years?”

“You and your father—and poor Harry, dead all these years already—that’s your business. But what are we going to do without your father’s income? I’m going to go talk to him.” Then Mama went into the kitchen.

Papa sank into the sofa. He looked dazed, the way he had one day when he’d swum his mile even though he was getting over the flu and he emerged from the ocean white-faced, his teeth chattering.

I looked at the elegantly set table and imagined the china and crystal stacked on the curb after we’d been evicted.

As if they had absorbed my fear, all of the beautiful things on the table trembled. But it wasn’t just the table. The floor was lurching. Lights flickered. The whole house made terrible, deep grinding noises, overlaid by the shrill, ominous tinkling of crystal.

Barbara and I grabbed each other, screaming, “Earthquake!” Papa threw himself on top of us and pulled us to the shuddering floor as glass shattered around us.

Then it stopped.

For a few seconds, the stillness felt as strange as the shaking.

“Girls, are you all right?” Papa sat up and scanned our bodies for injuries.

We were whimpering like babies, but we hadn’t been hurt. Not like Papa, who was bleeding from cuts on his head and arms! But he said he was all right. He told us to go outside—carefully, there was broken glass all over the floor—and wait in front of the house. Then he ran into the kitchen, yelling for Mama and Zayde.

Barbara and I tiptoed through the room, which had gone crazily askew. A table with knickknacks had toppled over, and all of the furniture, even the big, heavy sofa, had lurched into slightly different places. Outside, our wooden porch looked all right, but the three concrete steps were cracked, and a big chunk had broken off the middle step. Testing the ground each time I put a foot down, I picked my way over the broken steps and out to the sidewalk.

Neighbors were spilling outside, too, everyone dazed and eyeing their houses as if fearing what fresh revenge they might take for our living in them so heedlessly, with so little gratitude for their constant effort to squeeze joists and nails and boards together against the forces of chaos. Except for the porch steps and some broken windows, our house looked unharmed, but the porch roof had collapsed at the Lischers’, three doors down. There was a horrid blaring sound—the horn of a car, one of several that sat askew in the middle of the street, with no drivers in sight.

“Is anyone hurt? Your mother, with the baby?” It was Mrs. Anshel.

What baby?
I thought dully, wondering if she meant her baby, Sharon. But Sharon was right there in her arms. Then I understood she was talking about Mama’s pregnancy.

“Papa’s getting everyone else,” I said.

“Tell him he needs to shut off the main gas line.… Barbara, Elaine, are you listening? Just come get me when your father comes out.”

Mrs. Anshel turned out to be one of those people who get invigorated by a crisis. Wearing the navy and white dress and silver clip earrings she’d put on to come to dinner at our house, she bustled over to the Yamotos’, two doors away. She told them about turning off the gas line—now I understood what she was talking about—and Mr. Yamoto went to take care of it. She mentioned the blaring car horn, and the two sons, Teddy and Woodrow, went and lifted the hood of the offending car.

Papa, Mama, and Zayde came around from the back of the house. Papa and Zayde supported Mama, who held a kitchen towel to her forehead.

“Mama!” we cried, running to her.

“I’m fine, girls. Something fell in the kitchen, that’s all,” she said, but she walked heavily and her eyes barely flicked over us.

But then, as if strength had flooded into her, she charged past us to the street. “Audrey? Where’s Audrey?”

Barbara and I looked at each other, as if that would magically make Audrey appear. Together, we looked at the house. Audrey’s face wasn’t in any of the windows.

“Didn’t she come out?” Papa asked me.

I shook my head.

“You said ‘the girls’ were out front. ‘The girls,’ you said!” Mama screamed at Papa.

He was already sprinting back into the house. Zayde was two steps behind him, and then Barbara and me, but, even holding her baby, Mrs. Anshel managed to plant herself ahead of both of us. “What are you girls thinking?” she said. “Take care of your mother.”

Mama’s face was ashen, except for the bloody gash on her head—no longer covered by the dish towel, which dangled in her hand. Mrs. Anshel led her to sit in one of the abandoned cars and told me to press the towel against the wound on Mama’s head. I used it to dab at Mama’s tears as well, while my own tears streamed and soaked the collar of my blouse.

The Yamoto boys had silenced the car horn, and we could hear Papa and Zayde calling for Audrey. No one answered.

“Barbara. Elaine.” Mrs. Anshel made sure we were looking at her. “This is important. Was Audrey with you when the earthquake happened?”

“No,” we said together.

“Where did you see her last?”

“Living room,” I said. “But she was going into the kitchen.” I glanced at Barbara.

“How was I supposed to notice?” she said. “I had to fix the dinner.”

“Oh, was your mama not feeling well?”

“Yes,” we answered quickly, both of us immediately understanding that we couldn’t reveal what had really happened.

“Hmm.” Mrs. Anshel clearly sensed there was more to the story. “Well, does Audrey have a hiding place? Someplace she’d go if she was upset?”

“I don’t know,” I said, as miserable as Audrey when Mama had snapped at her about the candlesticks.

Papa and Zayde returned, alone. Now Papa took over questioning Barbara and me, while Mrs. Anshel went to organize a search party. Were we absolutely certain we hadn’t seen Audrey after the earthquake? Papa asked. What about before the earthquake? Did she go outside?

Yearning to help in some way, I mentioned the need to shut off the gas line. Papa asked Zayde to do it. Then he instructed Barbara and me to stay with Mama, and he joined the search.

Why wasn’t Audrey in the house? Had she run outside in distress after I could have helped her but didn’t? I asked myself miserably as, all up and down the street, people called her name. And then … had she been crushed under a falling building? Had someone taken advantage of the confusion of the earthquake and kidnapped her, like the Lindbergh baby last year? What could I promise God, if He brought her back safely? Of course I would never ever tease her again. But I needed to offer something bigger. What about helping my family, since Papa had lost his job? Some children, even as young as I was, had left school to go to work.

Then I heard a woman cry out, “Here she is! The little Greenstein girl!”

“Look, they found her!” someone else exclaimed.

I followed the pointing fingers and swiveling heads toward the end of
the block, and saw … it was Audrey! She rode on the shoulders of a handsome Mexican man. And wasn’t that Auntie Pearl at their side?

Mama let out a cry and staggered toward them. Applauding and cheering, the crowd parted to let her through. The Mexican man gently lowered Audrey from his shoulders, and Mama swooped to embrace her.

“I found her on the street outside my apartment,” Pearl said. “I tried to telephone you, but the line was down.”

Now Mama was scolding Audrey but at the same time hugging her and stroking her hair and weeping, while the rest of us surrounded them, chattering and smiling, a happy family again.

“Bill? Charlotte?” Pearl said after the first few delirious minutes of relief that Audrey was safe. “Papa?” she added tremulously.

Pearl looked … not just pretty, but like women in the movies. Wearing a clingy green sweater and high heels, and with red lipstick on her mouth, my aunt was
sexy
. She placed her hand on the arm of the Mexican man who had carried Audrey; and who hadn’t, like the other helpful neighbors, drifted away. “I’d like you to meet Alberto Rivas,” she said.

“Bert,” the man said with a smile. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Greenstein.” He held out his hand to Zayde.

Zayde gave Pearl a long, cold look and walked away.

Papa, however, grasped Bert Rivas’s outstretched hand. “Thank you for bringing back our daughter.” As if to emphasize how different he was from Zayde, he added, “Please, stay and have dinner with us.”

“Bill, you don’t have to,” Pearl said quickly.

“He brought Audrey back safe and sound. It’s the least we can do.”

Bert glanced at Pearl. She nodded, and he accepted Papa’s invitation. Even then, I kept telling myself he must be one of Pearl’s neighbors; it was a bit odd that he lived near Pearl instead of in the Mexican part of Boyle Heights, but a certain amount of mixing went on, like the Yamotos living on our block instead of in the Japanese area. And while the idea of Bert being Pearl’s neighbor was odd, it wasn’t impossible, not like the other idea that gradually forced its way into my mind: that Pearl had put on her sexy sweater for Bert Rivas. That this Mexican man was my aunt Pearl’s boyfriend.

“I couldn’t help it,” I heard Pearl tell Papa as we picked our way over the broken porch steps. “The important thing was to get her home. What if there was another earthquake, or we had to get past buildings that were destroyed? It would have been crazy to bring her back by myself.”