“It’s so unfair,” Fannie whispered into her daughter’s hair. “I didn’t even get to see you twirl your baton. Bring it the next time you come?”
“My baton?”
Enough was enough. Esther grabbed Gussie’s hand and yanked her from the bed.
“Don’t keep her away so long next time,” Fannie shouted after them as Esther herded Gussie out of the room and into the corridor.
Esther waved a hand in the air, threw a “See you tomorrow” over her shoulder, and shut the door behind her with a louder bang than she’d intended.
It wasn’t until she and Gussie were down the stairs, through the lobby, and out the hospital’s front doors that her breathing returned to normal. Still, her legs shook. They walked over to Pacific Avenue, and Esther hailed a jitney to take them the rest of the way home. The driver pulled the string that opened the car door, and Esther waited while Gussie climbed in and scrambled to the far side of the car.
“So, Stuart’s really teaching Anna to swim?” she asked once she was inside the jitney, the door shut behind her.
“Should I not have said that?” Gussie asked. “I didn’t know that was a secret.”
“No, no. It’s fine. You did fine.”
Something wasn’t sitting right with Esther, and she didn’t know what it was. She wasn’t thrilled about Anna spending time with Stuart, and most certainly didn’t like the idea that he might be so quickly redirecting any affection he’d once had for Florence. But she reminded herself that Stuart was as unsuitable a match for Anna as he’d been for her daughter. She didn’t know Anna’s parents but she could only imagine that Anna would be on the next boat back to Germany if she announced she was going out with a goy, even a very wealthy one.
No, there was something else.
The jitney rolled past Agron’s Furs and Elfman’s Shoes and the Block Bathing Suit Co. In the window of Block’s a large sign readJANTZEN BATHING COSTUMES. ON SALE NOW!
That was it, thought Esther. Anna didn’t own a bathing suit.
Esther felt hot with rage as she entered the apartment. Her hands trembled as she removed a few dollars from her wallet, rolled them up tight, and handed them to Gussie.
“Anna!” she called into the quiet apartment. “Will you go by Lischin Bros. and pick up some veal cutlets? Take Gussie with you.”
When the girls were gone, Esther locked the front door of the apartment and walked directly back to the bedroom Anna had shared with Florence. She hesitated, briefly, in the doorway. It had been almost a month since she’d seen any of Florence’s things. A shudder ran through her body but she shook it off, pushed back her shoulders, and forced herself forward.
Florence’s bed was made, her dresser a little neater than she’d left it. It was tempting to turn over each of the objects on the dresser top, to feel the heft of the books and earrings and Pageant Cup, to picture the last time her daughter had held each item. But Esther did not allow herself that pleasure. She walked straight over to Fannie’s old dresser, now occupied by Anna, and began opening drawers.
It didn’t matter that Florence had owned several fine bathing suits and that Anna had none, that Florence was dead and could wear none of them and that Anna was alive and slim enough to stretch any one of the suits across her limber frame. In another time, Esther might have been generous.Why don’t you borrow a bathing costume of Florence’s?she pictured herself saying to Anna if Florence was still away at college or already in France. But not now. She sifted through one drawer and then another, looking for the evidence that Anna was usurping her daughter’s life.
In the bottom drawer of Anna’s dresser, she found no clothes at all, just a stack of neatly bundled papers. Esther picked the packet up and began to thumb through it. It was all of Anna’s immigration paperwork, paper-clipped according to some system Esther could not interpret. There were medical records, school transcripts, a police clearance, and a copy of Anna’s acceptance letter from New Jersey State TeachersCollege. So much paperwork for one person. One piece of paper came loose and fluttered to the floor, and Esther stooped to pick it up.
It was a copy of Joseph’s affidavit of support, neatly typed and notarized by the Atlantic City commissioner of deeds. Joseph had completed the section, for naturalized citizens, at the top of the form, and had then gone on to list his age and occupation, his weekly earnings, and his assets. He’d outlined the balance of his bank account and the value of his insurance policies and real estate holdings. Esther sucked in her breath when she got to the section of the form where Joseph had been asked to list the names and ages of his dependents. The wordsFlorence Adler (19)jumped out at her from the middle of the page.
Farther down the page still, Joseph had listed Anna’s information—her full name, her sex, her birth date, and the country of her birth. Underoccupation, he indicated that Anna was a student, and underrelationship to the deponent, he had typedPlease see addendum.
Esther forgot the bathing suit completely and began to dig through the papers in earnest, looking for the addendum. Joseph had submitted several supplements to the affidavit—everything from bank statements to copies of his personal income tax returns—so it took some time to locate the document she wanted. Finally, she found it near the bottom of the stack. It was a typed letter on Joseph’s stationery that began,To Whom It May Concern.
He wrote,I understand that this affidavit of support would be looked upon more favorably if I were a close relative of the applicant.Esther scanned the next several sentences, in which Joseph did his best to document the childhood Inez and he had shared in Lackenbach. She assumed he was making enhancements here and there, anything to demonstrate the durability of the relationship. Esther would likely have done the same.
At seventeen, the applicant’s mother and I became engaged to be married.Esther went back and read the sentence again. Engaged? Joseph?The engagement lasted for a period of three years after I immigrated to the United States, and while we did not ultimately marry, I remain committed to the welfare of both her and her family.
Esther felt like a fool. How had she not realized it all along? Of course, Joseph had been promised to someone. It explained the three years he’d spent with his head down, working day and night, first at Kligerman’s in Philadelphia and then at Chorney’s. He had been saving to bring Inez over. Now Esther understood why it had been she who had asked Joseph to go on that first walk, why he had looked so startled when, later, she had reached for his hand. He had been spoken for. At what point, she wondered, had he written to Inez and called off the engagement? Assuming, in fact, that he had been the one to call it off at all.
Esther read the rest of the letter but she couldn’t take anything else in. The fact that this letter existed at all, much less in the bottom drawer of Anna’s dresser, meant that Anna also knew the specifics of Joseph and Inez’s relationship. How had the girl managed to sit on information so compelling? Maybe she assumed Esther knew the truth, had always known it.
What did Esther really know about her own marriage? What did anyone ever know about a relationship that could look as transparent as a Coke bottle one moment and as milky as sea glass the next?
In the early days, Joseph had been besotted by Esther. She had felt it in his glance, his touch, even the way he breathed—a little more deeply when she was near him. She had felt similarly, had been willing to disregard her parents’ wishes and marry him, move to Atlantic City, and start a life from scratch.
As they aged, the longing they had felt for each other was transmuted into a calm and constant love Esther could see all around her. It was in the bakery and the house but—most importantly—in the two beautiful girls they raised together.
In thirty years, Esther had never looked back. She’d never had reason to.
