persistence. I thought it had to be a stranger. Anyone who knew us knew the hours we kept. They knew our disapproval of night life and lobster suppers and men who rolled home incapable of putting a key neatly in a keyhole.
I heard the Irish slide back the bolt, eventually, and voices. And then, leaning up on my elbow, holding my breath so as not to miss anything, I heard my Ma scream. This signaled excitement. The late visitors were Aunt Fish and Uncle Israel Fish, come straight from the opera, still in their finery, because they had seen newsboys selling a late extra edition with reports of a tragedy at sea. ‘At sea’ was where my Pa was, sailing home from Europe.
Aunt Fish was my mother’s sister and she always seemed as at home in our parlor as she did in her own. By the time I had pulled on my wrapper and run downstairs she had already arranged Ma on a couch and was administering sal volatile.
‘Are you sure he sailed, Dora?’ she kept asking, but my mother wasn’t sure of anything. ‘Maybe he didn’t sail. Maybe business kept him in London.’
My father had been in Berlin and London, inspecting his subsidiaries.
‘Israel will go to the shipping offices,’ Aunt Fish said. ‘Israel, go to the shipping offices.’
Uncle Israel was stretched out with a cigarette.
‘Nothing to be done at this hour,’ he said. Aunt Fish turned and looked at him.
He left immediately. And my mother, released from the constraints of being seen by her brother-in-law dressed only in her nightgown, collapsed anew.
‘Poppy,’ said Aunt Fish, ‘don’t just stand there. Be a comfort to your mother.’ And so while she plagued the Irish for a facecloth soaked in vinegar, and more pillows, and a jug of hot chocolate, I stood by my mother’s side and wondered what kind of comforting to do.
I tried stroking her arm, but this appeared to irritate her. I looked at her, with my head set at a compassionate angle, but that didn’t please her either. I was altogether relieved when Aunt Fish returned from harassing our help and resumed her post as couch-side comforter.
I said, ‘Aunt Fish, is Pa lost at sea?’ and Ma resumed her wailing.
‘Poppy!’ said Aunt Fish. ‘Don’t you have even an ounce of sense? Your poor mother has received a terrible shock. If you can’t be quiet and sensible, then please return to your bed.’
I’m sure it wasn’t me that had rung the doorbell in the middle of the night with news of shipwrecks.
‘And send the Irish in, to build up the fire,’ she shouted after me.
We had stopped bothering with names for our Irish maids. They never stayed long enough to make it worth learning a new one.
‘And Poppy,’ my mother called weakly, from her couch, ‘don’t forget to strap down your ears.’
I lay awake, waiting to hear Uncle Israel’s return, but eventually I must have dozed, and then it was morning. But it was not like any other morning. Our family was suddenly part of a great drama. The first edition of the Herald reported that though Pa’s ship had been in a collision, all hands were saved and she was now being towed into Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Aunt Fish returned, having changed into a morning gown, and then Uncle Israel, with news that the White Star Line was chartering a train to take relatives up to Halifax to be reunited with their loved ones.
I said, ‘I’ll go. Let me go.’ This provided my aunt with further reasons to despair of me.
‘For heaven’s sakes, child!’ she sighed, and Uncle Israel winked at me.
‘Out of the question, Pops,’ he said. ‘Too young, you see. But why not write a little note? I’ll see he gets it as soon he sets foot on land.’
‘There’s no need for you to go, Israel,’ my mother said. The morning’s brighter news had restored her appetite and she was eating a pile of toast and jam. ‘I can always send Harry, if it isn’t convenient to you.’
‘Of course it’s convenient,’ said Aunt Fish. ‘It’s Israel’s place to go.’
I went to the escritoire and started composing my letter to Pa, but I was still more haunted by the idea that he might have drowned than I was uplifted by the prospect that he was safe. I had no sooner written the words ‘Please, never go away again’ than I burst into inappropriate and inconsiderate tears and was sent to my room.
Soon after, my sister arrived with her husband. Honey came up to my room and lay on my bed beside me.
‘Don’t cry, Pops,’ she said. ‘Pa’s safe. And you don’t want to get swollen eyes.’
I said, ‘Why did he have to go across an ocean, anyhow?’
‘Why, because that’s what men do,’ she said.
I said, ‘Would you allow Harry?’
‘Allow?’ she said. ‘It isn’t my place to allow. Besides, I know everything Harry does is for the very best.’
I had often suspected that marrying had caused a softening of Honey’s brain.
Uncle Israel left that afternoon on the special train to Halifax. And Harry went downtown, first to his broker with instructions to buy stock in the Marconi wireless company whose wonderful shipboard radio had helped save so many lives and bring comforting news to the waiting families. Then he went to the White Star offices to inquire when the passengers might be expected back in New York.
Honey and I were pasting scraps, just like old times, when Harry walked in, looking smaller and flatter and grayer than usual. He scratched his head.
‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘The Titanic has sunk, with heavy losses. A boat called the Carpathia is bringing the survivors home.’
It was eight o’clock. Up in Massachusetts Uncle Israel’s train was stopped, directed into a siding and reversed. There had been, he was told, a change of plan.
My cheeks were hot from the fire, but something deathly cold touched me. My mother fainted onto a couch. My sister uttered a terrible little cry. And Harry studied the pattern on the parlor rug.
‘Marconi stock closed up one hundred and twenty points,’ he said, to no one in particular.
My Grandpa Minkel and his brother Meyer arrived in Great Portage, Minnesota, in 1851 intending to set up as fur traders, but they were too late. The beaver pelt business was finished. They stayed on though and changed their plans and did well enough trading in lumber to build a fine house on top of a hill in Duluth. From Grandpa Minkel’s house you could see clear to Wisconsin. So they said.
Meyer and his wife were never blessed with children. This was somehow due to the accidental firing of a Winchester ’73, but I was never allowed to know the details. So when Grandpa headed south, looking to buy a spread and turn farmer, he left behind one of his own boys, Jesse, as a kind of second-hand son. Gave him away near enough, though he was a grown man and might well have had plans of his own. Grandpa took his other boy, Abe, to Iowa to be a mustard farmer. And that was my Pa.
Uncle Jesse stayed where he was put, married one of the Zukeman girls and had a number of obedient children, plus Cousin Addie, the one who refused to knuckle down to marriage. Grandpa Minkel grew so much mustard he had to buy a factory. Grandma Minkel told him he should make mustard that had a fine flavor but a short life, and she was right. Folks just had to keep coming back for more and Minkel’s Mighty Fine Mustard did so well Grandma and Grandpa had to send Pa to New York City, to invest the profits and keep his finger on the quickening pulse of finance.
My mother’s people were Plotzes. They sold feathers and goose down, in Cedar Rapids. She married Pa in 1890 and came with him to New York soon after, in a delicate