We Never Told Read online

  WE NEVER TOLD

  Copyright © 2018 by Diana Altman

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

  Published 2019

  Printed in the United States of America

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-543-8

  E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-544-5

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956264

  For information, address:

  She Writes Press

  1563 Solano Ave #546

  Berkeley, CA 94707

  Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

  She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

  Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

  For Dorita Imperio

  No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child.

  —Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER ONE

  While cleaning out my mother’s files after she died alone at her secluded house behind a locked gate near the Catskill Mountains, her five cats yowling from fear and hunger, I came upon an alarming letter. It was from a caseworker at Children’s Services in Louisville, Kentucky. Its tone was tender but firm. Of course the case worker could understand Mrs. Adler’s reluctance to admit to the birth of a son she gave up for adoption but the birth records show that she was, in fact, the Violet Adler admitted to Central Hospital and was the mother of a baby boy given up for adoption immediately after his birth. If Mrs. Adler did not want contact with the adopted person, she had to sign the enclosed contact veto form. “If we do not locate and identify the birth mother,” the letter said, “then the adopted person is notified that they may search for the birth mother on their own without further restrictions. Children’s Services had been trying without success to find Joan and Sonya Adler, Mrs. Adler’s two daughters as stated in the hospital records. If they did not want contact with their half brother, they too had to sign the forms.” The caseworker could not give advice, could only set out the facts as required by law. The contact veto form was still there. My mother had not signed it.

  I couldn’t believe what I was reading. My heart was thudding against my ribs. He had tried to contact her? He was alive? I picked up the phone and called Leo. When I finished telling my husband, I called my sister. “Are you sitting down?”

  Had I been in a movie, the screen would become wavy signaling a flashback to the time when every family on Avon Road in New Rochelle had a maid and all those maids had Thursday nights off. Ours did too so we went out. The blurry screen of the flashback would become crisp and there I’d be age twelve, sitting in the back seat of the car worried because my mother did not drive to the train station to pick up my father. We had never gone out to dinner without him so I knew something heart-stopping was about to happen.

  Ebersoles Restaurant catered to children in a respectful way. The tables were set with white cloths and good china and there was an air of elegance though many of the diners were in grammar school. Sticky buns were a specialty. Usually Joan and I got one of our own and another donated by each parent. This night, we got only our own and half of our mother’s, and it was after she set the halves on our plates that she announced in a light and misleading voice her decision to divorce.

  The very fineness of the place made bad manners impossible. There could be no display of emotion. I thought it cowardly and cruel to make this announcement in public. I sat there cursing my chin because it was trembling. What right did my mother have to ruin my home? I was sorry that my parents fought about money and had little in common, but much of my life had nothing to do with them. While my parents’ lives were going on, so was mine. The boy who sat next to me liked the girl across the room and I thought he liked me, but my friend who sat behind me passed me a note that said he liked that other girl. My life included a secret rivalry with the boy who sat in first chair in the school orchestra. He had the unfair advantage of a mother who was a violin teacher, so I would probably never be able to move up from second chair. And I was writing a novel entitled Tippy Adams about a girl who gets invited to the prom by the handsomest boy in the class and goes shopping for a dress with her mother.

  I knew only one person in my sixth-grade class whose parents were divorced, a perky girl who did not deserve to have a blot on her. Now there would be a blot on me. I’d have a blot on me the way kids do who have a dead parent. They were set apart even as they sat among us in class, apart because of their dark and secret sorrow. I would have to enter Albert Leonard Junior High next year at a disadvantage. I whispered, “What will I tell my friends?”

  “There’s no need to live with so much tension,” my mother said. “You see how pleasant it is when Daddy’s not here. Here we are having a lovely time. It can be like that all the time. There’s no need to live with all that fighting and fussing. I have to do this now while I still have my looks. You two have your whole lives ahead of you.” She was forty and always aware, even now, that both men and women were drawn to her beauty, kept their eyes on her or turned around for another look. That man at the table across the way had flicked his eyes toward her when we entered then turned back to his wife and now he was sneaking more peeks.

  Joan said, “But where will Daddy live?”

  “I don’t know. In an apartment some place, probably.”

  “But he doesn’t like apartments.” Joan opened her mouth wide, stuck her finger in and readjusted one of the rubber bands on her braces. “Will we ever see him?”

  “Of course you’ll see him.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know when. The court will decide that.”

  “What court?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Just eat your dinner. I don’t know. He’ll have visitation rights.”

  We would have to visit our own father? He would have to visit us in his own house? A frozen silence descended upon me, as if a traffic cone had been put over my head. Dinner finished, cloth napkins folded correctly and set neatly next to plates, we went out to the lobby. On the floor in the lobby was a pirate’s treasure chest full of Tootsie Pops, treats to take home after dinner. Joan and I knelt on the floor in front of a mound of colorful lollipops to select either cherry, lime, lemon, or chocolate. I took two, a breach of Ebersoles etiquette. Joan saw me do it but didn’t tell.

  Turning into the driveway, I could see that my father wasn’t home. There was only one window lit up above the kitchen where Ruby slept. She was back from wherever she went on Thursday nights. Had my mother confided in Ruby? Would Ruby lose her job?

  Our house in New Rochelle was a white Dutch colonial with a black roof that hung down like bangs. The apple tree in the front yard burst with white blossoms in the spring. The forsythia that edged the house flared yellow, the rhododendron had fluffy pink blooms. Daffodils and crocus made what seemed a yearly mistake, showed themselves too soon. Ours was a narrow street without enough traffic to endanger our cat. Bordered by antique stone walls left over from the days when the neighborhood was somebody’s farm, giant elms canopied Avon Road as it curved pleasantly past woods that contained a brook where Joan and I swished sticks among the pebbles. The land behind our house was a small farm owned by an unmarried old man who refused to sell out to the Wykagyl Country Club. He kept chickens in coops and never objected to our using his field as a shortcut to grammar school. The golf course came right to the edge of his land.

  Every Four
th of July, the Club held its annual swim meet. Loud speakers broadcast metallic applause and shouts of victory. The hysterical enthusiasm of an announcer carried for miles right into my bedroom window that had to stay open because the weather was so hot. The revolving fan on my bookshelf blew hot air and was no relief. I tossed and turned all night as the roars of excitement came like waves into my room. This was not fair, here was injustice. I was kept awake by a place that excluded Jews—we were not allowed there.

  Our shortcut to school included crossing the golf course. Joan and I often stopped to take revenge by slamming our heels into the velvet green saying, “Take that! And that!” leaving in our wake chunks of dirt like dead hedgehogs.

  In the back seat of the car as Mother maneuvered the car into the garage, I worried. What would I say to my father when he got home? Did he know she was going to tell us that night? Had they planned this? Mother turned off the ignition and we edged our way out avoiding wheelbarrows, rakes, and bags of peat moss. Inside the dark house, we flicked on light switches as we went from kitchen to back hall to living room where there were sofas and wall-to-wall carpet and a breakfront displaying hand-painted plates. The fireplace hearth held an antique brass samovar and a log holder made of woven rope. A Steinway grand piano dominated the far corner of the room. My violin case was on the bench. The music stand held Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess, my teacher’s notes in the margin, bow up, bow down, more vibrato here. This music made me swoon, and I planned to play it at the audition for the junior high orchestra next year.

  A white cat ran to greet us. “Rinso, Rinso,” I said and rushed toward him and scooped him up and hugged him for so long and with such desperation he wiggled out of my arms and sat with his back to me grooming himself. “Where’s Daddy?” Joan wanted to know.

  “I don’t know,” my mother said in a weary voice. Her walk in public was proud and full of thrusting bosom but at home she often drooped and walked as if her feet were heavy. This difference between the public self and the private interested me. Now Mother, using her weighted down steps, climbed the carpeted stairs and walked along the upstairs hall and shut the door to the bedroom she did not share with her husband. It was a feminine retreat with a canopy bed so high it required a footstool, a satin chaise lounge, and wallpaper covered in roses. There was nothing of her husband in her bedroom, not a shoe, not a half-read book, nor a glass of water on the bedside table.

  My room, on the other hand, was full of Seymour Adler. Tacked to the wall were glossy autographed photographs of movie stars. “To Sonya, best of luck, Jimmy Stewart.” “Dear Sonya, be a good girl,” Greer Garson. Joan Crawford wrote, “To Seymour’s little girl with fond wishes.” Jimmy Durante and Mario Lanza smiled down at me as I sat on my bed making my boy doll kiss my girl doll, absorbed but also ashamed because I was too old to play with dolls. I was proud that my father was a famous movie producer, but I didn’t really want all those strangers on my wall. I put them there because each photo was presented as a gift and I didn’t want to hurt my father’s feelings. The portraits were so fake. Studio lights made noses less bulbous and cheekbones more chiseled. I understood what lighting could do by the glamorous portraits of my parents done by Hollywood photographers. It went against my sense of Truth to see my parents flawless, lovingly shadowed. Violet and Seymour, heads tilted just so, looked like the happiest and best-looking most handsome couple on earth.

  From my mother’s bedroom came the sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Ta Ta Ta Taaaa. She was probably in her velvet robe reclining on her chaise lounge, knitting. A car whooshed by outside, its headlights illuminating my bedroom window for a moment. When would my father get home? Would I already be asleep?

  A distinctive burning smell came from Joan’s room. She was in her pajamas on the floor peering into a miniature kiln surrounded by bags of enamel dust and wires. She squinted into the oven, it was about the size of a cantaloupe, and said, “Done.” With a spatula, she removed the piece and set it on an asbestos pad.

  I thought her work was beautiful. “How did you get the yellow to do that?”

  She looked up and moved over so I could sit next to her. “I don’t know. It just did.”

  “Is it a pendant? Are you going to wear it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Do you want it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can have it.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.”

  “Want me to make one for you?”

  “If you want to.”

  “A pendant or a pin?”

  “Pendant.”

  Just a few minutes before I was dangling off the earth but now some calm returned. My parents might be two battling creatures but Joan and I were one, at least right then. We sprinkled the copper pieces with enamel dust, inserted them into the kiln where the dust melted, then took the pieces out and examined them as they cooled. “Put a drop of yellow on that one,” Joan said, “and put it back in.” I did as she said and peered into the oven to watch the yellow dust merge with the other colors. When I took it out, I was glad I’d followed her advice.

  “Oh, you know that girl Barbara Sandowsky?” Joan said as she drew a design on her new piece with a toothpick.

  “With the mole?”

  “She tried to take Kenny Fallon away from Susie Weber.”

  “How?”

  “She called him up and asked him if he would go out with her.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Susie was at his house.”

  “So she knew Barbara called him up?”

  “She was sitting right …” We both froze as we heard the back door open and close. He was home. He usually bounced up the stairs, but this night he seemed to take a long time walking along the downstairs hall and into the living room where he turned off the lights. Sometimes he brought cashews or chocolates from Grand Central, but this night he held only movie scripts as he appeared at the top of the stairs in a three-piece suit. Short and alert, his posture was erect and energetic. He was loosening his tie and opening his collar button. He paused when he saw me. “We went to Ebersoles.” He acknowledged me with a forced smile, said in a weak voice, “Carry on, Kewpie,” and went into his bedroom. As he closed his door I said, “Where were you?” When he had a sinus headache, we were not allowed to go into his room but one time I did and found him in the dark on his back pinching the bridge of his nose.

  I sat down again next to Joan, who had not stopped her work to greet him. If he had come into her room, she would have looked up to say hello. But Joan was no tail wagging Golden Retriever available for hugs at all times. We never talked about how we felt. There was no need because we could read each other’s faces, but this night I couldn’t tell if she was even thinking about the divorce. Was she wondering how the house would be without our father in it?

  Suddenly there was a loud thump, Seymour’s fist against his desk where monthly bills were piled. I heard him shout, “What? What? Is she crazy!” We heard him yank open the door to Mother’s bedroom. Did she think he was made of money? Did she think money grew on trees? She didn’t know the value of a dollar! How could she spend that much on that thing? Was she out of her mind? She couldn’t be trusted with charge accounts. Usually, there was no response to his tirades, but that night she screamed, “God! How I hate you!” and he slammed the door of her bedroom, the bang reverberating through the house, the force of it, the anger of it echoing within me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Laid out on the platform next to the Twentieth Century Limited at Grand Central Station was a red carpet. Only those boarding the luxurious train were allowed to walk down the red carpet. Mother had turned up the collar of her mink coat to frame her face, and as I hurried along next to her I saw both men and women do double takes as if checking to see if that woman really was that good looking. Mother kept track of the attention with quick eye flicks here and there, and each glance was a victory that showed as satisfaction on her face. While she was absorbing what a
mounted to a standing ovation, she seemed unaware of Joan and me, and I felt unsafe in that chaos of bellhops pushing dollies heaped with luggage, crowds of passengers pushing forward, and loud speakers broadcasting train tracks and departure times. My socks kept slipping down into my shoes, and I had to stop to pull them up. If Joan hadn’t stopped to wait for me, I might have lost sight of Mother altogether. “Sonya! Come on! Hurry up!” Joan too thought the train might pull away without us and our mother wouldn’t even notice.

  Mother showed her ticket to a conductor, and we climbed up onto the train and found our compartment. A red cap came in, swung the suitcases up onto the overhead racks then stood waiting for a tip from the woman in a full-length mink coat. My mother seemed startled as if she’d forgotten that she had to tip him. She peered into her coin purse as if the answer about the appropriate amount might be in there. Her face was a mixture of embarrassment and anger, anger I assumed, at Seymour who put her in this position, a woman alone on a train with two children. It was the husband’s job to tip. Her fluster annoyed me. She was old enough to know how to take care of things. Why didn’t she? She should have more poise in the world. Taking a plunge, she put some coins in the man’s palm. He looked at them as if they were candy corn, touched his cap in a mocking way, and looked up as if asking God to help him endure such idiots. After he left the compartment, my mother sank down into the corner of the seat, pulled her coat around herself like a blanket and muttered, “They’re becoming so arrogant.”

  The Red Cap had violated some rule. Maybe he was supposed to be grateful for whatever was given to him; maybe he was supposed to pretend to be grateful even if he wasn’t. I knew my mother’s attitude wasn’t the only one because my father’s was so different. She came from the South and he came from New England. When his friend Ossie Davis, the actor, tried to buy a house in New Rochelle and was turned down, I overheard outraged conversations between Seymour and the real estate broker. Most of the black people in New Rochelle lived downtown where the houses had no yards and were close together. The baseball player Willy Mays lived down the street from us, and I always wondered when I rode my bike by his mansion how he felt surrounded by white neighbors. One evening I met Ossie Davis and his wife Ruby Dee in our living room. They came to say hello to Seymour and to thank him for his help, but I never found out what he did that made it possible for them to buy the house they wanted. I was proud that my father’s voice had weight in the world.