“WHERE WE GOING?” ISABELLE kept asking, trying to keep up with Finn as he hurried along Beacon Street. It was wet and miserable and too cold for conversation. “Finn, where we going?” He was down to his last drop. He would send on her things later. He needed her out of his house, at once.
“Are you taking me to Schumann’s?”
He didn’t reply.
“Are you getting rid of me?”
He didn’t reply, he just kept walking.
Isabelle stopped walking. He had to turn around. He had to reply.
“I’m taking your advice, Isabelle,” Finn said. “You told me I can’t keep employing all the help in my house. Very well. But I’m starting with you.”
“You are fool.”
“I’m not going to stand in the middle of the street and argue with you.”
“Why not? You certainly can’t argue with me in your house in case your wife hear some hard truths.”
“Enough!” he said. “I can’t take it anymore. You’re not my family, you’re not my responsibility. I helped you as long as I could—”
“You think you helped me?”
“You don’t think I helped you, Isabelle?”
“Okay, you help little bit. But don’t joke yourself, who do you think is going to take care of your children once I’m gone? Who do you think is going to shovel coal into your furnace to keep your children warm? Who is going to dress them, bathe them? Loretta? Martha? Wicker? Vanessa?” She was derisive at first but then lowered her voice, beseeching him with her eyes. “Who is going to help you?” she said emotionally, taking a step to him.
“You think you’re helping me?” He leaned his face into hers. “All you do is cause me pain.”
“The pain part I can’t help,” she said. She didn’t back away from him. “But you got it all messed up, Finn. All messed up. Your thinking is . . .” She struggled for the word. “Kerflooey. And I can see why. You got no person to talk to.” She paused. “Nobody but me.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” Finn said. “I don’t want to explain to you, I don’t want to pay you, or see you, or have anything to do with you. You can be Schumann’s problem now, the way you should’ve been from the beginning.”
“Oh, my God, will you stop it!” she cried, her composed demeanor finally cracking. “What you saying is tomfoolishly! You don’t fire me! You fire everyone else and keep me! Let them all go, and I take care of you and your wife and your children and your house. I do it for you.” She pressed her hand to her heart. “I do it for you.”
“I don’t want you to do anything for me!”
She shook her head. “You don’t mean it.”
“With all my heart,” Finn said, his fist on his chest.
She grabbed him by the coat sleeves. “You drowning in burden,” she said.
“Unless you got a million bucks under your pillow, you can’t help me.” He yanked away from her.
“Your mother and father, and Vanessa’s parents, and her sister, they all living in separate homes, yes?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Answer me.”
“It’s raining, and we’re in the middle of the street.”
“Let’s go back to house and talk.”
“No!”
“Answer me!”
“Okay, yes—so what?” Finn was panting. He couldn’t believe he was fighting with a woman who was not his wife in a public place. Good thing it was raining and there was no one around.
“And you paying house loan or mortgage on these houses?”
“So?”
Isabelle laughed with scorn. “And you think I’m insane? You think I don’t understand things? Too simple to figure things, poor village idiot Isabelle. I mean—that’s craziest thing I ever hear, and I heard woman tell me to cross two countries on foot with small children looking for some port somewhere. Finn, you live in house size of small castle. You have five floors, plus lower level, with seven, eight bedrooms? Plus attic space, plus libraries, office—my God, you could fit all of Ispas into your house! But whatever, not my problem. But you keep saying you have no money. You sell your car, how much you get, few thousand? Money gone five minutes. You sell your Truro house in secret, how much time you buy? Two months, three? Why don’t you sell all those other houses and have your family come live with you in your big empty house? You save money. You live under one roof, everybody does little bit for house, live cheaper, and you don’t need all your servants.”
“That’s your advice?” Finn was mirthless. “That I live with my mother-in-law, and Vanessa live with hers? And you think I’m crazy?”
“To save money until job chances improve, why not? It’s not forever, just little while.”
“I’m not going to discuss this with you, Isabelle. You are not my wife.”
She folded her arms. “So go back home and discuss with your wife.”
“Oh, to be sure, I will, but first I’m going to say goodbye to you.”
“You want to say goodbye to me, do you?” said Isabelle, the balloon of her beseeching enthusiasm popping. “After all I just say?”
“Especially after that.”
“Great and dandy,” she said, waving her hand. She wouldn’t look at him. She shoved him, pushed him down Beacon Hill. “You going wrong way, Finn Evans. Home is that way. Vanessa that way too. Me, I’m opposite way. You getting rid of me? Bye-bye. I don’t need you to walk me to Schumann’s. You can get rid of me on street. You don’t have to return me like dog you don’t want anymore. Leave me. Go head, say goodbye to me.”
Finn was silent. Isabelle was panting. With open eyes he stared into her angry, upset face for a few frozen moments in the falling rain, for the first time realizing something he didn’t want to realize or understand or acknowledge. He resumed walking uphill in the direction of Schumann’s store, dogged but determined. “I can’t do that,” he said. “It is an impolite thing to do.”
“Oh, and we all know you so polite,” Isabelle said. “Yes, dear, everything is fine, dear, nothing to worry about, dear.” She was mimicking his voice as he talked to Vanessa.
“I owe you a paycheck for the last four weeks.”
“You haven’t paid me for eight weeks, polite man,” said Isabelle. “But who’s counting.”
“I want to talk it over with Schumann. Out of respect. I owe him that.”
“Him you owe things?” Isabelle said. She walked next to him, but so quickly he could barely keep up. “Yes, bring back cur he tried to hand off to you and ask if he want me back, that’s great.”
“You have nowhere else to go but Schumann’s,” Finn said. “So that’s where I’m taking you.”
“What do you care where I go after you done with me?”
Schumann sat at his tailor’s desk near the window, stitching on his sewing machine. He took one look at Finn, at Isabelle, at their frantic, frenzied expressions and said, “Uh-oh.” He took his foot off the pedal and the machine stopped.
“And how is everything this morning with you two?” Schumann asked.
Isabelle rolled her eyes.
“Not good,” Finn said. “About the dresses I left with you last month . . . you said you might find a buyer for them?”
“Ah, yes. Someone in Chestnut Hill was interested.” Schumann opened his register and pulled out an envelope from under the change tray. “I managed to get twenty each for them. So, a hundred and twenty altogether.” With a longing sigh, Finn glanced at the money, peeling off a twenty for himself and thrusting the remaining hundred dollars at Isabelle. She refused to take it. Finn dropped the envelope on the counter.
“If you need twenty dollars so bad,” she said, “you need rest even more.”
“Fine, take everything.” He stuffed the twenty back into the envelope and thrust it toward her.
“Not penny,” she said.
“And what is happening?” Schumann cut in, fake-brightly.
“I’m so sorry to do this, Schumann, but . . .”
“Don’t be sorry—but whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.”
“You don’t know what I’m about to say.”
“I do. It’s still no.”
“Schumann, please. I can’t pay her anymore.”
“He hasn’t paid me two months,” said Isabelle. “I don’t know why he care about it all of sudden.”
“I just offered you a hundred dollars and you refused to take it.”
“I need room to sleep,” Isabelle said. “Food. I don’t need money. You take money Schumann give you for your wife’s dresses and pay your five house loans. Maybe you can sell your children’s dresses next.”
Finn whirled to Schumann. “Do you see?”
“Frankly, I don’t,” Schumann said. “She is right.”
“She is wrong! Isabelle, can you wait in the back for a minute, so Schumann and I can talk?”
“No,” said Isabelle.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I don’t work for you anymore. You fire me, but also you don’t pay me. So you don’t tell me what to do. Whatever you want to say, you say in front of me.”
“There’s nothing to say,” Schumann said. “I can’t take her. Business is bad, money is tight, problems are everywhere.”
“Schumann, I can’t keep her!”
“Me neither.”
“Thanks, gentlemen,” said an unfazed Isabelle, as if they hadn’t just been horse trading over the fate of her life. “Please continue, this is fastening.”
“Schumann, you have no idea what I’m dealing with,” said Finn.
“But I do,” Isabelle said, “and you refuse to let me help.”
“I advise you not to reject her help,” Schumann said. “But also”—and here, Schumann folded his hands before he continued—“none of us has any idea what anyone is dealing with,” he said. “If we knew even a fraction of it, we would all be kinder to each other. So why don’t you be a little kinder to Isabelle, Finn, and be on your way.”
“I’ve kept her with me for a year and a half! That wasn’t kind?”
“This isn’t.”
“Schumann, I need to fire my cook,” Finn said in supplication. “I need to fire my housekeeper and my maids. I’ve already let go my gardener, and we’ve cut our milk delivery. Any minute I’m going to start carrying the coal from the shed to the furnace myself.”
“Why not? I do,” said Isabelle.
“Yes, but I won’t be able to afford the coal.”
“Oh, but by all means, pay five loans for five houses,” said Isabelle.
“It’s not five houses!” He breathed deeply. “It’s four houses and a bank.”
“Sounds like five to me,” said Isabelle.
“Sounds like more reason you need her,” Schumann said, “not less.”
“That’s what I say!” said Isabelle.
“I can’t!” said Finn.
“That’s the trouble with the new country, Isabelle,” Schumann said. “They don’t know the trouble in the old country that brought us here.”
“Oh, he knows,” Isabelle said. “I told him.”
“There is no trouble like our trouble,” Finn said, and at that moment he sincerely meant it.
Schumann and Isabelle stared at each other, and then both of them stared at Finn. Unplumbed depths were in Schumann’s and Isabelle’s gazes, realities Finn couldn’t comprehend. Finn adjusted his hat to cover his eyes. He was filled with shame. “Okay, you’re right, I know nothing,” he said quietly. “I’m too busy watching my own life being snuffed out.”
“Are we alive?” Schumann said. “Are you both standing in front of me, diminished but breathing? Am I standing in front of you, business slow, not making ends meet, but still open? We have no money. We don’t have much work. I know. But I still have two dozen people a month coming by ship. Why do they come? I told Nate don’t put anyone else on the ships! I told him there is no more money! But they keep coming to Constanta, and he keeps buying passage for them, paying for their visas somehow, sending them on. Why? Because they’re all mad optimists. Even now, they think America can help them.”
“This isn’t the twenties,” Finn said. “We can’t help anyone anymore.”
“No, not with that attitude.”
Finn struggled for breath. “Why can’t you hear what I’m telling you? I can’t even help my family. And she’s not my family.”
Schumann said nothing.
“I’m going to lose my bank, Schumann,” Finn said in a gutted voice.
“I’m sorry. I hope you don’t. But times are hard.”
“She,” said Finn, “she is making my life harder.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Schumann said. “She is the daughter of Martyn Lazar, the most capable man in all of Ukraine. Martyn Lazar risked his life for a Jew during the war when the Red Army and the White Guard and the Poles were all hellbent on snuffing out every Jew in Ukraine. That Jew he helped was me. And she is his daughter. Ask her to do anything. She’ll do it.”
“I don’t need capable,” Finn said, losing the fight inside himself and with himself. “I need fewer mouths to feed.”
“You can barely feed mouths you have because you pay five loans for five houses,” said Isabelle.
“Oh my God,” Finn said. “I’m going to smash my head against the rocks. She and you both, like a chorus. This is not how we do things in Boston, not how I do them. Why can’t she work for you here for free?”
“That’s not how we do things in North End or Ukraine,” Schumann said. “Not how I do them.”
They were speaking quietly, blistering, hissing. Isabelle was standing behind Finn. Behind her, through the wet glass, was freezing January drizzle.
“Schumann, please,” whispered Finn.
“Finn, please,” said Schumann.
Schumann put his palms down on the counter. Finn’s palms were already down. The two men stood for several long moments.
Finn grabbed his hat and turned to Isabelle. “Are you really refusing to leave me?” he said.
“Honestly now, I don’t know,” she said. “You deserve leaving.”
“Goodbye, you two!” Schumann called after them, smiling and waving.
Outside in the rain, they stood motionless.
“Let’s go, I guess,” Finn said, as cast off as he had ever felt. “We’ll stop at the soup kitchen on the way, see how long the line is.”
“What about rest of your job with Lucas and Lionel?”
“I don’t want you to bring it up again. I don’t have a job with Lucas and Lionel. Lionel took his share and moved to Indiana with his pregnant wife. And Lucas is probably sleeping off a two-week binge somewhere.”
“He is not,” said Isabelle. “I see him last week, he fine. More or less. He said you didn’t complete full job, so you didn’t get full money.”
“Isabelle, I asked you before and I’m telling you again. I’m holding on to my sanity by a thread, a thin fragile thread! Don’t talk to me anymore about it.”
“I heard Lucas say some man named Sully still owe you thousands of dollars for liquor cases.”
“How do you hear everything you’re not supposed to and nothing you are supposed to? How on earth could you possibly hear Lucas say this?”
“What you mean?” she said calmly. “I asked him, and he told me.”
“Why would you ask him!”
“I wanted to know what you were up to with secrecy and truck and that cock-maiming story about flooding at Truro in house you no longer own.”
“Secrecy being the main part of that cockamamie story! Why would Lucas tell you?”
“Don’t you listen? Because I asked him.”
A maddened Finn didn’t know where to look or how to get out of this absurd conversation. There was nowhere to look except Isabelle’s open, composed, serene face.
“A lot to be mad about, Finn, I know,” she said. “I’d be mad too if man named Sully owed me money. You need to get it. It’s not hundred bucks for dresses. It’s thousands of dollars. It will pay loans on your half-dozen houses. It will feed your family. Why such discussion about it?”
“I can’t get the liquor, I don’t want to explain why.”
“Take Lucas and drive.”
How did she always get him to divulge what he had zero desire to divulge? “Lucas is part of what got me into this diabolical mess to begin with. The three of us got arrested because of Lucas and his uncontrollable drinking, and my father had to get me out of it without jail time. For that, he is now being forced into retirement. And it’s my fault! But I have no one to get me out of a jam when I get caught again.”
“Don’t get caught again.”
“I barely kept it from Vanessa. I almost went to prison. It’s not worth it.”
“It’s more than thirteen thousand dollars!” said Isabelle. “It’s worth it.”
“I don’t have a fucking truck!”
“Ah,” she said with a nod, “now you talking. Wait out here. I be back.” She disappeared inside, leaving him standing in the rain. Finn watched her talking to Schumann, pointing to Finn, explaining things. Nate popped his head in, and she thrust her finger at him, gesturing to the rear, and he lowered his head and slunk away. Five minutes later she walked outside. Her face was relaxed, smiling, as if she were full of good news.
“I found you truck,” she said. “Schumann has truck to borrow. Tomorrow. We need to bring it back in three days though because Nate need it. You see, you tell me problem and I find solution.”
“It’s like speaking to a deaf-mute,” Finn said. “I can’t go alone. Lionel is gone, and Lucas is drunk! And I got no one else.”
“Not true,” said Isabelle. “You got me. And I come with you.”
“You’re going to come with me? On a bootleg run to Vermont?”
“How hard can it be?” she said. “You three boys did it. Nate has weapons. We bring them. For just in case. If we bring them, we won’t need them. But if we don’t bring them, you can be sure, we will need them.”
“We’re going to bring weapons,” Finn echoed.
“Yes,” she said. “You fight in war, no? You know how to handle weapon? That makes two of us.”
“What do you plan to do with these weapons?”
“Let’s hope you never get to find out.”