The Two-Family House: A Novel (3 page)

It was only when Helen opened the windows to air out the living room that she thought of it. The idea floated in with the crisp morning breeze, erasing the staleness that had filled her lungs. A new resolve elated her, and she stopped for a moment to savor it. She was only thirty-five, for heaven’s sake. Why not?

After that, the rest of her morning chores flew by. By the time the boys woke up, clamoring for food, Helen was giddy with newfound purpose. Abe wandered into the kitchen a few minutes later. “You made a beautiful party,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her, already recalling his favorite moments of the previous day. She returned the kiss and played along, but Helen had no interest in reminiscing. The bar mitzvah was behind her, and her heart was hungry for what would come next.

Chapter 4

ROSE

(August 1947)

Rose took the second loaf of bread out of the oven and placed it on top of the stove. The smell made her stomach turn, but she took a deep breath and tried to force the sensation into retreat. She felt awful.

Rose never imagined she would get pregnant again. She assumed that part of her life was over and that Dinah, just turned five, would always be the baby of the family. But she could no longer ignore her condition. And as each day passed, the realization that she was going to have to tell Mort invaded her thoughts more frequently. A month ago, the thought of telling him was like the sighting of a distant ship: a black speck on a remote horizon. Thinking of it that way calmed her. Over the past few weeks, however, an overwhelming sense of dread transformed the picture: the ship grew closer, filling the frame, and no amount of coaxing could turn it back around. Today, she could think of nothing else, and so after the children left for the park, she kept herself busy baking bread.

“Something smells good in there! Open up!” It was Helen at the door, all smiles and pink cheeks. Not just pink, Rose saw, but bright red and dripping with perspiration. She puffed her way inside and saw the loaves cooling on the stove.

“You’re baking bread in this heat? It’s like a sauna in here, Rose. Open a window!”

Rose slid open the window over the sink. The August morning was hot and still, with no breeze. “I felt like baking bread.”

“For heaven’s sake, why?”

“I needed to keep busy. One is for you. Sit. You can taste it for me.”

Rose set one of the loaves on the table with a plate for Helen and the butter dish. She found the jar of blueberry preserves she had made a few weeks ago and put that down too.

“Oh good, your jam! Don’t you want a plate?”

“I can’t eat in this heat.”

Rose poured two cups of coffee and sat down. She couldn’t help smiling as she watched Helen attack the bread. First Helen cut off the end. She sliced a generous piece from the middle, slathered it with butter and jam, and popped it in her mouth, leaving the end piece on the table. “It’s so good, Rose,” Helen practically moaned. “I swear I could eat the whole thing right now.”

“Don’t you like the end?”

“What?”

“The heel—you don’t like that part? That’s Mimi’s favorite.”

Helen chuckled. She put down the butter knife she was holding and began to laugh harder. When her laughter turned into a coughing fit, Rose jumped up to get her a glass of water. After a few sips, the coughing stopped.

“What’s so funny?”

“You never met my grandmother; she died before I met Abe. Anyway, she was from the old country, very stubborn, very superstitious. You couldn’t put a hat on the bed, you couldn’t eat only one olive—she believed all that stuff. She used to say that if a pregnant woman wanted a girl, she should never eat the end of the bread, only the middle. And if she wanted a boy, she should only eat the end.”

“You’re pregnant?” Rose was stunned.

“Don’t you see what a horse I am? I’m busting out of my dresses! I’m due the first week of January. Five months to go. I thought for sure you knew.”

Rose had been so preoccupied with her own pregnancy that she hadn’t even noticed Helen’s. Of all the babies born to the two women—the upstairs boys and the downstairs girls—Rose and Helen had never been pregnant at the exact same time. There had been a few months of overlap here and there but nothing like this. They were both due in January. “Have you told Abe?” Rose asked.

“Just yesterday. I wanted to wait until it was safe. Boy, was he surprised! You’d think he would have guessed, but men never pay attention.”

“I guess they don’t,” Rose admitted. She filled their coffee cups again and thought how lucky she was to have Helen for her sister-in-law. When Helen was beside her she felt braver, resilient. They would go through this together. Rose felt the terrible feeling in her stomach dissipate. She reached across the table for the bread knife and cut the other end off the loaf. She took the end Helen had cut and the newly cut piece and placed them both in front of her on the table. Then she took a bite from each one.

“You too?” Helen jumped up and put her arms around her sister-in-law. She patted Rose’s stomach. “But you’re slimmer than ever! You’re not showing at all!” Together they went over their symptoms and ailments from the past few months. Rose had been exhausted and Helen had craved sweets.

Slice by slice, Helen polished off the middle of the loaf while Rose nibbled only on the ends. She wanted to believe Helen’s superstition would work. She wanted to believe she had some control. She wanted, more than anything, to believe that what lay ahead of her would be better than what had come before. But as she chewed the ends of the loaf she had baked, the dry bits of crust only stuck to her tongue and the crumbs felt like dust in her mouth.

Chapter 5

ABE

Abe couldn’t believe it when Helen told him she was pregnant. “Are you sure?” he stuttered. He had left the office early that afternoon because of the heat. Now he was home, sweating even more than he had at work.

“I’m sure.”

“Did you see the doctor?” A stream of perspiration was making its way down the side of his cheek, directly in front of his ear.

“Abe!” she scolded. “Of course I did!”

Abe sat down on the couch. He put his head down and tried to breathe.

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you happy?”

His head was still down. “I’m happy, I’m happy,” he muttered. “It’s good.”

“Then why do you look like you’re having a heart attack?”

Slowly, he lifted his head and looked at her. “I’m just surprised, is all. It’s a big shock. It’s enough to give anybody a heart attack if you want to know the truth.”

Helen sat down next to him and took his hand. “I’m not an old woman yet. It can’t be
that
much of a shock. What’s the matter?”

“Mmm.” His eyes were closed and he was dabbing at his forehead with his handkerchief.

“Stop it!” Helen shook him by the arm. Then she stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Are you happy or not?”

Abe stood up too, a little shaky at first, and managed a smile. “Sweetheart, of course I’m happy. We’ll have a beautiful baby.” Helen popped a kiss on his cheek and promptly pushed him back down. “Sit. I’m going to get you a glass of water. You look green. I can’t raise five children alone, you know. I don’t want you to have a
real
heart attack.”

Abe closed his eyes again and tried to relax. He should have seen it coming. The way she was looking at her cousin’s baby a few months ago—like a kid drooling over a lollipop! That look in her eye, the frantic way she pulled him into bed. He should have known. And here was the result: just when they were able to enjoy themselves a little and get a couple nights of sleep, they were heading back to diapers and midnight feedings.

Abe knew his initial misgivings would fade. He’d get used to the idea and get excited about it, just like all the other times. In fact, he told himself, he might as well get excited about it soon, because Helen wasn’t going to tolerate any other kind of reaction from him.

“Drink this. I let the water run so it’s cold. Here.” She handed him the glass just as he was getting up.

“Where are you going? I thought you felt sick?”

“I’m okay. I’m going to head to the park and hit a few balls with the boys, grab them all and bring them home for dinner in an hour. How’s that?”

“Fine. But come home if you don’t feel well. And tell them not to pound on the stairs when they come home—it sounds like a pack of animals stampeding!”

“Sure.” He paused. “How do
you
feel?”

“Good. Tired. Fat.” She let Abe take her in his arms. “A new baby will be good for us,” she told him. “I read in a magazine that having babies keeps women young.”

Abe was skeptical. “Yeah? What did it say about men? Because all this is making
me
old.”

She pulled away and shook her fist at him in mock frustration. “Go to the park already! Go to your pack of animals!”

Abe blew her a kiss and shut the door behind him. He felt like he could breathe again. He wondered if he should tell the boys the news at the park. No, better to do it with Helen at dinner. He’d wait.

Chapter 6

MORT

Mort’s sandwich sat on top of a brown paper bag on his desk, uneaten. He wasn’t happy. Something was off with the collections for last month, and he was going through the orders one by one until the numbers made sense to him. He had been at it for several hours already, and he was getting frustrated.
Why am I the only one who pays attention to this?
He knew Abe took care of sales and handled the guys in the warehouse. But as far as Mort was concerned, none of that was business. That was just hand-holding and schmoozing. The only thing that really mattered was the numbers. If the numbers didn’t make sense, the business didn’t make sense.

Mort sharpened his pencil and took down a different book from the shelf on his wall. Mort and Abe had adjacent offices in the back left corner of their building. They were windowless, sparsely furnished and identical in size and shape. But that was where the similarities ended.

For one thing, Mort’s office door was kept closed at all times. His desk, bare except for a single black-and-white photo of Rose on their wedding day, was pushed against the far wall. When Mort sat down, he faced the wall with his back to the door. This position suited him best and provided the least amount of distraction.

In contrast, Abe’s office was a hodgepodge of clutter and inefficiency. Mort couldn’t understand how Abe got any work done there, with his desk smack in the center of the room, facing an open door all day long. Abe’s desk was so littered with photos of Helen and the boys that there was barely room for the phone. Plus, Abe never threw anything away, so every card he had ever received was either on the desk, taped to the wall or in a pile on the floor in the corner. Mort considered the ever-growing pile a fire hazard.

He was going over the numbers again when someone knocked. Abe poked his head in the doorway, still chewing the remains of his lunch.

“Mort—we’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning. Bob Sherman set it up for us.” Bob Sherman, a name Mort hadn’t heard in years, was their father’s old friend. “Bob met somebody in Philly, guy making breakfast cereal.” Mort was still absorbed in the pages of his ledger.

“Mmm,” he muttered. He had just found the error he had been looking for all morning. He wasn’t surprised: Abe had given one of the buyers a discount and had forgotten to record it.

“This is a big meeting. Could you maybe look at me for a minute?”

Mort forced himself to look at Abe. “What’s so important about this guy?”

“What’s so important is that he’s the king of breakfast cereal. Cornflakes, wheat puffs, all that stuff.”

“Cereal tastes like sawdust.”

“You don’t have to
eat
it, for Chrissake! This guy wants us to
package
it.”

“Hmm?” Mort had already lost interest in the conversation, his eyes naturally drifting back down to the comfort of the numbers on his desk.

“In cardboard boxes, Mort! Millions of boxes! And the guy needs a new supplier.”

Mort was unimpressed. “We don’t make boxes for that.”

“We can make anything! We make shirt boxes for the laundries now. Why not cereal boxes?”

“I suppose.”

“You
suppose
? Mort, do you have any idea how big this could be? How much business we could get from this guy?”

Reluctantly, Mort put down his pencil. He was used to Abe’s enthusiasm, the way he wound himself up over every new client and every new deal. But Mort could never connect with it. He was immune. It had been the same when they were boys. Being the older brother, and the one with more playmates, Abe was always the first to catch any childhood illnesses. Their mother’s policy was that if Abe caught something, Mort should be exposed as quickly as possible in order to get the whole thing over with. She had learned this strategy from her own mother, who swore by it. Somehow it never seemed to work with Abe and Mort. When Abe got the chicken pox, their mother forced Mort to sleep in the same bed with Abe. But Mort never got the chicken pox, and he was still resistant to Abe’s optimism.

“Listen, I know you don’t like meetings, but we both need to meet this guy. He deals with big-time suppliers. What if he asks how many boxes we can get to him every week or how much the monthly shipping is gonna be on this?” Abe’s speech was coming faster as he reeled off the issues.

“You don’t need me for that. You give buyers quotes for those things all the time.”

“Yeah, but not with this kind of volume. These are gonna be big, big numbers.” Abe was pacing fretfully around Mort’s small office now, pointing at the ledger books and the adding machine to make his point.

“So? Bigger numbers just have more zeroes. They’re still just numbers. Don’t worry so much.”

“Don’t worry about the numbers? That’s a good one, coming from you!” Abe gave Mort a friendly punch to the shoulder.

Mort rubbed his shoulder and frowned. “You really don’t need me for this. You’ll be fine on your own.” He bent his head back down over his book.