Christina was surprised. “He’s my boyfriend’s brother. Why?”
Miri wasn’t sure how to answer. “No reason.”
“Are you going with him?”
Was she going with him? Did being in love for a week count?
Christina didn’t wait for her to answer. “He’s a nice boy,” she said. “A hard worker. He wants to get out of Janet Memorial and as soon as Jack can move into a better place…”
But Miri didn’t hear the rest of what Christina was saying. She was stuck at Janet Memorial.
“It’s temporary,” Christina continued. “Like I was saying, as soon as Jack moves into a better place he’ll be able to take Mason to live with him. In the meantime, you want to do something nice for Mason—take his dog, Fred.”
She had no idea he lived at Janet Memorial, the orphanage on Salem Avenue. He hadn’t told her anything about his life and she hadn’t asked him any questions. But so what? She knew how she felt when they were together. Wasn’t that enough?
Fred was a different story. Mason took Fred everywhere, except to work and to school. One day over vacation he asked if she could keep him for the afternoon, while he was at work. She’d told him sure, without thinking about what she’d do with him. She couldn’t risk bringing him home. If Irene caught her with a dog in the house she’d be in big trouble.
So she’d gone to Suzanne’s, whose parents were both at work. She’d had to hold Fred in her arms to keep him from setting foot on the floor or, worse, jumping onto the furniture. In Suzanne’s room they’d made a little bed for him out of a box and some rags. Barking was off-limits. Suzanne lived in an apartment house on Chilton where dogs weren’t allowed.
After her visit to Dr. O’s office she told Mason she’d had her teeth cleaned and that Dr. O had found a small cavity. “I have to go back to get it filled. He said I won’t need Novocain.”
Mason wasn’t impressed. “I’ve had teeth pulled without Novocain and it hurt like hell.”
“Dr. O would never hurt you.”
“That’s where I’m going from now on.”
They were walking home from the movies. “So I was wondering,” she said, not able to stop herself, “where does Fred live?”
A shadow fell over his face. Why was she doing this?
“He lives around,” Mason said. “He stays with one of my friends. But I pay for his food and I walk him every day. I can’t have a dog at Janet, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
She hated herself for putting him in this position. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That you’re an orphan.”
He forced a laugh and grabbed her hand, pulling her behind him as he ran.
Elizabeth Daily Post
C-46 HAS A CHECKERED HISTORY
GIs Nicknamed the Transport “The Flying Coffin”
By Henry Ammerman
DEC. 26—The C-46, the aircraft that crashed into the Elizabeth River on Dec. 16, began life with a bad name. It was rushed into military service in 1943 to fly supplies over the Himalaya “hump” from India to Burma. Allied pilots called her the “flying coffin,” with at least 31 known instances of fires or explosions in flight between May 1943 and March 1945. Many others went missing and were never found. Disabled C-46s were stranded at bases from Kansas to Karachi. It was standard procedure to save two of every five that reached the theater just for parts.
The plane was gradually modified and improved, and in 1948 the Air Force made surplus C-46s available to airlines for rental at the very attractive rate of $300 a month. Here was a transport that could be modified to carry 52 passengers, enabling non-scheduled airlines to offer cut-rate service across the country, and between this area and Florida in the winter.
Despite the improvements, a summary of aircraft accidents shows 45 involving the C-46 between January 1947 and October 1951, 11 of them fatal, taking 137 lives. The need for careful maintenance is obvious, yet like any plane, it makes money only when flying.
Miami Airlines, the non-scheduled operator of the ill-fated Dec. 16 flight, is already in litigation with the Civil Aeronautics Board for flying an excessive number of flights between Newark and Florida. But because the crash is still under investigation it is too soon to say whether pressure to keep the plane in the air contributed to the disaster.
7
Miri
The fathers took turns driving their daughters to and from events, a get-together in someone’s finished basement, a dance at the Y, a Saturday night movie. Miri was the only one without a father. Not that any of her friends asked about him. They figured either he was dead or her parents were divorced. Either way, they understood she didn’t see him, didn’t talk about him, and that was enough. Once, when they didn’t know she was in the girls’ room at school, she’d heard them speculate that maybe he’d died in the war. She sometimes hoped he had died in the war. That would simplify everything.
Mothers might drive them somewhere during the day, but at night it was strictly fathers. Anyway, Rusty didn’t drive. She’d never had a car. She and Miri walked or took the bus around town. Sometimes Henry would give them a lift, but only in decent weather, because one of them, almost always Miri, would have to sit in the rumble seat.
Ben Sapphire, on the other hand, drove a big black Packard. The car was new. It was the car he’d planned on driving to Miami Beach. Miri had seen photos of his wife standing next to it. Not that she wanted to see his family photos, but he’d brought an album to Irene’s one day and she knew Irene expected her to be polite. She couldn’t tell him that when she pictured his beloved Estelle, it was inside the ball of fire that had fallen out of the sky. No, she could never tell anyone that. Well, maybe Natalie, since she claimed to have a special connection with Ruby Granik, but if Ruby knew anything about Estelle Sapphire, Natalie hadn’t shared it with Miri.
They’d held the funeral for Estelle three days after the crash. Irene had baked for the shiva at the Sapphires’ house in Bayonne, and now Ben Sapphire’s sons were headed back to Chicago and Los Angeles with their wives and children. Once they’d left, Ben offered to drive Miri and her friends to the Y, or wherever they wanted to go, in his fancy new car, but Miri wasn’t about to let him drive her anywhere. He was too old, too hairy and sometimes—you never knew when—he’d break down and cry. It was dangerous to drive that way, wasn’t it? She understood he was sad. She understood why. But she wasn’t ready to accept a ride from him. “Thank you,” she said to his offer, “but my friend’s father is driving us tonight.”
He nodded. “Maybe another time.”
“Yes, another time.”
Ben Sapphire
He’d open the door to the house in Bayonne, the house where he and Estelle had raised their family, calling out, Stellie, honey, I’m home—but no one ran into his arms, no one slept curled around him, telling him every night before they went to sleep how much she loved him. Estelle was gone, gone forever. He wanted to believe he’d catch up with her on the other side but he didn’t believe in the afterlife. It was all shit. Dead is dead. Dead and buried. All he had left was his memories and their children and grandchildren. He and Estelle had vowed long ago they would never become a burden to their children. The children had their own lives. And he wanted it that way.
He didn’t know what his future held. Only that he had to get out of that house. He’d already made the decision to put it on the market. His daughters-in-law had disposed of Estelle’s things. They’d taken the good jewelry and furs for themselves, with his blessing. The new leather gloves, gloves Estelle hadn’t yet worn, they gave to Irene for the compassion she’d shown Ben since the crash. He could see Irene didn’t want the gloves. But what could she do? She was a mensch. She thanked them for thinking of her. Now Ben would move to the Elizabeth Carteret hotel until he found an apartment that suited him. In the meantime, there was always Irene’s couch.
After the funeral, he wanted to talk to the rabbi about something so personal, so shameful, it was eating away at him. But he couldn’t admit it to this rabbi, who had bar mitzvahed his sons, who had married one of them, this rabbi who thought of Ben Sapphire as a loving husband and father, a pillar of the community. Instead, he went to a Catholic church in Elizabeth, where no one would know him, and sat for a long time before he told the priest he had something to confess.
He had not been faithful to Estelle. Men are different, he’d explained early on, men have needs. And she’d understood. Not that she hadn’t cried the first time, until he’d taken her in his arms and reassured her. I will never leave you. You understand? I will always be here for you and the boys. The others, he didn’t love them, they weren’t worth the hem of her dress. He just couldn’t help himself. Couldn’t ask her to do the things he could pay for, things that made him feel dirty. She was his wife. Now he was done with all that. He’d been done with it for years. Couldn’t remember the last time. But there it was, gnawing at him, giving him sharp pains in his left side, as if he’d eaten popcorn and set off his diverticulitis.