Part Twelve
Gershon, 1919
Chapter 30

Gershon paced while Yetta took in his trousers for the second time in six months. His appetite had disappeared along with Shmuel. Yetta tried to get him to eat by cooking roasts in the middle of the week and baking a different cake every day. She stood over him like a mother cajoling her sick child to eat. He felt guilty about disappointing her, but guiltier about not finding his nephew.

It was almost a year since the Armistice. Troops were coming home, but still there was no word of Shmuel. Gershon petitioned the War Department, only to receive a form letter saying the government appreciated every family’s sacrifice, but with millions of deaths worldwide, they must accept that their unidentified sons were buried in mass graves or in the ocean. Money didn’t help. Gershon’s generous gifts to Senators Wadsworth and Calder were acknowledged with signed photos. He tore them up; he wanted information, not pictures.

He refused to believe that Shmuel was dead. The Armistice hadn’t ended the fighting in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, so Gershon held out hope his nephew was stationed there. If only he could prove it. Then he read about an upcoming victory march down Fifth Avenue and knew what he had to do. Forget the military brass and politicians, he’d stop sailors in the parade and ask if they knew Shmuel. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, a useful expression Dev had taught him, but he’d overcome impossible odds before.

Yetta called him meshugga; Ruchel said it was the most cockamamie idea she ever heard. Even Zipporah admitted it was crazy. Gershon didn’t care what his wife and daughters thought. He’d promised his sister to find the boy before his brother-in-law’s self-imposed year of mourning was up, and he’d failed. Gershon seethed when Avram gloated in bitter satisfaction.

As Yetta bit off the last thread, Gershon tried again to convince her he knew what he was doing. “Have I ever given you reason to doubt my judgment? I chose to marry you, didn’t I?” His wife encircled him with her arms, something she hadn’t been able to do since he was a skinny newlywed on the boat to America. Her touch reminded Gershon that he hadn’t made love to her for three Sabbaths. He hugged her back, a tacit promise he’d make up for it when he got home.

Yetta relented, but remained worried. She told Ruchel to go with him.

“It’s a fool’s errand,” Ruchel said. “Let him play the fool on his own.”

“For shame!” Yetta, who rarely got mad, wouldn’t tolerate any insolence that threatened peace in their home. She handed a bag of babka to Gershon. “Take, you shouldn’t go hungry.”

Gershon swatted it away, but changed his mind when he saw her hurt look and reached for the bag. Ruchel beat him. “I’ll pass out cookies to all the hungry Jewish sailors marching down Fifth Avenue,” she said, opening the door and walking ahead of her father to the subway stop.

They stood apart at the station and didn’t sit together on the train. The rocking motion typically lulled Gershon to sleep, but today he imagined the marchers’ boots pounding inside his skull. The subway car filled with passengers heading uptown. He worried that if they all exited at 107th Street, where the parade began, he’d be lost in the crush. Forgetting that Ruchel was with him, he bolted from the train at 59th Street, planning to catch the march at the halfway point.

“Wait!” his daughter called and tumbled onto the platform behind him, just before the doors closed. Gershon raced upstairs to the street. This time, he thought, let her keep up with him.

Crowds lined the curb, waving flags and tossing hats and handkerchiefs in the air. Others peered from windows draped with red, white, and blue bunting, or threw fistfuls of pennies and shredded paper over balcony railings. Craning his neck, Gershon saw troops a few blocks away, advancing quickly. He moved to a lamppost on the corner, where an effigy of the Kaiser hung. Wind knocked the dummy against his hat brim. “For goodness sakes, Father, stand over there.” Ruchel tugged him toward a tree in the middle of the block, but he refused to budge. The broad intersection would give him more room to dash out and accost the sailors when they walked by.

“Mr. Mendel, I didn’t know you were a patriot.” It was Joseph Cohen, the manager of the old-age home whom he’d bullied into admitting the incontinent Mrs. Meltzer the same week that Shmuel disappeared. Last year, the congregation recited Kaddish for Cohen’s son, who’d served in the Army. Yetta had organized the chevra kadisha to bring food to the family while they sat shiva. Cohen tipped his hat to Ruchel. “I didn’t expect a man with daughters to show up today.”

Gershon searched for the perfect retort, but was distracted by the approaching marchers. Ruchel grimaced and answered herself. “We’re sorry for your loss, Mr. Cohen. Coming here is our way to express gratitude to you and the rest of the country.”

A man ran past waving a banner that read, “Liberty cannot die!” Behind him, a group of men, their faces painted black, slowly carried a coffin to symbolize the millions of anonymous war dead. One of the pall bearers wore a Navy uniform. Gershon fell in beside him and asked where the sailor had gone to boot camp and served afterwards. He was told Atlantic City, and in the Mediterranean.

“My nephew may have been there too. Perhaps you know him.” Gershon described Shmuel, a fair-haired boy who would have worn a tallit beneath his uniform. He might have regrown his payess. The sailor looked puzzled. Gershon couldn’t think of the English words.

“I believe the boy was sent to the Ottoman Empire to continue fighting.”

“Your nephew wrote where he was stationed? I couldn’t let my family know.”

Gershon said he’d found out through other channels. The sailor sized up Gershon’s fine wool coat, which hung on his thin body, and fancy leather shoes, scuffed by the surging crowd.

“So now you’ve fallen on hard times and can’t pay channels to find him. Well, tough luck mister, but the families here today are suffering worse losses.” The sailor snorted and shouted to his fellow pall bearers, “Let’s pick up the pace before Pershing’s troops overtake us.”

Out of breath, Gershon turned back and faced the first wave of oncoming soldiers. They were dressed in trench helmets and full combat gear. Again, Ruchel tried to pull him elsewhere. “Can’t you see they’re from the Army, Father? Come stand with me back on the corner.”

Gershon looked at the lamppost, where Cohen still stood, eying Gershon with the same sad superiority he’d seen on Avram’s face when every lead dead-ended. Today he would not be defeated. He shook off Ruchel’s arm and charged up the street as a deafening volley of rifle shots and cheers erupted for General Pershing. Gershon’s shouted questions to the line of soldiers went unheard. He yelled louder, but they saluted at the crowds and marched past him without breaking formation. When had people stopped listening to him? He tripped and stumbled as a cannon rolled down Fifth Avenue, behind the first contingent of troops. Ruchel ran into the street to help him up, assisted by Cohen, who retrieved Gershon’s trampled hat and held it out to him.

For the rest of the afternoon, Gershon followed the marchers downtown, falling further behind. He heard his voice ratchet up from commanding to pleading, but was powerless to control it. After Cohen peeled off, Ruchel continued to track him from the sidewalk. Women embraced the troops and once, when Ruchel caught Gershon’s eye, she ran out to plant a kiss on a soldier’s lips before darting back to safety. Gershon froze, debating how to punish her, when a sea of blue uniforms amid the hordes of green drew him in their wake. Most smiled reflexively, tired of the accolades and ready to go home. A few strained to listen before casting the pitying look they’d give a mad man. “I’m not meshugga!” Gershon said, the English word escaping him again.

The parade ended at Washington Square Park, near their apartment. The crowd dispersed, leaving a few stragglers sitting around the fountain beside pigeons pecking for peanuts. Gershon and Ruchel stood under the arch. “Mother will plotz if you walk in like a beat-up shtetl kid,” she said. Gershon let her brush his lapels. As they started home, she pulled Yetta’s cookies from her pocket, crammed one in her mouth, and snickered. “That was a day well spent.” Crumbs spewed on his freshly groomed coat.

Gershon stopped walking. It was one thing for his daughter to talk like that to him in the privacy of their own home. Never before had she been sarcastic to him in public. Was this how American children spoke to their parents? Was her rudeness the backhanded proof of his ultimate assimilation?

“Sorry.” Ruchel stopped too and held out the bag. “I should have shared.”

“I’m not a child.” Gershon grabbed the sack, stepped to the curb, and emptied the cookies through the sewer grate. Ruchel snatched the bag back, crushed it, and threw it down the hole atop the crumbs. She clapped her hands clean, sneered at him, and pivoted back toward the park.

Gershon had a sudden image of feeding babka to Ruchel as a baby. At the first taste of sweetness, she’d look up at him like he was a god delivering a miracle. Her rosebud lips had opened for more, but while she chewed, her eyes stayed locked on his. When had her adoration turned to scorn? Gershon watched her skip away in the fading light. He blinked and limped home. There were more ways than one to lose a child.