Drives Away All Adversity
1940–1945
1
Pregnant, Evelyn banged pots and wept at what she heard on the radio, cooking barefoot because all of her many shoes now hurt her feet. Artie didn’t know if she was angry at Hitler today or at him. He had had no idea about marriage—no idea that a woman who was humorous and resourceful when they took a long walk might not invariably be humorous and resourceful. But also no idea about sex. Evelyn loved sex, and though she had been a virgin until their wedding night, she was not shy or modest. Artie was shy for about a minute. Then he discovered that sex was the best possible way to play, to fool around. He made love, Evelyn said, like a monkey, and he said, So that’s where you are when I can’t find you—with your boyfriends in the zoo.
Yet one startling afternoon, Evelyn screamed at him—with no affection in her voice—not for being messy or careless, which he knew he was, but for being fussy, which he was not. And even if he had been, why was fussiness something to scream over? He had corrected her grammar.
—You could be drafted, she said now, turning from the stove. She wasn’t angry with him: she was frightened. Then she said, They wouldn’t let you do that in the army! He was helping her cook dinner, trying to peel a potato in one long strip. She took the potato out of his hands and did it quickly.
—I won’t be drafted, he said.
—What’s so special about you? Her voice sounded as if she did consider him special, and he took that in.
He said, We’re not going to war. Harold had been arguing with him about this. It was well into 1940 and Europe was bloody.
—We’re going to let them die there? Evelyn said.
—They won’t die. But they were dying. Is the baby moving? He liked to put his hand on her belly and wait for movement. She nodded, abandoned the potato, raised the hem of her maternity smock, and laid his hand across her middle. He felt her skin, her blood coursing and lunch digesting, and his child. He said, He’s not kicking, just moving this way and that way.
—That’s right.
—So you’re such an expert, he said, which way is he facing?
She guided his hand. This is her backside.
—Her? Her little tuchas, he said. I’ll give it a squeeze.
—Artie, she said. Artie. I think there’s going to be a war.
Brenda Saltzman was born a stubborn and cranky girl with a square face and sparse light hair in January 1941, a few months into the bombing of London. The United States was still at peace. A long, difficult labor wore out Evelyn, and Artie disgraced himself, screaming at nurses, terrified and furious. When he wasn’t allowed to be with his wife, he was sure she had died. He saw Brenda for the first time through a window into the nursery as she lay crying in a bassinet. A nurse picked up his daughter, but she wouldn’t stop yelling. Her cries delighted her father. He liked her.
But two weeks later, Evelyn shouted, How should I know what to do? when the baby—in her bassinet in the kitchen because they had so few rooms—wouldn’t stop crying and go to sleep. You figure it out, if you’re so smart!
She went into the bedroom and closed the door. The crying became louder. Artie wondered if music might soothe a baby. He went into the kitchen, picked her up, and tipped her against his shoulder. He put his finger into her hard toothless mouth because he liked the way that felt, and rubbed her gums. He took her into the living room and began dancing to the music on the radio—Duke Ellington. Brenda yelled hard—her face was dark red—but maybe she’d like different music better. He turned off the radio with his free hand, then put Brenda down on the rug on her back, and began looking for the record he wanted: Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras 5, a piece of music so strange—wordless, gorgeous wailing over the sound of cellos—that it might sound normal to a baby. He hurried to put it on the turntable of the Victrola.
When Evelyn came out of the bedroom, Brenda was still screaming, while Artie held her and danced a slow, creative dance to Villa-Lobos, oohing along with the ululations on the record. What are you doing? she said.
—We have to be patient.
—Why don’t you give her a bottle? Evelyn said, though she herself had insisted the baby couldn’t possibly be hungry.
—She’s not hungry, Artie said.
—How do you know? You’re in her mind? Evelyn had become solidly round with pregnancy, and that or something else seemed to make her move more directly than before, as if she hurled her weight against obstacles. She flung herself into the kitchen, and he heard the sounds of warming up a bottle. Brenda continued screaming, and Artie took her into the bedroom to remove the evidence of his failure. Without taking off his shoes, he lay down and arranged Brenda facedown on his stomach, pulling the bedspread over both of them. The baby’s chest heaved rapidly against his and he was overcome with joy. He rubbed his hand down her bony back and rear end, singing his old school song, while Brenda’s saliva soaked his shirt and he smelled urine from her leaky rubber pants. Her cries were softer.
One-four-nine is the school for me
Drives away all adversity . . .
Evelyn came in, moving more slowly now, testing the milk on her wrist. She put the bottle down, picked up Brenda, and took her to the waterproof pad on the dresser.
—Poor baby, Evelyn whispered, as she unpinned the diaper. Artie turned on his stomach and hid his face. He wanted his life back: his funny wife with the jiggling lump in her belly, his own competence. He was a teacher, but he couldn’t teach his daughter how to be a person.
—I’m not mad, Evelyn said, but she sounded mad. He got up and went for his camera, which was in the living room. He’d piled his photography equipment on a chair when Brenda was born. It had been in a cabinet in the bedroom, but they needed the space for her clothes and diapers. He’d already taken many pictures of her. Now he brought his lamp and set it up. Evelyn was sitting on the bed, holding the baby and feeding her the bottle, but when he came in with the lamp, she watched him set it up and then heaved herself and her daughter up and went into the living room. When he came in, she was on the couch, still feeding the baby. You don’t want me to take your picture?
—The light will disturb her.
—You want to comb your hair? Evelyn had always loved having her picture taken. You’re so beautiful, he said. Her wavy hair was rumpled, longer because she didn’t have time for a haircut. You don’t need to comb your hair.
Evelyn stood, handed him the baby—who began to cry again—and wept against his chest. I don’t want a baby, she said. I don’t mean that. I don’t mean that.
—Should I stop taking pictures? Artie said. It was unthinkable.
—I don’t want you developing them in the apartment. She stopped crying and stepped away from him. You’re locked in the bathroom for hours. The smell, the chemicals. It’s not good for her.
He’d known this was coming but also had not known. But she’s so pretty, he said. Your parents like the pictures.
—Don’t make me decide now, Evelyn said.
Two weeks after that, she did decide. Artie had set up his lights and tried to get Brenda to follow his hand with her eyes, taking picture after picture. Her changing face fascinated him, its unmediated honesty. But Evelyn didn’t trust him unless the baby was smiling. Brenda knew how to smile now but didn’t do it often.
—It’s not just the space or the smell, Evelyn said, walking into the living room from the bedroom, where she’d been folding laundry, as if picking up on a conversation they’d been having a moment ago. I don’t like the mood you get into. I don’t like the way you get when they don’t turn out the way you want.
—For crying out loud! Artie shouted, so loudly that Brenda started to cry. Would you stop it? he shouted—at the baby. He’d never before shouted at the baby.
—Be quiet! Evelyn said, and snatched Brenda up. I have to say this. I’ve given it a lot of thought—
—All right, I’ll just go. I see where this is going, Artie said. He folded his tripod and unplugged his lamp, with its clean smell of heat and light that he loved, put his precious camera into its case, then bundled everything in his arms. He had much more equipment—he developed and printed his own pictures—but this would make his point.
—Where are you going? said Evelyn.
—What difference does it make? Artie said. His arms were full, but it was winter. His coat was on a chair, and he managed to stuff it under his arm and walk out of the apartment, leaving the door open. Oh, for God’s sake! he heard her say. He expected Evelyn would follow, but as he ran down the steps, he heard the door close behind him. He stopped in the lobby to reorganize, trembling, and put on his coat. He had no hat or gloves. There was no time for this—he had papers to mark and lesson plans to write. He could dig his keys out of his pants pocket and go back upstairs or even ring the doorbell, but he began trudging toward the elevated train that would take him into the city. He didn’t know what he’d do with all this stuff if Harold wasn’t home.
Harold had rented his second apartment, on an undistinguished block in Murray Hill, for one reason: the front windows. He had one room on the second floor of a brownstone—two stories up from the ground, up staircases diminishing in grandeur—with a bathroom made out of a former closet and kitchen equipment in an alcove. The front windows weren’t as large as the ones on the first floor, but they were large enough, and the apartment faced south, so in winter the sun warmed and brightened it. On Saturday afternoon Harold was drinking coffee he had just percolated, sitting opposite a woman buttoning her sweater. She’d come in from the bathroom, where she’d retreated to dress. This was the first time he’d seduced her. A week earlier they’d struck up a conversation at an art gallery and had met by arrangement at a different gallery earlier that afternoon. Her name was Naomi; she was bright (and Jewish) and she had turned out to be a virgin. Naomi wasn’t especially pretty, but she was honest and funny, with a worried crease between her eyes that smoothed out when she wasn’t nervous and thus gave Harold an interesting challenge. He was feeling kindly, elderly, and erotic. Naomi, with no experience, apparently considered him a dignified, confident lover. Now he was being charming on purpose, listening with sympathy to a story she was telling that she’d begun an hour earlier, before he’d interrupted her with a hand that lingered on the center of her back for quite some time before it moved farther. Because she was so smart (she taught French in a public high school in a rich neighborhood in the Bronx), he could be himself. If he didn’t call, this woman would write no pathetic letters. Virgin or no, she took her coffee black and drank it with her feet drawn up under her, telling him how she’d gotten lost in Paris when her aunt and uncle gave her a trip to France as a graduation present. At the thought of Paris, her eyes grew large, as if she was stretching the lids up so as not to cry, and he knew they’d have talked about the war, but the doorbell rang and the crease returned between her eyes. Her eyes were blue, like his, and close together.
Harold considered not answering the door: he could signal Naomi to be quiet and not move until they heard departing footsteps. The visitor was right outside—the downstairs door was never locked. But nobody as suave as Harold was pretending to be would be afraid to answer a door. He rose, frightened but interested to know what would happen if Myra was his guest. But it was Artie, his arms full of photography equipment.
—What are you doing here? Harold asked, making his voice jocular so Naomi wouldn’t worry.
—That’s a fine way of saying hello, said Artie, crouching to set his bundle on the floor. Sorry to interrupt. He nodded curtly in Naomi’s direction as he stood, his possessions clattering as they settled.
—What’s this stuff?
—Can’t you see? Two cameras in cases, a tripod, a lens in a case, a light on a pole, and a screen to focus the light. Any further questions? Artie remained standing between them. Harold had closed the door and was now perched on the bed. He was glad he’d made the bed while Naomi was in the bathroom. He didn’t feel like inviting his friend to sit on the edge of the bed next to him, and Naomi was in the only chair. Artie’s long, thin face was tense, his cheeks sucked in as if he was ready to whistle at any moment, his heavy brows squinting with outrage over his glasses. Harold murmured their names, and both guests nodded. How’s the baby? Harold said then.
—Evelyn threw me out.
—Really?
—She said I can’t keep this stuff at home. Apparently she’s the president now. I thought we reelected a guy named Roosevelt. Artie sat down on the rug, leaned over on one hand, and let his legs sprawl to his side. He took up most of the room. Can I have coffee?
Harold stood and so did Naomi. You don’t have to go, he said.
—I should do some things today. She followed him into the alcove with her cup and saucer and set them down. Then she touched his arm, and he stopped reaching for the coffee pot and kissed her quietly on the mouth. I’m sorry, he said in a low voice. I’ll see you soon. He brought her coat from the hall closet and held it for her, then saw her out to the landing.
—And what was that all about? Artie said when the door was closed. He had moved to the bed, where he sprawled as he had on the floor. He had a cup of coffee with no saucer and he’d already drunk half of it.
—Don’t put your shoes on the bed, Harold said.
Artie kicked them off. All over with Myra? he said. I can’t say I’m sorry.
—You don’t know Myra, and you have a superficial idea of what she’s like, Harold said.
—It’s not over? You’re skipping out on her? Artie finished his coffee and began twirling the cup between his hands.
Harold had lost all his confidence. We don’t have a formal arrangement, he said. We’re not promessi sposi.
—Ooh la la, Artie said, his usual response to any foreign word. So that gives you the right to lure little girls into your cave? Did you tell this Naomi about Myra?
—I didn’t do anything wrong, Harold said.
Artie said nothing. His silence was more effective even than his sarcastic speech, and Harold had an uncomfortable sense that something he had believed to be true was not true. He even glanced around as if Naomi might not have left after all. Sometimes, in the shower or late at night, Harold understood that the game he played was indeed a game: he pretended he did no harm to the women he slept with, that he was such a clown, such an oaf, that at best they pitied him. But this was pretending. Then the thought passed.
—Myra’s not the girl for you, Artie said.
—Why, because she’s not Jewish? Because her family has money?
—Myra’s trouble, that’s why, Artie said. You don’t want to spend your life with Myra, and that’s why you run around with all these Naomis. Tell Myra good-bye and keep Naomi. I like Naomi.
—You don’t know a thing about it.
—I have eyes, Artie said. There’s a lot I could tell you that you need to hear.
—Such as what? Harold said mildly. Don’t you think you’d better solve your own problems first?
—Such as your job.
—My job? Harold still worked for the Writers’ Project, though many people had been let go.
—I’m telling you, there’s no future. Sooner or later you’ll not only be fired, but you’ll be in the paper as a Commie Red.
—I told you, I tore up my membership card.
—You think anybody will care about that? Artie stood, put his cup down in the alcove, picked up a kitchen towel, and began playing with it, twisting it and snapping it loose. He said, You think the American people are going to check the expiration date on your membership card? This stuff is getting worse and worse, this Dies and his committee. You don’t need it.
—I don’t want to teach children, Harold said. He knew what Artie thought he should do. He wanted to teach, but in a college. He wanted to get a doctorate in English literature. He couldn’t teach until he’d done that.
—What’s so terrible? Long vacations, you’re home early, the kids are funny.
—I don’t think so, said Harold.
—I don’t think so, Artie mocked, making the words sound weak and uncertain.
Myra had made the same suggestion. You like the sound of your own voice, she had said. If you teach, you’ll hear it all day long. Nobody had much respect for him, Harold reflected, but remarks like that kept him with Myra. This Naomi—all these good women. They didn’t have the nerve to say things like that.
—I’ll think about it, he said, feeling as if by some kind of elaborate logic he owed it to Naomi, the teacher he’d just seduced and would probably never see again, to think about teaching. He could take education courses at night. It was true that the Writers’ Project wouldn’t last. He stood up. I’ll see about it, he said.
—You won’t be sorry, Artie said.
—I said I’ll see about it. Now what about all this stuff? He pointed.
—Just for a week or so, until she calms down?
—You want to leave it here? For God’s sake!
—What’s so terrible? I didn’t bring the baby and leave her for a week.
—What’s she like?
—Come see her. She’s smart. She’s driving me crazy, but she’s smart. Artie replaced the kitchen towel on the table, furled into a long cloth tube. Come back with me. Come eat with us.
—You’re in the middle of a fight.
—Evelyn will be nice if you come with me.
—It’s trouble for her.
—She won’t care. What’s trouble? Another plate? I’ll set the table. I’ll wash the dishes. Come on.
They left Artie’s beloved photography equipment in a tangle on the floor and took the subway to Brooklyn.
2
On November 25, 1942, the New York Times reported that Dr. Stephen Wise, the chairman of the World Jewish Congress, had confirmed that half the estimated four million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe had been exterminated. The story was on page 10. Harold had bought the paper on the way to work, read the first pages, and put it aside. He picked it up that evening to read on a subway ride to Brooklyn.
Artie’s photographic equipment had now been sitting on Harold’s floor for more than a year and a half, and Harold had phoned to complain about it. He didn’t complain, but he did mention it to Evelyn, who had answered the phone. She invited him to dinner. She liked him and often invited him. On his way, Harold read the story about the Jews.
—My God, he said to Artie and Evelyn, carrying the paper in, folded back to page 10. My God. He had intended to demand the retrieval of Artie’s belongings once he was there, but now that he’d read the newspaper story, his wish to clear his floor had become selfish and trivial. He put down the paper to take off his overcoat. Brenda stood in her overalls in the middle of the room. She had a chunky, square face and her lips looked as if she might cry or complain, but she was quiet, holding something. When Evelyn turned away with the coat, Brenda came toward Harold and held it up for him to see. It was a stuffed horse. Is that your horse? he said.
—Baby, said Brenda.
—Your baby.
They sat in the living room. He lit a cigarette and Evelyn brought him a drink. When he tried to talk about the story, Artie and Evelyn shook their heads and looked shocked but wouldn’t speak. Brenda was surely too young to understand, but they didn’t seem to want to talk in front of her about such a thing. Evelyn was pregnant again, and when Harold spoke of the newspaper story, she put her hand over her protruding stomach.
—We haven’t seen you, Evelyn said. It had been a few weeks. You’re all right?
—I was rejected, Harold told her. Pearl Harbor had turned war and the draft from discussion into fact—as if frightening figures on a movie screen had stepped into the theater, three-dimensional. Artie had expected to be rejected because of his nearsightedness, his fatherhood, or both, and was glad about it. Death? he had often said to Harold. Who needs it?
But Harold had always told himself he’d go and fight. True, since the day the police had beaten him up in the Union Square riot in 1930, his right hand trembled at times and became weak. Sometimes it hurt. His hand made him drop things and kept him from doing anything precise—he couldn’t have drawn the fine, shapely lines in Myra’s illustrations, even if he had the talent—but he could almost control it if he tried. He hadn’t thought it would keep him out of the army. He’d imagined being drafted, even enlisting. Then, when the war started, he was startled to find himself hoping to be rejected: afraid. Soon enough, he’d received a draft notice, but he failed the medical exam. His hand was too disabled. He thought he might have exaggerated the weakness on purpose. Were the doctors smart enough to detect that kind of deception? He was afraid to be a soldier, but when he’d received his 4-F notice, he’d been depressed for days. He’d told few people he’d been turned down, not Myra.
—That’s good news, Artie said.
Harold shrugged. Not really.
—You’ve got better things to do with your life, Evelyn said.
—But with this going on? Harold pointed at the newspaper.
Artie waved his hand dismissively, but Evelyn nodded.
A few weeks later came a front-page story. The members of the United Nations had issued a joint declaration protesting the Germans’ cold-blooded extermination of the Jews. This account was full of detail. Jews were taken to camps in Poland; nobody returned. Healthy people worked as slaves, and the rest were systematically exterminated. The United Nations, the paper reported, was making plans to bring the perpetrators to justice—which wouldn’t bring dead people back to life, Harold pointed out. This time he said it to Myra. The story was two days old when he met her in the garment district on a Saturday. She had to see someone in an office. Harold had waited in Herald Square; he liked watching the iron statues on the big clock that had recently been installed there. Mechanical men lifted their arms and struck, and their hammers crashed against the big iron bell. At last Myra came along, annoyed at her assignment. A few days earlier, he had finally told her he’d been rejected from the draft. I assumed, she had said.
They went to see Casablanca for the second time. The war was going badly in real life, and the movie first cheered Harold, then depressed him: the French national anthem, the courage of the characters, his own cowardice. Later, they sat in a luncheonette and he began to talk about the extermination camps.
—Do you think it’s true? she said. Her lipstick was a new color, darker, and it or something made her skin look dark and flushed, healthy with purpose but a little brutal. She rarely read a newspaper.
—Of course it’s true. They’ve been investigating for months.
She considered. She had ordered only coffee—though he urged her to eat, as he always did—and had drunk it quickly, getting lipstick on the rim of the cup, and now she took out her compact and lipstick, blotting her lips on her napkin, stretching her mouth open and then pressing her lips together like a fish. Harold watched her, sipping his coffee and eating a cheese danish. He didn’t like the way she repaired her lipstick, but he wanted to see her do it.
—Do you remember how I used to get? she said now.
—How you used to get? You mean, upset? When you and Virginia—
He wasn’t sure he was allowed to speak of it. Sometimes, even now, she’d panic as she had at the cabin, but she never referred to these episodes later.
—When we met, she said.
—I remember.
—Well. That’s the kind of thing I’d think about. You know.
—What kind of thing? He didn’t know what she meant.
She sighed, putting her compact and lipstick into her purse, closing the clasp with unnecessary attention.
—That’s what I used to think about. I didn’t know how to stop. People killing other people. Not like wars, but just like this. Deciding to kill people and doing it. Maybe smiling.
He put down his cheese danish. What made you think things like that?
—How should I know? Maybe I read something when I was a kid, heard something. Scary stories. Most kids laugh.
He had so many questions he couldn’t speak. He wanted to know what her thoughts were like, why she couldn’t stop, how it was for her—for a woman—to have these thoughts.
—So I know it’s true, she said. People can do that. Hitler—he’s not like one of the bad guys we have around here, you know?
—No.
What did he want to say? He had to say something large and loud to Myra Thorsten, but they were in the third booth of a crowded luncheonette, with people at the counter, people walking by. He had half a cup of coffee left and part of his danish. His fingers were sticky. Will you marry me, Myra? he said.
—You mean that? She had reached for her bag again, and she held it in front of her like a shield, or as if she displayed it.
He didn’t know if he meant it. They’d known each other for more than six years. He kept returning to Myra. He loved taking her to bed, but just as much, he loved waking up, late on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, to discover she was gone, and he was free to think of other women, other people, other topics. His parents were baffled that he’d know a woman as American as Myra.
They left the coffee shop and walked holding hands, his sticky hand in hers. They scream at me all the time for seeing you, she said.
—Who screams?
—My mother, my sister. My father doesn’t know I sleep with you. He’d kill you.
—Really?
—He might. Or he might kill me.
—They don’t trust me?
—They say you’ll never marry me.
Harold had often thought that he would never marry Myra, but it was new to consider himself a potential villain for that reason. The idea pleased him, but he was offended, though they had guessed right about his intentions. Of course, he never intended the drama of abandonment they apparently believed possible of him—and now he couldn’t say just what he had thought would happen. Myra would get tired of him and disappear—that must have been it.
—They don’t care that I’m Jewish?
—They figure you’ll make money.
Instead, weeks after their wedding, early in 1943—it seemed to happen immediately, as if a dress, a dinner, bridesmaids (Myra’s two cousins, including the one who had spoken to Harold at the party) had been lined up waiting—Harold lost his job. He couldn’t find steady work as a reporter. If he hadn’t been married, he’d have gone to graduate school at last and become an English professor, making a scanty living writing reviews and freelance stories, but now he finally took the exam to become a teacher. Meanwhile, they lived mostly on Myra’s earnings. When they married, he’d given up his apartment (he didn’t know what Artie did with the cameras and tripod, when at last he had to insist they go) and moved in with Myra, whose place in the West Village was slightly bigger. But now they couldn’t afford even that. On a tip from somebody, Artie found them an apartment near his own in East New York. Artie, with his years of marriage, his children—Evelyn had given birth to another girl, Carol—seemed older, though he’d always look boyish compared to Harold.
—We can play tennis again, he told Harold. I’ll show you a thing or two. Suddenly Harold was living a mile from the neighborhood he’d grown up in, teaching in a nearby high school not very different from the one he’d attended. He’d attempted to flee into Manhattan—into adulthood—and had been captured and returned.
3
On a Saturday afternoon, Artie stayed home with Brenda, who was taking a nap, while Evelyn took Carol along in the baby carriage to the grocery store. It was spring 1944, and when Brenda woke up, Evelyn instructed Artie, he should take her outside. Evelyn’s hair was pulled back with barrettes, and her eyes looked large and weary. He maneuvered the carriage down from their second-floor apartment while she carried Carol. When he heard Brenda talking to herself a little while later, he went into the children’s room and found her sitting up, frowning deeply. She put up her hands to be lifted, and he took in her urinous baby smell. She was trained but often wet the bed. He changed her and gave her a snack, but he wasn’t wearing his shoes and didn’t feel like the major nuisance of getting himself and Brenda out the door, so he decided to teach her to play golf, showing her how to use her push toy to knock small toys into a box he placed on its side in the kitchen doorway. Brenda was entranced. She shoved things with the push toy, yelled I win, I win, and ran back and forth, becoming wilder. Artie found her delectable, with her disorderly light brown hair flying, her clothes hanging out, her voice loud. She had a bellow and she indulged in it now. They ran together. When she fell, he picked her up and pretended to eat any part of her that might have been injured, each limb, her neck, her ears. He set her down again. He was tired, and now it seemed that Evelyn should come home, but not much time had gone by.
—All right, you play now, and I’ll watch you, he said, and lay down on the couch with his book.
Soon Brenda began to scream in a different way, more frantically, with abandon. At first, Artie put down his book and watched her, taking even more pleasure. But then she picked things up and threw them—first a magazine, then some mail, then the book he’d been reading. She hurled the book, then dove after it, and tore the page that came to her hand, holding up the torn piece of paper and laughing.
—Wait a minute! Artie shouted. What’s the matter with you? He was screaming as if she were an adult. Why are you tearing my book? Do I tear your books? Brenda started shrieking, and he turned away disgustedly, half intending to find one of her books and tear it, to show her how much she wouldn’t like that. He picked her up roughly. She was wet with tears and needed to be changed again, because he’d forgotten to take her to the toilet, and her shoes were untied. She did not stop screaming. What, are you stupid or something? he said. What do you think will happen, you do things like that? He smacked her backside.
A moment later, Evelyn came in carrying Carol. What’s going on? she said. The people downstairs complained about the noise. What is wrong with you? What did you do to her? She picked up Brenda and held both children, and now Carol began to cry.
—Your back will hurt, he said, but she carried both girls into the bedroom. She’d left the carriage and groceries downstairs, so he went down and lugged them up, and then he put the perishables in the refrigerator, but he was too angry—with all of them—to put the rest away, so he waited resentfully in the living room until she came through alone, on her way to get a bottle for Carol.
—Maybe you want to call the cops on me, he said then. Maybe you think I’m dangerous! Send me to prison. It’ll make a good story in the paper. Give the downstairs people a little more to think about. He picked up the cheap camera he used these days for snapshots and walked out of the house. How he missed developing pictures—the smells, the suspense, the strange surprises. He’d sold all that equipment without saying anything to Evelyn.
Home was not easy, but in the classroom the unexpected only inspired Artie. The riskier the better. He could not discipline his seventh- and eighth-grade social studies students because they knew he was amused by bad behavior. Eventually, though, he’d lose his temper. Once, he kicked his metal wastebasket around the room, scattering papers and causing a terrible banging, scaring the children. They quieted down, and the look in the girls’ eyes made him uncomfortable. But when he told them that maybe their teacher was dangerous and they should call the cops, they laughed, unlike Evelyn, who didn’t speak to him all day after he said that. The children liked his whistling and his games. Artie devised games to teach everything, managing to use his outdated maps to let them see how badly the Allies were doing in the war, then how things began to improve. Children would play General Eisenhower and Winston Churchill deciding what to do, and once he chose someone to play Hitler, but the boy refused and Artie didn’t push it. He never concealed his own opinions except as a trick. But he encouraged the children to disagree with him and held debates that got louder and louder, until the bell rang and the kids said they had to go to math, while Artie wanted to keep arguing.
4
Harold came home one evening, late in 1944 when Myra was a few months pregnant—he had found time despite teaching to write a book review, and he’d just turned it in—to find Gus Maloney in his living room. He hadn’t seen Gus since long before the war. Harold had known him as a newspaperman, but Gus had left his paper to work in a family business not long after Harold and Artie borrowed his cabin in the Adirondacks. When Myra, now and then, mentioned Gus, it was with irritation, possibly fond irritation.
—Gus has no sense of direction, she said once, when they were looking for an unfamiliar place.
Another time she said, Gus doesn’t eat chicken. Have you ever heard of someone who doesn’t eat chicken? They were eating chicken—or, Harold was eating chicken. Myra was rarely observed to eat. Her remarks made it seem as if Gus might be waiting just outside the room, and indeed, now he had come in. He sprang to his feet to shake Harold’s hand and give him a slap on the arm that made him think Gus had been in the war. He stumbled slightly as he sat down again, and it turned out he’d served in the Pacific, had been wounded and discharged. His arms and legs were long, and he seemed ready to spring up again, despite the limp, to do what Harold couldn’t. Harold became intensely conscious that Myra and Gus were a couple of goys while he was a Jew, as if they’d have ways of deceiving him he couldn’t begin to imagine. Gus was lanky, craggy-faced, older than Myra and Harold, with graying hair he flung off his forehead with a careless gesture.
—We were talking about the cabin, Myra said.
—You still own it? Harold said, remembering the silence and the smell of the woods. It was several years since he and Myra had been there, and again it had seemed unreachable, maybe because Myra didn’t mention it and Harold, always wondering about Gus, couldn’t.
—More than ever, Gus said. It’s mine since my father died. I have some plans for it, and I thought it might hold a sentimental value for you too. He cleared his throat. Since I take it that you met there.
Harold didn’t answer. He was taking off his hat and coat. Gus kept talking. For what he called a pittance, Harold and Myra could become part owners of the cabin. With some money, Gus could enlarge it and put in a bathroom.
—Nobody can go there often, Gus said with a broad gesture. There’s no point in just one family owning it.
—We don’t have a car, Harold said. What Gus was proposing would put him permanently into their lives, but they’d also have the cabin.
—The bus goes pretty close now, Gus said quickly, while Myra said, You know my father would let us use his car.
Harold hung up his coat, leaving his hat on a chair, and considered coffee or whiskey. Myra had offered nothing. She was deep in their most comfortable chair, her legs drawn under her, looking sleepy. She disliked pregnancy.
Harold said, What does your wife think about asking us into this deal? He lit a cigarette, then became uneasy—Myra said smoke nauseated her—and stubbed it out.
—My wife? Gus said. She thinks it’s a good idea.
Pouring drinks, Harold kept his back to Gus. Well, we don’t have any money, he said. We can’t consider it. He found himself angry that he couldn’t own the cabin or some of it, while he was simultaneously angry with Gus for making the proposal. He’d always been suspicious of Gus and now found himself wondering whether Myra’s child was his own. But he loved the cabin.
—Not for me, she was saying. He handed a glass to Gus and took one. Myra said, Maybe my parents would put in some money. It would be nice for the baby. She spoke, as she occasionally did, in a slight falsetto, and when she did, there was trouble. When they were alone, she’d tell him four or five things he already should have done that he’d never thought of—bought her a present or told her not to wear something she had decided was unbecoming. She’d become more and more outraged, then would weep for hours, no matter what he did.
Maybe her parents already knew the whole scheme. We’ll talk about it, he said. What did I hear about you, Gus? You’re in business?
—Funerals, said Gus.
Harold needed to go outside and walk. Funerals! He wondered how long it would take to walk all the way to the reservoir in Highland Park. It was a bleak spot, an enormous angular stone bowl of dark water with a fence and a treeless cobblestone path around it. From it one could see distances. Gulls flew from Jamaica Bay to the reservoir, if rain threatened, and settled on the water. Harold got up, hitching his trousers self-consciously, and stood near the chair on which he’d dropped his hat. Out of the corner of his eye, Myra, in her dark green robe, had grown sharper, more alert. Why was she entertaining a visitor in her bathrobe? Well, since her pregnancy, she often worked all day in it, making drawings in bed of models and clothes she’d seen only once—clothes that wouldn’t fit her now. Once a week she’d dress in stylish maternity clothes and take her portfolio into the city.
Sometimes, after she’d criticized him, Myra cried and said, I know I’m impossible. I don’t want to be impossible! Harold, don’t let me be impossible! He’d take her in his arms, soothe her, talk to her in nonsense syllables, offer to open a can of soup, but she’d shake her head. The chair with his hat was as far away from her as he could go.
5
When Harold heard that President Roosevelt had died, in April 1945, he surprised himself by crying, though he’d often quarreled—sometimes out loud, in one-sided arguments—with Roosevelt. He had turned on a radio and was caught by surprise. It was another shock, after the shock of seeing the films of concentration camp survivors a few weeks before. Myra came running with the baby when she realized that Roosevelt was dead—with their long, skinny son, their floppy baby, whom people tended to hold horizontally, so he seemed less organized than the usual compact infant squashed comfortably against an adult shoulder. She’d insisted on calling him Nelson, a name that sounded pretentious to Harold. Now she was speechless, then distracted, saying they had to go see her parents, who had never been enthusiastic about Roosevelt. She went to get dressed, scattering hairpins, then changed her mind. They stayed home, and she squeezed against Harold on the sofa. Nothing is the same, Myra said.
Evelyn Saltzman was devastated, weeping over her daughters and then handing Carol to Artie so she could cry in private, which meant in the bathroom. Artie was upset too but didn’t say much. He distracted Brenda from the sound of Evelyn’s sobs by carrying her around the house on his shoulders, neighing and clutching her feet, trotting and even galloping, though she was afraid and after a while begged him to stop. But Artie neighed louder and ran faster, not wanting to think too hard about the ways in which time had passed, the man who seemed as if he’d be president forever was dead, and Artie himself had turned into an adult, despite everything. He felt sure he must be a boy still, but there was so much evidence to the contrary, more every day.