has come to this house, so you must now make great efforts to be a good girl, for your dear mother’s sake.’
I said, ‘I’m sure I always do try to be good.’
‘There is all the difference in the world between trying and succeeding,’ she said, ‘and quibbling with me is not a promising way to begin.’
I said, ‘I know Pa is drowned, Aunt Fish. I know Ma is a poor widow now.’
She leapt up and knotted the ends of her shawl in despair.
‘That is precisely the kind of heartless remark good girls do not make,’ she said. ‘Your duty is to spare your mother from harsh reminders.’
I got up and put on my wrapper. Aunt Fish was looking at my ruined stockings and muddied shoes.
I said, ‘Am I to pretend then that Pa isn’t drowned? Am I to pretend he may come back some day?’
‘You are to wash your face and show respect,’ she said. ‘You are to go to your mother, and try to persuade her to sip a little peptonized milk, to keep up her strength. And you are never ever to speak of drownings, or steam ships or … oceans. How worn out your shoes are, Poppy. I’d suggest a new pair, but you’ll be going out so seldom now it hardly seems worth the expense.’
And with those words, Aunt Fish raised the curtain on a whole new period of my life.
Ma was propped up with extra pillows. Her night table was cluttered with various bottled remedies, her little helpers. I could see she had been crying. I suppose she could see I had, too. She patted the bed beside her.
‘What a blessing I have you, Poppy,’ she said. ‘I see now, this was all meant to be. If you had been as favored with beauty as Honey you’d soon make a good match and then what would I do, left all alone in the world?’
I opened my mouth to say I didn’t think Honey was all that favored with beauty, but Ma was getting into her stride.
‘But it’s so clear to me now,’ she continued. ‘I was given a beauty for the consolation her children will bring me, and I was given a plain one for companionship in my old age. How wise Nature is!’
I said, ‘Does this mean I don’t have to go to Cincinnati for a new nose?’
‘The nose is cancelled,’ she said. ‘And the singing lessons and the French and the cotillions. There’s no sense in exerting ourselves in that direction anymore.’
The husband hunt had been called off. Still, I had rather enjoyed my singing lessons.
I said, ‘Shouldn’t you like me to be able to sing for you sometimes, Ma?’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I should like you to read to me sometimes from the Home Journal. And mend stockings.’
She tried to stroke my hair, but her fingers caught in it. Standing in the rain had given it a particularly vicious kink.
‘We’ll just live quietly now,’ she said. ‘No more dinners.’
Dinners had always been a trial to her, as she clambered the foothills of society. She had once committed the solecism of following a potage crème with creams of veal en dariole. It was only the dessert, a Prune Shape, produced by Reilly, our cook, in a moment of whimsy, as a substitute for the Almond Shape that had been ordered, which saved Ma from the social ruin of presiding over a completely beige meal.
As far as I know she never descended to the kitchen. Her negotiations with Reilly were conducted entirely through a speaking tube that connected the parlor to the scullery. The temperature of their exchanges rose as the dinner hour drew near, and neither party ever seemed to understand that they could not only hear and be heard. They could also be overheard.
‘Reilly has been nipping at the brandy,’ was one of Ma’s favorite asides.
Reilly herself was fond of the prefix ‘fecken’’, as in, ‘I’ll give her fecken’ fricandeau of sweetbreads, all right.’
I took this to be a quaint usage from Reilly’s home country and sometimes repeated it, in imitation of her. I had no idea what it meant, and neither did Ma, so no harm was done.
On the day of a dinner, Ma required an extra dose of Tilden’s, for her nerves. The day after a dinner, her shades were kept tightly closed and she took nothing stronger than seltzer water. That Pa’s death meant an end to all this was no cause of regret to me.
I said, ‘What about the backboard? Do I still have to wear that?’
‘Good posture is always an asset,’ she said, ‘even in a homely girl.’
I sensed, though, that this was the moment to strike as many bargains as possible, and I was just about to sue for a ceasefire in the war against my protruding ears, when Aunt Fish appeared in the doorway. In her hand were the ashes of my corrective nightwear bandeaux.
‘Dora!’ she said. ‘I have had the candle removed from Poppy’s vanity table. I fear she is not yet to be trusted with unguarded flames.’
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
