The Imperfects Page 19

  “Nothing. Helen never even mentioned it,” Jake admits. “She told us stories about Vienna but only happy memories.”

  “It goes one of two ways. My family talked about it. It was easier for us. My sister and I came over together, and my parents were able to emigrate after the war. Helen wasn’t so lucky. Talking helped us, but I could see how it wouldn’t help everyone.”

  “I wish she’d told us. I wish we could have helped her.”

  Mr. Frankel pats Jake’s knee. “You’re helping her now.”

  His voice is steady, almost as though he’s telling Jake a bedtime story.

  “I was one of the younger ones in our group. There was another boy who was five, a girl who was six, then me at eight. Most of the others were around ten. And then there was Helen. She was fourteen, if I remember correctly.” Jake nods. “Whew, your grandmother was something. She could put you in your place like that.” Mr. Frankel snaps his fingers.

  “I’m well acquainted with that.” Jake laughs. Being with Mr. Frankel makes Jake wish he’d had a grandfather. His sisters have updated him on Deborah’s hunt for her father. Until this moment, he hadn’t paid much attention.

  “She was always nice to me and my sister, but the other kids, there was this one wiseass on our trip.” Mr. Frankel purses his lips as he tries to remember the boy’s name.

  “Edmund Schneider?” Jake guesses, remembering the name from My Grandmother and the Other 49 Children. Edmund had switched the keys to the cabins and stole underwear from the girls’ luggage. For the last twenty years of his life, he was imprisoned in North Carolina.

  “That’s the one. He was always up to something. I guess he got into your grandmother’s stuff. She had this doll she always carried with an apron on it, and Edmund slipped a piece of pickled herring into the pocket of the apron. Your grandmother didn’t notice until it started to rot, and by then, phew, was she mad. So she gets her hands on two filets of herring and waits until they’re good and ripe. She wakes Edmund in the middle of the night, sits on his chest until he’s eaten every last bite of that rotten fish. Of course Edmund ran crying to the Goldsteins. They got into it with your grandmother. After that, Edmund didn’t play any more tricks on any of us kids again.” Mr. Frankel puts the lid on the chocolates and rests the box beside him.

  “Is that why the Goldsteins didn’t get along with Helen?” Jake remembers Ashley saying something about how Helen clashed with Irvin Goldstein.

  Mr. Frankel shakes his head. “That couldn’t have helped, but I remember something about a diamond, when we were stopped over in England.”

  Jake’s back straightens.

  “I never knew the whole story. Helen had some square diamond that her mother gave her. When we docked in England, she tried to trade it to the father of one of the other kids, who was displaced there. He came aboard to see his son, and she’s begging him to help her mother escape. When Mr. Goldstein found out, he was furious.”

  “How’d she get the diamond past the Nazis?” Jake asks.

  Mr. Frankel shrugs. “The inspectors checked our luggage. And the Goldsteins were very clear that we couldn’t take anything beyond the pittance the Nazis allowed. One misstep and the Nazis could have changed their mind and not let us leave. I still can’t decide if that was very stupid or very brave of her.”

  “Probably both,” Jake says, and Mr. Frankel nods in agreement. “And you’re sure it was a square diamond? We have this family heirloom—an egg-shaped yellow diamond. I’m trying to figure out if that’s what you mean, if Helen brought it with her from Vienna.”

  Mr. Frankel reopens the box of chocolates. “I remember it being square. And it wasn’t yellow. It looked like a piece of glass. I couldn’t figure out why they were making such a fuss over it.” Realizing he’s already eaten half the chocolates, Mr. Frankel closes the box and pushes it toward the end of the bench.

  The diamond Mr. Frankel describes doesn’t sound like the Florentine. Besides, if Mr. Goldstein found the Florentine, that would have erupted into a larger scandal. Still, it feels ominous, revelatory. Helen brought a diamond to the US. Where there was one diamond there may have been more.

  The nurse finds them in the garden, frowning when she sees the box of chocolates. Mr. Frankel bats his eyes at her.

  “Time for dinner. Is your friend joining us?”

  Jake is about to refuse, but Mr. Frankel tells him he’d like that very much.

  “Like I said. We’re good fodder,” Mr. Frankel says, holding on to Jake as they walk toward the dining room. “You can’t make characters like these up.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jake assures him. “I won’t write about your friends.”

  Mr. Frankel stops, still holding Jake’s arm. “Oh, you must. If we don’t tell stories, they disappear. You must write everything. You must keep us alive.”

  * * *

  At his apartment, Jake finds Kristi on the couch. The television is off. Her book lays closed on the coffee table. Light from the table lamp illuminates the profile of her troubled face.

  “Sorry I’m so late,” he says, kissing her cheek. He left her a message and texted, but he doesn’t try to argue his case.

  On the coffee table beside her mystery novel, his computer is open, the screen black. Jake doesn’t remember leaving it there. He closes it before sitting on the couch next to Kristi. She doesn’t look at him, even when he takes her foot and begins rubbing her arch. He racks his brain for what might be wrong. Their next checkup isn’t for another two weeks. It’s not her birthday or their anniversary.

  As he continues to rub her foot, he tries to act normal even though his heart is racing. She must have found out about Trader Joe’s, that he’s been lying for almost a month and a half. What can he say? He didn’t mean to lie, it just happened. It just happened? What kind of bullshit excuse was that? Does it make any difference that he now knows, at least in part, what his script is about? After his conversation with Mr. Frankel, he can picture Helen’s voyage to the US, and now that he can envision it, he can commit it to scene. Does it help that, in six months, he’s confident he’ll have his script completed? That he knows it will sell, and when it does, Trader Joe’s and the man in the leather jacket will all be a distant memory, maybe even a funny anecdote?

  Kristi winces as he accidentally digs his thumb too deeply into her arch and jerks her foot free of his hand.

  “I wasn’t trying to snoop,” she begins as though she’s the one who should apologize.

  “Kris, I can explain. I didn’t mean to—”

  She cuts him off. “My computer died and I really needed to pay my credit card, so I used yours. I wasn’t spying on you.”

  Did Randy email? One of his other coworkers, asking how he was holding up?

  “You can use my computer whenever you want, you know that. I’m the one who screwed up, not you.”

  Something inside Kristi snaps. “I asked you not to, Jake. I asked you not to write about my mother.”

  It takes Jake a few moments to realize she means the script he started outlining about Mrs. Zhang’s escape from China. Jake almost laughs, he’s so surprised. All this over some script he didn’t even write? A partial outline that would never see the outside of the Bad Ideas folder?

  “It’s not funny,” Kristi says. “What, you can’t ruin your family any more than you already have, so you thought you’d have a go at mine?”

  Jake’s done worse, made stupider, more damaging decisions, but he sees this one cuts to the core of something he doesn’t understand.

  “Kris, I never wrote it. I outlined a few scenes, then realized it was a bad idea. Look,” he says, reaching for his computer. The cursor hovers over the folder that holds the script. “I put it in a folder that’s literally called Bad Ideas.” He opens the folder and there are more partial scripts than he remembers, at least a dozen PDFs full of fleeting, delusional promise.
It embarrasses him to show her this, like he’s exposing his browser history or skid marks on his boxers. “There’s one about Rico, and another about my boss’s grandma, who was a secretary for Al Capone, and this one, that’s my old roommate. His dad had two families. They’re all stupid, idiotic ideas that will never see the light of day.”

  She stares at him in disbelief. “That’s supposed to make me feel better, that you’re mining everyone in your life for stories?”

  “That’s what being a writer is.” Jake is genuinely confused.

  “You think Rico wants you to write about his mother’s immigration? You think your coworker wants you to write about her sister’s muscular dystrophy?” Jake had never told Kristi about Sadie, and he realizes she’s read every abandoned script, all thirteen in the Bad Ideas folder.

  “I’m not doing anything with them.”

  “That’s so beside the point.” Kristi starts pacing and Jake worries the commotion is bad for the baby. “What really gets me is that you actually assumed you understood what my mother went through. I don’t even understand. But you, you have one conversation over king crab and suddenly you’re an expert?”

  “I write because I want to understand.”

  Kristi’s laugh is cruel. “I forgot you were the next Steven Spielberg. Do you know what it meant to my mom to share her story with you? Do you know what it meant to me that she trusted you with it?”

  Jake hops off the couch and catches Kristi in the middle of the room. “I was trying to honor her.”

  “She didn’t tell you because she wanted you to share it with the world.”

  “But if we don’t tell stories they disappear.” These words sounded so right when Mr. Frankel said them. Why do they sound so disingenuous now?

  “Getting them wrong is worse.”

  Jake knows he should be focused on what he can say to make Kristi feel better, but her words drain the energy from his body. Getting them wrong is worse. She’d always believed in his writing before.

  “Nothing?” Kristi asks when he’s been silent too long. “You really have nothing to say?”

  “I’m sorry.” He is sorry. Sorry for so much more than their current fight. He’s sorry for not telling her about his firing from Trader Joe’s, the diamond. He’s sorry he’s stunted, emotionally and professionally. He’s sorry he’s become the ghost of the man she fell for. He’s sorry that she ever fell in love with him, that she feels bound to him when she deserves better.

  She shakes her head before she walks down the hall, slamming the bedroom door behind her.

  Jake stays on the couch, unsure what just happened. He finds the outline he’s begun on Helen and, instead of adding the scenes he’d envisioned while talking to Mr. Frankel, he moves Helen’s outline to the Bad Ideas folder. He drags the Bad Ideas folder to the trash, then opens the trash folder, the cursor blinking on Empty. He can hear Kristi stomping around their bedroom. The cursor continues to blink. Instead of clicking to permanently delete the folder, he moves the folder back to his desktop. He isn’t ready to have those scripts vanish. Not completely.

  * * *

  “And you’re sure it was a different diamond?” Beck asks Jake through the iPad screen. “Mr. Frankel is certain the diamond Helen had on board wasn’t the Florentine?”

  “I didn’t ask him if it was a famous missing diamond, no. He said it was square. And clear. He seemed pretty positive about that.” Jake doesn’t want to be on a FaceTime call with his sisters. He has a headache and needs this horrible day to be over. He leans back on the couch, his home for the foreseeable future.

  “What’s wrong?” Ashley asks from her iPad in her bedroom in Westchester, noticing Jake’s despondence. “Did you and Kristi have a fight?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Ashley hears Ryan banging around in the kitchen below. Since his company banned him from its premises, he has discovered a passion for cooking. In the mornings, he whisks batter for pancakes and Belgian waffles. In the evenings, he dons an apron and roasts chicken, bakes macaroni and cheese. Ashley has never seen Ryan in an apron. She didn’t know he was so adept with a whisk. If the children are curious why their father is home to prepare both breakfast and dinner, they do not show it. Each night, they shout requests for the following day’s meals.

  Earlier that afternoon, Ashley had announced to Ryan that she planned to go back to work. She approached him in the kitchen, while he was blending a marinade for skirt steak. She wasn’t asking his permission, and she braced herself for a fight. The children were at school, so she and Ryan could yell as loudly as they wanted, use whatever choice language suited the occasion. Ashley leaned against the kitchen island, preparing for his response, but Ryan had just said, “Okay,” as he poured the marinade over the steak. She goaded him, feeding him opportunities to tell her what a challenging job she already had as a mom, that familiar refrain of how it was his mess to clean up. Instead, he told her, “I think that’s a great idea. Any company would be lucky to have you,” and wandered into the living room to watch baseball. His immediate support didn’t quell her desire for a fight. So, she followed him into the living room where his full attention was on the batter at the plate. She stood behind the couch, watching him, waiting for him to say something, anything, so she could pounce. He didn’t look back at her, but eventually he said, “You have my full support on this, okay?” She continued to linger, until he reiterated, “Seriously, Ash. I should have encouraged you to go back a long time ago. I’m sorry I didn’t. I want this for you.” While her anger persisted, it lessened ever so slightly as she realized he was sincere.

  The clanging downstairs stops, and Ashley knows that Ryan will soon knock on the door, waiting for permission to enter his own bedroom. He’s still sleeping on the pile of blankets on the floor, but as long as they continue to share a room, as long as he supports her decision to work, whatever else happens, they will survive this. Despite her mentioning the D-word, Ashley still isn’t ready to give up on him.

  “Best advice I can give you is to sort it out before the baby comes. You’ll have plenty to fight about then,” Ashley tells her brother.

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Anyway, Mr. Frankel was just a kid at the time,” Beck says, and for once, Jake is thankful for her disinterest in his life. “He wouldn’t have known what he saw.”

  “If it was the Florentine, wouldn’t that Goldstein guy have made a big deal about it? It would have gotten out.”

  “It could mean...” Beck turns her attention toward Ashley’s side of the screen.

  “The hatpin?” Ashley says to Beck.

  “It would explain how she had another diamond.”

  “God, and she was trying to use it to try to save her mother. That’s heartbreaking.”

  Jake’s inability to speak in half-thoughts with his sisters appears yet another way he doesn’t understand women. “What’s a hatpin?”

  “A pin for hats,” Beck says deadpan. Jake rolls his eyes. “For a crown, in this instance. When the Florentine disappeared in 1918, it was set in a hatpin with several other diamonds. Helen’s brooch wasn’t made until the 1950s, so it’s possible Helen brought over the whole hatpin and reset the Florentine in the brooch years later.”

  “The diamond could have been from anywhere, though. Why would you assume it was from the hatpin?”

  Beck sighs. “Aren’t you supposed to be the storyteller?”

  “It’s a reach.”

  “It’s a hypothesis. One, obviously, that requires proving. Trust me, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions.”

  “No, Beck Miller would never dare make assumptions.”

  “Look, just because you’re having some issue with your girlfriend, which I’m assuming is your fault, doesn’t mean—”

  “Did Mr. Frankel have any idea where Helen may have hid the diamond?” Ash
ley interjects, trying to head off the impending fight.

  Jake shrugs. “He said their bags were inspected pretty thoroughly.”

  “Did he tell you anything else about Helen?” Ashley asks.

  “Just that she wouldn’t let anyone push her around.”

  “We already knew that.”

  “She got into it with Mr. Goldstein and some kid who put rotten fish in her doll.”

  Ashley laughs. “I bet that kid learned never to mess with Helen.”

  “Wait, go back,” Beck says. “Someone put fish in her doll?”

  “In its apron or something,” Jake says dismissively.

  “The doll,” Beck says excitedly to Ashley.

  “You think?”

  “It’s, what, this big?” Jake watches Beck spread her hands about a foot apart. “It’d be big enough to fit the hatpin. And the body was firm, so you wouldn’t be able to feel it.”

  “Can someone please tell me what you’re talking about?” Jake asks.

  “Helen’s doll. The one in her archival box. She used to carry it around everywhere with her,” Beck says.

  “So you think...what?” Jake asks.

  “I bet it’s hollow inside.”

  * * *

  Deborah LIES in bed, her birth certificate resting on the pillow beside her. It’s only nine o’clock, but her body is fatigued. Sore. It’s been months since she’s been touched, sexually or medicinally. She needs to start dating again. She needs to find a new acupuncturist, too, preferably one who doesn’t have a lustrous ponytail and a mischievous smile. Deborah’s always had an active dating life. She likes skin, nakedness, sex. Right now, she’d crave any distraction. The two glasses of wine she’s drank have only made her feel more dejected. She needed the first glass to work up the courage to open the envelope from the Pennsylvania Department of Health. The second to grapple with the disappointment that her birth certificate didn’t tell her who her father was.