post-First World War development of summer homes for New Yorkers, the simple bungalows formed a self-enclosed community just ten minutes’ walk from Huntington Harbor. It was a promising wooded site, bounded by roads on three sides, unimaginatively divided into lettered lanes. By 1925 seventy units had been sold to city lawyers, engineers, architects, professors, civil servants, builders and small businessmen, anxious to get away from the oppressive heat of the city, to enjoy days on the local beach with their children. Brown’s Beach, it was called locally, and brown it certainly was.
Only a few years later, the residents, who had not been warned of the menace of the local waters, signed a petition for an immediate amelioration of their parlous state, complaining of ‘a polluted harbor, constituting a menace to health and life . . . with sewage and other disease-breeding material continuously distributed into the waters of the harbor, including the effluvia from cesspools and toilets, making the harbor unfit for bathing purposes or for the cultivation of shellfish’.
Not many of the residents, most of whom kept kosher homes, gave a hoot about shellfish, but the pollution was disgusting, the smell at low tide noxious. The waters were only negotiable at high tide, and grandparents warned of the dangers of getting your head in the water. The children went on frolicking, splashing and ducking. None of them died. The adults donned their swimsuits and paddled. Now and again one of them, swimming in the deeper waters, would encounter an itinerant floating turd, like an organic grenade. Ben called it Perle Harbor.
Becca fought for territory in the back seat, was bored quickly and kvetched, got carsick if she read or ate too much junk. She worried incessantly that they would get lost, particularly if Ben turned off the highway for one reason or another.
‘How will we find our way back?’ asked the little one, increasingly anxious. ‘Is it on the map?’ She had a lot of faith in maps, but only Ben could read them. If Addie started unfolding, peering and muttering, tracing various lines with her finger, Becca knew there was going to be trouble and they would end up in fairyland.
‘Ben!’ she ordered. ‘Stop the car! Then you can look at the map.’
‘I am looking at it just fine,’ said Addie, peering down intently, trying to get the damn map to hold still.
‘Do you know where we are?’
Addie pointed randomly. ‘Here!’ she said. ‘And we are going – there!’ She pointed at a place higher up. ‘Towards the North!’
Becca looked outside, at the unwinding landscape of the highway. The North was uphill, like mountains. But the road was flat. They were lost.
The bungalow was at the top of the unpaved Lane L, which had three other houses on it, off Cedar Valley Lane. It was a simple, unheated wooden structure, thrown up by a developer who could hardly produce them fast enough to meet the demand. When Maurice bought theirs for $2,000, in 1939, they were already considered good investments, though Perle worried about the cost.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he said breezily. ‘I’ll pay it off.’ He would never have said ‘we’. She acceded with her own version of good grace: silence, a shrug, acquiescence. Paying wasn’t her problem. Morrie would provide, he always did, almost always.
A screened-in front room led into the kitchen, through which was a modest living room, three bedrooms and two simple bathrooms. At the back was a porch, with a gate that led to a small lawn, and a couple of mature crab apple trees between which Poppa could hang the orange striped hammock. The children had to be taught that a gate was not also a swing, except that it was if you wanted it to be. One day the hinges broke and Becca fell over and skinned her knee. She didn’t do that again.
From the very first day, Perle adored the heavenly expanse after the cramped two-room apartment on the fourth floor of the Hotel Brewster, kitchen, dining room and living room together as you came through the door, with a double bedroom and bath. And in Huntington, six rooms! A porch, a yard! She loved furnishing it, choosing fabrics and furniture from the current Sears Catalog, a bedroom suite for only $37.75. That was very reasonable! A red lacquered rocking chair, a few throw carpets, a sofa, some occasional tables: only another $32.40, for them all. She had a few bits and pieces she could spare from the apartment – it was too cluttered anyway – and from the local goodwill shop she bought a dining table and six chairs – eight bucks! – and three sets of used curtains at fifty cents a pair. The empty space soon became a home, if only for the summers. She loved it! A summer was a long time, you could stretch it at both ends as the developers recommended. Residents went to Harbor Heights in the early spring and didn’t leave until after Labor Day (for those with children at city schools) or October (for those fortunate enough to stay on for the beautiful fall).
It was a happy period, the two of them in unusual harmony, proud of what they were creating, Perle on the inside, Maurice, the out, members of a professional community of gregarious city residents. They made friends quickly: Momshe and Popshe Livermore (he was the boss of a fancy department store), further up the road Sam and Martha Lowry, and across from them the Cohens (he was named Edwin, but she seemed only to be called Honey). The women became friends, which was a brocheh, because it left the men to their baseball, cigarettes and beer, their pinochle games in the evening, while the women schmoozed in the living room.
Maurice had no idea what they talked about. The children, obviously. Clothes, recipes, matters of housekeeping? TV programmes? Who cared, as long as they were happy, and quiet? He would have been surprised by the range of their conversations, would have forgotten to add the topic ‘husbands’, about whom they were sometimes amused and frequently exasperated. But to a woman they were loyal, occasionally indiscreet, but anxious never to overstep that unspoken line that would make them emotionally unfaithful. They all knew about men, what they were like. No need to say everything, was there?
Sometimes, when the right four could be arranged (which was surprisingly difficult), they would play canasta. Perle was a student of the game, as adept as Maurice at his, but her aggression was not channelled into bonhomie, teasing and patronising instruction. No, hers was the untrammelled thing: she played to win, and when she snapped down her melds, taking the cards from her hand and twisting her wrist as ferociously as if she were trying to remove the recalcitrant lid of a jar of pickles, you could hear the snap as they hit the table, which wobbled under the impact. As did the other players. It was daunting, imperious. No one wished to play with her, no fun in that. Better to schmooze – safer, more relaxing.
And while they talked, they knitted. It was a skill required of the girls of their generation, and during the war they had formed a local group, knitting socks, sweaters and mufflers for the poor freezing soldiers. Afterwards Perle carried on knitting and (a new passion) crocheting, revelling in the freedom to choose her own patterns and colours, to brighten things up with oranges and greens, make sweaters less bulky, socks for more delicate feet, ladies’ mufflers to look smart on a winter’s night. She knitted at such a rate that the family were swathed in warming garments, begging for less.
The overflow was placed in the cedar chest in the front room, opposite the freezer, which was Becca’s favourite spot in the bungalow. When she arrived she’d run up the steps, pull back the lid, put her head right in and take a deep smell. It was heavenly; she couldn’t get enough of it, would return several times a day and sniff away happily, like some sort of juvenile junky. Opposite her, Jake would make several trips to the freezer to sneak a Good Humor ice cream. Becca liked them, too. Sometimes he’d share. But he thought the cedar chest was stupid.
When it got just past eleven, the cigarette packs and beer bottles empty, one or another of the pinochle players would suggest that enough was enough, they should settle up. Maurice always won, but the stakes were low, less than five dollars would change hands. He hated having to stop, loved the niceties of play, frequently pointing out the errors of his fellow
