Unexpected Gifts (14 page)

He was about to nod off when he recognized the back of his mother's dress, a black satin number with a belted waist. She was standing next to one of their neighbors, he identified the sports jacket, and they were plastered together. Where was Dad? he wondered as he saw his neighbor's hand drift over to his mother's bottom, then rest there.

He couldn't take his eyes off that hand. Why was his mom allowing this, and where was his dad? Should he say something? No, he was just a little kid. Focusing on that chubby, mammoth hand, he couldn't utter a sound, not even when he saw his mom's hand slowly slide around to the back of her dress, clasp the neighbor's hand in hers and give it a tight squeeze.

“Oh, Harry, that's terrible.” Sonia leaned into him, remembering Grandma Rose sitting alone in her living room late at night, numbing herself with alcohol. Feeling her seat partner's warmth against her, she also recalled Lily's pubescent awakenings towards her father, Sam, so many years before. Suddenly Harry looked quite handsome.

He leaned back away from her, chuckling slightly. “So, am I still so perfect?”

She smiled. “I guess you're just like the rest of us.” She started to stand up and almost toppled over. He immediately sprung up to catch her.

“It's time to go. I'm going to make sure you get home safe and sound,” he insisted, his voice unusually authoritative. She started to fumble through her purse, but he had already plunked money down on the table, and helping her gather up her light coat, held her steady as they exited.

Outside, not more than fifty feet away, there was a New Jersey plated limousine illegally parked, with a man leaning against it, talking earnestly to someone inside the back seat.

Harry nudged her. “Ah, isn't that Mike's manager?”

She stared, then nodded. Who was Steve talking to?

Harry quickly steered her in the opposite direction, exclaiming, “Let's go a different route.” Down on the subway train, they didn't talk much. Sonia was half asleep as Harry kept a protective arm around her shoulder, listening to her murmur things about Mike and her father. On her front steps, she placed a hand on his chest. “I can take it from here, Harry. Thanks.” Although her words were still slurred, she seemed somewhat cognizant.

“Ah, would you like to go out with me again?”

She avoided his eyes. “Oh, Harry, you're so nice,
so
kind, but…”

“No problem, Sonia. Get some sleep. See you later.” He started to turn away, muttering, “Not ready.”

She placed her hand on his forearm. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. See you around. Night-night.”

She watched him leave, picturing all the years her mother said “Night-night,” as she switched off the blaring overhead light, turned on the soft Tinker Bell lamp, then made sure her daughter's door was left open a good six inches.

“Are you okay, Shannon? You don't seem your usual self,” Sonia commented Saturday night in the club's bathroom.

“I…Oh, Sonia. Can you keep a secret?”

Sonia nodded vehemently.

“Something's up with Pete. These days he's always on the phone, or on the computer, but when I enter he hangs up or shuts his PC down.”

“Do you think he's having an affair?” Sonia kept her voice as gentle as possible.

“No, that's the strange thing. I don't. I think it's something else, but he won't talk.” She was about to say more, but someone else sauntered in.

Later at Mike's apartment, Sonia was about to relay her conversation with Shannon but Mike started first. “I'm always telling the guys what a good little seamstress you are, how you and your mom always made your own Halloween costumes.”

“Yeah, we did. So?”

“So, I've got a tiny rip in my favorite stage shirt that needs just a little touch up. While I take a shower, would you do me the honors? Sorry, there wasn't time to take it to a professional. I know it'll be easy for you, it's just a stitch here or there. I've even bought a little sewing kit with needles and thread. Here it is. And here's the shirt.”

A peck on the cheek and he was off, leaving her on his bed, sewing kit and shirt in hand. She double tapped several times on the kit, took out a needle and thread and started to sew. In and out the needle went but she was barely concentrating on her job. Her mind was too stocked with images of Bimmy mending Grandma Rose's church sweater after being told she had to make sure she didn't show up at work with unstraightened hair.

After numerous knocks on her parents’ front door, she could hear Sam screaming from inside. “Use your key, goddammit!”

Oh, goody, she thought as she inched towards the den and the slumped, drunken form in his wheelchair. In front of him on his hospital table was a full glass tumbler, an almost empty fifth of rum and a six-pack of open coke cans.

“Itwasnmyfaaa,” he garbled when he caught sight of her, his head rolling loosely.

“
What?
”

“I saiditwasnmyfaaaalt!”

Sonia knelt in front of him, and with a catch in her throat, pleaded, “Dad, could you stop? Mom should be home any minute.”

He stared at her as if for the first time. “SorrySonia…but isssnotmyfaaault.”

“What's not your fault, Dad?”

His eyes blinked a couple of times before he reached out and stroked the top of her head.

She repeated herself. “
What's
not your fault? Please tell me, Dad.”

“I didn’ wanna do it. Carbini made me do it. It wash Carbini. I didn wanna doit. It wasssh Carbini, I tellya!”

“It's okay, Dad. It's okay,” she cooed.

“Let's get Billy R. He'll ssstop Carbini. Where'ssssh Billy R.? Where
issssh
he?”

He was truly getting agitated now, his body beginning to twitch. Not a good sign, she knew. She was wracking her brain, trying to remember what it was her mom did when he was like this when she heard Lily's key turn in the lock.

Lily took one look at the situation and altered her leisurely gait. She grabbed a hold of Sam's wheelchair and swinging him around, muttered ritualistic orders like a British nanny sending her charge off to bed without any dessert.

“Did we have an official date, honey?” said Lily finally, after Sam was tucked in.

“No, Mom. I just felt like coming over, but I should have warned you. Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Is Dad getting worse?”

“Define worse.” She grimaced, then, “Hey, while you're here, wanna do our thing?”

Up in the attic, Lily started to pull out Great Grandfather Tony Balakov's material. “Mom, before we move on, I'm curious how you got Sadie's story when Grandma Rose forbid you to see her again.”

“Oh, that. Well, I went behind your grandma's back, that's all. I wanted to see Sadie anyway,” she answered. Then, “Here are Tony's journals. A really first-hand account of The Depression era, Sonia.” She handed over three slightly moldy accounting books, and flipping through the beginning page of the first one, Sonia grinned. It was going to be a good read.

Next, Lily took out a few smaller items: a
Bright Spot
club card with a post-it on top of it, marked
speak easy
, a clothing receipt with Belfry Tamany Derby printed at the bottom, an Empire State Building flyer, and another small trinket. It looked Native American, perhaps a child's bracelet.

“What's
this?
”

Lily shrugged. “I'm not sure. When I first showed it to Grandma Rose, she had muttered, ‘Joe’. Then her face switched to I-don't-want-to-discuss-it, so I didn't push.”

She kept searching. There was also a tattered recipe for a
Shopska Salad
, which she explained had come from Sonia's great-great grandmother Eugenia from Bulgaria, and three tickets to Disney's
“Three Little Pigs”
at the Loew's Sheraton, placed in a separate envelope.

“Why are these here, Mom? They're just movie tickets.”

Her mother half-smiled. “You'll just have to read about them. It's all in there. You'll also get to read about our family's compulsions.”

Sonia looked over at her. “Any hints?” she coached.

“Not a chance. Just read…”

She couldn't wait to plunge into the journals, but a yowling Petra, relentless in her quest for attention, insisted on being fed and getting her fair share of strokes. Finally, comfy in bed and reaching for Tony's first journal, Sonia made sure to turn off the ringer button on the phone next to her. Five seconds later, Petra jumped up and settling down against Sonia's head, supplemented Great-Grandpa Tony's narration with gentle waves of purrs.

The first two pages were highly descriptive, but try as she might, she couldn't stop the forces of nature. Within seconds she was sound asleep, Tony's book spread across her chest. She drifted off into a dream that involved Lily's wanting to play Spin-The-Bottle because she was hoping to kiss Sam, only it wasn't really Sam. It was Harry and it wasn't at a kid's birthday party. It was in front of the café they went to and when he kissed her, it wasn't fast and hard like Mike. It was slow and deep.

“And there will be strange events in the skies—signs in the sun, moon, and stars. And down here on earth the nations will be in turmoil, perplexed by the roaring seas and strange tides…” (Luke 21:25-33 NLT)

Some people claimed the Bible had gotten it right all along. Why else would such dark forces of nature, along with a greedy Wall Street Empire, rain down on America with so profound a fury in so short a time?

It didn't start out that way. Why, the 1920's prosperity cascaded across the country like a Vitale family's Fourth of July sparkler. The stockbroker was king as was the farmer, with money flowing nonstop into both sets of hands and all appearing as a'good and a'plenty. But when Wall Street's Black Tuesday hit on October 29
^th
, 1929, a day as black as they come, everything about-faced, and for many people it was so long to good times and good time Charlies.

In 1930, the big city breadlines expanded by the hour, snaking around buildings like a cobra slowly choking the life out of its victims, but the farmers stayed smug; they thought they were the bee's knees. After all, they had their wheat, and the continued bumper crops on their depleted land flourished, just like its prices; sixty-eight cents a bushel was not to be sneezed at. Maybe, just maybe they were going to escape this Depression thing after all. Hoover had assured his public that everything was copasetic, with nothing to be alarmed about. They all said he was president, he must know. Applesauce! Why, he couldn't even see beyond his nose without his cheaters.

Oh, the farmers did read about the bonus-demanding veterans camped out on the capitol's grounds in hovels called Hoovervilles. Still, they remained untouched. When the government sent troops in to crack men, women, and children on the head with their clubs and burn their housing, the three inch headlines gave the growers the heebie-jeebies. But in the end, I guess the homesteaders figured as long as it didn't directly affect them, they could turn the other cheek.

Meantime, out in the vast farmlands of the Great Plains, there was more wheat than ever before, the harvest sitting pretty in the grain elevators, kernels sprouting up out of the overtired soil. Then, without warning, that sixty-eight cents collapsed down to twenty-five cents, churning more than a few stomachs in its wake, I'd say.

The fact was, the weather was drying up, and with the lowered prices, the farmers were failing. Many left broken-hearted, some refused to quit, but when record droughts, the likes of which had never been seen, ravaged the Great Plains, farming became impossible. By 1936, storms had picked up, slamming the entire country with heavy rains, blizzards, tornadoes, and floods, and if that didn't beat all, giant black clouds of rolling dust and grit darkened the sky over the Midwest, cocooning it like it was the end of the world.

I suppose I was one of the lucky ones. At least that was what everyone told me in 1927, when I had landed a job at Henry Ford's Highland Park Factory through my father. At five dollars a day, I could sure do a lot worse. But that five dollars Kings Ransom came at a heavy price. Forty hours a week, day in and day out, hunched over a conveyer belt, tightening different units on the waist-high flywheels floating by, my fingers cracked from the nails and screws, my brain dying. Worse still, was spending so much time with Papa; having lunch with him and walking back dog-tired towards our apartment together, was all too close a reminder of my childhood.

“Tony, stand up straight. You too young so that you no stand up straight,” Papa would mutter as he hobbled alongside me, turtle-backed style.

My shoes kept dragging the pavement in little swisssh scufffff swisssh whispers.

“I tell you, stand up straight. Do like a
man!”

My shuffles scraped with a more determined resonance.

Papa wasn't always like this. He was much kinder and even playful when we were in Bulgaria, when I was very young and my older sister Adriana, about twelve. But that all changed when we immigrated to Detroit. After that, he was never the same. Mama wouldn't talk about it and as for me, when I turned twenty-five, with Adriana long gone, I decided to live away from Papa in a rooming house down the street, so I could concentrate on myself.

And Daria. My Daria from Ireland, with her jet black hair, pale skin, and light green eyes that were so clear and lovely. Her nose had the lightest splash of freckles, like gazing at a small star cluster against a black sky. Brigit was her other name, but I preferred Daria, because that was a name so often used in my own country. Yes, being with her was like winning the grand prize. With her, I could do anything.

She had the goods, that was for sure, and the way she carried herself and talked in that calm, steady voice with the Irish sing-song lilt made all the Ford factory girls seem stupid, like the oil cans they
were
next to her. And she wasn't any Mrs. Grundy, either. When we kissed, she was warm, with her trembling cherub mouth and her lightest of touches. I just knew she would be the real McCoy in bed.

But in the end, there was no avoiding it. I had to take her to meet my parents. Knowing Papa as I did, I dreaded that meeting of course, but I cared for Daria too much, so we went together one Saturday evening, when the buds were just beginning to pop through the bare branches and the lighter air was a welcomed relief from the stinging February winds.

Mama had prepared a fine, chilled Bulgarian soup, sweet peppers and Baklava for dessert, using her best china and fancy cloth napkins. My heart went out towards her, seeing her make such an effort for my girl, and it worked. Daria was so impressed, she kept putting her hand gently on my arm, letting me know how much she liked my mother straight away.

Papa was another story. He sat in the corner, alone, hard-boiled, like the toughest cop you'd ever seen. He grunted a single hello, and I immediately itched to give him the bum's rush, just to get him outta there. But Mama and Daria got along like two peas in a pod, with a constant chatter that relaxed me and got me thinking about the future.

“So, Daria, you from Ireland, eh?” Papa managed between forkfuls, not glancing up.

“Yes, Mr. Balakov, that I am.”

“Who you live with?”

“Me cousins.”

“Vere your parents? A young girl, she needs parents, no cousins.”

I could feel my innards heading for a boil.

Daria pulled herself up, iron-rod straight. “Mr. Balakov, they be finding death before they got here, they did.”

“Vell, vat happened?” He wasn't even close to being kind.

“Me da found death in Ireland and me mam she died before she be getting here.” Looking over at my father, I saw he looked startled. Mama was busy stroking Daria's back as she sat proud, defiant even, and as for me, I thought my heart would burst through my chest. It was then that I knew I was going to ask this lovely girl from Ireland to marry me later that very night.

I needed a drink first, of course. The Bright Spot, a speakeasy located behind the Florentine Flower Shop, was run by a whisper lady named Gertie, and it was there, sandwiched between men in their derbys, Trilbys, and pork pies, drinking one shot of swill after another, that I celebrated the good times along with the bad.

To be sure, this was one of those good times. A great time, I would say, and by the time I reached Daria's apartment, I was canned. I did manage to kneel down on one knee, and through my pickled haze, I could see her mixed emotions; joy, there was definite joy, but something else I couldn't quite understand until much later after we had been married for a while, and by then it was too late.

Our marriage celebration at my parents’ apartment was interesting. Whoever supposed the Irish and the Bulgarians could get together and fit like gloves were kidding themselves, but with enough drink, I had a good time. Daria had her cousins and a few secretarial friends, while I had friends and family, including my older sister Adriana, who braved being in the same room as Papa just to be there for me. She and I laughed for hours while Papa sat in the corner, his brow so hooded you'd think it was ridges out in the countryside.

And there was plenty of Irish and Bulgarian food: Sudzhuk (sausage), sarmi (grapeleaves), kashkaval cheese, shopska salad, Irish stew, bacon and cabbage, Boxty, fried potato farls, and soda bread. Bulgarian sweet wine and Irish whiskey melted together as the bride grew more and more distant towards me and her cousin Tommy raised his glass for some Irish toasts:

“May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live!” Murmurs of “Here, here!” rippled throughout the room.

He continued,
“May the roof above you never fall in, and those gathered beneath it never fall out.”

The ripple turned into chuckles, but Tommy didn't stop there. A third time he lifted his glass, his face as red as the rose in Daria's hair.
“May you die in bed at ninety-five, shot by a jealous spouse!”
Screams of laughter followed that and by three a.m. the last dish had been washed and dried, the bride off to our temporary ‘bridal’ back bedroom, and me, I was passed out on the sofa.

Ten months later, Rose was born and I became the outsider. We had to move back in with Mama and Papa, and with the three of us squeezing into their lives, I felt as if I was going crackers. So I turned to the Bright Spot every evening after work to get corked, no matter how much Daria and Papa gave me an earful when I finally showed up for dinner.

I began struttin’ again, out with my Sunday Bowler and glad rags, past all the pretty dames, and it felt so good! Who needed to be saddled with a wife who no longer thought I was the cat's meow and a cute little girl who chatted so much I had to tell her to pipe down every ten seconds? For Pete's sake, if she didn't get all quiet then and go off into the corner to rearrange her dolls and toys, like a broken record.

But Daria was smart, I'll give her that. Even after I made her quit her job, she managed to save the money I had given her for household things. I wouldn't have known about this, either, if I hadn't discovered her hiding place. I was impressed. So impressed in fact, that later that week, rifling through her cashbox as she lay sleeping, I did get a twinge of guilt that stayed with me as I spent all the money on a new Belfy Tammany wool-lined Derby and a silk necktie.

A long, Indian summer came and went and by October, 1929, the weather had turned cold. I no longer walked to work with Papa and I no longer got kissed by Daria. In that department, the bank was closed. Oh, she gave kisses all right, but they were mostly reserved for Rose or Mama.

Meanwhile, we had never paid no mind to Wall Street in New York City, we were all too busy surviving, but when all the rags had headlines as big as your fist, you couldn't help but notice. BLACK TUESDAY they were calling it, and walking home, you could start to feel the tension in people and it wasn't just from the crisp air. Suddenly no one looked at you or nodded or tipped his hat as he walked by, he was just bustling home to bellyache to his family about all his fears. Normal families, that is.

But amazingly, old man Ford kept me, and although I should have been grateful, one lunchtime, when a co-worker, Steve Long, told me about the need for high steel construction workers to build the Empire State Building in New York City and how his cousin Bill Strang could get me a job back there, I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months.

Before going home, I stopped off at the Bright Spot for a single glass of courage, but five drinks later, I had trouble unlocking our front door. Papa opened it for me and there was quiet Daria, sitting on the couch with Rose, her green eyes piercing through my brain like an ice pick.

“They need highss shteel conssshtruction workers in newyork city…they' rebuildin' the EmpireSshtateBuildin' an' it pays shfifteen dollarsan hour! Thatsssh
eighteen hundred a month!”

Daria's daggered look turned to sheer terror. “Working high up into the sky? Ach, Tony, a windy day is not the day to be fixing your thatch! And you with your drink! Do you want Rose not to have her da anymore, is that what you'd be wantin’?”

I was stunned. Who'd have thought she'd even care if I lived or died? I smiled at her worried eyes looking wetter than they had for a long time.

The next week, my lunch card was filled with Steve Long's instructions about hitching a freight train bound for New York. Railroad riding could be tricky, he warned me and he sure was right. Leaving Detroit, I learned firsthand how you had to hide somewhere near the track—a ditch, a shed, maybe bushes, sometimes overnight, to make sure there were no Bulls, those railroad men from the Northern and Southern Pacific, paid to conk you over the head if they caught you sneaking onto a train.

Once the coast was clear, you waited until the train's coupling and connecting rods started their slow rotation forward. Then you'd rise up like a soul from the grave, run like hell from your hiding place as if your life depended on it, and while the smoky train picked up speed, run alongside it, grab onto one of the side ladder iron handles, and with your clothes sack slung over your back, swing your legs and body up into an open-door car.

The first time I tried it, I sure felt a bang. More alive than I had felt in a long, long time. I landed hard on the boxcar wood floor, but as I looked around at my fellow companions, I soon forgot my pain. What a motley group these hobos were, tattered, dirt-stained, and perfumed in a mix of urine and tobacco. I was by far the best dressed and I do suddenly remember thinking what in the world was I doing there. But soon, I realized that some of the men were really quite educated, just down on their luck, like the couple of writers, Louis L'Amour and Art Linkletter, who were just trying to make their way back east.

A few hundred yards before each stop, maybe at a watering tower, a line switch, or a station, we had to jump off the train and hide again, so the Bulls didn't catch us. Jumpin’ and rollin’ off the train, many times there was one or two men who got hurt when they landed, so hopping back on at the last minute for them was just about impossible. Once, I even saw a man's leg get practically ripped off while he was trying to get out from the undercarriage rod box he had been hiding in. We all had to jump off at that point because his screams brought too much attention and we didn't dare risk hanging around.