The Imperfects Read online

  “Why does it say Vienna is in Germany?”

  “Austria was annexed into Germany before the war, so in 1939, Austria wasn’t its own country,” Clara explains. “I had to look it up, too.”

  Ashley runs her finger down the list of six names beneath Helen’s on the first page of the manifest. Their names and ages are unique, but beneath pupil, beneath German, beneath Vienna and Hebrew, the six rows say the same thing: DO.

  “DO means ditto,” Clara says, squinting to make out the letters. Ashley feels a sting of disappointment that she didn’t intuit this on her own. She scrolls farther across the manifest. “Huh.” Clara’s finger grazes the columns on the screen. Helen’s passage was paid for by a Mr. Irvin Goldstein. He is also listed as the FR—friend—Helen was joining in the United States, on Cyprus Street in Philadelphia. Again, the six slots beneath Helen’s FR and the final destination read DO. “Do you know him, Irvin Goldstein?”

  Ashley shakes her head. “Never heard of him. So, he paid for all their passages? And they all were going to live with him? I thought she lived on Monument Street?”

  “Maybe Irvin Goldstein had some sort of arrangement set up,” Clara says distractedly as she continues to sort through the manifest. Suddenly, she clenches Ashley’s forearm. “Look—”

  The manifest list continues, the acronym DO bleeding down the page. Clara and Ashley count forty-three more names, fifty in total, all traveling with Mr. Irvin Goldstein.

  Clara’s pointer drifts down the age column for the fifty names allocated to Mr. Goldstein. “They’re all children.”

  “Helen was the oldest,” Ashley realizes when she skims the children’s ages and sees a fourteen in Helen’s age column.

  “So this Irvin Goldstein,” Clara says. “He sponsors fifty Jewish kids to come to the US?”

  “Have you ever heard of that before?”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like it,” Clara says, typing furiously. “Wowzers.” On Google, Clara finds a list of articles from the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, the Philadelphia Record, the Jewish Times: “50 Children Refugees Arrive from Vienna.” “Philadelphia Lawyer and Wife Travel to Vienna to Rescue 50 Jewish Children.” “Young Refugees Make Good Americans.”

  Ashley has no idea if this has anything to do with the diamond. Regardless, it’s significant. Helen never told the Millers that she was part of a fleet of children brought to the US. There must have been a reason why.

  Ashley’s phone buzzes. A text from Lydia. Can we get ice cream on the way home?

  She’s conflicted about her eleven-year-old having a phone. Ryan bought it for her while Ashley was in Philadelphia, a transparent attempt to win over their daughter, an obvious indication that he’s about to torpedo her life.

  Ashley checks the time and realizes she’s supposed to pick her children up in fifteen minutes.

  “I should go,” Ashley says abruptly.

  “Let me just print the records and the articles for you.”

  The printer squeaks as it churns out the SS President Harding’s manifest, the articles on Mr. Goldstein and the fifty children. Ashley reaches into her wallet to pay the ten cents for each copy, but Clara waves her away. “It’s on the house.”

  Ashley rushes toward the elevator, cursing at herself for being late. Although punctuality has never been her strong suit, she’s always careful to be waiting outside the school before the children are let out. In the parking lot, Ashley walks so quickly she almost doesn’t notice the sedan parked in the handicap spot, that same handsome man half-obscured by his paper.

  The following day, when Ashley sees the same model of navy car at the grocery store, it sends a chill down her spine. Is this man following her? It’s just a dark Buick, she tells herself; there are probably hundreds, thousands, of dark Buicks in Westchester. As she walks past the car, she sees that same handsome, nondescript man behind the wheel. Then, at the drive-through at the bank, the Buick pulls into the parking lot as she’s withdrawing money.

  When the Buick pulls up to the curb outside her children’s school, her body seizes. The man is definitely following her. Only he isn’t trying to hide. He wants her to know he’s trailing her. He wants her to be afraid. On the drive home, the children prattle on about their day. Tyler’s in hysterics over the music teacher, who farted during class, then pretended it was his recorder. Lydia insists that that didn’t happen, to which Tyler proceeds to make fake farting noises, Lydia begging, “Mom, make him stop.”

  Ashley isn’t listening. Her full attention is on the car in the rearview mirror, taking each turn she does, patient and lurking.

  “Mom?” Lydia says. “You just passed our house.”

  Ashley laughs like it was the product of daydreaming. She turns around. The sedan pulls over but doesn’t turn back with her. When they get to the house, Ashley tells the kids, “Run ahead. I’ll be in in a minute.”

  She waits in the driveway, watching the rearview mirror. After a few minutes, the sedan rolls past her driveway, then speeds off.

  It’s no longer a hunch. Ashley finds her phone and texts her siblings: I’m being followed.

  She tries to determine why anyone would be following her and can only come up with one answer—the Florentine Diamond.

  * * *

  Jake gets Ashley’s text while he’s walking to the gym down the street from the Trader Joe’s where he works. Since he’s gotten back from the east coast, he’s decided not only to stop smoking weed but also to get in shape. Rather, he’s decided he should probably get his heart rate up a few times a week and his biceps prepared for the weight of a newborn.

  Before he can respond or even process Ashley’s text, he receives another from Beck, then Ashley, a conversation unfolding without him.

  What do you mean you’re being followed?

  I mean there’s big guy in car following me.

  Why would he be following you?

  Why u think? Ashley texts an emoji of a diamond.

  How would anyone know about the diamond?

  Three dots appear on Ashley’s side of the text chain, then disappear. Jake puts his phone in his back pocket and walks into the gym, deciding Beck is right. No one could possibly know about the diamond. Even if Ashley told a friend, like Jake did, no one would believe them, not yet. Not until they know how Helen had the diamond, why she kept it.

  As Jake plods along on the elliptical, he ruminates on motivation, the essential element of story. Why would Helen have kept a diamond worth ten million dollars? Why was it so important to her? Cigarette smoke wafts into the cardio room through the open window that leads to the street. He finds the smell strangely calming.

  “Somebody needs to tell that asshole to take it down the block,” the buff, older man on the machine beside Jake says to him. His scalloped muscles rouse a deep shame in Jake, whose biceps never pop, not even when he flexes them.

  Jake peers onto the street and sees a greasy-haired man leaning against the meter outside, taking steady drags from a cigarette. He’s wearing a leather jacket. The leather jacket from the taco stand when Jake told Rico about the Florentine Diamond. Jake’s left foot slips, and he catches himself just before his head hits the elliptical’s console.

  “You okay?” the man on the machine next to him asks. Jake rights himself and nods, pedaling faster. He checks the street again. The man takes a final drag of his cigarette before grinding it out with his steel-toed boot, so inappropriate for the warming weather. He gets in his car and speeds away. Jake’s heart starts pounding too quickly for the modest exertion of his legs.

  Later, during his afternoon shift, Jake dishes out plates of baked fish, wondering about the man. Was it a coincidence? Silver Lake is the kind of neighborhood where you run into the same people everywhere. He often sees the scallop-muscled man from the gym at Trader Joe’s and the sports bar wher
e he and Rico watch the Clippers. Besides, the guy in the leather jacket couldn’t have heard Jake and Rico’s conversation. They were in the parking lot behind the Dumpster. He would have needed superhuman hearing. Jake shakes his head and laughs at himself. He’s glad he’s quitting smoking pot. It’s making him lose his judgment.

  With each passing day that Jake doesn’t see the man again, he grows more convinced that Ashley, too, is being paranoid. It’s uncharacteristic of her, but since they found the diamond, she’s been on edge. He opts not to engage when she reports that the navy Buick is at the farmers’ market, the nail salon, the animal shelter.

  Jake doesn’t expect to see the man in the leather jacket again, not outside the gym, not at Trader Joe’s, certainly not at Palermo Ristorante where he takes Kristi on a date. Kristi has always been a voracious eater. Since announcing her pregnancy, her appetite has both doubled and diminished. Everything besides carbs makes her nauseous. Kristi only wants pizza and pasta, not the fancy stuff that the neighborhood has in abundance, but the old-fashioned Italian American food they both grew up on.

  Palermo is so pitch-perfect it’s almost a set. Red leather booths. Dim chandeliers. Laminated menus. All the garlic bread you can eat and waiters with thick Italian accents. Kristi and Jake are finishing their salad course when the man in the leather jacket sits down at a booth in the back. Jake chokes on a piece of iceberg lettuce, coughing so hard that Kristi rushes to his side of the table and starts hitting his back.

  “You okay?”

  “Who knew salad eating was an extreme sport,” Jake jokes, once he’s caught his breath. The man pretends not to see Jake, infinitely interested in the laminated menu. It’s definitely him. Ashley wasn’t being paranoid. She’s being followed. So is he.

  Kristi is too absorbed in her salad to notice the panic across Jake’s face as he signals to the waiter. She stops eating when he asks for the check.

  “Kris, we gotta go.”

  “What are you talking about?” Garlic bread dangles from her mouth. “We haven’t even gotten our entrées.”

  “We’ll eat them at home. Trust me, we have to leave now.”

  Kristi begins to put on her jean jacket. As they’re leaving, he braves one final look at the man in the corner, who smiles at him. It’s a friendly smile, too friendly, and Jake walks more assertively toward the door, his hand on Kristi’s back.

  “Did you make sure they gave us extra garlic bread?” she asks as he nudges her onto Vermont Avenue.

  Once they get into the car, Kristi insists, “What’s going on? Jake? Tell me right now what’s going on.”

  Jake rubs the steering wheel as he decides what to tell Kristi. “Helen. She left us a brooch that might have had a valuable diamond in it. This guy that came into the restaurant, he thinks I have it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Beck found it hidden behind Helen’s dresser. It’s called the Florentine Diamond. It was part of the Austrian crown jewels. When the empire fell, it disappeared. It’s worth, like, ten million dollars, and that guy thinks I have it.”

  “Back up. You found a brooch worth ten million dollars and you didn’t tell me?”

  “We’re not sure it’s ours. We don’t know how Helen had it.”

  “That’s not the point. How long has this guy been following you?”

  “I don’t know, a week or two. Someone’s following Ashley, too. This is so messed up. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “You’re going to call the police,” she says like it’s obvious.

  “I can’t. No one can know we have the diamond.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it might not legally be ours.”

  “So now you’re dealing in the black market? Jesus, Jake.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “That makes me feel so much better. What a relief that you didn’t want me to know someone is stalking you because he thinks we have a ten-million-dollar diamond. Jake, if we’re going to do this, you can’t keep secrets from me.”

  “What do you mean if?”

  He grows progressively more worried as Kristi turns away and stares out the window, letting the if linger. He really was trying to protect her. And he didn’t want to get her hopes up about the money, not until he was certain it was theirs.

  When they park outside their apartment building, Kristi asks, “You don’t have the diamond, do you?”

  “It’s in a bank in Philadelphia.”

  “Well, then,” she says, unbuckling her seat belt. “If you don’t have it and you can’t get it, he’s no threat to us.” Her tone says something else entirely.

  * * *

  “Why would he think you have the diamond? How could he even know about it?” Beck asks when Jake FaceTimes his sisters that night.

  Ashley tries to keep her face impassive while inside she’s cursing herself for that nincompoop visit to Georgina’s office. Her insults have taken on the maturity of her children. She is a nimrod, a fart face, a dumb butt—Tyler’s favorite aspersion. About two hours after their meeting, once Ashley was back in Westchester, safely ensconced in her bubble bath, she remembered the copy of the IGS report she left on Georgina’s desk. She’d convinced herself that Georgina had shredded it. That was the responsible thing to do. As she listens to Jake’s story, she’s not so sure. How could she have trusted Georgina?

  “Well,” Jake begins, “I may have told Rico about it.”

  “What?” Ashley and Beck say at once in distinct tones: Ashley is excited; Beck is furious. Neither knows who Rico is, not that it matters.

  “You’re such an idiot,” Beck adds.

  “Don’t yell at me, I was just shooting the shit with a friend.”

  “And you couldn’t think of anything else to talk about except the one thing you were supposed to keep secret?”

  “Look, I know I fucked up. Please don’t yell at me.”

  They watch Beck do laps around her kitchen as she says over and over again, “I never should have told you about the diamond.”

  “Beck, I’m scared. Kristi’s pregnant. If anything happens to her—”

  “Kristi’s pregnant?” Ashley asks.

  “Yeah, it’s still, like, ten weeks, but—”

  “You’re going to be a father?” Beck cannot hide her disdain.

  “That’s typically what having a baby entails,” Jake snaps back. “I don’t know what to do.” It’s unclear if he’s referring to the man who follows him or the prospect of being a father.

  Beck stops pacing. “You need to stop talking about the diamond.” Beck clicks off before her siblings have a chance to respond.

  Ashley makes eye contact with Jake through the screen. His hair is disheveled and his skin is sallow like he hasn’t slept in days.

  “Do you and Kris want to come stay with us?”

  Jake shakes his head. “Kris can’t miss work.”

  “You can always call the police.” Ashley knows how preposterous this would sound to the police, especially if Jake doesn’t mention the diamond, probably more so if he does.

  “I didn’t know it would turn into this. If anything happened to you and the kids because I ran my mouth, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  Ashley feels a pang of guilt. Even though Jake told his friend, it’s much more likely that this has something to do with Georgina, who has access to the entire jewelry world. The whole thing is so illogical that it makes a strange sort of sense—men following the Millers because Ashley showed Georgina the IGS grading report. It’s just a matter of time before they start following Beck, before they do more than trail them in dark sedans.

  “Just promise me you’ll be safe? And, Jake,” Ashley says before they hang up. “You’re going to make a good dad.”

  Ashley stares out into her dark backyard, the sound of Spo
rts Center trickling from the living room where Ryan is watching television. She hasn’t told Ryan about the man who follows her, the diamond, Georgina. There’s still a subtle thrill to keeping secrets from him. More so, it’s become routine, and she wonders if this is how the dissolution of a marriage starts, not with secrets but with distance.

  * * *

  Although she doesn’t discuss it with her siblings, Beck is worried that someone is coming for her, too, and soon. It keeps her up at night, makes her restless, her body on guard for the slightest commotion. A motorcycle bellows in the distance, the sound growing louder as it approaches her block, then quiets. Is it right outside her stoop? Is someone spying on her? She remains awake until the first rays of sunlight pierce her blinds. It takes her another hour to muster the courage to peek outside. A motorcycle is parked outside her stoop, the driver nowhere to be seen.

  She’s late to the office, then completes her work in a daze. She does not remember sending one of the partners the brief she finishes. Mechanically, she highlights pertinent sections of a deposition for a first-year lawyer with less experience than she has and twice her salary. The hours pass and Beck’s fear magnifies, all the more so because nothing has happened yet.

  When she meets her friend Dea for a drink that night, every bar stool could hold a spy. A man in a flannel shirt sits next to her, pretending not to look at her. When he offers to buy her a drink, she relaxes. He’s just some dude at a bar hoping for something she’s not prepared to offer, something that has nothing to do with a historic diamond. She turns him down, despite Dea nudging her that he’s cute, more her type than Tom.

  Two glasses of wine later, she leaves the bar alone, checking at every corner to make sure no one is following her. The evening is tepid, and the streets are predictably empty this time of night. She falls asleep, inoculated by the wine, until a few hours later, when she darts awake. She can’t remember what she was dreaming, only that it involved handcuffs around her wrists. She reaches for her phone, positive she’ll have an alert from the New York Times or Apple news: “Diamond Missing for 100 Years Has Returned.” Of course, when she checks her phone, there are no news updates, just a text from Dea: Next time, I’m not letting you go home alone! And another from Ashley: This guy’s still following me. She’s not prepared to deal with either of them, so she turns off her phone and tries futilely to fall back asleep.