hapless man for being…hapless.
“I’m sorry, Bill,” I whispered into the silence.
He reached out and found my hand, held it.
“Tell me about your day.” A lazy grin. “Mr. Ryan must be overjoyed with your Houdini piece, no?”
I thought of Matthias Boon’s coldness all day long. The intimidating Mac had left the back room and wordlessly dropped a sheet on my desk, my printed Houdini piece, his grimy thumbprint on the corner. He’d never done such a thing before, and I had no idea what it was all about. Now and then he’d step into the front room and address some concern with Sam, but rarely to Matthias Boon. This morning he’d given me a preview of my article, which would appear in the afternoon paper. When I started to thank him, he was already leaving, his hulking back to me.
I withdrew the galley sheet from my pocket and read my own words to my father. I wanted him to hear my interview before it appeared that afternoon. He leaned in, intent. I read well, dramatic, with flair, the product of Ryan High School’s rigorous elocution regimen. When I got to the end, my father was smiling.
“Well?”
“You have a news nose.”
I glowed. “You think so? So you like it, Father?”
“All Jews are escape artists.”
“What does that mean?” I was startled.
“You know the history of our people. Think about it, Pete. Escape from shackles, bondage, struggles to survive. To escape endless persecution.” He was now grinning. “Houdini is simply the first to make a spectacle out of it…to make others pay for the privilege of watching. The immigrant who broke free.”
“But that’s not the point.”
“Of course, it is.”
I’d always considered my mother the shrewd, intelligent force in the family: domineering, pessimistic, logical. A rigid woman, horribly unhappy. I’d inherited my mother’s acumen, her perceptiveness. My father-well, I’d long ago labeled the handsome, dreamy man as the vagabond poet, the helpless businessman, the sad wanderer out of Budapest into America, the man who’d played, feebly, a few strains of Mozart on the violin that now rested in the dining room hutch. Listening to his careful words, I feared I didn’t know my own father.
A voice from inside broke the quiet conversation. “Ed, did you see Kathe Schmidt today? I hope she remembers to come tomorrow morning to help Fannie with the dress patterns.”
I called back. “No, I haven’t seen her since yesterday.” At the Elm Tree Bakery, wooing (and abusing) Jake Smuddie, fluttering those eyelids and spewing venom toward Frana Lempke, who still held a place in the footballer’s heart. “Don’t worry. She’ll be here.”
“How do you know?” My mother loomed in the doorway. “God, I wish these people had a telephone like civilized people.” She didn’t look at my father.
“Her mother wants her money. I’ve met the woman. She’s greedy.”
“That’s cruel,” my father whispered to me.
“No, it’s true. You know that Kathe doesn’t like coming here. She’s made that clear. She’d rather run around town but she has no choice.”
“Still and all…” I could hear displeasure in his tone.
“I don’t mean anything bad.”
My father tapped my wrist. “Of course you do.”
Esther was running down the street, cutting across a lawn, even stepping over a bed of iris. Her long dress got caught on a protruding root of an old oak tree, and she grabbed at the fabric to rip it free. “Edna, Edna.”
My father answered. “Esther, what is it?”
Esther caught her breath on the lower steps, so winded she couldn’t speak, her face flushed and sweaty. I rushed to her. “News.” Esther threw her hands up into the air. “I have news.”
Esther, the town crier with the innocent face. I was the notorious town reporter, the town snoop, yet Esther, popular and garrulous, with a multitude of casual friends, always joining this clique or that, a social bumblebee, really reported the scintillating gossip or puerile revelations. People readily shared confidences with Esther, things they’d never reveal to me. She knew about secret engagements, hasty weddings, abandonments, even hush-hush pregnancies long before such news became commonplace; in her quiet, demure way, she often informed me of
Fannie and my mother joined us, and Esther, finally making it to the top step with my arm on her elbow, blurted out, “Frana Lempke. Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“We think-Milwaukee.” She swallowed. “Chicago. New York.”
I was irritated. “All of them?”
Esther shot me a look before mumbling, “Gone.”
My mother settled into a chair and sighed. “Esther dear, just what are you talking about?”
“Frana has run off with a man.” One word, almost: “Franahasrunoffwithaman.” She slowed down, breathed in, repeated the line. “Frana has run off with a man.”
“Good God.” My mother glanced at Fannie. “What is this all about?”
Fannie was puzzled. “Are you sure? I thought she was still seeing that football player, you know, the good looking…”
“What did you hear?” I broke in.
Esther took a couple of deep breaths. “Well, everyone
“But who?” From Fannie, interrupting.
“When did this happen?” I touched Esther on the sleeve.
“I bet it’s that Calvin Steiner,” my mother said. “Forty-odd years old, a drinker, that one, and always his eyes on the young girls. He comes into My Store, huffing and puffing, and if a farm girl is sifting through the pottery, he loses his train of thought and sputters like an old fool. Trying to sell me those mousetraps that wouldn’t so much as catch an elephant passing by…”
“Was it him?” I demanded.
“No one knows. But I heard that the afternoon train leaving for Milwaukee had the usual bunch of drummers, and one man was accompanied by a young girl who hid her face.” Esther let the drama settle on the porch.
“So how do you know it was Frana?” I wondered.
“Well, she’s disappeared. When her uncle went to get her at the high school this afternoon, she was gone. She’d left early. She snuck out, it seems. She wasn’t
“But that’s impossible.” I knew how severely the high school was run. If Frana’s uncle was scheduled to collect her at school’s end, there was no way Principal Jones or Vice-Principal Timm would allow her to simply stroll out, especially not with Miss Hepplewhyte, that authoritarian sentry, guarding the doors. It was not done.
“She lied, I guess.”
“How did you learn this?”
“I was with my father at Pettibone’s just now, and Mollie heard it from Kathe Schmidt, who said Chief Stone had been called to the high school. He was out of town but is just back and…”
“What’s happening now?” Impatient, my words rushed.
“Well, everyone is rushing there. To the high school. The chief even called the teachers back for a meeting. Right now. Frana’s uncle’s raising Cain, it seems. He’s at the school yelling and cursing. He refused to leave the building. And…”
We all started to talk at once, speculating, guessing, my mother
