THERE NOW, THERE NOW,” THE MAN SAID, STROKING RACHEL’S back. He drew out a handkerchief and pressed it into her hand. Rachel stepped back and blew her nose. The handkerchief smelled of dust but was stiff and new, as if it had just been pulled from inventory.
“You wouldn’t by any chance be Rachel, would you?”
“Papa, you remember me!” Rachel felt she was in a reunion scene from a movie, ecstatic actors with exaggerated smiles.
“Not so fast. I’m not your papa. Your papa, Harry, he’s my brother. I’m your uncle. And I wouldn’t have known you, except your brother showed up here out of nowhere in the spring, and he’s talked about his sister, so’s I figured that’s who you must be.”
Rachel blinked. Like film caught in a projector, the magic of the moment melted away. “My uncle?”
“That’s right, Uncle Max. Your brother’s up at the Silver Queen with Saul—that’s my son, your cousin.” Max pulled a watch from his pocket and opened it. “They’ll be back anytime now. I was just putting their supper on the table. Come on back.” He picked up her case and receded down the aisle.
The rapid shift in emotions left Rachel dazed. For a moment she’d thought she was in her father’s arms. Now it turned out she had an uncle and a cousin—family she’d never heard of before. As if wading through an undertow, she followed Max through the store to a doorway hung with a curtain. Beyond, there was a small kitchen—sink, icebox, Hoosier cabinet. In the corner, a stew pot simmered on an old cast-iron stove. Three plates were set out on the table, with a loaf of bread and a pitcher of iced tea in the center.
“Sit yourself down.” Max pulled out a chair for Rachel, then sat across from her. “Are you hungry?”
Rachel shook her head. Though it had been a long time since breakfast with the Cohens, she was in no mood to eat. Her mind was a jumble of questions; she asked the first one that surfaced. “What’s a Silver Queen?”
Max laughed. “The Silver Queen. It’s a mine, most famous one in Leadville. When Sam showed up, Saul was already working at the Silver Queen, so he got your brother a job there, too. Been talk in town of them shutting down operations for the winter. Not that they can’t mine any season of the year. Once you’re down there the weather don’t matter. Silver market’s gone bust is what it is.”
Rachel was relieved when Max stopped talking to pour himself some tea. It was all so much to take in. He gestured with the pitcher. “Thirsty?”
“Yes, please.”
“Here you go.” Max filled a glass and pushed it toward her. “Better?”
“Yes, thank you, Uncle Max,” she said, trying out the phrase.
Max waved away her thanks. “Why’d you think I was Harry back there?”
“Sam wrote me from here, to let me know he was safe. He didn’t tell me about you or Saul. But when I saw Rabinowitz Dry Goods on the envelope, I thought maybe it was our father.” Rachel dropped her head. “All the days on the train, I hoped it was.”
Max was incredulous. “You hoped your father was here? After what he done to you kids?” Before Rachel could respond, Max had another question that bothered him more. “Where’d you get money for the train from New York? Did Sam send it to you?”
Rachel’s eyes drifted upward. Overhead, an electric bulb dangled from a cord in the ceiling. She’d thought about the question, expecting Sam to ask. She couldn’t admit to her theft, but now that she knew how much a ticket cost, he’d never believe she came by that much money honestly. She’d planned to say she had met the Cohens in New York and come to Denver with them, but it was a story she hadn’t yet rehearsed. She was so long answering, Max took her silence for assent. “I thought as much.” He polished his glasses on his shirttail then settled them back on his nose, magnifying his watery eyes. “Well then, let me get a look at you. Take off your hat.”
Rachel froze. She’d had the cloche hat on her head every waking minute since she’d run away from the Home.
“Now, don’t be shy. Sam told me about your hair and all. From some medical condition, isn’t it? Never mind about that. I just want to see my only niece.”
Rachel took off the hat and placed it on her lap. Max appraised her like a piece of inventory he was trying to price. “Not so bad. I heard Hasidic women shave their heads when they get married, to make themselves ugly to anyone but their husbands.”
Rachel lowered her face and hunched her shoulders. Ugly. The word rang in her ears, blotting out the jingle of the bell.
“That’ll be the boys now,” Max said. “Lock it up behind ya’all!”
“Already did!”
Rachel recognized Sam’s voice. She stood so quickly the hat rolled to the floor. She reached for it, then heard footfalls closing in. She straightened, not wanting to be doubled over when Sam first saw her. The curtain was swept back. Her brother stopped in the doorway so suddenly his cousin ran into him from behind, pushing him into the table and jostling the pitcher.
“Rachel? What the hell are you doing here?”
Sam looked taller, older, though it was only six months since he’d run away. Thinking of the last time she saw him, all the events of the Purim Dance rushed into Rachel’s mind. Sourness gagged her mouth and her bottom lip quivered. A sound like a bad trumpet note escaped her throat as she felt her knees weaken. Sam stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her. Rachel felt the grit of silver dust on his skin.
“Don’t now, Rachel, don’t.”
“She arrived sooner than you expected, is that it?” Max said. Sam looked at him, as baffled by his uncle’s words as by the anger in his voice. “Come on, son. Let’s take a walk around the block, leave these two to their reunion.”
After the door’s jingle assured them they were alone, Sam settled Rachel in a chair. He leaned over for the hat and set it on her head. “Better now?” he asked. She nodded. He pulled a chair close to hers so their knees touched.
“How did you get out here? How did you even know where I was?”
Rachel explained about the envelope, then told the story she hadn’t managed to spin for her uncle. “I didn’t have a plan when I ran away, I just went to Penn Station to find out what the train would cost when I met this nice family,” she began, ending with, “Mrs. Cohen even bought me the ticket for the Mail to Leadville. But Max thinks you sent me the money. I didn’t say you did, but I didn’t have a chance to tell him you didn’t.”
Sam sat back, taking in his sister’s story. Finally he said, “Well, I’m glad you got out here safe. It is good to see you.” He smiled and squeezed her hand. His kindness drew out the question Rachel had been suppressing ever since he ran away.
“How could you leave me like that?” She cringed at the petulance in her own voice. Why was everything about this day the opposite of what she had imagined it would be?
“God damn it, Rachel, I didn’t want to leave you, I had to leave that place. I had to get out.”
“But why not take me with you?”
“I couldn’t take a girl along. Mrs. Berger, she looked in our file for me, saw there was a note from an uncle in Colorado asking whatever happened to us, but it was from years ago. I didn’t know if he’d still be out here, but I didn’t have anyplace else better to aim for. They put a few dollars in my pocket, sure, but it wasn’t near enough for a train ticket. I hopped a freight for Chicago, saved my cash. Didn’t know how long I’d need it to last. Turns out, it didn’t last longer than two days.”
Sam pulled a pouch of tobacco from his shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette. His hands were blistered, his nails black crescents. At the Home, Rachel thought, he’d have gotten a standing lesson for hands that filthy. He struck a match on the bottom of his boot. Smoke curled around the hanging lightbulb.
“I got rolled on the freight car before it reached Illinois, robbed of everything. I had to fight to keep my shoes. By the time I got to Leadville, it was a week since I had a decent meal. I was in rough shape, I’ll tell you that.” Sam drew deeply on the cigarette. Rachel remembered the luxury of the Pullman and felt nearly as guilty as she did about stealing from Naomi.
“So, Max thinks I sent you the money to come out here? Let’s let him keep on believing that. It’ll get him off my back for a while if he thinks I’m too broke to make a move.”
“What kind of move?”
“I’m saving every cent I earn to get out of this place before winter hits.”
“But where else would we go? Shouldn’t we stay here, with our family?” On the back of her tongue, Rachel tasted jam stirred into a cup of tea. “Maybe we should try to find Papa.”
Sam snorted. “Why the hell would you want to find him?”
Rachel was beginning to think everyone else knew something about her father that she didn’t. She wanted to ask Sam what it was, but he had started talking again.
“Max has been decent enough, and Saul’s a good fella, but there’s nothing for me here. Max says business has been real bad since the last crash. All his money’s tied up in inventory and nothing’s moving. Once the Silver Queen lets the summer workers go, I’ll just be dead weight around here. And now I gotta carry you, too.”
The door jingled. Max and Saul clomped through the shop, intentionally heavy footed, and came into the kitchen. Saul took his place at the table and Max brought over the stew pot. The boys could no longer hold off their hunger after a day’s work in the mine. While Sam and Saul shoveled in stew, Max prevailed on Rachel to take a few bites. The lumps of meat looked unappealing, but she found that she, too, was starving.
In between bites, Saul filled the room with talk about Sadie, the girl he was engaged to. He didn’t look much like her brother, Rachel observed, but when he spoke, his mouth and ears moved in just the same way. It made her like him. “Sadie moved out to Colorado Springs with her folks last spring, but they’re all coming back in November for the wedding.” He looked at his father, who busied himself with some dishes in the sink. “Sadie’s father started up a factory, he’s got a job lined up for me and everything. I told my dad a million times he oughta sell this place, come out to Colorado Springs, too, but he’s too stubborn to budge. Can’t tell you how glad I was when Sam showed up, and now with you here, too, Rachel, I know my dad’ll have all the help he needs. You can work in the shop and Sam can make the deliveries.”
“You got it all figured out, don’t you, son?” Max said over his shoulder.
It sounded perfect to Rachel, but her brother scowled, muttering under his breath, “What deliveries?”
After dinner, they made an occasion of Rachel’s arrival with a few hands of cards while they listened to the radio. There were only two bedrooms on the second floor—the rest of the space was unfinished storage—so Max suggested Rachel sleep in the kitchen, where she could have some privacy washing up at the sink after all the men had gone upstairs. “Which is where I’m heading right now,” Max announced. “Come on, son.” He opened a door that Rachel had assumed was a pantry, revealing a steep back staircase. “Your brother’ll get whatever you need. Good night, niece.”
“Good night, uncle. Good night, cousin.” The familial words felt novel in Rachel’s mouth.
Sam rummaged around in the store and came back carrying a bedroll and a cot, which he set up for her. “You’ll need this,” he said, shaking the dust off a camping blanket. “As high up as we are, it gets cold at night, even in summer.” Rachel curled up under the itchy wool, realizing how exhausted she was.
“Good night, Sam.” She reached out and squeezed his hand.
“Good night, Rachel.” Sam switched off the swinging bulb, plunging the room into darkness.
AFTER BREAKFAST, SAM and Saul left for the Silver Queen, their packed lunches in a pail. Rachel cleaned up after them, then wandered into the shop and asked her uncle what else she could do.
“I need an inventory,” he said. “I haven’t had to order much lately, just replacing the things I sell: soaps and thread and whatnot. It’s been a while since I had a clear idea of what all’s in here. Think you can do that for me, Rachel?”
She scanned the crowded aisles, the sagging shelves. “I can do that, Uncle Max. Do you have a ledger started?”
“Somewhere around here.” Max went to find it. Rachel decided to work from top to bottom, so at least the dust would sift down to the floor and she could sweep it up at the end of each day. She climbed up a stepladder to start with the jumbled pile of goods on the highest shelf. Max hurried over to steady her, his hand lingering on her hip. “Here you go,” he said, handing up the dusty ledger. While she took inventory, her uncle hovered nearby, his hands quick to close around her waist whenever she had to climb up or down.
Max could have done the inventory himself in as much time as he spent talking to her, but Rachel didn’t mind. She liked handling the stock, dusting off items, comparing her count to the numbers scrawled in Max’s book. She’d never seen most of the things he carried in the store, didn’t know what half of them were for. Cooking, building, camping, hunting, fishing, mining—all were pursuits strange to her. No matter how foreign the items in her hand, it satisfied her to sort, stack, and put them in order.
“I came out west when I was about your age, Rachel. How old are you again?” She told him she’d just turned fifteen. “Fifteen, that’s right. Back in my day, you were a man already by fifteen, and plenty of girls were mothers, too. Harry, your father, he was still in knee pants when I took my chances and came out here. Spent every cent I’d managed to save on an order of coats and dragged them as far west as I could get. Sold them for five times what I paid. For years I went back and forth until I set up shop here permanent. Married Saul’s mother, may she rest in peace.” He polished his glasses on his shirttail. “Back in the 1890s, I tell you, Leadville was the place to be.”
When Max said it was time to put a stew on, Rachel followed him into the kitchen, but she was of no help at the stove. In the Home, she had been served thousands of meals but had never so much as seen an egg cracked. “Oh well, cooking isn’t everything in a woman,” Max said, stroking her hand. “I’ve learned to fend for myself since Saul’s mother passed. There’s other things you can do for us, isn’t that right, Rachel?”
The boys came home with the fading light, dusty from the mine, starving for supper. After the meal, Rachel cleaned up while the men smoked and listened to the radio, too tired for cards. Then it was night, and the cot, and the sound of her brother’s footsteps on the floorboards above her head.
The next day was Saturday, and though the boys had to work, Max took Rachel to meet the rabbi. On the walk to the synagogue and back, he showed her the town. It wasn’t much to take in. Every family or business worth a brick building was on Harrison. Cross streets petered out within a block or two, wood-frame houses giving way to shacks, rutted roads devolving into dirt tracks that narrowed to mule trails into the mountains. Sunday brought Mr. Lesser, Max’s Denver supplier, in his hiccupping delivery truck. After taking a few minutes to unload the truck, the two men sat for an hour around the kitchen table, sharing news and sandwiches and lazy cigars. From what Rachel could see, the visit was more nostalgia than commerce, the small order for Rabinowitz Dry Goods hardly worth a weekly drive.
IN THE COMING weeks, women patronized the store more frequently now that this new young woman could quickly hand them those knitting needles or that spool of Carlisle ribbon that Max was never able to find. One day Rachel was surprised to see Max tear September from the calendar on the wall. The month had gone by so easily, the routine of shop and family absorbing her as if she’d always had a part to play.
Before she knew it, Saul’s wedding was around the corner. “I’ll be leaving with Sadie and her parents after,” Saul said one night at dinner, glanced over at his father by the stove, then smiled warmly at Rachel. “I’m so glad you’ve come. Dad’s happy for your company. Aren’t you, Dad?”
“Aren’t I what?” Max asked.
“Glad to have someone who’ll listen to your stories all day long?”
“That I am, son, that I am.” Max’s look at Rachel was so penetrating she blushed.
Sam, embarrassed for his sister, cleared his throat. “Talk’s starting to go around town of a big project, an Ice Palace to attract tourists out from Denver. They claim it’ll put Leadville back on the map.” The men took up the topic, Max optimistic about the jobs it would bring after the mine shut down for the season. It sounded exciting to Rachel, but her brother was unconvinced. “Who the hell’s gonna come out here in the dead of winter to see a house made of ice?”
Sadie and her parents were expected a couple of days before the wedding. Max enlisted Rachel’s help in cleaning out the upstairs rooms and rearranging the beds. “They’re only having the wedding out here because it’s cheaper,” Max complained. “If they had it in Colorado Springs, Nathan, that’s Sadie’s father, he’d have to invite the whole synagogue. He always was a penny-pincher. Won’t even stay in the hotel while they’re in town. So, we’ll put Nathan in here with me and Saul. Sadie and her mother, Goldie, they can share the other room. Sam’ll have to bunk down in the kitchen with you. You won’t mind, will you, Rachel?”
Rachel smiled. “I won’t mind at all, Uncle.”
The wedding party arrived on the last day of October, and Rachel was swept up into the preparations. That evening, everyone gathered around the kitchen table for a simple supper of cold cuts and smuggled bottles of wine set aside before Prohibition. The men debated the consequences of Tuesday’s stock market crash in New York while the women talked of veils and flowers. Nathan called for a toast, and Rachel joined in, seeing rainbows in her wineglass where it caught the light. By the time everyone else went upstairs, Rachel’s head ached and her stomach gurgled from the unaccustomed alcohol. She lay down gingerly while Sam unfolded a second cot for himself alongside hers. In the darkness, he lit a cigarette and smoked it dreamily. The wine had made him nostalgic.
“Do you remember how we used to sleep in the kitchen, under the table?”
Rachel searched her mind. There was the dark underside of a table, the scrape of a chair, someone’s untied shoelaces. “I remember, Sam.”
He pinched out the cigarette and dropped it to the floor. He reached across the space between their cots and found his sister’s hand. Their fingers intertwined. Soon Sam started snoring. Rachel stayed awake as long as she could, savoring the beating of her heart.
RACHEL WOKE TO find her brother’s cot empty. She supposed he’d gone to work earlier than usual. The shop was busy that day with old friends dropping by to visit with Nathan and Goldie. In the afternoon, Sadie and Saul had to go to the synagogue. “The rabbi wants to give us the marriage talk,” Sadie whispered to Rachel. Max announced that he would go along with them. Goldie took the opportunity to go upstairs for a nap. Nathan went out for a walk. Rachel, alone in the store, wandered the aisles, handling the familiar goods, imagining her life here with her brother and uncle after their cousin was married and gone.
Sam came home dusted with silver. “Good thing for Saul he quit yesterday, cause they would’ve fired him today anyway,” he said while he washed up at the kitchen sink. “Bunch of us got canned. They’re closing the shaft early, cause of that business with the stock market.”
“It’ll be all right, Sam, we’ll just work for Uncle Max. Or maybe you can work on that Ice Palace.”
“You think I want to stay in this dump? Look around you! Rabinowitz Dry Goods is a joke. If Max didn’t own the building, he’d be out on the street, broke. There’s no future for me here.”
“But, Sam, he’s family. He’s Papa’s brother. He wants to take care of us.”
Sam snorted. “You, maybe. He’s taken a shine to you. But me? If I’m not earning a living, I’m just dead weight around here. Only reason he’s been off my back about money is cause he thinks I sent all my savings out to you. Just see what happens when I tell him I’m out of a job.”
“He’s not like that. And anyway, where else would we go?” She added, softly, “If only we knew where Papa was.”
Sam’s face twisted like he’d eaten something spoiled. “Why do you keep bringing that up?”
Since she’d mistaken Max for her father, Rachel hadn’t been able to shake the idea of finding him. She wanted to ask Sam, now, why he got so angry whenever she mentioned Papa. Sure, she’d say, it was terrible how he left them, but it wasn’t his fault, was it? He hadn’t wanted to, Rachel was sure of that. He was afraid of the police was all, that they would never believe it was an accident.
Before Rachel could say anything, the store’s bell sounded a succession of returns: Saul and Sadie, followed by Max, and a few minutes later, Nathan. The noise brought Goldie down as well. In the rush of talk, there were no more private words between Rachel and Sam.
“We’re headed out to the Golden Nugget,” Max announced later. “Going to send my son off in style. You haven’t forgotten about the back room at the Nugget, have you, Nate?”
“I haven’t forgotten how much you hate to stand for a round, Max.”
“Don’t get yourselves arrested for drinking,” Goldie warned. “We’ve got a wedding tomorrow.”
“Leadville’s sheriff has never been persuaded that enforcing Prohibition’s exactly his job,” Max assured her. “Better worry about the groom being able to stand up straight at the ceremony.”
Rachel watched her brother hustle out of the store, so much unsettled between them.
“Mom, what do you say we take in the show at the Tabor?” Sadie said. “Everything’s ready for tomorrow.”
Goldie looked wistful. “It’s been a long time since I looked down on that stage. And it’s a variety tonight, not one of those foreign operas Baby Jane used to bring in to impress the Guggenheims. Sure, let’s us girls go to the opera house. Rachel, that means you, too. It’ll be my present.”
Outside, frost dusted the sidewalks. Despite the cold, the women didn’t put coats over their dresses, the theater being just next door. The show had already begun, but there were plenty of seats available. Goldie, wanting to avoid the raucous miners on the main floor, led Sadie and Rachel up to the third tier and through a curtained doorway. Space sank away in front of them. Rachel reached for the railing to steady herself. Goldie guided her along the front row, settling Rachel into a seat so oblique to the stage she could see into the wings.
The Tabor boasted of being the finest opera house west of the Mississippi; Rachel had certainly never been anywhere so grand. That this elegance was on the same block as her uncle’s dusty shop astonished her. Gas jets flickered around the tiers and lit the stage, on which a magician was combining and separating solid brass hoops. Each flourish and clink of the hoops sent the violins in the pit scurrying. Rachel wanted to ask how such a thing was possible, but Goldie was busy whispering that she’d known old Horace Tabor personally, back before the silver crash devastated his fortune. Sadie whispered back that Saul had once delivered goods from the store to his widow, Baby Jane, who lived like a hermit up at Tabor’s spent mine, getting battier with each long winter.
Rachel tilted her head to see who was waiting to take the stage next. Half hidden in darkness stood a regal woman in purple velvet whose neckline glittered in the gaslight. A final flourish, a flutter of doves, and a round of applause marked the end of the magician’s act. Dramatically wrapping himself in his cape, he stalked offstage. The hot spotlight swung over to the opposite wing, pushing back the darkness. The regal woman stepped out as the master of ceremonies announced, “From the greatest stages of Europe where she has performed for royalty, Madame Hildebrand!”
The orchestra struck up an aria as Madame Hildebrand proceeded to play her part as the culture of the program. The emotion of her brows and lips exaggerated by stage makeup, she flung soprano notes over the heads of her audience. Rachel’s gaze followed the woman as she strutted across the boards, but she wasn’t listening to the song. It was the woman’s hair that her eyes devoured. It was the same smoldering garnet as the braid hidden in the bottom of Rachel’s cardboard case.
She had almost forgotten about it. But there it was, Amelia’s hair on this woman’s head. Perhaps she was Amelia’s true mother, not dead but run away, like Rachel’s father. The possibility spun in her mind until the aria ended and applause cleared the notes from the air. The soprano bowed and backed into the wing from which she had come, the spot following her. Rachel leaned over to watch her exit. Hidden from the orchestra seats by a side curtain, the soprano paused, her shoulders rounding. She reached for something in her hair—a pin or ornament? But no, she crooked her finger under the brow of her hair and lifted it off her head. The spot shifted across the boards to pick up the next performer just as the soprano removed her wig.
Rachel was jittering with excitement. “Excuse me, please, I’m feeling dizzy.” Sadie and Goldie stood to let her pass. “I just need some fresh air.”
Rachel ran down the stairs to the lobby of the opera house, then looked around for some way backstage. There wasn’t one. She went out front and around the corner. In back, a truck was pulled up to the open stage door, ready to be loaded after the performance. Rachel ducked past the dozing driver. Inside, she could hear the muffled laughter of the audience as she negotiated the backstage maze. A woman pushing a rack of costumes pointed when Rachel asked where she might find Madame Hildebrand. She peered through a partly opened door. There was the soprano in a dressing gown, seated before a mirror and touching up her greasepaint. Thin brown hair streaked with gray was plastered to her skull. Next to her on a wig form was the hair so like Amelia’s.
Rachel’s eyes met Madame’s in the mirror. “Don’t just stand there, child. Come in.” Rachel slunk into the dressing room. “What do you want? An autograph?”
“The wig you were wearing. . . .” The words dried up in her mouth.
“What about it?”
Rachel pulled the cloche hat from her head, letting the bald scalp speak her desire.
Madame turned to look kindly at Rachel, her heavy jewelry peeking out from the dressing gown. “Come here.” Rachel took a step closer. “Which one do you want to try on?”
Rachel realized then that the red wig was not alone. Beside the one she’d seen onstage were two more: one with a cascading mass of black curls, another with golden braids so long they circled the neck like a noose. None was rough and dead-looking like the wig they’d given her at the Home.
“This one would match your coloring,” Madame said, gesturing to the dark hair. “I wear that when I sing Carmen.”
But Rachel stepped closer to the red wig, reaching out to stroke a crackling curl. “May I try this one?”
Madame smiled. “Yes, this one is special. Somehow it always puts me in the mood for Mozart. Come, sit.” She rose and offered Rachel her seat before the mirror. It reflected the naked oval of her face.
“Here.” Madame settled the wig gently on Rachel’s head, tugging under the ears until it settled in place. “It’s loose on you. Your head is smaller than mine. Mrs. Hong makes every wig custom for a perfect fit. There. What do you think?”
Rachel was overwhelmed by the sight of so much hair falling around her face. It was as if Amelia’s ghost had come to swallow her up. Then she remembered Amelia whispering to Marc Grossman, and she tasted bile. If anyone deserved to have the hair, it was Rachel.
“How does it feel?”
The wig was a bit loose, and the hair was heavy, but against her scalp it was soft, soothing, strangely alive. “It’s lovely. It doesn’t itch at all. The one they gave me when I was a girl, it itched so much I couldn’t wear it.”
“Wool lining, probably, and sometimes they use hair from horses’ tails. Mrs. Hong’s girls crochet the lining from silk, and of course she uses only human hair.”
Without taking her eyes off of her reflection, Rachel asked, “Who is Mrs. Hong?”
“Only the best wig maker I’ve ever known. I get all of my wigs from Mrs. Hong’s House of Hair in Denver.”
Rachel’s eyes lingered on the image in the mirror. She ran her hand over her head, wrapping the hair around her neck. “What does it cost?”
“Oh, child, it’s nothing you could dream of, I’m afraid. Even I can only afford one a year.” Madame Hildebrand reached out for the wig. Rachel hunched her shoulders, edging away.
“What if I already had the hair?” she asked. When she had cut Amelia’s hair, her only motivation was revenge. She’d never known why her fist had closed around the braid, why she’d dragged it halfway across a continent. Now Rachel understood. The brown wig she’d worn to the Purim Dance had betrayed her with false promises of beauty, but a wig made from Amelia’s hair would do more than mask her ugliness. Such a wig would elevate Rachel to match its splendor.
Madame Hildebrand looked at Rachel’s greedy eyes in the mirror and pitied her. She thought this strange girl must have some hair wrapped in tissue paper, the strands thin and oily from whatever illness had left her bald. Scarlet fever could do that sometimes, she’d heard. “I’m sorry, dear. I can’t imagine what it would cost. I don’t even know where Mrs. Hong has her shop. She always comes to my dressing room at the Municipal Auditorium when I’m in Denver.”
The woman with the rack of costumes appeared at the door. “Ten minutes, Madame. I have your gypsy costume.”
“Excuse me, dear, I need to prepare for my next aria.”
Madame lifted the wig from Rachel’s head and settled it back on the form. Rachel’s scalp felt bereft. Resentfully, she put on the cloche hat, mumbled her thanks, and retraced her steps to the stage door. She stood in the cold as long as she could stand it, her breath misting the air.
Goldie and Sadie were in the lobby looking for Rachel when she entered. Sadie was too nervous about the next day to sit through another act, so they returned to the shop. They were upstairs arranging the wedding dress when they heard the men stumble in below. Going down to the kitchen, Rachel hoped for a chance to talk with her brother, but Sam flopped down on the cot and began snoring without even taking off his boots. Rachel undid the laces, pulled the boots from his feet, and covered him with a blanket.
Before crawling under her own covers, Rachel opened the cardboard case and brought out Amelia’s hair. She remembered the first time she had seen it, so abundant and beautiful it made Mrs. Berger love the girl it belonged to. The braid belonged to her now, and she imagined that someday, somehow, it would make her beloved, too.
AT THE WEDDING, Rachel took Sadie’s bouquet as the bride held out her hand for the modest gold band Saul pushed down her finger. Then the glass was smashed underfoot and shouts of mazel tov mixed with clapping. After the ceremony, the assembled Jews of Leadville lingered in the synagogue, offering the new couple kisses and handshakes and slipping them folded dollar bills. Max had told Rachel there used to be so many, the synagogue could barely contain them all; now they were lucky to have enough men for a minyan. Goldie and Nathan invited everyone to share in the wedding cake. As long as a bottle had been opened by the rabbi for religious purposes, they all enjoyed small glasses of wine.
Max sidled up to Rachel and took her elbow. “I’m wanting to ask you something. Would you come over here?” He led her to the far corner of the room, where two chairs had been pulled close together. When they sat, Max’s knees bumped into Rachel’s. He pulled out his shirttail to wipe his glasses.
“What is it, Uncle?” Rachel asked, her eyes following the circle of his silver hair from mustache to sideburn and around to the other side.
“I talked it over with the rabbi yesterday, and he advised me to talk to you plain and simple.” He cleared his throat. “So, here it is, Rachel. Could you ever think of me as something more than your uncle?”
She wasn’t sure what he was asking. Did he want to take the place of her father, to adopt her? Her expression prodded Max to explain himself.
“Sadie and Saul, they’re moving away today. My son, he’s going to start his own family now. And what am I left with, alone in my shop? Your brother, he’s a restless one. What if he leaves, tries his luck somewhere else?”
“Can’t he work for you, making deliveries, like Saul said?”
“I hardly got enough business to keep my own head above water. But you, Rachel. Since you came, it’s been good, working with you. How we talk when you take the inventory. That I need, someone in the shop, to help with the stock. And the lady customers, they like having a woman to deal with. But what will they say, a young woman and a grown man living together like that? You can’t sleep on a cot in the kitchen all winter. But if we were married, we could stay together, upstairs. I’d take care of you, Rachel, if I was your husband.”
Rachel’s heart cowered behind her ribs. She had to swallow, hard, before she could speak. “But you’re my uncle. You’re older than my father.”
“I’m not too old to be a husband, and a father.” He tilted his chin up. The sun, slanting through the synagogue windows, bounced off his glasses. “There’s lots of older men who get themselves a young wife. Rabbi says an older man is more understanding and patient. As for me being your uncle, it’s true, it’s not so usual here. But back in the old country this is what happened sometimes, to keep a family together. And the rabbi says he’ll bless the marriage.”
Rachel remained silent. Max had one more argument to make. “Maybe soon we’d start a family together. Wouldn’t you like that, Rachel, to have a baby all your own?”
Rachel’s stomach was curdling, but her mind ticked like a clockworks. It was revolting to contemplate marrying her uncle, but the prospect of refusing him made her realize how dependent she was on this man. She considered and rejected every option she could imagine. To buy herself time, she said simply, “Uncle Max, I don’t know what to say.”
“You think about it, Rachel. Maybe it’s a new idea for you, you have to get used to it. I’m also driving out to Colorado Springs this afternoon. I decided to give the bedroom suite from my own wedding to Saul and Sadie, so I’m going to take it in my truck. I thought maybe it’d be nice to get a new bed. For a fresh start?” Max closed his hand over her knee. “I won’t make it back tonight, so you don’t have to answer me until tomorrow.”
Rachel blinked. “Tomorrow?”
“I could wait until you turned sixteen to get married, if you want, so we’d just be engaged for now. But, well, I can’t have a young girl living in my shop unless there’s an understanding between us.” Max took her hand. He pulled her toward him and pressed his mouth against her lips. Beneath the hair of his mustache, Rachel could feel the hardness of his teeth followed by the damp tip of his tongue. A chill shivered through her as someone walked on her grave. Max pulled away. “Besides, where else can you go?”
Nathan’s voice carried above the murmur. “Time to go home.”
The word rang false in Rachel’s ear. Rabinowitz Dry Goods could only be her home if she let her uncle become her husband. Then it occurred to her—Sam would never stand for that. Once she told him, he would take her away. They would leave together, maybe find Papa, make a real family for themselves. A smile pulled at her mouth as she followed Max out of the synagogue. Rachel thought of that scene in the movies where a girl is tied to railroad tracks and the train is coming. She relished the certainty that Sam would save her.
“MAYBE IT’S FOR the best,” Sam said that night when Rachel told him about Max’s proposal. Everyone else had gone to Colorado Springs, the newlyweds in the back of Nathan’s sedan, Max following with his old bedroom furniture tied down in the truck. Sam was reclining on his cot in the kitchen, a lit cigarette between his lips.
Rachel couldn’t believe she heard him right. “He wants to marry me, our own uncle!”
“He said he’d wait till you were sixteen, didn’t he?” Sam stood and reached up to the top of the Hoover cabinet, taking down a small bottle. “Max’s medicinal brandy.” He pulled the cork with his teeth and took a swig. “Not bad. Not bad at all.” He stretched out on the cot again, alternating inhalations with sips of liquor.
Rachel was alarmed. “He’ll know you drank some.”
“I don’t care. You just pretend you don’t know anything about it, let him blame everything on me.”
Rachel sat beside her brother on the cot. “I’m not going to pretend anything. You’ve got to take me away from here, Sam.”
“You’re birthday’s what, nine months away? This could work for us, Rachel. You know I’ve been wanting to get out of here, and I saved up a lot, but not enough for both of us to get anywhere and have anything left once we got there. Besides, I want some adventure, after all those years being told what to do, those damn bells ringing every hour of the day.” Sam shook his head as if there were water in his ears. “Drove me crazy, those bells. But where the hell was I gonna go with you to worry about? Now I know he’ll take care of you, I can go.”
“But, Sam, it’s disgusting! You can’t leave me here, to that.”
“I’m not really gonna let him marry you, Rachel. By the time you’re sixteen, I’ll be settled somewhere, and I’ll send for you. Promise.” He gazed at the ceiling, already lost in his imaginary adventures.
Rachel watched the forgotten cigarette in her brother’s hand burn out. He was supposed to save her, not leave her behind with nothing more to cling to than the memory of his word.
“You promised you’d get me from the Infant Home, too.”
Sam bolted up. “I was just a little kid, Rachel. I couldn’t do anything about that. You want to blame someone, blame our damn father, the bastard, for turning us into orphans.”
“No, Sam, it wasn’t his fault, running away after Mama’s accident. He was just scared.” Rachel caught her brother’s hand. “I don’t really blame you, you know that. You can’t blame him, either.”
“I can’t blame him?” Sam pushed her aside and pounded up the stairs. He came back down a minute later with a knapsack. “You want to find our father so bad? Here!” He yanked out a crumpled envelope and threw it at Rachel. While she pulled out a tattered sheet of paper and smoothed it enough to read the writing, Sam aimed a barrage of words at her.
“Max wrote to our beloved Papa when I showed up here. He’s living in California if you want to go find him. The address is right there on the envelope. You know what he had to say to me when Max told him I ran away from the orphanage and came out here all on my own?”
Sam tore the letter from Rachel’s hands. “‘Dear Son,’” he read, his words slurred with anger. “‘Glad to hear you’re out in Leadville. I heard through Max you ended up in the Orphaned Hebrews Home. I knew they’d take good care of you and your sister, better than what I could have done. But now Max tells me you’re working in the mine. Maybe you could spare a few dollars to send my way? I’ve been sick lately. . . .’” Sam threw the letter on the floor. It drifted under the cot. Rachel got down on her hands and knees to retrieve it.
“Money! That’s what he wants from me, after all these years. Max says it’s always the same with him. He came out here, after Mama died. Stuck around leeching off Max until he finally ran him off. Max says to me, do what you want, but I’m not throwing good money after bad on my brother no more.”
Rachel was reading the words scrawled on the paper. Her own papa’s handwriting. “If he’s sick, Sam, we should help him. We should go to him.” It was as if the lies she told to the Cohens and the Abramses were coming true after all.
Sam lit a fresh cigarette, the flame reflected in his eyes. “Let him die if he’s so sick. I’m not sending him a penny from what I earned, chipping away underground. He left us, Rachel. We don’t owe him a thing.”
Rachel started to object, but Sam cut her off. “Look, you do what you want. You don’t trust me to send for you? Fine, then go on back to the Home.”
Rachel thought of the curled insole of Naomi’s shoe, of Amelia’s shorn hair. Shame washed over her. “I can’t go back there, Sam. Let me come with you, wherever you’re going.”
He shook his head. “I tried, Rachel, all those years, I tried to watch out for you. You don’t think I would’ve run away a long time ago if it wasn’t for you being in the Home? I can’t protect you anymore. I never could. I mean, look at you!” He flung his hand at the cloche hat. He intended only a gesture, but he knocked it from her head.
Rachel inhaled, as if stricken.
“Oh, Rachel, I’m sorry.” He stooped to retrieve it. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
She took the hat from him, held it on her lap. She sensed the glare of electric light on her smooth scalp. She lifted her chin and tried to hold Sam’s gaze, but he turned his attention to the floor. She recalled the way Sam’s eyes had slid away from her face, that first day in Reception, when she mistook Vic for her brother. All these years, she’d thought it was guilt that turned his head. Now she saw the truth—that he couldn’t stand the sight of her.
“You go ahead, Sam. I’ll stay here. Maybe I’ll go find Papa myself. Or maybe I’ll end up marrying Uncle Max after all.” To hurt him back, she said, “It couldn’t be worse than Marc Grossman.”
Blood rose into Sam’s cheeks, mottling his skin. “It won’t come to that, Rachel. I promise.”
The word was such a lie, Rachel switched off the light so she wouldn’t have to see her brother’s face.
If Rachel ever slept, she didn’t know it. She listened to Sam in the night, pilfering supplies from the shelves in the store. Knowing the inventory by heart, she could guess from the location and quality of the sound what he was taking: duffle, blanket, canteen, knife. He’d be gone by morning, of that she was sure. She turned over on her cot, covering her ears with the blanket. She heard a muffled jingle sometime before dawn.
In the morning, Rachel felt strangely numb as she adjusted the inventory ledger to cover her brother’s theft. She wandered silently through the building, picking up a piece of ribbon that had fallen from Sadie’s dress, peeking into Max’s dusty bedroom. For a while, Rachel couldn’t account for the novelty of it. Then she realized—she had never before in her life had a place entirely to herself. Sitting at the kitchen table, she read again her father’s letter, then spread out what was left of Naomi’s stolen money. It might be enough for a coach ticket to Sacramento, but she’d be arriving with nothing in her pockets to find a man she hadn’t seen in a dozen years. A man who was sick and needed money himself. A man who had left his children behind.
Rachel looked through to the store. She liked working there, talking with customers and organizing the goods. She even liked Max, just not for a husband. Maybe she would stay on awhile longer. Then she thought of Max’s tongue sliding across her teeth, his hands on her waist every time she climbed a ladder. He might say he’d wait until she was sixteen, but alone in the store, she wasn’t sure his word could be trusted.
In the quiet kitchen, Rachel realized she was homesick. Not for her brother and the father she could hardly remember, but for the dorms and dining hall and play yard of the Castle. She missed Nurse Dreyer. She missed Naomi. The money on the table, the braid in her case: they were a wall between her and the place that had been her home. She dropped her head onto her arms. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t go back. She would have to choose between her brother’s promises, her uncle’s proposal, or the uncertain prospect of her father.
She heard the whine of an engine. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she looked out the window and recognized Mr. Lesser’s truck. Of course, it was Sunday. Max hadn’t left an order, though. Mr. Lesser knocked on the kitchen door. Rachel tucked the money and her father’s letter in her pocket, then went to let him in. She could at least offer him lunch until Max returned. He’d come so far.
All the way from Denver.