Always and Forever Page 42

  She greeted Janet with an embrace and a kiss, affecting her usual manner. “Well, Janetel, you had a nice visit with your momma and poppa?”

  “Lovely,” Janet answered, watching Fayge trying to put on a brave front. “How are you, Fayge dear?”

  Fayge swallowed, paused for a moment, then said, “How am I? Fine. Come, I’ll make a nice glass of tea, then we’ll talk.”

  As they sat at Fayge’s kitchen table drinking iced tea, Janet studied her friend’s face over the rim of her glass. “I was … surprised to see that you weren’t open today, Fayge.”

  “Nu, so I’m entitled to a Sunday. Tell me, what happened with your family?”

  Fayge was obviously reluctant to talk about herself at this moment, and respecting that, Janet began to tell her the story of her great-grandfather, ending with her father’s request to be buried in the tradition of his people. And as she talked, Fayge sat there reflecting on the story that in one way or another had affected the lives of all Jews. Poland … How painfully vivid were the sounds of hobnail boots running across a cobblestoned courtyard, the sound of a siren, a car coming to a screeching halt, a door being bashed in, the screams, pleading, the cries of children … the herding into boxcars … numbers on tattooed arms … emaciated bodies … families separated … gas chambers … Auschwitz … pits in the ground … arms and legs, by the hundreds … Fayge closed her eyes and put her hands over her face. Did one ever forget? How was it possible to forget? At least Mendele would die in the warm sun of Miami.

  “Fayge, what’s wrong? Tell me.”

  She shrugged. “Mendel got sick. The coughing started all over again. The doctors said he should go back to Denver, but I said no, not this time. No more separations. I’m selling the shmattes to Mrs. Goldstein. Rags I can buy in Florida.”

  Janet was stunned. She was losing a part of herself. Fayge had represented a link between her and what she longed for, to know more about … It had little to do with Judaism in any religious sense. What she wanted to know were the songs, the humor and storytelling, the taste of the food, the experience of sitting in Fayge’s shabby front room with the newspapers on the table and feeling the richness that they had. They were rich, rich from the long years of survival. Fayge and the remains of her family wore the signs of a survival with dignity, even beauty. Although Fayge was a part of the silent generation that refused to discuss the unspeakable horrors that had been visited on them, without knowing, through a word dropped here and there, she had revealed things that she might have liked to have kept hidden.

  “When are you moving?” Janet asked quietly.

  Fayge shrugged. “A week maybe.”

  They sat silent, each with her separate thoughts. Then Fayge said, “I want you should know I feel like you’re my child.”

  Janet got up and kneeled in front of Fayge. Putting her face to Fayge’s, she allowed the tears to come … It wasn’t fair, that Fayge should suffer like this … or that she, Janet, should lose her …

  Fayge smoothed Janet’s hair away from her face. “You shouldn’t cry. God has been good to me. I have Mendele, my mother and my two uncles. With them, how bad off can I be? Wipe your tears. Now come, I have something I want to give you so you would remember where you came from.”

  As she went down the hall Janet looked around this place that had been her haven and realized how much beauty she had been given. But as Fayge would have said, “Nothing lasts forever.” There are moments of joy and misery. Without the bad, how would we appreciate the good, how know the difference … ?

  Janet looked at Fayge as she sat down alongside her on the worn red velour sofa and handed her a small green velvet box. Janet’s hand trembled as she accepted it. For a moment she hesitated, then opened it. Inside lay a gold Star of David. It was impossible to hold back the tears. “Oh, Fayge, thank you … you’ve been so good to me, I’ve learned so much from you. How can I thank you—?”

  “You can thank me by wearing this. You can thank me by remembering your zayde, by remembering your Jewishness, by remembering to repeat the story to your children.”

  “I promise.”

  “Now, let me put it on.”

  Janet looked at the star, and felt as though God had put his arms around her and that Yankel Stevensky was looking down from heaven, and smiling …

  And now the moment she dreaded … Lingering at the top of Fayge’s stairs she looked for the last time at this beautiful face and heard Mendel’s coughing behind the bedroom door, smelled the pungent odor of liniment that wafted under the crack of another door. She kissed Fayge, then walked slowly down the stairs. Fayge called, “And thank you, Janetel, for the candy. They’re sweet as the memories I’ll always carry of a beautiful girl who I pretended for a while was my child.”

  At first it was impossible for Janet to realize when Sundays came that she no longer had Fayge to run to. Friday nights were spent in bittersweet memories. But time softened the sense of bereavement and in its place Janet heard the distant laughter of Fayge and the others on Shabbes. Forgetting the pain was also more easily managed when Janet was very tired, and so she urged herself to accept more assignments. Her earnings became much more than she either wanted or hoped they would be. But when she thought about it, it had its compensations, not so much for the money itself but for the gifts she was able to send to Fayge and her family. And, at last, it also allowed her to furnish a lovely apartment. Life, at least on the surface, seemed good.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ALONG WITH HER SENSE of achievement, Janet also found a new source of personal happiness. After being in New York a year she finally met her first real friend—except, of course, for Fayge and her family. Janet and Kit Barstow were quite different in temperament and backgrounds, and their attitudes were far from the same; nonetheless, they were completely taken with each other.

  Kit had been a freelance model since she was eighteen, and now that she was twenty-four she was taking a long look at her life. How many more years did she have as one of the top fashion models? Four, maybe five? She’d had it all, made the front cover of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. Sure, it was exciting … who—as Janet too had discovered—wouldn’t like seeing their image staring back at them from a magazine rack? Yes, she’d loved it but now her best days were numbered and she knew it. For reasons other than Janet’s, the raven-haired, olive-skinned, green-eyed, five-foot-eight Kit Barstow had lost her drive. Who needed it? It would be nice to have a sense of, well … of belonging, to have a place to use to get out from under the rain. And so, secretly, she began to toy with the idea of marrying Nathan Weiss….

  Strange, thought the forty-seven-year-old Janet sitting in her deck chair … What would have happened if she hadn’t gone to Kit’s party that particular Saturday night. She’d had no intention whatsoever of going, but Kit was adamant, wouldn’t take no for an answer, and so she finally, reluctantly went. What a difference one small word could make—a no or ayes might have changed the direction of her whole life. If she’d said no that evening, chances were she also would not be on this magnificent voyage today. Twenty-seven years had passed, and yet she recalled each and every detail of that event as if it were yesterday.

  It was the night she met Bill McNeil for the first time …

  When she walked into Kit’s exquisite apartment it seemed as if most of the population of Manhattan was there. She looked around uncomfortably at the unfamiliar faces and searched for Kit, but there was no sign of her. People stood huddled in close groups, talking about whatever it was that people huddled in small groups talked about. Ten minutes later, Janet was still standing alone and feeling so ill at ease that she was tempted to leave, but just then she caught a glimpse of Kit, who waved “hello” from across the room.

  Janet accepted a glass of champagne from a server and started across the room to join her friend, but her progress through the dense and shifting crowd was slow.

  Suddenly someone backed into her, jostling her arm, and she was dismayed when she realize
d that the champagne that had been in her hollow-stemmed glass a moment before was now dripping down the front of a Brooks Brothers suit. She began to apologize, but as she looked up into the man’s face she broke off mid-sentence, stunned by her overwhelming awareness that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen. All she could do was to stand mute as he took out his handkerchief and began to wipe the front of his jacket. Finally, she said, “I’m so sorry … I … I really am …”

  “Forget it,” he answered, mopping up the remains. Without looking at her, he went on, “I’m going to give this damned suit away. It’s a jinx. Three times I’ve worn it and three times I’ve had it cleaned. I don’t know what there is about it, people just don’t seem to like this suit.”

  “I … I know what you mean. I have a white dress like that … I’m really so sorry—”

  “It’s okay. Think nothing of it,” and the next thing she knew he was gone.

  She was so embarrassed and surprised by the effect he’d had on her that, without stopping to say goodnight to Kit, she promptly left the party.

  In the lobby she asked the doorman to call a taxi, then walked out of the building to wait. Her heart thumped. He was standing there, also apparently waiting for a taxi. They looked at each other. He nodded almost imperceptibly, as if he only vaguely remembered it was she who had rained on his evening—or rather his suit—and then looked away. When the taxi arrived and he was about to get in, he hesitated and looked at Janet with some annoyance. “You take this one.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it, but thank you. Mine will be here any time now.”

  “Oh, come on, we’ll share this one.”

  In a semitrance, she found herself sitting in the back seat, he in the extreme left corner and she in the right.

  It was the voice of the driver that brought her back to earth. “Where to?”

  By now she was so unstrung she couldn’t remember.

  The next voice came from the left corner of the back seat. “What’s your address?”

  “The Hotel Barbizon on—”

  “I know, lady,” the cabby said.

  After what seemed an eon of silence the man next to her said, “My name is Bill McNeil.”

  “Janet Stevens … I want to apologize for spoiling your evening—”

  “You didn’t spoil my evening, just my suit. The truth is, I wasn’t going tonight but Kit can be damned insistent.”

  “That’s strange,” she said more to herself than to him.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t want to go either. Tonight, I mean. And you’re right. Kit doesn’t take no for an answer.”

  That was the beginning and end of their conversation. As the cab stopped at the curb in front of the Barbizon Hotel, Bill asked the driver to wait, helped Janet out, escorted her to the door, said goodnight and was back in the cab before she could even say thank you for the ride.

  Somehow she made it to her room and found herself leaning against the now closed door and staring into the dark. The heat of the room was not nearly as intense as the burning she felt. It was as though she had been hit by a kind of stroke. Quickly she opened the window and tried to catch her breath. No man had ever affected her the way Bill McNeil had. She probably would have fainted if he had kissed her goodnight or even if he had shaken hands. What in the world had happened to her tonight? And what was wrong with her … acting this way? She’d had her share of dating since she’d arrived in New York, but no one had really excited her. In fact, quite the opposite. Sooner or later, and usually sooner, they all got around to the same old line. You’re gorgeous … simply gorgeous. Love to see it without the draperies. Which was usually followed with … my place or yours? The propositions were so constant and so predictable, and the men so utterly lacking in desire to know anything about her beyond what met the eye, that she had felt almost inhuman. She began to find them repugnant, and she was exhausted by her efforts to fend them off tactfully. Finally she had given up the lovely apartment she had eventually taken and furnished to her taste and had moved to the Barbizon, a hotel for women only. She wasn’t a prude and even in Kansas girls knew about sex. But the opportunities that had been offered her could have made her the most underpaid, overworked bed partner in Manhattan, and so far she had never made love with a man. She’d saved the experience for someone very special, and somehow she had the feeling that that someone might be Bill McNeil. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t come on strong like all the others. For that matter, she reminded herself, he hadn’t even noticed her, much less made a pass or asked her out. But somehow she knew that he would. He had to. The more she thought of him, the more her feelings went into turmoil. At the moment, at least, nothing for them except a very cold shower.

  After a sleepless night she looked at the bedside clock. It was only six in the morning, and another empty Sunday lay ahead of her. Well, one thing was sure. She couldn’t lie here any longer fantasizing about what it would be like going to bed with Bill McNeil. She had run the gamut on that one since two this morning. Quickly she got out of bed, went to the bathroom and took another shower. With the towel wrapped around her hair, she went back to the bedroom and dressed in a pair of plaid wool slacks, a cashmere turtleneck sweater and boots. Replacing the towel with a knit cap, she then buttoned her navy blue jacket, flung a muffler around her neck and grabbed up coin purse and keys as she left the room.

  It was an extraordinarily mild and invigorating day for February, not a cloud in the sky nor a threat of rain on the horizon.

  Finding a coffee shop a few blocks away, she ordered tea and toast. No butter, thank you … had to keep those pelvic bones showing. Munching on the dry toast, she tried reading the Sunday paper but found that she could read no further than, “It has been rumored that before Joseph Stalin’s death last year, he …” when her mind wandered back to Bill McNeil. She visualized him as he lay in bed, his thick chestnut-brown hair in disarray, the deep brown eyes shut in repose, and his long, nude body sprawled under the sheets. In her fantasy she saw him getting out of bed, stretching away the last vestiges of sleep as he yawned … Now he was doing a dozen push-ups … now dashing quickly into the shower, letting the spray pelt against his lean and muscular body. Wiping the steam from the mirror, he lathered his face, took up his Schick razor and shaved. No, wait a minute, that’s what my father uses. Bill probably uses an electric. Refreshed and still nude, he went to the kitchen, measured the coffee grains into the Silex. Waited until the water turned a rich dark brown, poured a cup and brought it back to the living room, where he opened the front door, stuck out his hand and retrieved The New York Times. He scanned the pages as he sipped at his coffee, then threw the paper aside to read later and decided to dress and face the day. Leaving the bed unmade, the coffee cup unwashed, papers strewn on the floor, he dressed in a gray sweat suit and left the apartment. Where would he go? To Central Park? More than possible … Why not? Sunday mornings were the only time to get out into the fresh air after a long week in a stuffy office. The more she dwelled on it the more logical the fantasy became.

  She got up quickly, leaving much of the toast and tea untouched, paid the check and proceeded toward the park.

  Once inside the park she was deluged with a dozen overlapping thoughts—all negative. How in God’s name would she find him, if this was where he would be going? It was a good-sized park with plenty of trails and was it possible that she could accidentally bump into him? Stupid … STUPID … This is just a fantasy, she reminded herself, and you can’t manipulate reality. But there was an urge that compelled her on. Perhaps some unknown source had led her here, and him as well. There was such a thing as fate, or destiny. Don’t be ridiculous, Janet. Things happen spontaneously. This isn’t a movie, where you can change the script and make happy endings.

  Abruptly a new thought occurred to her … maybe he could be at the skating rink. She walked quickly past the zoo and all but ran to the platform above the rink, where she had a perfect view of the skaters below. She sc
anned the panorama, carefully observing each face. The skaters pirouetted and twirled in pairs to the sound of a Chopin waltz coming over the loudspeaker. It was a romantic scene that made her sigh all the more deeply as she realized Bill wasn’t there. Slowly, she turned and walked away, the lovely music fading behind her.

  By eleven that morning she’d given up, feeling like a female Walter Mitty. Slumping down on a park bench, she lectured herself, Well, you didn’t really think it would happen … In fact, you knew it wouldn’t. I’m sorry, Judy Garland, but you’re absolutely wrong. Wishing will not make it so. She sat looking out to the greenery beyond for a moment longer, then decided to go back to the hotel. Mission impossible not accomplished.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, staring out of the window. God, how lonely Sundays were. Particularly this Sunday. Imagine, somewhere in this city was a man who had aroused feelings in her she’d never even been aware she had, brought out a kind of compulsive, irrational behavior … If this wasn’t love she couldn’t find a different or a better word for it. If her parents could see the state she was in and the reasons for it … Their words sounded in her ears … “Your father and I are not for your leaving college and going off to New York by yourself, but as much as we’re against it, we do give our consent … Janet, you’re very mature for nineteen and we know we can depend on you to do the right thing … you’re a very level-headed young woman, we’re very proud of you, and we know you won’t do anything to embarrass us or yourself …

  Well, mother darling, you wouldn’t be so sure at this moment about that, not when I’m burning up and crazy in love with a man who doesn’t even know I exist. If I could, right now at this very minute, I would encourage him to seduce me. So there, mother, that’s your adorable little Janet, Girl Scout leader, pompom girl of the year, Miss Kansas Corn and runner-up for the Kansas Miss America. And, damn it, he didn’t even look at me. And you know something else, dear mother? The most shocking thing of all is I would never have guessed such passion was even a part of cool, calm and collected Janet Stevens. Cool? Some bad joke …