5

“TRY THE PLUMS,” Fleurette said at breakfast a few days later.

Norma ignored her and kept her eyes on her newspaper.

“Just one. Just a bite.” Fleurette took her butter knife and cut out a perfect triangle of toast and plum preserves. She slid it onto Norma’s plate.

“Look,” she whispered. “C’est tout violet.”

Norma rattled her newspaper and put it between herself and the offending toast.

“That’s more red than purple,” I said, sitting down across from them. “You’ll never win at this.”

Fleurette giggled and took her toast back.

The long-standing and largely one-sided feud between Norma and Fleurette over the regal hue of their breakfast condiments began years ago, when Norma absentmindedly reached for a jar of pickled red cabbage and spooned it onto her toast. After the initial shock, she found that she liked it a great deal and continued to eat it, every morning, for the rest of her life thus far. Fleurette was only seven or eight when this began and couldn’t understand how anyone could eat such a disagreeable food for breakfast. She asked Norma about it so often that one day Norma finally said, “Because it’s purple, of course. Didn’t you know that eating purple food at breakfast increases one’s height by two inches over a lifetime? It’s why we’re all so much taller than you.”

She waved her newspaper around as if to suggest that she’d read it from a place of authority, adding, “If only there was anything more purple than pickled cabbage, I’d eat that instead.”

Fleurette didn’t know how to tell when Norma was making a joke—none of us did, really, even all these years later—and took the challenge seriously, presenting Norma with any purple food she could find in the morning: jams and preserves, violet pastilles, blueberries and grapes. Every now and then, she resumed the old feud again out of habit. But so far, she’d failed. Not even plum preserves could match the brilliance of Norma’s cabbage.

That’s just how it was with Norma: once she approved of a thing, she adopted it to the exclusion of everything else. If she believed pickled cabbage and toast to be the best breakfast, it would be a betrayal of her principles to eat jam and porridge. If a pair of boots suited her, they became the only style she wore. I’d only ever seen one book on her nightstand (The Practical Pigeon: A Complete Treatise on Training, Breeding, Flying and Uses of Winged Messengers) and suspected that she had read it hundreds of times, having found none better.

At breakfast I read aloud my second letter to Henry Kaufman. Before I got past the salutation, Norma interrupted.

“I don’t like this Kaufman,” she said.

“Well, of course you don’t like him,” Fleurette said. “None of us do.”

“What I mean to say is that I don’t like us writing letters to him,” Norma said. “We shouldn’t be carrying on a correspondence with a man like that.”

“It’s an invoice, not a correspondence,” I said. “And this will be the last one. I’ll go and collect from him myself if he doesn’t reply.”

“But do you not agree with me that we shouldn’t . . .”

“Norma! He owes us the money.” Fifty dollars was no small sum to us. We lived on about six hundred a year, and because we were relying mostly on savings, that fifty dollars took one month of independence away from our dwindling funds. I rattled the paper and began again.

 

July 23, 1914

 

Misses Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp

Sicomac Road

Wyckoff, New Jersey

 

Dear Mr. Kaufman,

I trust you have received our invoice for the damages inflicted upon our buggy as a result of the collision with your automobile on July 14. The amount owed remains the same. The buggy remains in a state of disrepair. Anticipating that you are a busy man whose bookkeeper undoubtedly falls behind in his work when business is brisk, I will present myself at your place of business next Tuesday to collect in full if we have not yet received the fifty dollars owed. Until then, I remain,

 

Yours in a state of cautious expectation,

Miss Constance Kopp

 

“It’s best not to criticize a man’s bookkeeper,” Norma said without looking up from her newspaper.

“I was only offering an explanation for his failure to respond.”

“You wouldn’t like that, if you were his bookkeeper.” She noticed a strand of pickled cabbage on the back of her hand and flicked it onto her plate.

“I wouldn’t like much of anything if I were Mr. Kaufman’s bookkeeper,” I said, signing my name to the letter.

 

I MAILED THE LETTER on a Thursday. When no reply arrived by the morning post on Tuesday, I readied myself for a visit to Paterson.

“Are we going to town?” Fleurette said when she saw me in my hat.

“I am,” I said. “I have business to do. You’re not well enough yet.”

“But I haven’t left the house in ages.” She flopped into a stuffed chair in our sitting room. She’d wrapped herself in a Japanese shawl and pinned her hair into a complex arrangement of cascading glossy curls, held together somehow by an enormous red silk poppy. The bandage had just come off her foot, and to celebrate her newly liberated appendage, she was wearing ballet slippers.

“Read a book,” I said. “Help Norma in the kitchen if you’re feeling so much better.”

More moaning. More flopping about on the chair. I wished for the hundredth time that we had treated Fleurette less like a curiosity, an exotic bird nesting in our chimney, and more like a child in need of instruction.

I left her to issue her protests to an empty room and went outside to saddle Dolley for the trip into town. Dolley was not happy to see me coming. I was built like a farmer, even taller and broader than my brother. I looked ridiculous on a horse. But there would be no other way to get around until our buggy was repaired.

Norma had been in the barn all morning, mucking out the chicken coop and spreading fresh straw in the horse stall. It smelled of sweet, dry grass. She’d given Dolley a good brushing and was checking her hooves when I walked in. She ran a hand down the mare’s leg until the hoof lifted off the ground for inspection. Animals instinctively trusted Norma. She’d held every sort of claw or hoof or paw.

“I spoke to that boy at the dairy who fixes their wagons,” Norma said when she saw me. “He says it can be put back together. He’ll come over in the evenings and do the job.”

I didn’t say anything. I pulled the saddle off the wall and Norma helped me cinch it into place.

“Mr. Kaufman isn’t going to pay, and we’ll still have to get our buggy repaired,” Norma said. “That boy has all the tools, and he’s just down the road.”

There was no point in arguing over it. Living this far out of town was dull enough without a means of escape. We couldn’t all ride Dolley. “All right. Have him keep a record of his expenses,” I said, “and make sure it comes to fifty dollars.”

Norma finished her inspection of Dolley’s hooves and walked her out of the barn. “We don’t go around demanding money from strange men,” she said, as she watched me hoist myself up.

“This is an exception,” I said.

“Well, then we shouldn’t make exceptions,” Norma replied, and trudged off to pump water for the chickens.

 

THE KAUFMAN SILK DYEING COMPANY sat along the railroad tracks among a string of other dyers, warpers, and winders, bleach works, jacquard card cutters, and suppliers of dyestuffs and intermediates—all housed in low brick buildings that turned their backs to the street. The windows sat high enough off the ground to prevent anyone from looking in, but I could hear the sounds of industry from within: the clattering of machines, the sloshing of dye in tubs, and voices calling to one another in German, Italian, French, Polish—every language but English.

Delivery wagons had worn deep ruts in the street. Dolley picked her way around them, and I watched the small signs stenciled across the metal doors at each factory until we came to Henry Kaufman’s. I heaved myself out of the saddle without any finesse and lashed Dolley to a post. She tossed her head and snorted to let me know she was happy to see me go.

Inside, the coppery sulfuric stench of the dyes hit me with such force that I had to close my eyes and grope blindly for a handkerchief. I coughed and choked and fought the urge to take a deep breath, not wanting to draw any more of it into my lungs. I couldn’t swallow and my vision was so clouded with tears that I could hardly make out the dim figures around me. I almost backed out the door and went home.

Finally I composed myself and saw that I was standing at the edge of a factory floor, looking down a row of enormous troughs, with two or three men attending to each of them. Steam rose up from the troughs and floated to the broad wooden beams overhead. The dye lay in bright pools at the workers’ feet, and to protect their feet they wore wooden clogs stained in shades of deep midnight blue and a bright pink the color of peppermint candy. Everywhere the dye met another color it turned a blackish gray. It took two men to hoist the skeins of silk out of the troughs on their metal poles, and when they did, the dye ran down their arms and into their shirtsleeves. A troupe of girls and young boys pushed brooms around the edges of the room, sloshing the runoff into drains, and a few of them wheeled carts piled high with raw silk. Off to one side, a row of wringers were in constant motion, clattering and groaning as the workers fed the wet skeins through them.

A few men looked up at me through the steam but no one said anything. To my right was a long, windowed wall dividing the office from the factory floor. I lifted my skirt and walked over to try the door but it was locked. Through one of the windows, a secretary looked up from her desk and seemed to be considering what to do with me. Finally she rose and led me in.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “I’m here to see Mr. Henry Kaufman.”

She ushered me through the door and closed it quickly behind us, which seemed to have more to do with keeping the malicious odor out than an eagerness to invite me in.

“Your name?” She spoke with a brisk efficiency. She wore a smartly tailored navy suit with a long plain skirt and a trim jacket, and her hair was tied in a tight bun. After resuming her post behind the desk, she looked at me over the top of delicate gold spectacles and waited for me to explain myself.

I said my name and told her that I had come to deliver an invoice for damages to our buggy. She held her hand out as if she was in the habit of receiving such invoices daily. I gave it to her and she laid it across her blotter, smoothed the folds, and read it slowly. Then she looked up at me with an expression that I could not read. It might have been sorrow or shock or deep skepticism.

“Henry did this,” she said, mostly to herself.

“He claimed that our horse ran in front of him, but everyone along Market saw the accident, and he is most certainly the one who ran into us.”

She waved her hand to silence me. “I don’t doubt your story. Are you sure this took place on the fourteenth?”

She glanced up at me and I nodded.

With a sigh she handed the letter back to me. “He was supposed to meet with our banker. He told me a tire burst.”

She dropped her head into her hands and muttered something I couldn’t hear.

“Forgive me for saying—”

“Oh,” she interrupted, “you’re forgiven. What is it?”

“With the company he was keeping, I don’t believe he was on his way to visit a banker.”

She gave another long, aggrieved exhalation and pushed herself to her feet. “Have you any brothers, Miss Kopp?”

“Just one,” I said.

“Is yours as much trouble as mine?”

“Henry Kaufman is your brother?” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought you were the secretary.”

“I am, according to the letterhead. Marion Garfinkel. My husband’s Ed Garfinkel. We’re in town from Pittsburgh to try to sort out the mess Henry’s made of our factory.” Before I could say another word, she turned and yelled in the direction of a closed door across the room.

“Henry!”

In addition to her desk, there were three others, all occupied by young women working at typewriters and ledger books. The girls ducked down when she shouted. The door didn’t open.

Through gritted teeth she muttered, “If he ignores me one more time—” and marched over to his office. Without turning around to look at me again, she called, “Stay there.”

She rapped at the door and rattled the knob. When it didn’t open, she fumbled around for a ring of keys at her waist and let herself in. “Henry, there’s a girl out here who says—” Then the door slammed behind her, and I heard nothing but muffled shouting.

I fidgeted with my handbag and tried to ignore the curious glances of the other girls. Dolley had been waiting unattended long enough, and I just wanted to hand him my invoice and leave. The shouting had ceased from inside Henry Kaufman’s office. I picked up my letter from Mrs. Garfinkel’s desk and crossed the room, giving the door a quiet knock.

It swung open. Marion appeared to be on her way out, but she stepped aside and swept her arm into the room, inviting me to enter, her lips pinched together in a kind of forced smile.

“My brother doesn’t recall the incident,” she said crisply.

“But I—”

“Tell him yourself, then.”

I had the uneasy feeling that I was being sent in to prove a point, although I couldn’t imagine what that point might be. I took one hesitant step inside and Marion slammed the door behind me. I could hear her shoes clicking across the floor as she hurried to her station.

Behind an enormous oak desk sat Henry Kaufman in yet another elegant suit, his hair slicked back the way men wore it if they were going out for the evening. But with that round, soft face, he looked more like a child trying to dress like his father. He couldn’t have been much younger than me—thirty, perhaps—but he had the pampered manner of a boy who had been too long at boarding school. He would’ve seemed entirely harmless if there hadn’t been a cold distance in his eyes and an angry set to his mouth. Here in this factory, he seemed like a man who didn’t want what he had, but also didn’t have exactly what he wanted.

And in leather chairs all around the room were his friends, his unsavory, no-good friends. There was the droopy-eyed man with the wooden leg, slumped over in a brown suit that was two sizes too big for him, and a beefy character with arms like stovepipes and the broadest set of chins I’d ever seen. The rest were lean and angular types who each seemed to have lost something in a fight: one lacked a third finger on his left hand, one was missing a patch of hair above his ear, and another wore a milky glass eye. They all held cards in their hands, and a bottle of whiskey sat on the table between them.

I wanted out of that room.

“Oh, you’re the one,” Henry Kaufman said. “She came in here talking about a girl wanting money and I told her it could have been half of New Jersey.”

The other men snickered and drew on their cigarettes.

I stood a little straighter and looked down at him with what I hoped was a calm and dignified air. “Then you remember me. I am Constance Kopp, and—”

“And these are your sisters,” he sneered. “Or haven’t you brought them along? Who is the youngest one? Fleurette?”

I felt a little sick when he said her name. “We haven’t had a reply to our letters,” I said, “so I’ve brought you another one. You owe us fifty dollars for the damages to our buggy, and I will take payment now.”

He didn’t accept the letter I held out for him, so I stepped forward and dropped it on his desk.

“I’ll just speak to your father about this,” he said. “Is his business here in Paterson? Or does he . . .” He picked up the envelope and examined our return address. “Or does he work on your farm in Wyckoff?”

He had our address. I should have asked him to make payment at our bank. In spite of the heat, I went very cold.

“You live on Sicomac Road? Down by the dairy?”

He came around the desk and stood right in front of me, easing his shoulder between me and the doorway, drawing a low whistle from one of the men. Henry Kaufman may have been a head shorter than me, but he was stout and powerfully built. He smelled of whiskey, and again of hair tonic and his own factory.

“I’m sure I can find it,” he said in a low voice. “When I get there, tell me, through which window may I find Miss Fleurette’s bedroom?”

He looked over at his friends and they laughed. There was a roar in my ears and suddenly he was very small and far away. I grabbed his shoulders and threw him against the wall, hard enough that the back of his skull cracked the plaster.

“Don’t you dare,” I said. I’d gathered his lapels up in my fists without realizing I’d done it. From the corner of my eye, I could see the other men rising to their feet.

A thin trickle of blood smeared the wall. There was a shuffle behind me and I could feel someone breathing over my shoulder.

“If you’d like to pick a fight with a man your own size,” he said quietly, “I’ll send one over.”

My hands flew away from him as if they’d touched a hot pan. Before the other men could get hold of me I was out the door and running past the secretaries. Marion rose from her desk and called out to me, but I didn’t answer.

I pushed the door open and fell out onto the factory floor, running straight into a slender red-haired girl carrying a steaming tray of fabric. She dropped the tray and emerald-green dye ran down the front of her apron. We slid around in a puddle of it, and then someone shouted in Polish and the girl grabbed my arm to stay upright, but I shook her off and ran for the door without once looking back.

Outside, I grabbed Dolley’s bridle and dragged her a few blocks away before stopping to catch my breath. My palms were slick with sweat and my head floated away from my neck like a balloon tethered by a string. Little pinpricks of light swam in front of me. I swallowed to push down the bile rising up in my throat, and then forced myself to focus on the shop across the street, a place called Gurney’s that sold boilers and ranges. “WE MAKE IT HOT FOR YOU” read the sign in the window, next to another sign announcing that the shop was closed for vacation because Paterson was hot enough already.

An engine rattled around the corner and I pulled Dolley toward me. Would they come after me? I held my breath and waited, but the machine rumbled past and its driver didn’t even turn to look at me.

I tried to imagine how I would tell Norma and Fleurette what had happened.

He said your name, I would say to Fleurette. He asked about your bedroom.

And to Norma: He said he wanted to speak to our father.

I could still feel the men in that room coming up behind me and a hand reaching for my shoulder.