The Great Husband Hunt (6 page)

“You're wrong, Israel,” Harry said. “You'd be surprised what little things folk pick up on. I have to do this, for my boy's sake.”

Aunt Fish agreed with Harry and had quite set her heart on becoming a Fairbanks, but Uncle Israel would have none of it.

“Question,” he challenged her. “What is a herring? What is a carp? What is a turbot? I'll tell you. They are fish. F-I-S-H. A good plain American word. I rest my case.”

Meanwhile Ma was eyeing me nervously. As well she might.

“We were thinking of Mink,” she said, “but as Harry pointed out, even Mink has a
ring
to it. So I have settled upon Minton. A very elegant, English name that will serve us well. Poppy Minton! How pretty it sounds. I believe it suits you better than Minkel any day.”

I allowed her to keep talking until I was sure I understood her meaning. Then I upended tea and seedcake all over her and the Turkish rug.

“Good,” Harry continued, as though an overturned tea tray was nothing remarkable, “so that's settled. And you'll be interested to hear I've just acquired a little jobbing printers, so your cards and so forth can be changed at advantageous rates.”

“I'm not changing my name,” I screamed. “I shall always be a Minkel. Always, always. I'd rather be a German than a Minton.”

It fell to Aunt Fish to slap my face and express loud regrets that I had returned from my afternoon amongst the wild Asiatics of Stanton Street rebellious as well as lousy.

“Now, now! Nothing's decided yet, Pops,” Uncle Israel called after me as I ran from the room. But it was. Harry had already made moves to change his name to Grace, and wherever Harry led, Ma would follow.

I hid in Pa's closet and wept. Down in the palor another part of him was being taken from me, and it seemed—perhaps it was the crying affecting my sinuses—but it seemed that his clothes hardly smelled of him anymore.

“If they do it, Pa,” I whispered into his gray worsted, “I shall change it back to Minkel the moment I'm of age.”

I did too. And though Honey may have gone to her grave a Grace instead of a Glaser, to this day I address my correspondence with Sherman Ulysses to Mr. S. U. Glaser. He complains and says it causes confusion and inconvenience to the staff of the Pelican Bay Retirement Home, but I tell him, the money he's paying he's entitled to discommode a few people. They're all foreigners anyhow.

Nineteen fourteen turned into 1915. The Misses Stone continued their work trying to uplift the unfortunate Hebrews, Uncle Israel Fish joined a relief committee and Harry, correctly anticipating a trend for changing disadvantageous names, bought two more printing firms.

In May the Germans sank the
Lusitania
with the loss of 128 American lives, and Ma and Aunt Fish reviewed their invasion precautions. There was an evacuation plan, involving dollars stuffed inside corsets and a secret address in Cedar Rapids. Iowa was apparently to be given a second chance. Priority of travel was awarded to Honey and to Sherman Ulysses, carrier of the blood of Abe Minkel, if not of his name, and they would be accompanied by Ma. I was to bring up the rear with Aunt Fish. This didn't bother me. Much as I longed to escape the monotony of West 76th Street, a Hun invasion sounded too exciting a prospect to miss.

In the event, the closest Ma and Honey came to running for port was when the Atlantic fleet was anchored in the Hudson and German agents were caught planning to blow up the guests at a Grand Naval Ball that was to be held on 72nd Street.

Defeated by the concept of traveling light and traveling fast, Ma was so unable to decide which hats to leave behind that the moment passed. The Germans were deported. The fleet, having danced till dawn, sailed safely away. And I was left, untangling the silks in Ma's embroidery basket, wondering what an invasion might feel like.

I redrafted my letter to Cousin Addie, hoping to capture her interest with the news that I had been as close as four blocks to the barbarian invaders. I obtained her address and a postage stamp from Ma's writing table, and I dropped it in a mailbox on the way to my weekly visit with Sherman Ulysses. As to how I would explain the arrival of Cousin Addie's reply, I felt that Providence would inspire me when the moment came. All that talk of war made audacity seem the order of the day.

8

I followed the war as best I could using my old school atlas. Honey and I had enjoyed a brief exposure to education at the Convent of the Blessed Redeemer. We both started late, due to measles, whooping cough and Ma's conviction that paper harbored disease and all books were written by socialists, and I finished early, almost immediately after Honey graduated, due to scarlatina and the nuns' inability to warm to me once my blonde and sainted sister had left.

“We pray you may find somewhere more suitable,” Sister Diotisalvi wrote to my parents, and Pa said, “Let her go to the Levison School.” But the Levison was on the East Side. I'd have had to cross Central Park every day, a journey Ma and Aunt Fish equated with finding the Northwest Passage. Worse still, the Levison was getting a reputation for turning out bookish and disputatious students. One of the Schwab girls had attended for just one year and had emerged so deformed, so stripped of delicacy, that Mrs. Schwab had had to search as far afield as Winnipeg, Canada, to find her a husband.

So I was not enrolled there, nor anywhere else. From the age of thirteen I had been tutored at home. By which I mean I received erratic visits from teachers of French, piano and dancing, and Ma taught me the correct way to serve tea. Of the Balkans, or Belgium, or Kaiser Wilhelm, I knew nothing. But I was a fast study, and Ma depended entirely upon me to explain about the Eastern Front.

“All this rampaging around is most unsettling, I'm sure,” she said. “If only people would be polite and stay in their own countries. Prussians and Russians and Macedonians. It's all too hectic.”

I was a little confused myself whether the brave Russians who had taken on the Hun were the same ones who had cruelly chased Malka Lelchuck from her home, and I should have liked to ask the Misses Stone about it, but they never called anymore. They were too busy with war work.

Then the Ballet Russe came to the Century Theater and as a reward for recent good behavior I was invited to join Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel to see the opening performance of
Petrushka.
Preparations began immediately after breakfast when Honey arrived with her burnt-orange Directoire gown and a chocolate-brown velveteen evening coat.

Burnt orange, it turned out, was not my color, but with a little help from Ma's seed pearl choker and a dab of cream rouge my skin was coaxed out of a tendency to mealiness. The shoe problem was not so easily solved. Honey's tapestry evening slippers were size four. My feet were size seven.

The Irish was assigned to do the best she could with a can of boot black and my battered day shoes.

“No one will see,” Ma said, “if you are careful to take small steps.”

After luncheon I was excused all further duties and sent to my room with instructions to double my dose of Pryce's Soothing Extract of Hemp and lie still with my eyes closed.

“Attending a ballet is a very draining business,” Ma advised me. “You must conserve yourself, otherwise you will be no use to me tomorrow and then what shall I do?”

At six I was collected by Uncle Israel's driver. We no longer had one of our own. After Pa's death Ma had given him notice.

“After all,” she said, “we shall hardly be going anywhere.”

Ma had plenty of money, but she seemed always to derive pleasure from small economies.

“Remember, Poppy,” Ma called after me as I bounded downstairs to the front door, “small steps.”

We ate an early supper of clear soup and epigrams of mutton, and I was supplied with an extra precautionary napkin, to be tied under my chin.

“It would be a tragedy,” Aunt Fish said, “if Honey's beautiful gown was ruined, when she has been generous enough to lend it.”

It wasn't all that beautiful a gown.

Uncle Israel asked, “What is it again we're going to see?”

“It will come to me momentarily,” Aunt Fish said, “though why you ask I cannot fathom. I see you are quite determined to dislike it, whatever it's called.”

I suppose musical comedies were more to Uncle Israel's taste. I suppose he took along the evening paper as a fallback in case of boredom.

I had never dreamed how wonderful a theater might be. The carpets were thicker and deeper, the chandeliers were vaster and sparklier than anything I had imagined. And there were marble staircases curving either side of a palm garden. I should have liked to practice majestic sweeping on those stairs.

But most exciting of all was the frenzy of the orchestra preparing to play and the roar of the audience. Aunt Fish was examining every face in the grand tier, and occasionally she would flutter her hand.

“The Elmore Ferbers are here,” she observed, “in spite of the talk. How brave she looks.”

Uncle Israel looked up from his paper and rolled his eyes.

“And I spy Mrs. Root,” she pressed on, “with a person who may be her sister from Buffalo. What a serviceable gown that twilled silk has turned out to be. I declare I must have seen it a hundred times.”

The lights went down.

“Now, Poppy,” she whispered, patting my hand, “we need only stay for the first act. And do sit up nicely. With good posture and Honey's lovely gown I believe you look rather pretty this evening.”

The curtain went up. The stage appeared to be covered with snow, and crowds of people were walking about, just like they were in a real town. There were candy stalls and a merry-go-round and a puppet theater, and everyone seemed happy, except for Petrushka who looked sad and the Ballerina who looked plain dumb. Petrushka wore beautiful blue boots and red satin trousers, but the clothes I liked best were the Wicked Moor's. He wore gold trousers and a bright green jacket and his hat was made of twisted yellow and violet silk.

Uncle Israel didn't care for the music.

“Darned racket,” he said, and he took out his newspaper again, even though it was far too dark for him to read.

Aunt Fish kept wondering aloud why they hadn't been able to find a dancer who could point his toes.

I said, “I think he's meant to be dancing that way.”

“Meant to?” she said. “Of course he isn't meant to. Ballet is danced with pointed toes, as I would have expected you to know. And I'm sure one pays enough to see correct technique.”

I was anxious that the combination of rackety music and incorrect feet might provoke an early exit, so I fairly begged Aunt Fish to be allowed to stay to the end. This made a sickening spectacle, I dare say, but it worked. I believe she was so astonished by my fawning she quite forgot about leaving the theater early. So the Moor killed Petrushka, the curtain came down, and far below us the livelier element of audience divided, two-thirds whistling and stamping, one-third booing.

With the house lights up, and the prospect of a second supper drawing near, Uncle Israel became cheerful again.

“Nine-thirty and our duty is done,” he said. “Now that's what I call a decent show.”

I said, “I should like to see it all again.”

“Well, don't look at me,” he said. “I've swallowed my dose. Bring your sister. Bring your mother.”

Aunt Fish gave him a warning tap with her fan.

“Dora would find the stairs far too taxing,” she said. “And I don't know that anything so
progressive
would suit Honey. Besides, it seemed to me a rather silly story. How much more satisfactory it would have been if someone had married the dainty little doll.”

But I was glad Petrushka never got the Ballerina. It was bad enough he always had to go to his poky room and couldn't wander around and buy gingerbread and just please himself, without having a prissy girlfriend, too. He was better off dead.

Uncle Israel said why didn't he treat us all to steak tartare at Luchow's, but Aunt Fish said she thought we'd had quite enough stimulation for one evening. I didn't care. I was ready to go home and dream about bright blue boots and turbans made of yellow and violet silk. It seemed to me I had discovered an elegant answer to the question of my mutinous hair.

9

By the beginning of 1917 President Wilson had taken about as much as he could from the Hun, and even Reilly, who never had a good word to say about the British and believed they intended to take over the world, even she was preparing herself for all-out war. She kept a heavy poker by her bed, in case of a nighttime invasion, and was working, in her spare time, on a type of cambric nosebag filled with crushed charcoal biscuits, which she hoped would protect her from phosgene gas. After she had made one for herself and one for the Irish she began work on a miniature one for Sherman Ulysses.

I ran upstairs to report this act of kindness, but it cut no ice with Ma.

“Little wonder,” she said, “that we are expected to eat our chicken still pink at the bone, when the help amuse themselves all day with handicrafts.”

I said, “When the war comes…” but she would never let me get any further. She was of the firm belief that talking about a thing could bring it on, and that, therefore, the best policy was to look on the bright side. She even planned a season of gay afternoon teas, her first social foray since Pa's death.

“Teas,” she said, “are quite suitable for a widow, and not nearly so draining as dinners.”

When war did come, in April, she said, “Poppy, you have been humming this past hour and smiling to yourself like a loon. I fail to account for your happiness. I'm sure war is a most inconvenient thing.”

It wasn't quite happiness I felt, but a little bubble of excitement. Whatever her shortcomings, my mother was deeply patriotic, so it seemed possible that my country's need of me might outweigh her own claim on my time. I was, after all, nearly twenty years old.

I said, “Ma, I should really like to do something for the war effort.” Nursing was what I had in mind. I liked the crisp femininity of the uniform. I hoped I might be sent to the Western Front and have a handsome blinded officer fall in love with my voice.