Unexpected Gifts (12 page)

“Mark! He's practically married to Sonia, that's not cool,” Harry said, scoping Mike out carefully.

Mike laughed. “Not really.” Turning to Mark he added, “You have no idea how good it can be! Tail whenever we want it, man!” Exploding with laughter, he and Mark gave each other an expansive high five.

Back again, Mike was all over Sonia, nibbling on her ear, stroking her hair while she scouted the exit. There was Harry staring at her again. He gave a little salute before ducking out and she swore, in the dark, from a distance, he reminded her of Leroy after the Harlem Riots, slipping out of sight.

“Mom, Dad, I had the most amazing time the other night.”

“Yeah? What happened?” Sam quizzed.

“Well, I was invited by this new guy in my psych group, Harry, to come to a birthday party of an old childhood friend of his. Her name is Martha and she has cerebral palsy, and it was really beautiful the way he interacted with her.”

“So, who is this new guy? This Harry? And what about your other guy…” Sam asked.

“Mike?” Lily interjected.

“Yeah, Mike. No mention of him at all. Are we moving on already?” Sam snorted.

“He's just a friend, Dad!”

“Well, ladies, I'm off to bed. I feel like reading tonight…” Sam declared, ignoring Sonia and looking pointedly at his wife.

While her parents did their Help-Sam-to-Bed ritual, Sonia stayed in the living room. There was a battered copy of
The Best of Robert Frost Poems
on the coffee table, transporting her back to when she was very young, listening to Lily read each of his poems out loud, not really understanding, but just loving the sound of her mother's soft voice. Flipping through the pages, she stopped at
The Road Not Taken.

I remember this one she thought and started to read it out loud. Forks in the road…decisions…glad he took the one less traveled…that made all the difference…

“Hey, honey! Since when have you gotten into poetry?” Lily entered, looking pleased.

“Oh, I'm not. I just thought I'd read this while I was waiting.” Sonia quickly put the book back. “What road has Dad taken that he's glad about?”

Lily saddened. “Come on, Sonia. You know your father's not glad of anything.”

“But he's alive, isn't he? He has you, hasn't he?” She pictured Martha.

Lily looked away. “Let's go upstairs, okay?” She tried a smile, but it was more of a grimace and Sonia wasn't positive, but it seemed like the corner of Lily's right eye had moistened.

Rose's box was color-coordinated to the nth degree, with four slim journals in varying shades of pink. Both women laughed at that as Lily put several other objects on the inside trunk top: a framed, Rotary Club Best Business Man Of the Year, with Peter Hanson stretched across its middle, a White Plains house Bill of Sale, a reel-to-reel tape, rubber-banned with a folder marked “The People I Love.”

“Wow. Look at this award! I didn't know Grandpa did so well.”

Lily frowned. “Yeah, he did. Never mind that he was hardly there for me or my mother.”

There was a newspaper ad for a CAL-DAK folding table, a business letter from a Mrs. Smithen and an employment application with Bimmy Robinson on it.

Lily continued diving into the trunk, then held up a pair of pearl pop beads.

“I remember those from your childhood chapter! Wow! They do look kind of real. How about that?” Sonia laughed, immediately popping them apart in various places.

“Careful, careful,” Lily mused. Finally, she handed Sonia her mother's journals. “It doesn't have everything in it, of course, just her stuff, but you can get a sense of what I was up against.”

“Hey, Mom, what about Bimmy, Sadie, and Leroy?”

“Funny you should ask,” Lily replied, handing the reel-to-reel tape and folder combo over to her. “I interviewed them for a senior high school project, then years later, I worried the tape might disintegrate, so I had their words typed up for posterity, turning them into little personal stories instead.”

“Wow,” Sonia murmured.

“Yeah, I even inserted their narratives into your Grandma Rose's journals, so you can get the full flavor of the three women's lives. That's why you have all those attached sheets saying either
Bimmy's Story
or
Sadie's Story. ”

“Mom. You missed your calling. You should have been an editor!”

Lily was laughing when the hand-held monitor crackled loudly. “Lily! Lily! Get down here immediately!” Sam's cutting voice broke through.

“Scrambling, the women hustled, replacing the items in their special niches and trotting downstairs, with Sonia clutching her grandmother's materials in the crook of her arm.

Sam was fit to be tied. Something about having lost a special pen of his. An italicized
Billy R.
pen, his good friend had given him on one of their Post Vietnam visits. “One-of-a-kind!” he kept insisting as Lily used her soothing voice.

“We'll find it in the morning, Sam, I promise,” she coaxed. “It couldn't have walked away. We'll find it.” But he wasn't buying. The good times were over.

“This house is always a mess! Nothing is organized,” he ranted as Sonia eyed his overly tabulated room, the pill bottles and Depends lined up in strict formation.

Lily had already started stroking his back, doing her shushing thing and within seconds, Sonia could see his shoulders drooping by degrees, his tense cheek muscles softening, and with some pillow propping and gentle words, he closed his eyes and eased into a light snore.

The two women tiptoed out of his room and into the kitchen. “What was that all about, Mom?”

Lily drew a deep breath. “Sometimes he has bad nightmares, and with all the drugs he's taking, he gets disoriented, that's all. I know how to handle it.” But she looked sad and once again, Sonia thought of
The Road Not Taken.

She placed Rose's padded journals in her backpack and retreated to the front door. “Sorry, Mom. You don't deserve this, do you,” she said, giving Lily an extra big hug.

“Your father's behavior I can understand. Just read your grandmother's journals,” was her only comment.

“Never has a whole people spent so much money on so many expensive things in such an easy way as Americans are doing today.”
-
Fortune
magazine 1953

“We'll bury you!”
- Nikita Khrushchev 1956

Saturday turned out to be a magical day. Lily was sent off to her room with her own tray, and between twelve and one p.m., all you could hear were women gossiping about things that mattered. Who was wearing what at the Rotary Club that month, didn't Mamie look divine in her Sally Victor inauguration hat, and what school was your child attending out here in White Plains? Then Mrs. Smithen arrived with boxes upon boxes of Tupperware products.

We hung on her every movement as she carefully set up her array of Tupperware on top of my dining room table. Containers of every shape and size with their coordinated tops. Her voice was clear, confident, as she explained how these tubs were made out of polyethylene, by the DuPont Company.

“Remember, ladies,” she beamed, “the DuPont Company's motto is: Better Things for Better Living…through Chemistry…”

Naturally, we all applauded, but when she held up her index finger, you could hear a pin drop in the room. Her timing was impeccable. Just the right number of beats passed before she slowly, dramatically, locked down the lid of a round tub so that it made a small squoooosh sound, “to lock in flavor and lock out air.” And when the crowd echoed a collective
ooooooh
, she held up her finger again. Yes, she was a master show woman, well worth all the effort it had taken to get her to come to my home.

Well done, Rose! I remember thinking. Not just anyone can get a Tupperware presentation at their house. Mrs. Smithen consented to come to me, and now I can get my mystery present from old Mr. Tupper and more importantly, a signed certificate from Mr. Tupper's Number one Saleswoman, the great Mrs. Brownie Wise.

The prize was delivered a few weeks later. It included a beautifully wrapped Max Factor gift pack with a gracious note and certificate from Brownie herself. I floated on cloud nine for a couple of days, even though Sadie made fun of me, Peter rolled his eyes, and Lily tried to dive into my new cosmetics kit when I wasn't looking.

But I guess I got the last laugh. I ignored Sadie's snide comments, sent Lily off to bed without supper, and when Peter switched off his bedside lamp and whispered across the air space between our twin beds in that special Saturday night husky voice, “Rose, Rose, are you awake?” I pretended to be fast asleep.

Growing up in Harlem, Bimmy learned early about life—how hard it came for some, for others, a gift from Heaven. Like the time she was six years old, playing with her doll and out of nowhere, her mama loomed over her. “Go get the bagpipe, ‘chile, and do the floor—it's time yo’ learned,” she ordered, pointing to their vacuum cleaner.

Her Papa was there, trying to walk steady after goin’ ‘round a bender, with his “S'quze me, princess, while I make a ‘lil trip to da bank t’ make a deposit,” in front of her, her mama, and their neighbors, before wobbling to the communal toilet as her mama hung her head.

She soon realized how different she was from everybody else. As far as she was concerned, people sitting around, jawin' about how good Flapper Steaks were deep fried, or how George Johnson from down the hall and his bebop frames were looking so thick “you can't even see his eyes, the fool!” might serve as entertainment for them, but not for her.

“Dat girl got a dizzy dreambox on her shoulders an' don't you talk any of that gutter talk to her neither! It don't sit well with her,” her mama used to tell everyone, her voice thickened with pride for her erudite daughter. She might be strange to some folks, but, as her mama gloated, at least she was headed for higher places. At least
she
wasn't going to end up useless like her no-account-juicehead father, pissing away a fine job as an elevator operator at the Empire State Building as he drank himself into oblivion.

Of course Lily had to have her friend Debbie over that day. Of
all
days! I told them they had better entertain themselves because I needed to get some things done.

But when Lily put on that stupid
Gotta Whale of a Tale
song from
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
, I couldn't take it anymore and sent them outside to play, leaving plenty of time to make my vegetable jello mold, a Betty Crocker cake, and the Brown ‘n Serve rolls that Peter loved so much.

“Mommy, we're coming in now!” Lily yelled as I moved towards the living room.

Three steps in, I stopped, horrified. Damn that girl! I thought, looking down at the dirt they'd tracked in.

“Lily, come in here this
instant!
I called out, wondering why her friend looked so frightened after I had given Lily a spanking. And why her mother gave me the cold shoulder when she picked up her little girl.

Like her mother told Sadie on their wedding day, “Sadelah, hold onto this man, your David. He's a gemstone, in between the pebbles.”

So she complied. They went everywhere together; museums, art galleries, concerts, leisurely walks in Central Park, poetry readings at the Coffee and Confusion club in Greenwich Village, moonlit suppers on top of their apartment building on Bleecker Street.

She tended to brag to everyone all about David's photographic proclivities, but when a call from
Life
magazine, offering a well-paying assignment accompanying the 24
^th
Division near Pusan came, his face glowed, her heart stalled.

He drew her into his arms and held her close. “Look, this is just a tactical maneuver in Korea, no real war. Don't worry…I'll be home by Hannakkah!” And then he was gone.

His abundant letters told her otherwise. Ill-trained and ill-equipped, the inexperienced American soldiers were floundering.

He also mentioned the terrifying, sleepless nights, when the enemy picked them off one by one like a shooting gallery at a county fair. But Sadie's real terror began when he no longer described the pillage and destruction, just the local terrain: the Juniper bushes that spotted the rough, mountainous ranges, and the snow starting to fall, gently at first, then with a vengeance. She knew her husband too well—he was trying to protect her.

His last letter was uncharacteristically short—he had simply run out of words, except for its end. “You are the love of my life. It would have been such a joy to grow old together. I love you, David.”

By sixteen, Bimmy thought her nickname might as well be Mellow-Yellow it was aimed at her so often. She hated the term, but her mama tried to set her straight.

“Chile, you light-skinned. People, they jest tryin' to compliment you, that's all. They ain't callin' you Nappyblack like they do with yo father. Jest you stop complainin'.”

At eighteen, she met dark-skinned Marcus Johnson, who smelled so fine, unlike her musky papa, and who got the nickname,
He got flashsport
as he sauntered by.

“You got the prettiest set of ham hocks I ever seen!” he commented, strolling by her, grinning the grin of a seasoned man.

At the time, she paid him no mind, but that night, as she inspected her legs and ankles, she giggled, and against the advice of her mother, searched the street corner for this stranger the following day.

“
Bimmy.
He may fool you girl, but he ain't foolin me! He's no good, no matter how much he perfume it, chile',” her mama warned. But for all her intelligence, all her book reading, she up and married this Marcus Johnson, this man-about-town, who got her a son nine months later and got himself plenty of outside action within the first month.

Sadie's first year out in White Plains, the days were spent with Lily from next door. Playing Hide-and-Seek, cavorting in the back yard, baking pies, and getting hugs at every conceivable opportunity somehow eased the ache left by David. Her nights were a different story. In the autumn, after the sky had melted into a navy blue and the frigid winds tumbled dried bits of colored leaves across suburban lawns, it was time for Sadie to pour some wine into David's favorite goblet, light a fire, and let the memories wash over her like a tsunami.

When winter came soon after, the filled goblet was still supplemented by memories, and it did cross her mind that perhaps she was going insane. But then spring and summer arrived with the infinitesimal hope that perhaps life could move on. She got a secretarial job nearby and at Rose's urgings, was just beginning to entertain the idea of going out on a blind date when the doorbell rang on a particularly hot summer's day.

She opened up to a lone man in a dark gray suit and shiny black shoes. A minute later, she found herself stretched out on her couch, getting fanned with her
New Yorker
magazine.

“Why me?” she managed.

“Because, of your late husband's Communist affiliations, Mrs. Moskovitz.”

“What affiliations? He went to two Artist Guild meetings, mostly to take some photos for an idea he had.”

“Nevertheless, he was a member. You'll have to appear at a closed HUAC meeting to clear things up,” he clipped before leaving.

That night, Rose came over to console and advise her on her wardrobe for the upcoming occasion and when the doorbell rang a week later, this time it was two official looking men and a black sinister car, ready to shepherd her into the city.

Shafts of light seeping in through the Venetian blinds made the small hearing room smoky as a middle-aged stenographer sat with her reading glasses half way down her nose, poised for action.

Sadie was hand signaled to sit at a long wooden table, directly across from a panel of three identical looking men with tight, pinched mouths and beady eyes behind black rimmed glasses. In front of each interviewer was a microphone and a glass of water.

The hearing began.

Q#1: Mrs. Sadie S. Moskovitz, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?

Sadie: I have not and I am not.

Q#2: But according to our records, your husband was part of it.

Sadie: (Let the record show the interviewee's voice changes.) Yes. But that was a very long time ago when we were fighting the Nazi's and it was
okay
to belong to a group like The Artist Guild of New York. Besides, he was never an active member. I believe he only went about two times.

Q#3: Yes, our records do show that. But the fact that this organization has been considered subversive and the fact that you lived with him leads us to think that perhaps you were influenced by his, shall we say, Communist affiliations.

Sadie: We hardly ever discussed these two meetings, except (Let the record show the interviewee laughs a little) for discussing how bad the food was at the meetings.

Q#4: Do you believe this hearing is amusing, Mrs. Moskovitz?

Sadie: No, I most certainly do
not.
I just wanted you to understand just how unimportant those meetings were to my husband and myself.

Q#5: Are you aware of any other members of that organization?

Sadie: (Let the record show the interviewee hesitates before answering.) Are you asking me to name names, sir?

Q#6: I'm only asking if you know of any one else that might have been involved with this so-called artistic organization.

Sadie: No. (Let the record show the interviewee's voice has become cold and formal.)

A different man continued.

Q#1: Now, Mrs. Moskovitz, it has come to our attention that you are employed at a company called Wakins Insurance. Is that correct?

Sadie: Yes, it is.

Q#2: Are you aware that the president of Watkins Insurance, a Mr. Berman, is cooperating with us fully today?

Sadie: I suppose…(Let the record show that the interviewee has placed her hand up to her mouth.)

Q#3: Yes, Mrs. Moskovitz, he is. He is a good American and as such, wants to make sure all of his employees are loyal to this country, as do we.

(Let the record show that the interviewee is beginning to cry.)

The three men cupped their hands over each microphone and conferred quietly for several minutes before the third man took over.

Q#1: Are you acquainted with a Mr. Peter Hanson, Mrs. Moskovitz? (Let the record show the interviewee is no longer crying.)

Sadie: Yes, of course. He's my next door neighbor. Why?

Q#2: Ah, Mrs. Moskovitz, we are the ones asking the questions.

Sadie: All right. (Let the record show the interviewee's voice sounds annoyed).

Q#3: Now, Mrs. Moskovitz, Mr. Peter Hanson is an outstanding member of the local White Plains community. Because of this and because he has personally vouched for you, you are free to go today. However, if we need to ask you anything further, we will definitely contact you. Do you understand?

Sadie: Yes. May I say something further?

Q#4: What is it, Mrs. Moskovitz?

Sadie: Are you aware that my husband died in Korea in the service of his country?

Q#5: Well, actually, according to our records, he just happened to be there as a paid photographer. He was not fighting in the military. We don't really consider that to be in the service of his country, Mrs. Moskovitz.

Sadie: (Let the record show the interviewee is standing up, looking angry.) Fine. Whatever. Good day, gentlemen.

She resisted screaming, “You bastards! Not die in the service of his country? And by the way, if you knew you were going to let me go, why did you put me through this hell?“

She gathered up Rose's stole and purse and slipped out the door as fast as she could, more attuned to the Communist cause than she would have ever thought possible.

I was glad Peter stepped in to help Sadie. She deserved any help she could get, poor woman. First her husband was killed and then this! But if I do say so myself, I think my fox stole added a certain respectability. If she had worn one of her usual Greenwich Village outfits, they'd certainly have locked her up as a Commie the minute they saw her! I'm also glad she took my black Leatherette & Patent Kelly purse, and my light gray Molly Parnis mid-calf length suit. She looked so good…wish she would dress like that more often.