Mitla Pass (39 page)

Joe Kramer: now, he was something else. Joe, with his gold bars, was not only an officer and a gentleman, but a member of the cavalry, as dashing a set of credentials as Leah had ever encountered. Here was a man of quality. His father and uncle were partners in the law firm of Kramer and Kramer. Joe was in his final year of law school at the University of Missouri. He was allowed by the Army to take his state bar exam early so that when he returned he would be able to hang out his shingle.

Joe was a go-getter and not a man who would be turned away easily. With such an attractive prospect, Leah came to realize that in order to win him, she would have to make some concessions.

It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go;

It’s a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know!

Goodbye, Picadilly, farewell, Leicester Square,

It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right there!

The ferryboat
Emma Giles
steamed away from her dock at Tolchester Beach on the Eastern Shore and headed back across the bay with her fill of weary, happy passengers. It had been a lovely day excursion, starting from Pier 15 on Light Street, and the mood was mellow for the return trip.

A trio of aging ladies in quasi-uniform who called themselves the Doughgirls ended their foray of patriotic songs, marching in step and saluting.

The lights were lowered and the band played more sentimental stuff, and soldiers and sailors and their girls glided about the floor, forehead to forehead, cheek to cheek. As the space between their hips narrowed, couples broke away and made, hand in hand, for the deck outside, into the starlight for a little spooning.

Al Singer and Fanny Balaban danced with their eyes locked on each other, chomping their chewing gum softly in rhythm to the music.

“Al,” Fanny said, “it’s been a wonderful day, the most wonderful I’ve ever spent in my entire life.”

“Yeah, me too,” Al said. “Hey, let’s go outside. I want to talk to you about something important.”

On the deck above them, Lieutenant Joe Kramer balanced on the railing, following a shooting star. Joe could be moody, Leah had learned.

“You haven’t spoken two words, Joe,” she said.

“Uh ... what?”

“Something’s wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

“Come on, out with it.”

“Looks like we’ll be pulling out soon.”

“Oh!” Those dreaded words. “How soon?”

“Couple of weeks, maybe.”

Leah came very close to him, leaned on him, and rubbed her cheek against his. It evolved into a long, deep kiss.

“I hate to see you leave,” Leah said. “Things have been real different since I met you.”

“I want to go,” he said. “Most of us feel that way. I have to get my piece of this war. It’s something that may be difficult for a woman to understand.”

“I don’t want it to be over between us.”

“Neither do I,” he said.

“I’m so glad.”

“Leah, we’ve been seeing each other for a decent amount of time. There’s something ...” He halted.

“Go on, tell me.”

“All right. Here it is. Straight. I’ve taken a room at the Belvedere Hotel for tonight. I’m not going to twist your arm to come with me. Just a simple yes or no?”

Leah’s hand automatically clutched her heart. Her instinct was to feign modesty and then go into an impassioned denial mode. Joe Kramer was no Richard Schneider, or any of her other recent beaux.

“I love you, Leah.”

There were no tactics of evasion she could employ now, and she knew it. There was either a chance of hooking Joe by consummating their affair, or the certainty of losing him by a rejection. No other choices. No games. His powerful, mournful eyes never left her.

Leah went tightly into his arms. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

As they kissed, Leah heard the unmistakably clumsy sound of Fanny flapping up the ladder from the deck below.

“Leah!” Fanny cried, grabbing her hand and leading her off as Al Singer honkered up to Joe, shyly.

“Leah, look!” Fanny cried, thrusting her ring finger out. The stone was so small, it was barely visible.

“Al just popped the question and I said yes. We’re officially engaged. He wants to get married right away, before he goes overseas.”

Leah embraced her sister, but her mind was whirling on something else.

“Then you can go to bed with him without shame,” Leah muttered strangely.

“We’ve already been doing it, Leah.”

Leah was struck with disbelief. “But why didn’t you tell me? Weren’t you ashamed? How long have you been doing it? Where?”

Fanny shrugged.

“Does Momma have any idea?”

“What’s the difference? He’s going to be my husband.”

Leah looked down the railing to where Joe was shaking Al’s hand. Leah realized she’d better not try any of her little tricks tonight if she harbored any hope that Joe Kramer would return to her. She had to go through with it. Moreover, she had to make love to him so fantastically that she and she alone would fill his thoughts in the months ahead.

T
HERE WAS
a double wedding at B’nai Israel Synagogue underwritten by dear Uncle Hyman, the proud patriot, especially since his own son, Gilbert, had been rejected for service.

In less than a month Private Al Singer and Lieutenant Joe Kramer sailed from the port of Baltimore aboard troopships bound for France. They left behind a pair of brides in their first weeks of pregnancy.

Molly Kramer and Edith Singer were born only a few days apart at Sinai Hospital on Monument Street.

H
ANNAH
B
ALABAN
had mystic premonitions. High times could not go on indefinitely. How could such happiness be sustained?

Hannah was reasonably satisfied that Al Singer and Joe Kramer would not give her daughters a life of misery like that
putz
Moses Balaban had given her, and that was good news.

Hannah had two
eynikles,
a pair of beautiful, healthy grandchildren, both girls yet, and that was more good news. Finances had never been better and the war was now definitely being won by the Allies.

But nobody could go on living on such a cloud. Hard times were bound to return. She would be ready when they did.

True to her premonitions, bad news arrived by the bushel.

America’s initial war fever had been diminished by the casualty lists. A stunned public came to realize that the war wasn’t just one big happy adventure. When the first of Hannah’s adopted soldiers was killed, she went into a depression that lasted the rest of the war, for there were others killed and many wounded. It was no joke, this war.

The second tragedy befell when beloved Uncle Hyman, their lifelong benefactor, passed away. He was in the prime of his life, a young man in his sixties, a godly man who gave to everyone: money ... credit ... love.

Hyman’s only son, Gilbert, inherited the business. Would Gilbert be as generous and loving as his father? Maybe yes, probably no.

Fortunately, Hyman’s last will and testament remembered them all, particularly his promise to set Lazar up in a drugstore of his own when he returned from France. If only some shyster lawyer didn’t steal everything. The mourning for Hyman was one hundred percent genuine. His photograph went up on the mantel alongside Saul’s and Lazar’s.

Not so doleful was the news out of Havre de Grace. Moses, so he claimed, had lost everything to a couple of smooth-talking con men in a fraudulent get-rich-quick, phony-war-bonds scheme. When Moses learned what had happened to his money, he had a stroke, on the spot. He was forced to liquidate lock, stock, and barrel to cover his debts. Partly paralyzed and unable to work, he implored Hannah to take him in, after his brothers in Savannah had refused.

Scarcely able to turn away a stray cat, Hannah took pity. The rules she invoked were rigid. Moses could stay in a small alcove off her bedroom in a separate bed. He would have no power of decision over family matters and
no sex, whatsoever, positively.
Should he regain enough health to resume work, the whole matter would then be renegotiated.

Moses’ stroke and the passage of time had aged him considerably. Moreover, his self-imposed loneliness as a miserly hermit had taken a toll. Moses was now on his best behavior every day, which made him almost palatable.

Perhaps, Hannah thought, coming so close to death might have given Moses a revelation about how despicable he had been. Whatever his reasons, he was no longer a force in their lives. He could read the Talmud until he went blind, so long as he didn’t bother them.

Then Hannah’s worst fears came to pass. Shortly after Moses was installed in his alcove, the dreaded telegram came from the War Department. Lazar had been wounded. He was hit, apparently by shrapnel, in the battle for Belleau Wood. For two weeks, Hannah could scarcely breathe until a letter came from a hospital in France. Lazar had not personally written it, because he had been hit in the arms and chest. He assured them all that he would fully recover, and as his letters came more regularly, and in his own writing, some of the pain and horror eased for Hannah.

After several months, during which Lazar appeared to be getting well, a shocker of a letter arrived. Lazar had married a Frenchwoman! A
shiksa
yet! And what was more, she was a widow with a small son. The trauma of this news was somewhat tempered when Lazar assured Hannah that his new wife, Simone, was not a serious Protestant and would be happy to take instructions on how to keep kosher and run a Jewish home.

“Look, it’s not the end of the world. Lazar is nobody’s dummy. I’ll come to love Simone and her son, Pierre. God will provide me with wisdom.”

Fanny and Leah left their babies at home when they went to work at the Ginzburg Brothers factory. It was an ultimate pleasure from heaven for Hannah. Little Edith and Leah’s Molly were only a pair of matched dolls, that’s all. Such
naches
from the little girls. Only a grandmother would know.

However, still another premonition disturbed Hannah greatly. Leah stayed out quite often and sometimes the entire night. Her “with a girlfriend” excuse somehow didn’t quite add up. Hannah tried to perish the thought, but she could not help but feel that her daughter was screwing around on Joe Kramer. Hannah didn’t ask. Leah didn’t volunteer. But Leah sang to herself a lot these days and looked in the mirror even more than usual and spent far too much time in the bathroom primping up, just to be going out with a girlfriend. Joe Kramer had apparently given her a good time in bed, maybe too good for Leah’s diluted sense of fidelity.

So, what else could happen? It did.

Pearl was now a young lady, but still Hannah’s baby. She was a
shaynele,
a real pretty. Pearl strangely and suddenly dropped out of the nightly gathering of servicemen at the Balaban house. Gossip and rumor soon found its way back to Momma. Her baby daughter had been seen, not once, but several times in the company of a young sailor. The two apparently met at one of the stalls at the Lexington Street Market, of all places. Hannah was even furnished with the name of the family who owned the stall, the Abruzzi Brothers.

Hannah decided to conduct a quiet investigation on her own. Not that she was spying on Pearl, but a mother has certain rights to know. Pearl was a mere child and extremely delicate, as were all of her daughters. So, why not find out? She went shopping there twice a week, anyhow.

The Lexington Street Market was a century-old institution, where one could see a fantastic display from America’s cornucopia. Hundreds of stalls in regimented rows overflowed with mountains of foods of all stripes ... the produce of the rich earth of the Maryland truck farms ... the harvest from the Chesapeake Bay ... a conglomerate of ethnic tastes and aromas to stagger the senses. Hawkers hustled gawkers and eagle-eyed housewives pinched and bargained. Stall after stall displayed bakery goods adopted from a dozen different nations. Fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts, coffees, cheeses, meats, and sweets ... a section with ham hocks, chitlins and catfish, catering to the colored folks. Weigh it, blend it, trim it, slice it, wrap it in yesterday’s newspapers, here’s a free sample ... like it, lady?

Surrounding the market was a picket line of peddler carts filled with combs, mirrors, buttons, bows, and clothing and newspaper boys screaming war headlines and soapbox orators espousing forlorn causes.

Hannah stopped before the Abruzzi Brothers stall and drank in a deep breath and winced from the insulting smells of crabs, clams, oysters, shrimp, mussels, and other forbidden foods, alongside the iced bins of sixty varieties of fresh and smoked fish.

She studied the Italians in their fish-streaked rubber aprons and high boots, as they scaled, beheaded, gutted, and chucked from flat carts with oversized wheels into the bins and sang as they worked, as though personally anointed by Enrico Caruso.

The Jewish neighborhood was smack up against the Italian, whose hub was St. Leo’s Catholic Church on the corner of Exeter and Stiles streets a block away.

Italians? Not too bad, Hannah thought, if you looked at the broad picture. A woman didn’t have to feel afraid or particularly out of place walking through their neighborhood. They were certainly not like the Irish bums and hoodlums, who always gave the Jews a bad time.

The Irish never stopped drinking and fighting and they had swarms of kids they didn’t really care for. On the other hand, the Italians liked to eat and drink and made babies they adored. Leah and Fanny sometimes exchanged nasty words with the Italian girls who worked at the factory, but by and large they lived quite well side by side, and it was even possible to make a good friend. Italians thought very much of the family as a sacred institution, like the Jews.

“Hey, lady, you like to sample some fresh shrimp?” Angelo Abruzzi, an ancient fisherman, said.

Hannah screwed up her face and turned away. “Over my dead body you’ll catch me eating
traif.”

“You Jewish lady? Forgetta the shellfish. I gotta bluefish, swordfish, shark, I gotta smelts and freshwater perch”—kissing fingers to lips to denote ambrosia—”I gotta white bass, snapper, and butterfish. I gotta smoked herring, cured herring, salted herring. ...”