“We could try it, one or two Sundays,” Valentine said. “What harm could it do, charging for a few friendly songs?”
“We’d need someone in the middle,” Cap said. “An alto.”
Lily worked in the deli shop nearby. A large-breasted gal with thick legs and a gorgeous voice, Lily wasn’t opposed to singing, or flirting, or much of anything.
Soon word got around and men started coming for the Sunday sherry recitals, where Cap, Valentine, and Lily performed a couple of sets, and maybe for a little extra they’d sit on a lap, that kind of thing.
Pie was furious. The first chance she had she pulled me into her room. “You promised,” she sniped. “You promised me, hearts-cross.”
“What did I promise you, Pie? What have I ever promised you I didn’t follow through? If you don’t want men in the house, and your God-of-the-book isn’t providing, then give me another plan. How are we going to live?” I didn’t speak kindly, my feelings were still hurt that she hadn’t bothered to check on me when I was ill.
“I don’t know,” she hemmed. “You’re the planner. I know if you thought about it, you’d noodle a way—”
“Noodle. What exactly would I noodle, eh, Piper?” That was the first time in forever I used her real name. When I first came to live with them, I called my new sister Pie, and to me that was what she’d always been.
“We counted on you. Morie and I did,” she said.
We. Something stirred in me when she said that, an old something, born of the boar-bristle brush and how Pie never once lifted a hand to stop Morie.
So, I asked, “When I was sick, why didn’t you come see me? I was so blue, and you didn’t come.”
“Oh.” She stumbled. “You know I don’t care to go upstairs where they… sleep. And I knew… well, I was sure Capability was taking good care of you. She told me so. I did ask, V, and Capability told me you needed rest. I know it was a terrible shock and I thought: That’s right, Vera needs to rest. And I had my work at the orphanage—oh, V, don’t be sore at me.”
“How come you cook for the orphans, but you won’t help cook for your family, here?”
Leveling those calm blue eyes at me, she lifted her chin. “I’d cook for my family,” she said.
All that winter, I’d missed running into Sugarman. He’d taken Pearl and their boys to Europe while the city got back on its feet. Pearl’s nerves were shot, Sugarman explained to me, in his usual mix of Yiddish, English, and soul-speak. For six months Sugarman and his family visited relatives in Hungary; they met with his colleagues in Vienna. He was present when his former classmate Sigmund Freud met Carl Jung for the first time.
Upon Sugarman’s return, as I was just getting on my feet, I ran into him while I was out walking Rogue. The first few times we met by accident, but soon we were arranging our walks. We fell into an easy rhythm. Some nights we’d get so deep in conversation, we’d do five, six, ten laps around the perimeter of the square.
Concerning my predicament, Sugarman, ever the philosopher, put forth his theory that the greater the love, the larger the betrayal. He meant Rose, but I was fixated on Pie.
I’d been stewing on her words.
I found her in her room, getting ready for bed. She was seated at her vanity—the one Rose made sure every bedroom in the house had. In Pie’s room, the vanity’s trifold beveled mirror had suffered a few nicks in the quake. I took a seat on one of the twin beds and looked on as Pie performed her evening toilette. Morie had taught her what to do with her hair when she was a little girl. She likewise tried to teach me, but I never had much patience for the dabs and doodads.
First, Pie divided her hair into three parts, one on each side, then the back. Her blond hair fell to her waist, with a shy curl at the ends. Using a hairbrush that Rose had given her, Pie gave each section a hundred strokes. First the left side, then the right, then a reach to the back—always the same order, the same ritual Morie had followed and I suppose Morie’s mother before her. Pie’s lips moved as she counted strokes, and as she relaxed, she forgot about me. Her eyes fluttered closed. If ever I wondered what wouldn’t change after the world collapsed, it was this: Pie brushing her hair three hundred strokes.
“Pie?”
“Yah?”
“I’ve been thinking… on what you said. About turning the house into, you know?”
She paused mid-stroke. “Oh, I knew you’d agree with me, once you gave it a good think. There has to be another way.”
“Yeah, maybe so.”
Relieved, she started in where she’d left off. “Sixty-seven. Sixty-eight.” She smiled at me in the mirror. “I bet you’ve noodled something brilliant. What is it?”
“Well, it concerns you.”
“Me?”
“Mmm. Actually, it’s not a new idea, you and Morie thought of it a while ago.”
“We did?”
“We’ve got to get you married, Pie. I’ve gone through the figures and I can give you a month. That’s all we’ve got: one month to find him, woo him, marry him.”
She turned slowly. “Are you suggesting that I—”
My heart was pounding with false euphoria, with an old anger I’m not proud of, but there it was. “ ’Course,” I added, “he has to have money.”
“Get out!” she cried.
“Thirty days,” I said. “That, or we start the business. Oh, and should that happen, I expect we’ll need this room.”
Pie spent every one of those thirty days away from the house. She left early each morning and returned late from working with Eugenie and the orphans. Every day Bobby took her there and back in the buggy. No one asked him to do so; he just did it. I expect he thought it would please me.
It happened right under my nose. I
