The Golden Willow Page 3

  Then sometimes I would go down to Gray's drugstore in Times Square and get on line in their basement to buy discount tickets for some Broadway show. And we'd walk to the theater from the Village, and walk back again, and once, I remember, I chose to halt our walk and pull Ruby close to me and kiss her, and a passing car filled with young fellows slowed down and a head popped through the window and a voice yelled out, “Why don't you marry the girl?”

  Our four years in the Village went swiftly and happily, and there was never any more talk of children. The summers were a bit difficult for me. Our apartment on the top floor became an oven, with the sun beating down on the roof directly above us. I still read manuscripts for the movies, though I'd changed from MGM to Twentieth Century Fox, and I sweated over the books and things I had to read. When it came to typing out the synopsis that was required, my fingers were so moist from sweat that they slipped on the keys. I worked stripped to the waist, like a stoker in a furnace room, the sweat pouring over my body. I would keep a basin of cold water nearby, and every so often I would dip a cloth into it and run water over my head and face and chest.

  One hot afternoon, as I sat at my desk struggling to finish typing a synopsis of the book I had just read, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. The door was wide open to let in what little air there was, and the sound came to me clearly. I halted my work, thinking it was one of our neighbors on the floor, perhaps the modern dancer come to move some furniture around and bother me still more. But it wasn't a neighbor. It was Ruby.

  I gaped at her at first as she came through the door. Then I noticed that her face was pale, and she didn't look well. Nor had she ever come home from the office this early. I jumped to my feet at once and led her to a chair, and she sank onto it gratefully.

  “Aren't you feeling well?” I asked anxiously.

  “Not terribly well,” she said. “They let me go home early at the office.” And then she added—with complete irrelevance, I thought—“Darling, do you remember that joke James told us last Saturday night?”

  “Joke?” I said, more puzzled than ever.

  “Yes, the one about the unmarried girl who told her mother she wasn't feeling well and said, ‘Don't worry, Mother. I'm only a little bit pregnant’?”

  I gave a short laugh. “Yes, I remember it. So what?”

  “Well,” Ruby went on, “that's the way it is with me.”

  It took me a half second to catch on, and for another brief moment there was shock. But that only lasted another second, and then I was on my knees in front of her. It was a surprising reaction on my part. We'd quarreled over this once. I was dead set against having children. I hated families. I'd been miserable in one for a good part of my life. It had been a family of bickering and poverty and no father to speak of, and I had made it clear to Ruby that I would never have a family of my own.

  But in this moment all that had vanished, and I was on my knees in front of her and holding her hands and telling her how wonderful it was.

  She was not sure about me, though. She looked at me anxiously and said, “Are you sure you don't mind?”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “This is great, really great. I do mean it.”

  I did, without any doubt. And there was something else that had happened once to contradict my feelings about families. It was when I was ten years old. Until then I had been the youngest, the baby in the family. Then I woke up one morning to hear a baby crying in the next room, where my parents slept. My two brothers, who shared the bed with me, woke up too, and they laughed when I asked where the baby had come from.

  “He doesn't know anything yet,” Saul had sneered.

  “He'll find out one day,” Joe had added.

  Of course I hadn't known. I hadn't noticed my mother getting larger and larger, as they had, knowing what it meant. I went into her bedroom later that day and saw her lying there with the baby at her side, and she motioned to me and said, “Come and see your little brother.”

  When I looked at the little wrinkled face wrapped in blankets beside her, I'd felt an overwhelming happiness that blotted out all the poisonous feelings I might have had toward this new addition to the family. And it was that same kind of happiness that rose in me to greet the news Ruby brought me that day.

  Chapter Four

  2001

  IT WAS NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT, THE DOCTOR ASSURED US, JUST A common nosebleed, but our daughter, Adraenne, was not satisfied. She was a nurse practitioner and knowledgeable about medicine, and she knew who were the best doctors. She chose one in New York and made an appointment for Ruby.

  It turned out Ruby was suffering from anemia, but one that could be controlled with a weekly injection of a medication called Procrit.

  Since Adraenne was unable to make the trip to New Jersey from Brooklyn, where she lived, to give Ruby the weekly injection, we turned to our next-door neighbor for help. Blake had been a medic in the army before he retired, and was well trained in giving injections. He was only too glad to oblige, and every Sunday morning he would be at our door, often bringing a cake that his wife, Hildegarde, had baked for us, or perhaps a pot of her delightful chicken soup. Those Sunday mornings became a social event, with sometimes Hildegarde accompanying her husband.

  Eventually, I learned to give the injections myself, and they seemed to be working. Blood tests showed that the hemoglobin count was rising, and bit by bit it reached a normal level. The danger had passed. The anemia was not developing into the unmentionable leukemia, as in many cases it did. We were all happy, Ruby especially.

  “Now,” she said to me when the normal level was reached, “you can take me to the prom.”

  The Senior Prom was a new innovation in town. All seniors had been invited. It was to be held at the newly opened Cultural Arts Center. High school students were to be the hosts and hostesses. A dinner would be served. There would be a live band for dancing. It had been prominently advertised in the local paper, and Ruby had wanted to go, but I had held back. It seemed just a bit too silly to try to recover the high school days, and I wasn't keen on dancing, especially now that I was in my nineties, as was Ruby also.

  “Can't we go somewhere else?” I asked Ruby. “How about a play or a good movie?”

  “No, I want to go to the prom,” she said.

  So we went, putting on our best clothes. Ties and jackets required, the invitation had said, and I knew I was going to be uncomfortable wearing a tie and jacket, something I hadn't done in a long time. I must say, though, that Ruby looked beautiful in a blue sleeveless gown that she'd bought specially for the occasion, and no one would have guessed that she was ninety.

  It was a long time since we had gone dancing. Perhaps that was true of a great many of the others who came. By the time we arrived, the parking lot was packed and I had to cruise around quite a bit before I could find a vacant parking spot to squeeze into. Two young girls dressed in fancy party gowns greeted us at the door with smiles, and one of them escorted us inside.

  It was already crowded and noisy inside, with people seated at large round tables. Our hostess had trouble finding places for us, but she did at last at a table where three other couples were seated. We introduced ourselves, and there were handshakes and curious looks at us.

  All of them, it seemed to me, were on the youngish side compared to us. They were sizing us up, probably trying to figure out our age. It wasn't long before one of the women asked us, “If you don't mind telling me, how old are you two?”

  When I told them that I was ninety-one and Ruby ninety, there were astonished looks on their faces and cries of “Oh, I don't believe it.”

  I smiled, and Ruby smiled. We were used to this by now. It had happened before when we were among strangers. Sooner or later they would be saying, “God bless you!” and expressing the hope that when they got to that age, God willing, they hoped they would look half as young as we did.

  They did say exactly that. And then, in the midst of the dinner that was being served by the student
hosts and hostesses, the band struck up a tune. It was one of the old fox trots, and it was a good opportunity to get away from the table. I took Ruby's hand and we both got up. The others remained seated, and I knew it was because they wanted to see how we would dance—or if we could. I could feel their eyes on us as we went onto the dance floor. Ruby noticed it, too. I said to her, “Let's give them a treat and collapse onto the floor. I'm sure they're expecting it.”

  “We'll do no such thing,” she said. “Instead, give me a few extra twirls and show them how good we are.”

  I tried. I did my best, but after the second dance I had to beg Ruby for a rest. “I'm bushed,” I said. “I really can't do another, otherwise those people at the table are going to get what they expect and I'll have to be carried out.”

  A bit to my surprise, she said, “All right, darling, let's sit down. To tell you the truth, I'm a bit tired myself.”

  I don't know if she was telling the truth or not, but we went back to the table and got applause from our neighbors there, and words of praise, and a repetition of how they couldn't believe we were that old.

  We left shortly afterward. I couldn't handle the dinner, anyway. It was spaghetti and meatballs, and it got all over my blue serge suit. But mostly it was because we were both very tired.

  It was the last time Ruby and I danced together.

  Chapter Five

  1939

  KNICKERBOCKER VILLAGE WAS A HUGE COMPLEX OF MULTISTORY brick buildings in lower Manhattan, close to the East River and the Williamsburg Bridge. Our new apartment was on the tenth floor, overlooking a courtyard. It had two bedrooms, and this chiefly was our reason for moving. Now that Ruby was going to have a baby— despite the fact that she was only a little bit pregnant—we realized immediately that our place in the Village was not large enough to accommodate the extra person who was coming. Nor did we think Greenwich Village was an ideal place in which to bring up a child.

  And perhaps too, Ruby and I were changing a little and growing more mature in our thinking. We had met a lot of interesting people there, but we felt that a quieter, more conventional environment would be better suited for our growing family. There was another reason. Ruby had changed her job at Brentano's for one with the government at much better pay. She worked now in the Treasury Building in the Wall Street district, and she would be able to walk there in less than half an hour, something she preferred to crowding onto a subway.

  In Knickerbocker Village there were elevators to go up and down—no more stair climbing. And there was a separate bedroom, which would be the baby's room, and which we furnished in advance with a crib and dresser. There was a garden below, with benches to sit on, and other young couples like ourselves, some who already had children, others who were expecting them, as we were. There was a friendly, congenial atmosphere that we liked, and no more thumping when the modern dancer began her mysterious furniture moving late at night.

  Ruby's pregnancy was scarcely noticeable while she was dressed, people marveling when they learned the month she was in. Then one unseasonably hot night in September, we came home from a movie and had scarcely opened the door of the apartment and entered into the hallway before Ruby gave a cry and I heard a trickling sound. There was water on the floor around her.

  “Quick,” she said, as I rushed to help her to a chair. “Call the doctor.”

  I did while she sat on a wet chair. It was a day when doctors answered calls immediately. His voice came at once, and after I'd told him what had happened, he said, “The water bag has burst. Get her to the hospital at once.”

  I led Ruby outside, and we were lucky: There was an empty elevator waiting. In a few minutes we were down and outside on Monroe Street looking for a cab. Luck again: A cab pulled up, and I bundled Ruby into it. Soon we were at Beth David Hospital, and Ruby was taken from me, and Dr. Hibbard was taking me aside and saying things that weren't exactly comforting. “I have to tell you this,” he said. “We're going to try for a normal delivery, but it's possible she might need a cesarean, and in that case, there'll be some risk. So you have to be prepared.”

  I wanted to stay, but he urged me to go home and wait until I heard from him. I'll never know why he made it sound so dramatic. Cesareans were common enough even in that day, and there were relatively few fatalities. But anyway, it gave me a sleepless night, and I got up once during the night and sat at the window looking out at the few lighted windows still on in the courtyard, imagining all sorts of things. It was the first time in our married life that we had been separated, and perhaps even under more normal circumstances I would have been sleepless without her.

  But that night I went through all sorts of misery, with the doctor's warning sounding in my ears, and thoughts of how I could go on living if Ruby died. I would find out someday, and I would not be far wrong in what my apprehensions were that night. But that was not the time for it. Nor, when I think back on it, had there been any reason for that doctor to have put such fear into me.

  Early the next morning my phone rang, and Dr. Hibbard's voice came over sounding more cheerful and optimistic. There had been a cesarean, and Ruby had come out of it quite well, and so had the baby, and it was a boy weighing eight pounds. Congratulations!

  I rushed to the hospital, and some of my joy vanished when I looked through a glass screen and saw my son for the first time. His face was a mass of red wrinkles and he was crying.

  The intern at my side laughed at my expression. “Don't worry,” he said. “We all look like that when we're born, but we all change.”

  He was right, of course, and I was reassured about Ruby. She was smiling when I came in to see her, and lifted up her arms to me, and for the brief moment in which we were together again we forgot even the baby. But not for long. The serenity and complete absorption in each other that had marked our life before this was gone, and there was another person with whom we shared all this—one who was demanding, cried a great deal, had to be fed at regular intervals, and kept us up at night.

  There was much to be done in this new life of ours, and we were fortunate in having Aunt Lily there to break us in on the caring of our infant. She and her husband, Peo, had come from Chicago to live permanently in New York, and Aunt Lily had become a fully qualified infant nurse. She gave us her services for a week as her gift to us, and as soon as we arrived home from the hospital she donned her white uniform and took charge. It was through her that we learned how to hold the baby so that we did not injure him, how to bathe him and diaper him and do the many other things that were necessary. But the week afterward we were on our own. Ruby had no difficulty becoming a mother, and I know she loved every moment of it. It was then too she began her album that recorded in great detail the baby's growth and development.

  I was the photographer. I took the pictures, mostly with a Brownie box camera, of the baby lying in bed, the baby kicking his feet, the baby smiling for the first time, the baby grasping a rattle in his tiny hand. The album is gone now, along with a good many other things of the past, but I can remember it so clearly with its badly taken snapshots and the captions under each one written by Ruby in white lettering: “Charlie laughed for the first time today … Charlie can now sit up … Charlie sneezed and I am afraid he might have a cold—I must take him to see Dr. Walsh …”

  Dr. Walsh was our pediatrician and had her office in Knickerbocker Village. The white-haired, soft-spoken woman examined her squalling, squirming patients with minute care, never the slightest bit ruffled by their antics, going over carefully every inch of the little body, and giving her findings and instructions in a lengthy report that covered at least two sheets of paper.

  Charlie grew bigger and continued to develop. The intern had been right: The wrinkles disappeared and the face became quite normal. In fact, we thought it was a lovely face. And one day Ruby reported in her album, “Charlie laughed for the first time today.”

  On that same day the newspaper headlines blazed, “GERMAN PLANES BOMB LONDON.”

 
THE WAR HAD BEEN RAGING in Europe for over a year. Hitler's armies were sweeping over the continent, taking country after country, and now his planes were blitzing London. In the United States there was talk of the war spreading here, and there was controversy over whether we should or should not get into it.

  At Knickerbocker Village, though, the talk was mostly about babies. At least that was so among the mothers; the men might have been talking among themselves about the draft and the possibility that they might be called up. But as the mothers wheeled their babies around the lawns or sat on benches, rocking the carriages to get the crying babies to sleep, the danger of losing their men was still distant, and the conversations that took place dealt with sleepless nights, diarrhea, and breast-feeding or bottles. Ruby mixed well with these people, and we were both quite content with our new surroundings and our new first baby.

  Ruby got along with everybody, and everybody liked her, and she made a wonderful mother, as she was with everything. She loved the baby. She loved breast-feeding, and she loved every moment she spent with the baby, even getting up at night to change his diaper or to do whatever was necessary to halt his crying.

  I think it was a sad day for her when her maternity leave was over and she had to go back to work. Although she never complained or even said a word to me about it, I know it was not easy for her to relinquish the baby's care to the young Czech woman we had hired to take her place during the day. I have thought about that often, and with a touch of guilt that I also felt then, regretting that I did not make enough money to enable her to stay home permanently. I was still a reader and in the low-pay rut, and still writing and hoping that I would get a book published, even though the country was working its way out of the Depression and jobs were available. But what skill did I have? All I knew was how to read and write, and I did not know how to write well enough to make a living out of it.