The Unfortunates. Laurie Graham

       FIVE

      Like Great Uncle Meyer, Aunt and Uncle Fish had not been blessed with children of their own, and perhaps they had expected Ma and Pa to follow Grandpa Minkel’s example and hand over their spare. At any rate, Aunt Fish seemed to believe she had some lien over me and the bigger I grew, the more forthcoming she was with her advice and opinions.

      On the subject of molding and polishing Honey, she had deferred to my mother. Clearly she, the elder sister, understood better than Aunt Fish, a younger and childless person, how to raise a daughter, especially a daughter as perfectly pink and golden as Honey. But my aunt sensed the moment would come when her talents for, as she put it, ‘the handling of more difficult cases’ would be gratefully received. If Aunt Fish ever had a career, it was me.

      After Pa’s death she deemed her normal daily visits to be inadequate and she moved into our house for an indefinite period, to spare Ma the burden of household decisions and make good my deficiencies as a tower of strength. Ma suggested that this might be a great inconvenience to Uncle Israel, but he insisted that nothing could be more convenient to him. He would dine at his club, he said, and be occupied until late every night going through Pa’s complicated business affairs with Mr Levi, ensuring everything was in order.

      Complicated was a word that filled Ma with terror.

      ‘Are they not all in order, Israel?’ she asked him, handkerchief at the ready.

      ‘Nothing to worry about, Dora,’ he said. ‘I’m just going through things to make sure. Abe would have done the same for me.’

      I said, ‘Are we ruined, Uncle Israel? Am I still a mustard heiress?’

      ‘Poppy!’ Aunt Fish said. ‘That is a thing to have said about one. One should not say it of oneself!’

      ‘Never fear, Pops,’ Uncle said, ‘you’ll come into a handsome amount.’

      Ma said, ‘Not that you’ll have any need of it, since you will always have a home here and be provided for. You might think, Poppy, when you are of age, of making donations and helping with good works.’

      ‘There’ll certainly be plenty for that,’ Uncle said. ‘The Education Alliance is doing fine work with the immigrants. And The Daughters of Jacob. Both very worthy causes.’

      Aunt Fish said, ‘Dora didn’t mean that kind of cause, Israel. One has to be careful in selecting one’s charities. They reflect on one so. Poppy might do better sending money to the little black babies in Africa.’

      I’m sure it’s very easy to spend someone else’s inheritance. I didn’t bother to tell them I intended spending mine on silk harem pants and a gasoline-powered automobile and cake.

      So Uncle dined at the Harmonie Club every night and Aunt Fish moved in with us and began nursing my mother through a carefully planned convalescence. At first, no callers were received. Ma stayed in her room and toyed with a little calf’s-foot jelly. I was allowed to brush her hair for fifteen minutes each day, and sometimes Honey came and read to her from Fashion Notes.

      The name Minkel had only appeared in the first list of survivors published in The New York Times. By the time the next edition went to press, the phantom Mrs Minkel had disappeared and Ma seemed to be none the wiser. Harry Glaser had done something useful for once in his life.

      By the middle of May, Ma had progressed to a small, baked fillet of sole with bread and butter fingers, followed by vermicelli pudding or perhaps an orange custard, by way of variety, and she felt able to receive Mrs Lesser and Mrs Schwab, and eventually the Misses Stone.

      Mrs Schwab was herself a widow and understood what was appropriate, but Mrs Lesser was unpredictable. Sometimes she simply reported on the refreshments and gossip at her latest crush – she was very keen to be known for her afternoon teas – but sometimes she would canter off into more dangerous territory. Would there ever be a funeral for Pa, she would suddenly wonder out loud. If not, could there be a funeral monument? And if there could, what form should it take?

      One of my duties was to anticipate this kind of conversational turn and head off Mrs Lesser at the pass, but sometimes my attention wandered and before I knew it Aunt Fish would be fanning Ma and tutting at me and suggesting to Mrs Lesser that she had already given us more than enough of her valuable time.

      The thing was, I had questions myself, most of them far more macabre than Mrs Lesser’s. I knew, for instance, that the bodies of drowned persons were often hooked out of the East River and the Hudson, but I suspected things worked differently in an ocean. Still, sometimes I imagined Pa’s poor body, slowly finding its way to Pier 32. And other times I imagined he had never boarded that accursed boat. That he was still in London, inspecting his subsidiaries, and Irish Nellie had been, as usual, telling whoppers.

      None of these ideas could ever be aired, of course. They were merely evidence of the unhealthy state of my mind and I knew better than to draw that kind of attention to myself. Apart from my sleeplessness and loss of appetite, daily life had become easier with Pa gone. Since April eighteenth my hair had been left au naturel. This alone gave me such a fierce appearance, I doubt even Aunt Fish would have dared to suggest resuming the applications of neck-whitener. We had reached a kind of accommodation. No one troubled me with beauty regimes, and I troubled no one with my questions. Then the Misses Stone came to call.

      ‘It occurs to us,’ one of them began, ‘we might be of assistance, at this sad time, in the … disposal of … unhappy reminders.’

      The Misses Stone were collecting unwanted clothes for their Immigrant Aid Fund. It had never crossed my mind that Pa’s things wouldn’t hang forever in their closets. I visited them every day and buried my face in the cloth of his coats, to smell his cologne. The possibility that the Misses Stone might bundle them away and give them to strangers hit me much harder than the news of the sinking. I sprang from my chair while Ma and Aunt Fish still sat, pudding-faced, absorbing the request.

      ‘We have only happy, treasured reminders of my dear father and there are no plans to dispose of any of them’ was what I intended to say. But it came out as ‘They’re mine, you hateful crows! Pa’s things are mine! And no one else shall ever take them.’

      They were unnerved by the sight of me, I know. Even diminished by grief, there was enough of me to make two of the birdlike Misses Stone, and then there was my hair, which weeks of neglect had turned from a deformity into an instrument of terror. They fluttered toward the door under cover of Aunt Fish’s bosom.

      ‘Unhinged by our loss,’ I heard her whisper. ‘Perhaps, when a little more time has passed …’ and the Misses Stone made little gobbling noises of sympathy.

      Ma was looking at me in amazement.

      ‘Don’t let them take his things,’ I yelled at her. ‘Don’t let anyone take them. I miss Pa. I have to have the smell of him.’

      ‘Oh Poppy,’ was all she said. ‘Oh Poppy …’

      ‘Well!’ Aunt Fish said, when she returned from seeing off the Misses Stone. ‘That was a fine display you made of yourself.’

      Ma struggled to her feet. I realize now she was only forty-two and not at all the old lady she seemed. She put out her arms and held me stiffly to her jet stomacher.

      ‘Oh Poppy,’ she said, ‘how stricken you are. I think perhaps one of my powders …’

      She turned to Aunt Fish, who was all for smacking me, I dare say.

      ‘Zillah,’ she said, ‘I think poor Poppy needs a powder. Or perhaps some of my special drops?’

      ‘Hmm,’ said Aunt Fish. ‘And time alone, in her room, to compose herself and consider what embarrassment she has caused.’