Short Stories

 

 

Postcards

What caught Yvette Weissman's eye when Ann Todd introduced George Zimmerman to the table at the Stork Club on East 53rd was how good-looking he was in his vogueish worsted wool suit. It was a girls' night out. The girls, Yvette, the oldest at 28, were all sewing machine operators at Brew Schneider on West 21st Street. Dressed to the nines, this was the first time any of them had been inside the chic nightspot. Ann had organized it; tomorrow, January 7, 1941, they would be back at their Singers. Not Ann. She planned to be on the 20th Century Limited to Chicago on a journey that would ultimately deliver her – by plane! – to Naval Station Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, where she and Fowler Todd would be reunited. The girls had been talking about how lawless New Year's Eve 1941 had been in the city – most of them had stayed close to home – when George meandered over. They knew from Ann that George's godfather was acquainted with Arthur Godfrey, who pulled strings to get the Brew Schneider girls past the gold rope to a table of their own. George and Ann met in fifth grade at the Lillie Devereaux Blake School. What a surprise when they spotted one another after Advent Sunday services at West End Collegiate.

***

George pulled up a chair and inserted himself at the table between Yvette and another girl. The band was playing "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy."

"Want to dance?" It was more of a declaration than a question as George tugged Yvette by the hand. There was little room between the tables for dancing, but dance they did.

"You look swell," George complimented.

"Thank you." Yvette wanted to add something clever but decided against it. He smelled faintly of cigarettes, seawater, and mint.

"What do you like to do when you're not at the Stork Club?"

"I collect postcards," Yvette answered without guile.

"So, it's sewing machines and postcards?"

"And helping Mama. She works at the Turkish Baths on 10th Street."

Yvette challenged: "What do you do in your spare time?"

"Well, my spare time ends tomorrow. I enlisted in the Army Air Corps."

"Not as a pilot, he added hastily, "I'm hoping for logistics."

His brown eyes addressed her blue-green eyes with a combination of longing and apprehension. His calm voice whispered, "The Air Corps seemed a better bet than the army."

His hand on her shoulder transmitted electricity.

"Send me postcards when you can. I'll save them," Yvette said.

"Maybe I will. Maybe I will. Where do you live?"

"108 St. Mark's Place. With Mama."

***

The only news was war news. Neighborhood boys were collecting rubber for the war effort. She heard on WEVD Radio that Yiddish theatre stars would be performing in an "all Out for America" benefit for Army and Navy Relief on Tuesday. Yvette fleetingly contemplated buying $2.50 tickets for herself and Mama.

Preoccupied, she opened the letterbox marked "#3A Weissman." A color postcard fell to the green and white tiled lobby floor. Franked "postage-free" on June 25, 1941, it was captioned: "Barracks at Mac. Dill Field. U.S. Army Air Base, Tampa, Fla."

The image was an artist's rendering of red-roofed two-story white-clapboard houses, a row of trees, mock green lawns, and an airplane flying low as if toward one of the treetops.

It was from Cpl. G. Zimmerman: "Dear Yvette - For your collection. These are the barracks. I don't live in, but they're here. Everything else is status quo. Yours, George."

Yvette had opened the letterbox in a dour mood. She was pushing 30, and her life was going nowhere. She had let Mama make her feel that staying on at Washington Irving High School was an unaffordable indulgence.

Everyone had been worried sick about the stock market collapse. Leah never told her outright to quit in her senior year. By the end of October 1929, however, it was apparent that the world was going to hell in a handbasket. Cousin Abbie found her the Brew Schneider job.

She met boys who would ask her out, but none was the kind with whom she could keep company. Leah had sacrificed so much – by coming to America divorcing papa because he had strayed from the faith and into socialism; Leah did backbreaking work at the baths; she swayed and prayed fervently in the ladies' gallery at the Meserich Synagogue on 6th Street. On Monday and Thursday mornings, she was the only woman present.

Yvette felt responsible and trapped.

George's postcard. Why, after all this time?

The next postcard, unsigned, was an artist's color rendition of the "Ambassador Bridge at Night" postmarked July 16, 1941, Detroit.

"Hello, Here is one of your cards, I don't promise very many."

She knew it was from George.

From then on, the cards arrived with irregularity.

From Memphis: "Dear Y – Now passing through Missouri on this July 4, 1942 morning or so they tell me – I haven't seen any signs yet. I'm waiting for breakfast. Love George."

Love George. Was he urging her to? Was he saying that he did?

Postmark July 10, 1942 – Pendleton: "Dear Y – Still think it's swell here. Please convey my usual sentiments to yourself. George." A B&W photograph of two P-36A Pursuit fighters flying in formation adorned the flipside.

On her way to the Turkish Baths to help Mama bundle the used damp towels for laundry collection, she stole into the Tompkins Square Public Library before closing time to look up "Pendleton." She concluded that George was in the Virginia Pendleton, not the California Pendleton.

Postmark July 15, 1942 – Pendleton: "Dear Y – Your collection of cards should be well enhanced by now. Do you still have room for more? I wonder if you are sweltering in N.Y. It's cool here. Your George"

Her George?

Postmark July 19, 1942 – Pendleton: "Dear Y – For the first time in six months, I slept till 10AM today. After dinner I'm going in town for what it is worth – just a change of atmosphere. Yours George." The reverse was a B&W picture of the 0-47A fighter in flight.

When she was up at Papa Klien's Farm on Kiamesha Lake to get away for a few days from the sweltering NYC in August, he knew to write her there. It was an artist's color rendering of Multnomah Falls in Oregon.

More postcards came from Macon, Georgia, and Pueblo, Colorado. She especially cherished the ones signed "Love, George."

The Air Corps sent him to Washington. Postmarked September 21, 1942 "Soldier's Mail Free."

"The State of Wash. Invites you to take a dip in the cool waters of Lake Chelan – so do it if you can find the time. L George." A sepia picture of said lake on the reverse.

The final card for 1942 was typewritten, dated Oct. 29, 1942. The color picture was an artist's version of Long Beach, California, at night from Rainbow Pier. "Here's another for your collection. The scene here in the Desert isn't so pretty except when the cactus blooms. I wonder how we Desert rats are going to keep up our end. Isn't this a lot of nonsense?"

It was signed, "Hello George."

She would spend hours pondering the underlying message in George's cards. What did he mean by "a lot of nonsense?"

In 1943, George's cards came postmarked from Bristol, England, then Sicily, Italy.

In 1944, he was back in Bristol, promising now that he was on furlough, there would be more cards.

From Cambridge to Wales, he delighted her with postcards. He sent her a Christmas card from the National Gallery, Edinburgh.

He was still in England in 1945, sending a B&W photo postcard of The Quay, Ramsey, Isle of Man: "Dear – This has been almost an ideal furlough – only you are missing. However, my thoughts are with you. George."

In February, he sent her a corny "Till We Meet Again" Valentine's card: "However busy I may be/ Whenever we're apart/There's still a Shrine of Memory/ Deep down within my Heart/ Where I preserve your image/ Until we meet again."

Of course, they could never meet again.

It had gone on this long because she had not set Mama straight about "your Zimmerman soldier boy."

Zimmerman sounded like a Jewish name. When George announced he was being demobilized, she knew it was time to make the cut. She did it by letter.

There were no more postcards.

 

***

Reunion

The letter from Schachter-the-lawyer rested in Joe Weissman’s jacket pocket, now smudged with brown shoe polish from the shop. It had come down to the Tammany Hall shyster cutting through the red tape. 

He imagined that Leah and Yocheved could by now see the New York skyline from the deck of their boat. 

Joe was way too early. 

The boat would not dock for two hours, and it would take time for them to disembark. So why was he already on the 14^th Street bus heading to the West Side? He would get off at 11^th Avenue; it would be a short walk to Pier 57 on the Hudson River. On the way back to St. Mark’s Place, the three of them would take a taxi. Yocheved would have her own room. 

It relaxed him to think about the minutiae of transportation and living arrangements. It kept his mind off the impending reunion. 

He had been twenty-six when he last saw Leah. Yocheved was one-year-old. Would reliving that day ten years ago in Warsaw make this one any easier? Not really. He and Leah had self-consciously hugged, and he recalled kissing the baby then the mezuzah. 

He left from Warszawa Gdanska station to begin a 500-mile train journey to Hamburg. Then he crossed the Atlantic Ocean by steamship (third class) on the SS Aureole and reached New York City on a fair day August 5, 1913. A Tuesday.

Jack Shafer his father’s sister's son, also in his twenties, met Joe at the pier.  It was through Jack that he made his first connections. He began learning English at the Educational Alliance on East Broadway. Three years later, from the Hebrew Free Loan Society came enough money to open his own shoe repair shop. 

But Joe didn’t have a head for business.  He avidly followed the news and was drawn to politics. But he couldn’t gab with customers. He was a loner.  Nowadays, he and Jack hardly saw one another. Jack was married and doing well in the clothing trade.

The year after he arrived in New York, the Great War engulfed Europe. Joe and Leah had been regularly corresponding in Yiddish with a few Polish and English phrases thrown in. Then, the German army captured Warsaw from the Russian Czarist Empire – which from the Jewish point of view was good news. The Russians were the bigger Jew-haters. 

The letters came and went notwithstanding the war. There were things he could tell her and things he couldn’t, but he felt closer to her through the letters than when, for that brief time, they lived as husband and wife under one roof. 

The mail was less reliable after America entered the war in April 1917. But the apartment at Nalewkis 49 was as safe a haven as any in wartime Europe; at least Leah had most of her family from Biłgoraj in the neighborhood. 

Then, in November 1918, the war ended, and the Poles were independent. That was bad for the Jews.

Back in New York, Joe was living in a railroad flat at 108 St. Mark’s Place on the Lower East Side between Avenue A and First Avenue one of the half-a-million Jews living south of 14^th Street. He took in two borders – religious men in their early 20s who worked in a garment factory – to help cover the rent. They left at the end of last month in anticipation of Leah coming. 

He ate kosher food and kept his shop closed on the Sabbath. For a while, the city gave out summonses to stores that closed on Shabbos and opened on Sunday. The newspapers speculated that the Sunday Blue Laws were suddenly being enforced because Tammany Hall was sending a message that if the Jews continued to vote socialist, there would be consequences. 

There was no yarmulke under Joe’s brown hat. He did not spend much time in the synagogue. He preferred reading in nearby Tomkins Square Park on Saturday. He found sex where he could. But he was solitary most of the time. He could not remember a time when he didn’t feel forlorn. Even before America.

His interest was news and politics. He had hoped America would stay out of the war and that Czarist Russia would be defeated. He was pleased about Lenin taking power. 

Besides the Morning Journal, which cost two cents, he sometimes also read the Forward. When his English got good enough, he read the Illustrated Daily News or Daily Graphic and eventually the Tribune. 

Joe’s letters to Leah commented on the pogroms and discriminatory laws passed by the Poles. However, when it came to personal matters, their correspondence became more stilted. He had to hold back. And the letters were mostly at his initiative. Leah was not a writer and anyway she was worn-out. She went to the synagogue on Monday and Thursday – when the Torah was read on a weekday – and of course on Saturday. Most nights, she worked at the mikvah; sometimes Yocheved tagged along when there weren’t any adult cousins to look after her.

What with establishing himself as a shoemaker, albeit unsuccessfully, the war, subsequent restrictions on immigration to America and lack of money, it was not until 1923 that Joe approached Schachter-the-lawyer for help in bringing his wife and daughter to America. By then immigration restrictions were already in place.

Ten years had elapsed since Joe crossed over to America. Leah was now 35, and Yocheved was eleven. They were strangers.

 

He positioned himself behind the railing in the waiting area where the SS Mount Clinton from Hamburg was docking. His shirt was drenched with sweat in the August humidity. His mouth was dry. He felt himself trembling. 

As the crew lowered the gangplank, Leah finished reciting that day’s psalms and adjusted her beret. She prayed for strength and smiled nervously at Yocheved who was mesmerized by the goings-on below. The little girl wondered which of the men in hats was her father.

Joe planted a smile on his face in case they saw him before he saw them.

***

Blackout

There was no siren. Miss Leiser, our fifth-grade teacher at Yeshiva Chasen Sofer on New York’s Lower East Side was conducting a drill in case of a nuclear attack on New York City. 

All she said was “O.K. boys, get down!” And we dropped to our knees and scrunched under our wooden desks. After a minute or two, she told us to get up and continued with our current events lesson. 

It was November 9, 1965, a Tuesday, and a few days after my 11^th birthday. Our school days were long because we studied both Jewish religious and secular subjects. 

At around 5:30 PM as we were putting on our coats getting ready to head to the school bus, the lights went. The school and all of Broome Street fell into darkness. A minute or two later, Mr. Goldman, the principal, charged into the classroom. We knew it was him because he always had a cigar either in his mouth or at hand, and we could see flickering embers. 

“Now listen up, boys,” he said in his gravelly voice. “There is some kind of power failure. The traffic lights are also out so you have to be quiet and seated when you board the bus so Mr. White can concentrate on driving. The bus will make all regular stops. You must be on your best behavior.” 

The buzz was Goldman’s real job was as an assistant principal in a city public school. We spent most of the day in religious lessons. Our secular teachers arrived after their regular teaching jobs in public school. That gave Mr. Goldman gravitas – that and his demeanor. He wore a flimsy black yarmulke which suggested he only put it on when he got to Chasen Sofer. His shirts were always clean and starched. He was tanned deep brown as if he spent weekends in Florida. 

In the darkness, I remember feeling dread. I begged God to make the lights go back on. I was worried that my mother and I would not be able to find each other. It was just the two of us. I hated that some of my classmates were goofing around when I was so nervous.

The darkness got thicker, and the din of the other kids and teachers in the hallway was preternaturally replaced by quietness. My heart which had been beating rapidly calmed. Now the darkness seemed oddly reassuring. 

Then my prayers were answered, and the lights were back on. 

Only something was not right. I found myself in what looked like a police station.

The policemen, and also policewomen (they were definitely not crossing guards because they had some kind of guns) were wearing unfamiliar uniforms. I was standing against a wall in a big open space. There were thin televisions all over – on the desks and on the walls – some of them almost as big as a movie screen.

There were framed pictures of official-looking men. Mayor Wagner’s image was not there. I was no longer nervous, only curious – which is really not me because I am usually more anxious than adventurous. 

Policemen and policewomen (some of them were quite short, and all wore trousers) were coming and going. There were as many negro and Puerto Rican police as white. There were people in regular clothing, detectives probably, some of them holding small walkie-talkies, I guessed, to their ears.

I walked over to a uniformed officer with sergeant’s stripes. He had a cropped greyish beard. I had never seen a policeman with a beard. His name tag said he was Sgt. Emmanuel Cortez.

“Excuse me. Can you help me call my mother?” 

Cortez looked up from his television appearing mildly put out. He saw a husky boy dressed in winter clothes with a checkered black and white yarmulke sticking out from underneath his newsboy cap. “Which police officer brought you in? Doesn’t matter. Tell me your name and phone number and I will call your family.”

I ignored the question about how I got there but told him the rest of what he wanted to know.

He chortled. “So, you’re Heshy Singer. You live at 90 Avenue D, and your number is Orchard 4-7528.”

“Correct.”

“That’s funny son – seriously – what is your phone number and where do you live, and I will call your family.”

“It’s just my mother and that is my number. I even showed him my pocket Mincha/Maariv prayer book, which clearly stated in pencil: “Property of Heshy. If found Orchard 4-7528 Reward.”

He looked at me quizzically.

“Let’s start from the beginning. What are you doing here?”

I had no choice but to tell him how we were just leaving our classroom when the lights went out and that I really was not sure what happened afterward or how I got to the station.

“Where is your school?”

“136 Broome Street.”

“OK, kiddo. You better have a seat until we can identify you.” 

I repeated: “My name is Heshy Singer. I live at 90 Avenue D and I would like to please call my mother.” 

“If you do live at 90 Avenue D than you are probably the only Jewish kid in the neighborhood.”

“I’m not. There is Avrumi Kamanetzky and Yehiel Gutwein and the Wexler family.”

“And what’s the name of your school again?”

“Yeshiva Chasen Sofer.”

Cortez typed something into his television. “That school is in Borough Park.”

“Borough Park! Please call my mother. She will come pick me up.”

“Look, son, this is 136 Broome Street. And unless you give me a working phone number, I am going to have to call the Department of Social Services.”

I was thoroughly confused. How could I still be at 136 Broome Street?

“Tell me again how you got here.”

“The lights went out all over. Mr. Goldman said there was a power failure. That we should let the driver Mr. White concentrate because of the traffic lights. We were going downstairs to the bus. Someone pushed me, I think. The next thing I know I was here.”

“A power failure. Like a blackout,” Cortez asked.

“I guess.”

“There has not been a major blackout in NY in – let me see. He typed into the television. The last big one was in 1977 and before that 1965 and before that…

“1977? That can’t be.”

“Why not?”

I decided not to point out that it wasn’t yet 1977.

“How old are you?” 

“I just turned 11.”

“Wait. I think I understand. Do you attend a special school?”

“Yes, Chasen Sofer it is a Jewish yeshiva.”

“That’s not what I mean. Do the children in your school have special needs?”

“Special needs?”

“Never mind. Well, I’m gonna have to call social services. No point in doing that until after nine. They will help you find your mother.”

“But why can’t you call my mother?”

“Because the number you gave me is bogus. It needs to start with an area code and has to be all numbers, not letters and numbers.”

He typed some more into his television. “There is no report of a Heshy Singer going missing.”

“I am not missing.” 

“Maybe you are just a little confused. What day is it?’

“Tuesday.” 

“Correct.”

“What year is it?” 

“1965”

“1965?”

“Who is the president?”

“President Johnson. And the mayor is Wagner. And the governor is Rockefeller,” I rattled off their names. “I am the best in my class in social studies.” 

“You really are. Kiddo, let’s go for a walk up to East Broadway. Maybe one of the Jewish people there will recognize you. Like I say, there’s no point in calling social services until after nine.”

And there was no point in repeating that I lived on Avenue D, not East Broadway. Maybe we’d pass a phone booth, and I could borrow a dime from someone and call my mother myself. Anyway, it was a warm and sunny morning. The sky was a beautiful blue.

So off we went. It was strange. Cortez was a stocky man with a kind face. His belt must have been heavy because he had all sorts of stuff on it. The cobblestones on Broome Street had been replaced by a smooth surface. The downtown Talmud Torah was now the Beis Yaakov girls’ school. It looked like the police station was where the yeshiva should have been. The weirdest thing, looking back, was that I did not feel scared. 

The Williamsburg Bridge was there, but it was a different color. The police cars parked in front of the station were totally different both in color and look. I recognized the Dry Dock Savings Bank on East Broadway only it had some other name now. 

And looking down East Broadway toward Chinatown there were now two gleaming identical-looking skyscrapers dominating the horizon. They towered over the Municipal Building, where my friend Willie’s father worked. 

There was a tall electric sign on the bank grounds that showed the time, date, and temperature in numbers. I noticed Sgt Cortez’s wristwatch also had no hands-only numbers. The bank sign flashed “Time 8:46AM.” 

Cortez saw me looking up at the buildings. “Have you ever been up to the top of the World Trade Center?”

“No,” I said with hesitation, wondering if it was the wrong answer.

Just then a jet plane flew straight into one of the buildings and exploded.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Omigod. Kid, we got to get back to the station. His walkie talkie began sounding off I guess about the accident. We trotted back to the 7^th Pct.

I was watching the big wall-mounted television when a second plane drove into the other skyscraper called – now I knew – Twin Towers. I did not feel good that the police seem scared. The noise from the televisions and police radios was now overwhelming.

Cortez told me to stay put at the station, that he would call social services from his police cruiser but that he couldn’t stay with me. And then he and almost everybody else rushed out.

Since only the clerks were around, I decided to call my mother from the telephone on his desk. That’s when I saw that it had no dial. On closer inspection, the buttons had numbers. Each button had three letters. OR was “67.” I dialed my number. The phone rang seven times before my mother answered breathlessly.

“I was just going to the bus stop – all the lights are out in the neighborhood. Will there be a bus to take you home?” she asked worriedly.

I was about to tell her about the Twin Towers when I felt myself being jostled down a dark stairway to Mr. White’s school bus.

My mother and I stayed up late that night. No one knew what had happened. After a while radio stations like WOR and WINS began broadcasting on emergency power and we listened on the Motorola Transistor Radio we had. 

The lights did not come on until well into Wednesday. I am now 16 and no one has ever given a convincing explanation about why the lights went out up and down the northeast. And I never told anyone about Cortez or the Twin Towers.

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