We Never Told Page 3

  I was changing into my party clothes in the guest room when Grandma Greenstone, wearing only her slip, her hair in dozens of pin curls held in place with bobby pins, came into the room full of purpose. The straps of her slip were held to the bodice by safety pins and part of one seam had become so threadbare it could no longer hold stitches so it too was closed with a safety pin. The slip was silk and Grandma could not throw away silk. When she came downstairs for dinner later the tattered slip would be hidden under an expensive dress designed by Hattie Carnegie. The extent of Grandma’s frugality gave me a glimpse of how poor she once was. On the outside, she was a lady with servants living in a penthouse but underneath, privately, she was still an impoverished girl at a one-room adobe schoolhouse in New Mexico. Her parents spoke only Yiddish when they fled Russia and arrived at the port of Galveston, Texas. Grandma was four and remembered seeing the Tsar’s soldiers marching through the streets shouting, “Kill the Jews!” She remembered feeling seasick on the boat. Everything she now owned, every eggbeater, towel, and pillowcase was a miracle.

  She said nothing as she came into the room with a jingle of keys. Head down, not acknowledging our presence, as if not seeing us made us invisible, she selected a key, unlocked the closet door, opened the door, quickly ducked inside, and shut the door.

  She came out, at last, holding some things wrapped in tissue paper. She set them on a table then hurried back to the closet and quickly locked the door as if bandits might be coming down the hall. “This,” she said picking up one of the wrapped things, “is for you, Sonya. See that you take good care of it.” Heart beating with excitement, I tried to open the tissue paper carefully but ended by ripping it off and there it was, another doll I couldn’t play with, a French sailor six inches tall in a beret. I already had a milkmaid from Switzerland, a matador from Spain, a Hungarian bride, and an English Bobbie. “For your doll collection.” But I didn’t want a doll collection. All those miniature native people presented to me one by one, lifted out of a suitcase at the Waldorf Astoria when Grandma and Grandpa were in New York or brought forth from Fort Knox, all of them stood in a row on metal stands taking up space on my bookshelf because I was afraid Grandma might show up unexpectedly in New Rochelle. “Thank you, Grandma,” I said and gave the required kiss but couldn’t help resenting her for making me feel like a spoiled brat. It was always like this. Nothing really good ever came out of Fort Knox.

  Joan’s turn. She unwrapped her French sailor and said “Thank you, Grandma,” in her insincere singsong. Grandma said, “No kiss?” Joan’s miniature French sailor in a beret that couldn’t be taken off would get tossed in a box in Joan’s closet there with all the other inflexible dolls in native costumes.

  My mother’s present was always the same. Fabric. This time Thai silk. “There is enough, Violet, for a skirt and a jacket.” Dutifully, and in her dead voice, my mother said, “Thank you, Mama.” Perhaps Grandma wanted a more enthusiastic response. “Fabric, my dear,” she said, “is not unimportant. The quality of the fabric one wears expresses more than you know. The feel of it and the look of it. Fine fabric has a distinctive voice. Take this silk to Frau Waldman, your excellent dressmaker.” Her veneration of fabric came, I thought, from the olden days when women laid out patterns and sewed their own clothes. Perhaps as a child in New Mexico, her mother had to make clothes out of flour sacks. That she could give, and easily too, such beautiful fabric to her daughter was a thrill. Feeling bountiful, her walk was buoyant as she went out of the guest room and down the hall to finish getting dressed for dinner. In her wake was a pall of disappointment.

  My mother became more and more agitated as the hour grew closer to the arrival of her sister and brother. She wanted us to look adorable in the twin dresses she had chosen. Joan stamped her foot, said, “Oh, who cares?” and flounced away when Mother tried to tie her sash more evenly. When it was my turn, I stood as still as I could so at least one daughter’s sash would make an attractive display. Soon the doorbell would ring and there would be Uncle Alan and his family arriving in their Cadillac from a big house in Highland Park and it would ring again and there would be Aunt Dovey Lee and family arriving in their Cadillac from a big house in Evanston. My mother, once known as “the pretty one” in the family, would be judged as a failure by them: she had no career and her marriage was a mess. That thought, I imagined, was what made my mother’s hands brush thoughtfully against the nap of the bow as she tied it, giving it a final desperate tug before she pulled away to examine it. “It will have to do,” she said.

  The first to arrive was her brother Alan Greenstone, a gentle man in steel rimmed glasses, an unassuming person most comfortable when others took the lead. He was his father’s right hand at Greenstone Enterprises. He often said he would have no friends if it weren’t for his wife Dolly, but that was only because he was so modest and didn’t know how appealing his softness was. When I was four, I asked him to marry me. Instead of laughing at me, he said, “Ask me again when you’re twenty-five.” He arrived with his wife and three children, one still asleep in a portable cradle. I hugged him sincerely. Did he know my parents were getting divorced? “How’s the violin coming, honey?”

  “Good.”

  As he was helping his children out of their coats he said, “You had a solo, I hear. How did that go?”

  “Good. It wasn’t really a solo, Uncle Alan. It was a competition.”

  “You played with others?”

  “No, I had to play by myself but there were judges there.”

  “At school?”

  “No. At Steinway Hall. That’s in New York City.” I wanted to tell him that I won that competition, that I came in first and beat out all the other sixth graders from all over the city but we were interrupted by Aunt Dolly who handed him the portable cradle so she could take off her mink coat.

  Aunt Dolly was short and top heavy with a gravely voice ruined by cigarettes. She placed her cheek next to mine and hummed like a mosquito. It was the sound of discomfort, and I wondered why Aunt Dolly was pretending to be happy to see me. She was wearing a mink coat that was the genesis of my mother’s mink coat. I had heard the arguments at home, heard my father say there was no reason for such ostentation, there was nothing wrong with Violet’s storm coat, wasn’t it warm? My mother complained on the phone to Grandpa Greenstone. Her brother Alan worked for Grandpa so really it was Grandpa who gave the coat to Dolly. It wasn’t fair. Why should Dolly have a mink coat and the real daughter not have one? That was how we got our Cadillac too. My father refused. Said there’s nothing wrong with a Dodge. My mother complained to her father and soon afterward a Cadillac was in our driveway.

  Aunt Dovey Lee’s family burst into the apartment, husband, wife, and three boys. Uncle Jack in a greatcoat such as a Russian prince might wear, fur collar and fitted at the waist, lifted me off the floor and twirled me around, and when I said, “More!” he did it again and when I said, “More!” he did it again. This was what it was like to have a young father. He could toss you around. Jack was testosterone incarnate, smelled of cigarette smoke and maleness. Joan hated roughhousing, backed away out of his reach.

  Jack grabbed my mother, lifted her off the floor, and swung her around while she laughed. “Put me down! Jack! For heaven’s sakes! Put me down!” She was discombobulated by that contact with him, blushed and fixed her hair. He bopped her on the head with one of his gloves. In his presence, with his cleft chin, his dimple on one cheek, his full lips, green eyes, thick curly dark hair, and friendly gap between his front teeth, I felt sorry for my mother being married to a man twenty years her senior. Here was what my mother was missing, this boisterous sexuality.

  As masculine as Uncle Jack was, his wife Dovey Lee was feminine. Slender and cheerful in a red coat and red beret she said, “Here, Cutie Pie,” and handed me a monkey puppet with long dangling legs and arms. She gave one to Joan too and showed us how to work them, made them dance in a funny way. Her voice was musical. She was four years younger than my mot
her, capable, confident, light-hearted. She said to me, “Daddy couldn’t come?” Didn’t she know? “Tell him hi from us, okay?” No one else mentioned him, as if he were a child hidden away in an institution.

  Cousin Wiley was a grade ahead of me. I looked forward to seeing him because he was so affectionate and daring. On a previous visit, I saw him attach a rope to the top of the bannister at his house, yodel the Tarzan yell, and swoop down to the foyer. He could dive, play tennis, ice skate, ski, lift weights, and was the only person my age I couldn’t beat at Ping-Pong. He looked very much like his father, cleft chin, gap between his front teeth, green eyes, full lips, dark curly hair. He grabbed my hand and said, “Hi, Cuz,” and led me to the den. I was attracted to Wiley, felt his masculinity. We joked that he was my kissin’ cousin but all we did was hold hands and sit close to each other on the sofa. Sometimes I wished I had a brother but the one I imagined was older and appeared in my imagination heroic in an Army uniform.

  Grandpa Greenstone, still beached on his Barcalounger, greeted us all as we gathered in the den. A two-year-old grandson climbed up on Grandpa’s lap and stayed nestled against him. Uncle Jack poured Harvey’s Bristol Cream into Grandma’s delicate cordial glasses that only came out of the cabinet for family gatherings. Holding the glasses up like Olympic torches the adults toasted, Aproveche! Not L’Chaim the Jewish toast, nor Cheers the assimilated toast, but a Mexican toast meaning enjoy. My mother and her siblings spoke Spanish fluently, having grown up in El Paso surrounded by Mexicans.

  It was Willa’s job to announce dinner. Might as well have asked her to address a stockholders’ meeting. She entered the den in her gray uniform and stood trembling by the door. She hid her mouth with her palm and said, “Dinner be served.” Grandma, her cheeks pink from the ice she pressed into them while sitting at her dressing table upstairs, so much less expensive than rouge, her eyebrows now arched by gray pencil, her expensive dress perfectly tailored, said, “Thank you, Willa.” Aunt Dovey Lee and my mother looked up from their gin rummy game at the card table in the corner as we all shouted, “Thank you, Willa!” not in a mocking way but sincerely because we saw how uncomfortable she was.

  Willa had transformed the dining room into a banquet hall. Here were Grandma’s treasures on display: Rosenthal, Wedgewood, Steuben. Everything was precisely set, the white linen tablecloth and matching napkins, the silverware glinting from the light of the crystal chandelier. Grandma, dressed in pink lace, sat at one end of the table, her back straight. Grandpa sat at the other end with his snakeskin belt now buckled, a brown silk jacket open over a silk shirt, a short wide man whose head seemed to come directly out of his shoulders.

  Grandma, in her deliberate way, picked up a small ceramic bell, held it for a second in the air, then tinkled it. Willa came in and stood abashed at the kitchen door. “We are ready, Willa.” Willa shrank back into the kitchen. Grandma Greenstone’s mission in life was to elevate her family, to protect us from being outsiders as she had been and this meant teaching us to subdue Jewish mannerisms, no cheek slapping and exclaiming oy yoy yoy, no gesturing with hands while speaking. It was her duty to teach her offspring what spoon to use at a row of spoons dinner party and to know the difference between the ping of crystal and pang of glass.

  Grandpa’s chauffeur Jordan, now in the role of butler, came in holding a tray of sliced roast beef, as if the bad fairy had turned him from prince to servant. Part of him, maybe the best part, just wasn’t there. He held the tray down next to us as we tried to be careful to not drop a slab of meat onto the carpet. Wiley did all right with the roast beef and eggplant but he did drop a green bean. I saw Jordan pretending not to see as my cousin kicked the bean under the table. When Jordan moved on to the other side of the table, Wiley maneuvered the bean with his shoe, bent down quickly, and set it on my lap. I put it back on his lap. He broke it in half and kept half on his leg and put the other half on my leg, and so we flirted while Dovey Lee and Dolly got up from the table and went to cut up meat for the children who were too young to do it themselves.

  Coming down from the ceiling like mist, coming up from the floor like bubbles from clams, was the ghost of Sebastian. He was in the air hovering over the basket of Monkey Bread, the decorative platter of radishes and celery, the pads of butter stamped with a flower design. My mother often told Joan and me the story of her two-year-old brother who died when she was four years old. She never, since the day it happened, spoke about it with her mother or father, and she warned us to never mention Sebastian’s name in front of our grandparents. When Mother told us the story it was as if she could still see her mother in the house in El Paso cradling Sebastian in her arms as he was convulsing, could still hear her scream, “Get Señora Rodriguez! Get Señora Rodriguez!” and my mother, age four, running next door and standing in the neighbor’s kitchen unable to say anything. She was supposed to have been looking after Sebastian. Her mother was busy packing, they were moving. She could still hear her father screaming at his wife, “I warned you! I warned you! I said be careful with them rat pellets. I said be careful with them pellets. Didn’t you hear me? Didn’t you hear me?” Grandma was twenty-four when that happened and Grandpa Greenstone was twenty-nine.

  Aunt Dolly said, “We saw South Pacific Saturday. We loved it, the singing, dancing. What a wonderful evening!”

  Mother said, “Without Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin, South Pacific is nothing.” Her sister-in-law withered. “By the time the show gets to Chicago, the original cast is long gone. It’s just the touring company.”

  “Sometimes those touring companies are as good if not better than the original,” said Dovey Lee, who was not cowed by her sister’s life in New York City.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. They’re amateurish.” This was what Mother had that they didn’t: she’d seen every show on Broadway, sat center orchestra. She’d been to the Oscars, sat across the table from Elizabeth Taylor. She’d had the dancer Jacques d’Amboise at her dinner table.

  “Say, Violet,” said Uncle Jack tilting dangerously far back on his chair, “you ever meet Ezio Pinza?” He smiled, showing the gap between his front teeth.

  “Yes. Seymour made a test of him.”

  “What was he like?” asked Aunt Dolly, brave in the face of Violet’s scorn.

  “Like? Like all the rest of them. Me, me, me.”

  “Mama,” Aunt Dovey Lee said. “Tell us about the time you rode for the doctor when your sister broke her arm. Didn’t you see Pancho Villa that day?”

  “Yes,” said Grandma batting at her pompadour with the back of her hand. “I saw Pancho Villa many days. He played poker with my father.”

  “What did he look like, Grandma?” said cousin Mike though we all knew the answer.

  “Without his sombrero,” she said, “his head was shaped like a bullet.”

  “Was he a bad man, Grandma?”

  “He was a very bad man. But a gentleman when he played poker. When he lost, he paid his debt.”

  “But he’s dead, right?”

  “He is very dead.”

  “He’s not coming over here, right?”

  “He couldn’t come over here,” said Wiley’s older brother Mike. “After he died, his enemies dug up his grave and chopped off his head.”

  “Mike!” said Dovey Lee, glancing at the younger children.

  Mike, undeterred by his mother’s scolding wanted to show us that he’d read up on the bandit. “When he was alive, he had a cruel mouth and bulging eyes.”

  “Why did they bulge?” Wiley wanted to know. “Did you ever see them bulge, Grandma?”

  “Yes, indeed. He often came into Uncle Rovel’s general store. One day, the feds came in and warned Uncle Rovel. Told him that if he sold guns to Pancho Villa he would go to jail. I sometimes helped in the store. I spoke Spanish better than my uncle did. I didn’t learn English until I went to school, age six.” She took a sip of water and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I was there when Uncle Rovel told Pancho Villa that he could no longe
r sell him guns. That, my best beloved, is when I saw Pancho Villa’s eye bulge.”

  “Why, Grandma?”

  “Because he was furious.”

  “Tell us the story of when your sister broke her arm and you rode for the doctor.”

  “My sister,” said Grandma, “was not an obedient child.” She sent a meaningful glance at her grandchildren. “She was told not to play in the barn. She liked to balance on the wooden beams that—”

  “Started with nothing,” said Grandpa from his end of the table. “Had nothing. They called me the vitamin nut.”

  “Dad!” said Dovey Lee. “Don’t interrupt Mama. She’s telling a story.”

  “Aw,” said Grandpa. “Go on, honey. Tell your story. Go on.”

  “No,” said Grandma sniffing. “Never mind.”

  “Do, Grandma,” Wiley said. “Tell us!”

  “Aw, go on, honey. I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “No. Never mind.”

  “Please, Grandma!”

  “Dad, promise you won’t interrupt her.”

  “Go on, honey. Go on.”

  Grandma sniffed and batted at her pompadour. “As a result of her disobedience, Sally fell from the beam. My father was not at home. He was in Deming getting a harness fixed. My mother was home alone with the five of us. We lived two miles outside of town. Now today you could just phone the doctor, but then we didn’t have phones and we didn’t have doctors. We had Muley. He was a natural born doctor.”

  “Who was Muley, Grandma?”

  “Muley was a freed slave. He came west and joined the Cavalry when he got freed. The Cavalry was stationed in New Mexico to protect our border towns from Pancho Villa’s bandits. Our house was one mile from the border, and there was only a barbed wire fence between us and Mexico. No one paid much attention to that fence. It was easy to snip. Part of Muley’s job was to ride the border and mend the fence. Muley was a natural born doctor. He had no training whatsoever, but he could cure people. He was the Cavalry vet. When my mother said I should ride for the doctor, she meant Muley so I—”