Kitty had always gotten along well with her father-in-law, Ahab. He was fifty years older than Kitty when she married his youngest son, Rudy. Ahab loved to have Kitty on his arm when she accompanied him to a restaurant or nightclub. He had emigrated to America from Bucovina in the year following World War I with his four sons, his wife having died of tuberculosis during the war.
“In the Old Testament it says that Ahab fathered seventy boys,” he told Kitty. “I believe had Bella lived the long life that she deserved we might have come close to his mark.”
Ahab laughed after he said this, but it was clear to Kitty that even in his early seventies he remained strong and vigorous. The old man had remarried once, a year after coming to Chicago, where his uncle Ike had lived since before the war; unfortunately, Natalia died two years later in childbirth, as did their baby, a boy. Ahab decided never to marry again, to leave it to his sons to perpetuate the line. To his displeasure, however, his oldest son, David, fathered two daughters and his middle sons, Moses and Jerome, had not married. It was up to Kitty, Ahab told her, to give him a grandson, which she promptly did, naming him Roy—king—endearing Rudy’s bride to him for the remainder of his life.
One Sunday afternoon in May, Kitty, Rudy and his father went together to Riverview, an amusement park on Chicago’s north side. Kitty and Rudy rode a couple of the gentler roller coasters and competed at trying to knock down three milk bottles with a baseball, which neither of them managed to do. The three of them posed for a photograph together sitting inside a cardboard half moon, Kitty between the two men. In the photograph she looked even younger than her twenty-one years, and both Rudy and Ahab appeared relaxed and smiling.
Their outing was nearing an end as they were passing The Bobs, the fastest roller coaster in the park, when a man stood up at the apex of the climb to the top and leapt from the open car in which he, presumably, had been seated. Many people in the crowd screamed or shouted as they watched the man plunge to his death. A tall man standing next to Kitty said, “Happens about twice a year.” Rudy grabbed Kitty’s left arm and Ahab by his right and hurried them toward the exit.
That night Kitty said to Rudy, “I can’t get the sight of that guy jumping off the roller coaster out of my mind. I still don’t believe it really happened.”
“When I was eight years old, before we left the old country, I saw a kid fall off the roof of an apartment building and hit the sidewalk in front of me. He must have been eleven or twelve, I didn’t know him. He landed on his head and both of his eyes popped out.”
“Rudy, stop! Don’t tell me any more. You must have been horrified and frightened.”
“Surprised, sure, but not frightened. I figured some other kid had pushed him over the edge.”
“Did you tell your parents?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t think so.”
“I hope I won’t have a nightmare,” Kitty said. “I’ll never go to Riverview again. And you know that photo of us in the moon? If I look at it I’ll always remember what happened.”
“It’s a nice picture,” said Rudy, “let’s keep it, anyway.”
