“You got somethin’ to drink?” I asked.
The Greenspan kitchen looked even more like Fanny’s, even the wallpaper was the same. The only difference was that where Fanny had mismatched dishes and cookware, Gella had copper pots and dishes all with the same deep blue floral pattern.
She poured me a shot of peach schnapps in a cute little crystal thimble. Gella didn’t understand drinking the way her auntie did. I was sitting in the alcove, her standing before me. I downed the shot and put the thimble down in plain view, hoping that she’d get the hint.
“Sol is dead,” she said.
“When?”
“They called just before you got here. He died in his bed. Heart attack.”
I remembered what the maternity nurse, Rya McKenzie, had said about heart attacks but kept my silence on the subject.
“What did we do to deserve this?” she asked.
I got up and put my arms around her. She was a little taller than I, but still she got her head on my shoulder. I realized what Fearless meant about being there for someone who needs it. It was a small lesson on a bad day, and I wondered if I would remember it later on.
We stood there breathing, sobbing, being silent in the embrace. I was thinking about what I had to do next to keep out of trouble and to help Fearless realize that we were in over our heads. I pulled half away from the clinch, still holding on to her upper arms.
“He have any friends?” I asked.
“Sol?”
“Morris.”
“Oh.” That was a more difficult question. “Morris never had many friends. He was too serious for the young people who came to shul. He was always nervous and shy about how big he was. He was all the time saying how people made fun of him.”
“You got somethin’ to eat in the icebox?” I asked about food because I didn’t want to hear any more about how her Sad Sack husband didn’t have any friends and because I didn’t want to run him down in front of probably the only person who ever loved him since his mother.
“Oh yes,” she said brightly.
There was leftover meat loaf and stuffed cabbage that Fanny had made for them four days before. That and a Cel-Ray soda from the Jewish market was my dinner.
“She was a great cook,” Gella said, trying not to cry over the food. “They were both wonderful. He saved my father and me from the Nazis. He was a great man who would die for what is right.”
She switched over from meat loaf to heroism in wartime so quickly that I almost missed the meaning of her words.
“Some people said that it was because my father was rich that Sol saved us. But all our money was stolen by a man named Zimmerman. Sol knew that.”
“Who’s Zimmerman?”
“A Jew who worked with the SS men that sought out and deported Jews. They knew that some Jews had hidden their jewelry and valuables from German banks because they didn’t want to be robbed by the Nazis. Zimmerman came to my father and offered him our freedom for Papa’s art collection. But my father found out that Zimmerman lied and ran with me. After the war my father was broken. He lived with Sol and Fanny until he died.”
There was nothing for me to say. Sol and Fanny were saints.
“There’s a man named Jonas,” Gella said after a while.
“Who’s he?”
“Simon,” she said. “I think that’s his first name. He’s one of Mo’s friends. He’s not Jewish and so…” She let her own ideas of race and separation hang in the air a moment.
“Would Morris go to see his friend if he was upset? Somebody to talk to and drink with?” I suggested, indicating my empty glass.
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “Maybe.”
