Wherever There Is Light (48 page)

Kendall jumped up to look for him. “Bobby! Bobby!”

He ran to Kendall, holding on to her as though his body were a ballast that would make it impossible for her to disappear again. He sobbed once, twice, and Kendall murmured in French, “Don't cry, I'm here,” but her eyes glistened with tears.

Standing back, Kendall said, “Look how tall. Julian, what are you feeding this child?”

Bobby laughed. “Pastrami.”

The three of them squeezed into the front of the Thunderbird, Bobby in the middle, nestling between his parents and grinning as if he'd won a lifetime pass to the circus. “Dad, can Stevie sleep over on Friday? I want him to meet Mom.”

“You got it.”

Kendall was quiet, while Bobby told her about Stevie and his own straight-A report cards. As Julian drove into the garage, Bobby said, “Mom, you have to see my room.”

Kendall said, “Go ahead. I'll be right up.”

Julian was unloading the luggage from the trunk when Kendall walked behind the car and stood before him, shaking.

“Kendall?”

She was struggling not to cry. “Other men . . . when we were together . . .”

Julian waited.

“It wasn't us.”

“It could be. If you stick around.”

Nodding, Kendall tried to smile, but started to weep instead. Julian put his arms around her, believing that she wept in penance for her choices and in prayer for a chance to choose again; wept because she had lived according to the dictates of yesterday, guided by ghosts she barely knew existed; and because Julian was right—we are as haunted by the times we live in as by the monsters lurking in our own misshapen selves. Yet as she clung to him, Julian understood that Kendall wept for him and Bobby too—because there was no adequate payment for all that they had lost—and so Julian joined her, their sobs echoing in the garage, both of them weeping as if they wished that their tears could conquer time.

Some books I've written had longer gestation periods than others;
Wherever There Is Light
has been the longest, and so I have an army of people to thank.

I'm grateful to my agent, Susan Golomb, for her wisdom and persistence. Susan brings along two others with no shortage of these qualities, Soumeya Bendimerad and Scott Cohen, and now that Susan has joined Writers House, I'd like to thank Maja Nikolic and Kathryn Stuart for their help.

My first editor, Greer Hendricks, has moved on to other adventures, but not before she improved my manuscript with her discerning eye, and then turned over the pages to the equally discerning assistant editor Daniella Wexler, and editorial director Peter Borland, both of whom helped to shape my novel into its final form.

At Atria Books, I'd also like to thank publisher Judith Curr; associate publisher Suzanne Donahue; publicity manager Ariele Fredman; senior marketing manager Hillary Tisman; production editor Carla Benton; art director Albert Tang; cover designer Greg Mollica; and copy editor Peg Haller. Also a tip of the cap to the Simon & Schuster social media team: executive director of content and programming Sue Fleming; director of programming and merchandising Aimee Boyer; and digital marketing manager Amy Kattan.

I discovered the sunlit corners of Miami Beach as a child, and I was blessed to have my cousins Richard Russ, Denis Russ, and Lori Mishkin as guides. Since then, my corps of South Florida cousins has increased by two—Gina Russ and Andrew Kern, both of whom continue to teach me about all things Miami. In New Jersey, two other cousins were quite helpful: Laynie Golden Gershwin, an excellent family historian, and Sam Gershwin, who answered my questions about the real-estate game. I've been hearing stories about Longy Zwillman since childhood from my grandmothers, Mae Golden and Etta Perelman, both of whom knew him and Newark when they were all young; and my later interviews about Longy with Dr. Milton Shoshkes and the late Dr. Arthur Bernstein were especially enlightening. Karen Robinson, a classmate at South Orange Junior High, spoke to me at length about the challenges faced by African Americans in our hometown during the 1960s; and for the technical knowledge of photography required to create Kendall Wakefield, I received generous amounts of help from Nicholas Argyros, the owner and executive director of the PhotoCenter of the Capital District; and from Judy Sanders, a first-rate journalist and photographer, who sadly passed away shortly before this novel was finished. Marc Douaisi improved my French—an uphill battle—but the errors that remain are mine.

Comments by early readers of the manuscript were invaluable, beginning with the incisive suggestions of Marlene Adelstein. The responses of Kimberley Cetron, Beth Brinser, Nancy Burke, Colleen Reynolds, Howard Dickson, Howard Sperber, and Kathie Bennett kept me going when I felt lost in history's maze.

Others have also been of immeasurable assistance: my brother-in-law, Eric Francis; Maria Buhl at the Guilderland Public Library; Susan Novotny, owner of the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza and Market Block Books; my friends Tracy Richard and Bruce Davis, Carol and Joe Siracusa, Ellen and Jeff Lewis, David Saltzman, and James Howard Kunstler, who were always available to make me laugh and remind me why I'd wanted to be a writer in the first place. I'd also like to send a heartfelt thanks to all of the salespeople I met as I visited bookstores, and to Kathy L. Murphy and her Pulpwood Queens. Their love of—and dedication to—the written word remind an author that, even in the age of the nanosecond, books are important.

I've spent much of my career looking up things in grand libraries and dusty archives in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. I was often hunting for photographs, and now, thanks to Facebook, I do some of that hunting without leaving my office. These groups have been particularly helpful: Memories of Living in South Orange, NJ or Maplewood, NJ; Columbia High School Alumni; Gruning's Ice Cream; I Miss Don's; Vintage New Jersey; Newark, NJ Memories; Raised in Miami Beach; Old Images of New York; Paris Photo; and America in the '60's. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my Facebook friends, who have followed my postings on my research trips, and whose comments and questions frequently helped me clarify where I needed to focus my attention.

In
Wherever There Is Light
I have taken more than a few liberties with history, and the real people you meet in these pages have been transformed into fictional characters. To perform this alchemy, I am indebted to a long list of books. Here is a selection, which is by no means complete:
From Swastika to Jim Crow: Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges
by Gabrielle Simon Edgcomb;
The Reaction of Negro Publications and Organizations to German Anti-Semitism
by Lunabelle Wedlock;
Nazis in Newark
by Warren Grover;
Gangster #2: Longy Zwillman, the Man Who Invented Organized Crime
by Mark Stuart;
Swing City: Newark Nightlife, 1920-1950
by Barbara J. Kukla;
Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960
by Ross Wetzsteon;
The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues
by John Strausbaugh (who on page 207 cited the description of Café Society as “The Wrong Place for the Right People.”);
Dorothea Lange
by Linda Gordon;
Margaret Bourke-White
by Vicki Goldberg;
Lee Miller: A Life
by Carolyn Burke;
Robert Doisneau
by Jean Claude Gautrand;
Henri Cartier-Bresson
by Clemént Chéroux;
Street Photography
by Clive Scott;
Exiled in Paris
by James Campbell;
Paris After the Liberation 1944-1949
by Anthony Beevor and Artemis Cooper;
Paris Noir
by Tyler Stovall;
A Hungry Heart
by Gordon Parks;
Paris Journal 1944-1955
by Janet Flanner;
The Secret Life of the Seine
by Mort Rosenblum;
Wild Bill Donovan
by Douglas Waller (The announcement at the Polo Grounds paging Wild Bill after the attack on Pearl Harbor was quoted from Dave Anderson, “The Day Colonel Donovan Was Paged,”
New York Times
, 12/1/91.);
The Guns at Last Light
by Rick Atkinson;
Citizen Soldiers
by Stephen E. Ambrose;
The African-American Soldier
by Lt. Col. [Ret.] Michael Lee Lanning; and
The Invisible Solder: The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II
, compiled and edited by Mary Penick Motley.

Finally, I'd like to thank the two people who fill the center of my life: my son, Ben, who never fails to inform, impress, and cheer me; and my wife, Annis, reader, fellow adventurer, humorist, and the best friend a writer could have.

ALSO BY PETER GOLDEN

Comeback Love

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.