The Puzzle King (19 page)

“And your father?”

“He is good, too. He works hard.”

Flora never pushed and Edith never told the truth, afraid that if she admitted how frightened her mother was, how she worried about her father, then this new world of Flora, Simon, and New York would somehow deflate. They understood each other, and neither dared to ask the questions that really preoccupied them.

Why was Edith was so thin? Was she getting enough food? Did her parents have enough money? Was Margot still taking to bed with her terrible headaches?

Why didn’t Flora and Simon have children? Why had Flora left her mother and sister alone in Kaiserslautern? Did Flora have any idea what her mother would say if she saw the house in Yonkers with its wood-paneled den and sweet honey locust bushes in the front yard? And what about Simon? Where was his family? Why didn’t he ever talk about them?

As long as these questions remained unasked, both of them could fill in the blanks as they wished and keep their worlds in order.

By Edith’s second week in New York, Simon noticed that the dark circles beneath her eyes were fading. “I have a surprise for
you,” he said one night just after coming home from work. “Baseball. You know about baseball?” Flora pretended to swing a bat as he spoke. “Baseball,” she said again. Edith had no idea about this baseball but nodded anyway and said, “Ah, baseball.”

He reached into his vest pocket and pulled out an envelope. “What I have here,” he said, waving the envelope in the air, “well, let’s just say that what I have here is something most New Yorkers would give their eyeteeth to have.” Flora pointed to her own canine teeth, but Edith couldn’t imagine what teeth had to do with eyes, or what this baseball was. Simon continued in his overly dramatic voice. “What I have here are two tickets to Yankee Stadium for Saturday afternoon. And we all know who plays in Yankee Stadium … the Great Bambino!”

“Oh Simon,” cried Flora. “How on earth did you do that? Edith, you are in for the treat of a lifetime.”

Yankee Stadium had opened in the Bronx only two months earlier. The Yanks’ Babe Ruth, the baseball player with the mighty body and hound-dog face who flew around the bases on short spindly legs, was a New York sensation. He already had ten home runs this season, an unheard of amount in so short a time.

Simon turned to Edith. “I have a friend who has a friend. How could our esteemed guest from Kaiserslautern visit New York City without seeing a baseball game? It just wouldn’t be right.” Flora gave Edith a look and shrugged as if to say,
I can’t believe it either. Isn’t he amazing?
Then she threw her arms around Simon and kissed his neck. Edith enjoyed how easy they were in front of her and how they seemed to please one another effortlessly. Simon was always telling Flora how beautiful she looked; Flora would tell Edith what a clever man he was. It made Edith sad that they didn’t have children of their own.

E
DITH COULDN’T IMAGINE
how she would ever describe Yankee Stadium to her parents. It was oversized in the way that things in America were. But the colors—that’s what fixed in her memory. The sky, framed by the stadium’s decks, seemed bluer than a child’s drawing, and the clouds were so full they looked as if someone had blown them up. The packed bleachers reminded her of her mother’s embroideries, each person a different needle prick of color. Simon had tried to explain the game to her, which seemed unnecessarily complicated and beside the point compared with all the other distractions. People ate peanuts and threw the shells on the floor. There were more Negroes in the stands than she had seen in her life.

In the third inning, Babe Ruth hit a ball so high it disappeared into the clouds. People yelled and stomped their feet so hard Edith worried that the stadium would crack. Simon jumped from his seat, cupped his mouth with his hands, and screamed, “Attaboy, Babe.” The announcer said over the PA system that there were nearly fifty thousand people in the stadium that day. Edith guessed that was more people than in all of Germany. After the seventh inning, the crowd stood up and sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” They all knew the words, and when they sang, “Let me root, root, root for the Yankees,” they raised their voices and pumped their fists in the air. Just before the end of the game, Babe hit another homer. Edith jumped to her feet with Simon and, together, they cried, “Attaboy, Babe.” They turned to each other and laughed. Simon thought,
So this is what it would be like to have a daughter
.

Edith had felt joy before, but it was always something quiet and private. She had never seen it splayed out before her this way with thousands of other people apparently feeling as she did. Life
in Kaiserslautern was filled with muted greens and browns and hushed voices. After this day, her America was loud and gaudy and permeated with the blazing white lights of the electronic scoreboard in right-center field. Although she never would quite understand the rules of baseball, she became a diehard Yankees fan nonetheless.

Could there ever be anything more dazzling than Yankee Stadium? That would be impossible
, thought Edith. But that was before she was introduced to her Aunt Seema on Park Avenue a few days later. First of all, there was the doorman in a gray coat and matching cap. His sleeves were too long, the coat hung below his knees, and the cap hid most of his face. Only the sweat that dribbled down his forehead and clung to the tip of his nose gave away his discomfort at wearing a wool coat and cap on this sweltering morning. “We’re here to see Seema Grossman,” said Flora.

“Grossman. Grossman.” The doorman studied a leather-bound notebook that he kept behind a mahogany podium. He ran his fingers up and down the column of names, while shaking his head. “I’m sorry, madam, but I don’t think we have anybody of that name in this building.” He spoke in a formal, overly enunciated English, which seemed to irritate Flora.

“Grossman. Seema Grossman. She lives on the sixth floor.” Her voice was filled with bees. “I am her sister, and I’ve visited her here many times before.”

He raised his head suddenly and Edith could see how the sweat stained the rim of his collar. “Ah, Grossman. You mean 6-A. We have her down as Seema Glass.” He picked up an earpiece and pushed some buttons on a switchboard. “Who shall I say is calling?”

“You shall say it is her sister, Flora
Grossman
Phelps, and her niece, Edith.” Flora’s mouth tightened as she waited for the doorman’s reply.

Edith would have kept staring at the doorman and her agitated aunt, but the mural behind them suddenly caught her attention. It was a painting of statues. One of the statues was of a naked young man. Naked! She’d never seen a naked boy before. Only once had she glimpsed a penis, and that was when she had sat opposite her friend Franz in a rowboat last summer. He had been wearing shorts and his legs had been spread as he rowed the boat. Suddenly, there it was, a reddish purple blob like an overcooked knockwurst lying not two feet away from her face. Poor Franz, he had just kept prattling on and on about his trip to St. Moritz and how he had learned to ski, never suspecting that the reason Edith’s face had become flushed had less to do with the Alps and everything to do with knockwurst.

Then, it had felt like worms in her stomach. She had been afraid to stare for too long. Now, she could stare all she wanted. The penis in this painting was more streamlined, more elegant than what she had seen in the rowboat. It pleased her to look at it and she wished she could get a little closer. Just then Flora nudged her. “Art. Do you like art?” she said, not seeming to notice how Edith was blushing. “We’ll have to take you to the Metropolitan Museum of Art sometime. C’mon now, it’s a little stuffy down here.” She turned and glowered at the doorman. “Let’s go up and see Seema.”

The elevator rumbled and shimmied and Edith, who had never ridden in one, clung to the brass railing. Flora paid her no attention and kept tapping her foot as if she were keeping time to some song in her head. When they reached apartment 6-A, Flora jammed the bell several times. From the other side of the door came the sound of someone running and an eager voice shouting, “Hold your horses, I’m coming, I’m coming.” Then a svelte figure wearing a clinging long coral silk robe and apparently not much underneath answered the door. Her fingers were pale with a perfect crescent moon on each buffed nail. The smell of cigarettes and lilies and something bitter gathered around her. She had black shiny hair and green eyes. But it was her lips that Edith noticed first, thick lips that fanned out into a cherry red smile—just like an American movie star.

So this was Seema.

“What’s this ‘Miss Glass’ nonsense all about?” Flora demanded, before they were even inside the apartment.

“It’s simpler to spell Glass than Grossman,” said Seema. “Besides, people have trouble pronouncing Grossman. Oliver and I thought we’d make it easier for everyone.”

“Oh really? Gross Man. How hard is that to say?”

“Flora, it’s no big deal, honestly.” She placed her hand on Flora’s shoulder and gently pushed her aside. “And you’re Edith,” she said, her voice rising. “I am so happy to finally meet you.” She studied Edith as if she were looking at her own reflection in the mirror. “It’s odd, you resemble Flora the most, yet everything about you looks familiar. You don’t look so bad for someone who’s had whatever that was you had.”

She is perfect, thought Edith, who did not yet know the English word for “seamless.”

They might have stood at the door all morning if Flora hadn’t said to Seema, “Aren’t you going to invite us inside?”

“Oh, of course. I was just staring at our niece. You didn’t tell me she was so pretty. She does have a lot of Glass—I mean Grossman—in her, doesn’t she?”

Was that a slight smirk on her face? Edith couldn’t tell.

Flora placed them back to back. “The two of you are about the same height, both of you skin and bones. She’s got my eyes. Her hair is more like mine than yours, though all of us have the same brainy forehead. How about that? I think she’s got your nose.”

Seema flinched. She hadn’t gotten used to her new imperfection. She studied Edith’s nose. It was definitely a Jewish one. She wondered if hers gave her away as concisely.

Flora continued, “Lucky girl, she’s inherited her mother’s gorgeous long legs.” Now it was Edith’s turn to start. Her mother seemed so old and unstylish compared with her two beautiful sisters. She wondered if they knew how consumed she was with worry, how shrunken her world had become. “She comes to America,” she said, hoping they would believe her.

Flora ignored the comment, as she was in a hurry to move on with her plan. “I’m going to let you two girls catch up on the last twelve years by yourselves. I’ll just be in the way.” She laughed, trying to disguise her relief at escaping. She would go downtown and window-shop, buy herself a new hat maybe. She could use the break: Edith had not left her side in the weeks since she’d arrived. Children took up an awful lot of time; she hadn’t quite realized that.

Seema was alarmed at being left alone with Edith. What would they say to each other? How much English did Edith understand? She didn’t know a lot about Edith other than that she’d been sick
and had to have her rib removed. Pleurisy, or something like that. She would ask about Edith’s life and hope that Edith wouldn’t ask about hers. “Come, let’s sit down,” she said, pointing to the couch. But Edith remained standing, looking out the window straight across Eighty-third Street. She pointed to the large building on the edge of Central Park. Seema craned her neck. “That’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” she said. “Art.” She raised her voice and spoke slowly. “Do you like art?”

Until twenty minutes earlier, Edith had never thought about art. But that was before she’d seen the mural. “I like art.” She grinned. Buoyed by the passion in her niece’s voice, Sema ventured, “What else do you like?”

Edith gestured as if she was swinging a tennis racket. Then she made swimming motions with her arms. She lifted her left arm. “Not good,” she said, then lifted both arms to show how she could only raise the left one to about three quarters the height of the right one. “Pappa says I get crooked.” She stood up and walked around the room stooped over. Seema shook her head and laughed. Edith exaggerated her movements, placing her hand on her back and lurching around the room like a hunchback. Seema laughed harder as she tucked one leg underneath her.

Edith knew she was going on too much. Between meeting a new person and trying to converse in English, she was nervous, and when she got nervous, she fell back on what she knew how to do best, which was to ingratiate herself. She was particularly eager to delight this woman. What could she tell Seema that Seema would find interesting? The Baldies’ Club! That was some story. The trick was to tell it in a way she would understand.

She knew the English word for school, and as she talked about Fräulein Huffman, she puffed out her chest and pursed her lips
together. “Oh, Fräulein Huffman, your teacher. I get it,” said Seema.

Then she ran her fingers through her hair as if they were crawling bugs. Going back into her Fräulein Huffman pose, she made a chopping scissors motion with her hands. This was becoming like a game, and Seema grew excited as she deciphered Edith’s clues. “Your teacher,” she shouted. “She cut your hair!” Edith repeated the crawly bugs gesture and Seema guessed that it was lice. Only after Edith repeated the motions and said the words
“Das Juden”
a few times did Seema also understand that it was the Jewish children who had to shave their heads. “So you were bald?” she asked.

“Yes. Bald. All the hair gone. My mother makes a pillow from my hair.” Then she pointed to the hurt spot on her back and walked her funny walk.

“And your rib,” said Seema, running her hands over her own ribs. “Well, you must have been quite a sight.” It was a dumb remark, but she was so taken aback by what she was hearing, she didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t heard about the hair or the lice and wondered what else she didn’t know.

Edith kept on. She pointed to the same spot on her back that she had articulated earlier, and then to Seema.