grandmother didn’t notice any of that. She was fixated on something else.
“An Arab?” Desdemona asked as soon as she was alone with her cousin in the kitchen. “Is that why you didn’t tell us about him in your letters?”
“He’s not an Arab. He’s from the Black Sea.”
“This is the
“Pontian!” Desdemona gasped with horror, while also examining the icebox. “He’s not Muslim, is he?”
“Not everybody from the Pontus converted,” Lina scoffed. “What do you think, a Greek takes a swim in the Black Sea and turns into a Muslim?”
“But does he have Turkish blood?” She lowered her voice. “Is that why he’s so dark?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“You’re free to stay as long as you like”—Zizmo was now leading Lefty upstairs—“but there are a few house rules. First, I’m a vegetarian. If your wife wants to cook meat, she has to use separate pots and dishes. Also, no whiskey. Do you drink?”
“Sometimes.”
“No drinking. Go to a speakeasy if you want to drink. I don’t want any trouble with the police. Now, about the rent. You just got married?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of dowry did you get?”
“Dowry?”
“Yes. How much?”
“But did you know he was so old?” Desdemona whispered downstairs as she inspected the oven.
“At least he’s not my brother.”
“Quiet! Don’t even joke.”
“I didn’t get a dowry,” answered Lefty. “We met on the boat over.”
“No dowry!” Zizmo stopped on the stairs to look back at Lefty with astonishment. “Why did you get married, then?”
“We fell in love,” Lefty said. He’d never announced it to a stranger before, and it made him feel happy and frightened all at once.
“If you don’t get paid, don’t get married,” Zizmo said. “That’s why I waited so long. I was holding out for the right price.” He winked.
“Lina mentioned you have your own business now,” Lefty said with sudden interest, following Zizmo into the bathroom. “What kind of business is it?”
“Me? I’m an importer.”
“I don’t know of what,” Sourmelina answered in the kitchen. “An importer. All I know is he brings home money.”
“But how can you marry somebody you don’t know anything about?”
“To get out of that country, Des, I would have married a cripple.”
“I have some experience with importing,” Lefty managed to get in as Zizmo demonstrated the plumbing. “Back in Bursa. In the silk industry.”
“Your portion of the rent is twenty dollars.” Zizmo didn’t take the hint. He pulled the chain, unleashing a flood of water.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Lina was continuing downstairs, “when it comes to husbands, the older the better.” She opened the pantry door. “A young husband would be after me all the time. It would be too much of a strain.”
“Shame on you, Lina.” But Desdemona was laughing now, despite herself. It was wonderful to see her old cousin again, a little piece of Bithynios still intact. The dark pantry, full of figs, almonds, walnuts, halvah, and dried apricots, made her feel better, too.
“But where can I get the rent?” Lefty finally blurted out as they headed back downstairs. “I don’t have any money left. Where can I work?”
“Not a problem.” Zizmo waved his hand. “I’ll speak to a few people.” They came through the
“It’s very nice.”
“I brought it back from Africa. Shot it myself.”
“You’ve been to Africa?”
“I’ve been all over.”
Like everybody else in town, they squeezed in together. Desdemona and Lefty slept in a bedroom directly above Zizmo and Lina’s, and the first few nights my grandmother climbed out of bed to put her ear to the floor. “Nothing,” she said, “I told you.”
“Come back to bed,” Lefty scolded. “That’s their business.”
“What business? That’s what I’m telling you. They aren’t having any business.”
While in the bedroom below, Zizmo was discussing the new boarders upstairs. “What a romantic! Meets a girl on the boat and marries her. No dowry.”
“Some people marry for love.”
“Marriage is for housekeeping and for children. Which reminds me.”
“Please, Jimmy, not tonight.”
“Then when? Five years we’ve been married and no children. You’re always sick, tired, this, that. Have you been taking the castor oil?”
“Yes.”
“And the magnesium?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We have to reduce your bile. If the mother has too much bile, the child will lack vigor and disobey his parents.”
“Good night,
“Good night,
Before the week was out, all my grandparents’ questions about Sourmelina’s marriage had been answered. Because of his age, Jimmy Zizmo treated his young bride more like a daughter than a wife. He was always telling her what she could and couldn’t do, howling over the price and necklines of her outfits, telling her to go to bed, to get up, to speak, to keep silent. He refused to give her the car keys until she cajoled him with kisses and caresses. His nutritional quackery even led him to monitor her regularity like a doctor, and some of their biggest fights came as a result of his interrogating Lina about her stools. As for sexual relations, they had happened, but not recently. For the last five months Lina had complained of imaginary ailments, preferring her husband’s herbal cures to his amatory attentions. Zizmo, in turn, harbored vaguely yogic beliefs about the mental benefits of semen retention, and so was disposed to wait until his wife’s vitality returned. The house was sex-segregated like the houses in the
In those days there were a lot of car companies to work for. There was Chalmers, Metzger, Brush, Columbia, and Flanders. There was Hupp, Paige, Hudson, Krit, Saxon, Liberty, Rickenbacker, and Dodge. Jimmy Zizmo, however, had connections at Ford.
“I’m a supplier,” he said.
“Of what?”
“Assorted fuels.”
They were in the Packard again, vibrating on thin tires. A light mist was falling. Lefty squinted through the fogged windshield. Little by little, as they approached along Michigan Avenue, he began to be aware of a monolith looming in the distance, a building like a gigantic church organ, pipes running into the sky.
