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.’
I said, ‘I’m sure it wasn’t me who came begging for a dead man’s clothes. I’m sure we are not the ones who should feel embarrassed.’
Ma released me from our awkward embrace.
‘They are crows, Aunt Fish,’ I cried, as I fled the room. ‘They are crows and you are a gull for allowing them.’
I hid for an hour inside Pa’s closet, comforted a little by its smells but anxious, too, that they might be fading. When I returned to my room, a small bottle had appeared on my night table. Pryce’s Soothing Extract of Hemp, recommended for cases of nervous excitement.
All through June and July our household was run by Aunt Fish, and then she stayed on through the worst of the August heatwave because we had an electric fan and she did not, and she feared she might expire without it. Uncle Israel struggled on without her, quite weary I suppose of having to dine out every night and drink champagne and play cards with other poor bachelors.
The days hung dead and hopeless. We visited no one, we had nothing to refresh our conversations, and every exchange was hobbled by unmentionable subjects. Water, travel, Europe, mustard, Iowa, money, joy, happiness, unhappiness; these were the main taboos. But to those I added my own secret list: Irish secretaries, gowns by Mr Worth, death by drowning and ghosts.
I was employed in a series of sewing assignments, trimming handkerchiefs with black ribbon, and turning slightly worn sheets sides to middle, a pointless exercise made all the more absurd by the fact that I had ten thumbs. In the
