34
But Eddie was right about his father’s persistence.
The flowers, Ruth couldn’t have cared less about.
“Does he think we have a greenhouse?” she asked as more arrived, gesturing to the ornate display still sitting in the corner of my kitchen.
I honestly didn’t even know how we were going to dispose of them all—it was too large for a trash bag, and I wasn’t sure that the county would take them if we lugged them to the curb as they were.
I poked my head out the door and peered down the street, certain we would see him somewhere as he would want to know her reaction to the flowers. But if he was hiding, he was doing a fine job of it.
I came back into the kitchen just in time to see Ruth pocketing the note, which she hadn’t read out to me. Interesting, I thought. But I said nothing, deciding to let this unfold on its own.
The following day, a deliveryman arrived with a box of chocolates that could barely fit through the front door.
“A crate of chocolates, more like,” Ruth grumbled. “We’ll have no waistlines left if we eat these.”
“We can take them to the hospital,” I said, eyeing the box. It might fit in my trunk. If not, we would have to take Ruth’s car. “The nursing staff does love when I bring in sweets.”
“True,” Ruth said. “Though we should save some for the children.” The last thing they needed was more sweets.
Ruth had taken to buying them candy whenever she went shopping, claiming it was a grandmother’s job to spoil her grandchildren.
But I chose to believe that was a desire to keep some of the gift.
“It’s simply too much,” Ruth said, as she tossed chocolates into a large Tupperware container. “Why is he doing this?”
“Ruth.” She turned to look at me. “What did Abe do when you met him?”
She crossed her arms. “This isn’t the same at all.”
“How did you two meet? I asked Harry once, and he said it was something about a cousin?” I had asked if that meant Ruth and Abe were cousins, to which Harry replied by laughing merrily.
Ruth took a seat at the kitchen table, then selected a chocolate for herself and took a bite.
“They are quite good,” she conceded. Then she sighed.
“I came down from Boston—my father opened a laundry there. From a rabbi to a launderer.” She shook her head at the injustice the world had forced upon him.
“Why wasn’t he a rabbi here?”
“There were so many already. We had no money left, no congregation, nothing. He gave it all up for us.” She finished the chocolate. “He made a good living—as good as he could have at the time.”
I knew what she meant from my parents’ stories about their childhoods.
Even my own youth had a different tinge to it in my memories.
Not for us the sepia-toned nostalgia of an easier time; instead much more worry about what the situation in Europe meant for our place in the world.
After the war, things had gotten better.
“But I came to visit my friend Miriam. She had come from the same shtetl, and we kept in touch. Her family had relatives in Washington, so they settled down here. When she came to meet my train, her cousin drove her to pick me up.” She smiled, looking over my shoulder at a faraway past. “He was so handsome, but Miriam told me he was engaged, so I looked out the window for the entire drive. Meanwhile, Miriam told me later that he nearly crashed the car turning his head to look at me. He called off the engagement that night, then came to Miriam’s house for dinner—unannounced, I might add. ”
“You little home-wrecker,” I said with a laugh.
“I am no such thing,” Ruth said, reaching for another chocolate. But she looked amused. “I certainly did nothing to encourage him.”
“I’m seeing a pattern here,” I said, gesturing to the chocolates and flowers.
She shrugged. “I can’t help it if men are naturally drawn to me.”
I did try not to laugh. I really did. But it came barreling out of my throat in a giant guffaw. Ruth looked mildly insulted, then shrugged again and pursed her lips. “You should have seen me back then,” she said. “I was a looker.”
I reached over and patted her hand. “You still are,” I assured her, genuinely. “Tell me what happened next.”
Ruth shook her head, but her smile had returned.
“Miriam and I didn’t get a moment alone together until we went to bed.
He was there until bedtime and back again for breakfast the next morning.
Finally, his mother came over and told me if I didn’t agree to go out with him, he’d lose his job, and then where would they be? ”
“Had he asked you out?”
“Not in so many words. But I told him I’d have dinner with him—just the two of us—if he would go to work. He did and picked me up that evening.”
“What did he do?”
“He ran a dry goods store with his father.”
I arched an eyebrow. “So he wasn’t actually in danger of losing his job?”
“He might have been. His father was a difficult man. But he kept working, and we were married less than a year later.”
“Then you lived with his parents?”
She made a sour face. “You think I’m bad? You should have met Abe’s mother.” She shook her head.
“You’re not so bad,” I said, reaching out to put my hand back on hers. I was surprised to find I meant it.
She shook her head with a half smile, eyes looking into the past again. “There were times when I thought I’d have been better off with the Russians.” She looked back at me. “I squirreled away every penny that I could to save up so we could move out.”
Whether she was used to men pursuing her or not, it was the singing telegram that put her over the edge.
The knock on the door on a Saturday was unexpected, and I was behind the sofa, Susie sitting on the back of it, as I muddled through attempting to French-braid her thick, curly locks before she left for a birthday party.
I was definitely not cut out for hairdressing, and her complaints every time I tugged too hard made me want to call my mother and apologize for the hassle doing my hair had been.
Then again, I no longer had any pain sensation in my scalp from my mother tearing a brush through my own curls.
Ruth picked Pepper up and said she would get it, which I appreciated.
“Ruth Feldman?” A man’s voice asked from the doorway.
“Yes,” she said, hesitantly.
The sound of a harmonica caused me to look toward the doorway, Susie almost falling off the couch in the process, as the man in a red-and-white pinstripe suit and a straw hat began to sing.
“Your Joseph misses you,” the man sang. “Your Joseph misses you. He’s wondering what did he do? What did that poor man do? Can’t catch a break. He wants a date. Your Joseph really likes you. So call him please, or send one of these. A message in a bottle would do too.”
The man finished, removing his hat and bowing with a flourish. Both kids clapped, and Bobby yelled, “Bravo!”
I held a hand to my mouth to hold in a laugh.
“Did you know about this?” Ruth asked, turning around to look at me.
“Not at all,” I said, miming crossing my heart. “I swear.”
The singer still stood there expectantly, and Ruth, with a sigh, took a few steps to the console table where her purse rested, and pulled out a dime, which she dropped in his hat.
The man looked at it, clearly hoping for more, then thanked Ruth and pocketed the coin as she shut the door in his face.
Ruth shook her head, visibly annoyed, when there was another rap at the door. “These people,” she muttered, opening it. “Now listen, I gave you a tip, that means I’m done with—oh—”
Mr. Greene stood on the doorstep, hat in one hand, a much more appropriately sized bouquet of flowers in the other.
“Ruth,” he said with a nod, then extended the flowers. She looked at them as time stood still, then eventually took them.
“Joseph,” she said quietly.
“I—I do hope that wasn’t too much.”
“Joseph—” Ruth said.
“Joe.”
She held up a hand. “Please don’t start all that again.” She sighed. “You’re not going to stop until I have dinner with you, are you?”
He shook his head, but grinned, and I saw so much of Eddie in him when he did. “When I know what I want, I don’t like to waste time.” The unspoken part, that he wanted her, hung in the air.
For a long time she said nothing. “If I go to dinner with you, and then say I’m not interested, will you leave me be?”
“I hope that isn’t the conclusion you reach,” he said, running a hand through his gray hair. “But if it is, then yes. Tonight?”
“I suppose,” Ruth said. “You can pick me up at six.”
Mr. Greene looked so giddy that I honestly thought he might jump up and click his heels together. “You tell me where you want to go, and I’ll get us a table.”
“I don’t care,” Ruth said. “You decide.”
Mr. Greene nodded. “I will. I’ll ask Janet for recommendations. It’s been so long since I took a woman out.”
“I’ll see you tonight,” Ruth said, gently ending the conversation.
He plucked the hand that didn’t have the flowers from the doorframe and kissed it. “Until tonight,” he said gallantly.
She shut the door, and I caught her eye as she turned around.
“Don’t you say a word,” she warned me. “I’m just doing this so our house isn’t overrun with flowers.”
I didn’t even flinch at her calling the house “ours.” “I’ll try to find a vase for those,” I said. We had pruned down the casket spray into all available vases, so it was likely to be a water glass. But it was the thought that mattered.
Ruth sneezed. “He’d do better sticking to the chocolates,” she said, holding the offending flowers away from her. “My allergies may never recover from that man’s affections.”