The Secret of the Nightingale Palace (31 page)

Marvin appeared in the doorway of the train and hurried back to them. “I'm all set,” he said quietly. He grabbed his father's hand, shook it energetically, and said, “Good-bye, Dad. I'll be back before you even notice I've been gone.”

Herbert, who had continued to mutter to himself about the crowds on the platform and the recklessness of the porters, turned silent now. His son looked down at him and smiled. Finally, the father managed to speak. “Be safe, my boy,” he told him.

“I always am,” Marvin said, then turned his attention to his mother. With her, he showed more open affection but also adopted a lighter tone. “You're getting rid of me again,” he joked, planting a kiss on each of her cheeks.

“No, no, no, no!” she exclaimed, reaching up to cradle his chin in her hand. “Your father and Goldie and I can't bear it. You, on the other hand, look absolutely happy to be leaving.”

Marvin's face turned more serious. He looked at his mother. “I'm just trying to handle it as best I can.”

He turned to Goldie then, stepping close and taking her hand. Other than the requisite family farewell dinners, the two had barely seen each other in the past week. When she looked at him, though, she saw anguish in his eyes. “I'm going miss you horribly,” he told her.

Goldie put both her hands around his and held it tight. “Really?” she asked.

Marvin nodded. “You're the best gal in the whole world, Goldie,” he told her, and she could hear simply in the tone of his voice an accounting for not only the joyful news of her pregnancy but also the surprising success of their marriage so far. “I never, ever, ever could have found a better wife.”

Goldie did begin to cry. She dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief and then, seeing that Marvin was crying as well, began to laugh while dabbing his eyes, too. He leaned down and kissed her, perhaps more firmly than he'd ever done in his life. Then he took her face in his hands and whispered, “Don't forget me.”

The conductor passed again. “All aboard!” he called, and this time he meant it. The platform had begun to clear. Passengers were leaning out of the windows, waving good-bye. If Marvin had managed to run up the steps just then, Goldie's life would have unfolded in a completely different way. But he lingered for a moment too long, taking one last look at his wife's face, and that changed everything.

Because despite all his careful planning, Marvin Feld had made a terrible mistake. On the instructions he had given Thomas that morning, he had meant to write, “Board Car 3.” Instead, in his distraction, he had written, “Board Car 9.” Car 9 was the one in front of which Marvin, his parents, and Goldie were standing when Thomas, panting because of a late cab and a heavy garment bag, rushed across the platform to board the departing train.

“That looks like Mr. Raymond, the painter,” Marvin's mother said. “Is that you, Mr. Raymond?” she called.

Goldie said, “He's a sculptor, I think.”

“A sculptor,” said Mrs. Feld, waving grandly. Thomas saw them and stopped. From Goldie's perspective, he looked inclined to run away. “How funny,” exclaimed Mrs. Feld, “that you two would be traveling on the same train. In the same car!”

Cataclysmic as it seemed to the younger generation, the moment might have gone unheeded by the parents had Marvin addressed it with an easy greeting or even feigned surprise. But Marvin didn't manage that. His eyes turned steely. His hands became stones in his pocket. “It's a big train. There are lots of people on it,” he remarked, his tone so inappropriately gruff that it sounded rude. And that was the moment when Mrs. Feld's expression of gratitude that her son would have a companion on the long journey was replaced by a look of horror, which came over her so quickly that an astute observer would have seen it as a demonstration of the fact that Madeleine Feld had had suspicions about her son's proclivities for quite a long time. “No!” she responded, stepping away from her only child. She stared at Goldie, then Thomas, then at Marvin again. “No!”

Herbert Feld took a moment longer to put the pieces together, his gaze jumping in confusion from his wife to his son to his daughter-in-law and then to the stranger who had just appeared. Goldie could almost see the realization as it moved, like an ambush, across his consciousness. His expression, normally completely flat, turned jagged. And then, in a tone so uninflected that it could have masked anything from fury to despair, he asked, “Have you been lying to us all along, then?” He looked at Goldie. “And you? Who are you?”

Marvin had frozen. “Mother. Dad,” he said, his voice breaking.

But they didn't look at him. With the train's whistle blowing, the Felds only looked at each other. In all the time that Goldie had known these two, she had never seen them laugh together. Their marriage seemed based on indifference. In contrast, Goldie had flattered herself with the idea that her own marriage, despite its eccentricity, was far more successful than theirs. Now, though, at the worst time imaginable, she saw that she'd been wrong. The Felds might have shared little mutual affection, but they understood each other so perfectly that without exchanging a single word, they came to a decision that would ultimately become one of the most momentous of their lives. Mrs. Feld put her hand through her husband's arm, and like determined soldiers, they turned and walked away.

“Mother!” Marvin called.

Then the whistle blew again, and the train shook itself out of its stupor and began to move. Thomas, his bag hanging from his elbow now, grabbed Marvin's hand and pulled him up the stairs and into the train. Goldie stood on the platform, watching the windows, hoping for one last glimpse of her husband, but she didn't see him again. The train pulled away. A line of porters wandered past, dragging their empty carts behind them. Goldie let the lacey handkerchief drop to the ground. Then she spread her hands like a lattice across her belly and looked down at it. She had the strangest feeling then. The train took a long time to pass, and its rhythm reminded her of a lullaby her mother used to sing: “No one will love you, no one will love you, no one will love you,” it said, “like I do.”

 

At first she could pretend it hadn't happened. Goldie didn't hear anything from her in-laws, which gave her the courage to continue going to the store every morning as usual. If Mr. Blankenship had heard about the events at the train station, or that the family regard for Goldie had altered in any way, he didn't show it.

A couple of days after Marvin left, Goldie received a letter that he had mailed from Chicago. “Dearest Goldie,” it began,

I've left a lot of trouble for you there. If I could say with confidence that things will turn out fine in the end, I would do so, but how can I know? At this point I can barely get myself dressed in the morning, so I'm going to be hopeless at offering guidance to you. Thomas says that the only thing to do is wait. They will come around when they see that I do love you, in my way. And after all, he says, we're giving them a baby. I have to be honest with you, Goldie. I'm not such an optimist. I know my parents, and at this point, given what I've done to them, they may not even believe that the child is mine.

So I'll focus on the practicalities here. You've got plenty of money for the time being. I had expected that my mother would help you in a pinch—and now, with a baby coming, there will be some pinches! I don't imagine you'll want to turn to her now, though, so when I reach New York I'll transfer additional funds to our account. That way, you won't need to worry at all for the next six months. Even if my orders are extended (this is not something I anticipate, but I have to be practical here), you'll have plenty. Don't worry, Goldie!

Write if you can. You never know how much you'll miss a person until you're gone.

Your loving husband, Marvin

By the time this letter arrived, however, Goldie had already taken charge of the situation herself. Though she had wandered home from the train station almost immobilized with anxiety, by dawn the next morning she was sitting at the kitchen table with her face washed and eyebrows neatly plucked, making a fastidious accounting of the bank statements, bills, and receipts dating back to the beginning of her marriage. By 9
A.M
. she was hurrying down the hill to McMillan's, the furniture store, where she immediately canceled her order for a new dining room set. She walked directly to the bank and deposited the funds in her account. Later she called her tailor and put on hold her plans for two new winter jackets. She sold the pearl necklace that Marvin had bought her on Valentine's Day. She returned three pairs of brand-new shoes. She drew up a budget, cutting out beef and oranges and the fancy canned olives she liked to eat with tuna. She bought an iron and stopped sending out dry cleaning entirely. She returned to shampooing her own hair. Her long-term future no longer looked bright, but feeling more secure about the short term, she slept better.

For the first month after Marvin left, then, life continued as it had before. Because she had seen so little of her husband before his departure, his absence had little effect on her daily routines. Often, in the evenings, she and Mr. Blankenship would go to the cinema together, or he would come by her apartment for tea. She spent more time with Rochelle and Buddy, not because she particularly relished their company, but because the changes in her body made her feel she needed the contact of family. Sometimes, on a pretty day, she took the bus out to Golden Gate Park and walked through the tea garden by herself.

A few weeks after Marvin left, Goldie wrote to Mayumi. It had been a year at least since the two had corresponded, but Mr. Blankenship, who had kept in touch with Henry, knew how to reach them at the camp where they were living in the desert.

October 4, 1943—San Francisco

Dearest Mayumi,

I think of you and your family SO OFTEN—though it's been hard for me to write. You may know—from Mr. Blankenship—that I married Marvin Feld this year. He's a good man and kind to me. You can probably guess that the marriage has done A LOT to relieve all sorts of worries. It's funny, though, Mayumi. Even though I worried ALL THE TIME about money then, I think with so much fondness about the times we had together. Didn't we have fun? Remember the PIONEER WINDOWS? Remember the time on the YACHT? Wasn't that excellent? I've been on the yacht many times since then, but it's never been as wonderful as that time with you.

Sometimes I take the bus out to the park and walk through the tea garden. Can you believe that now I can FIND THE WAY through the trees from the bus stop BY MYSELF? The place is still so pretty, please tell your father for me. They changed the name from the Japanese Tea Garden to the Oriental Tea Garden. I suppose they were afraid of losing customers, but it sounds much worse to me.

I know that life is pretty rough for you out there and I want you to know that I feel for all of you. I've been having some troubles as well. Nothing bad, so don't you worry. But Marvin has gone to the war and it's lonely without him. How are you? How is your dear sweet family? I'm going to have a baby, Mayumi. What do you think of that?

Your friend, Goldie

Mayumi replied quickly.

October 10, 1943—Topaz, Utah

Dear Goldie,

I am so glad that you wrote. We're living in the camp now. They call this the desert but it looks to me like the surface of Mars. As you can imagine, it's not my kind of place at all. It's hard to know, honestly, what to put in a letter, but I think of you so often.

You're going to be a mother! This is a joy for you, I know. My mother has so many things that she wants me to tell you. Stay away from crab or lobster. Eat a lot of sardines. Don't sit with your legs crossed. Eat rice. Don't go to any funerals! I know, it's kind of funny. I laughed, too, but you might want to follow her advice, just in case.

We are all healthy. Life is very, very boring. In the summer you could die from the heat, and in the winter we freeze. My father has a little garden, but he mostly grows herbs in pots. He misses his bonsai terribly, and it was a boost for him to hear your news about the tea garden. The plants there are children to him.

I try to stay busy. I stopped sewing because we can't get good materials for that here, but I still make a lot of art. If I dig under the ground a few inches, I can find all these tiny shells. We paint them and glue them together and make jewelry in the shapes of funny things, like flowers and birds and fish. I've got a set of brooches now that look like bouquets. Compared with what you can buy at any shop in San Francisco, they're sad little trinkets, but it gives me a lot of pleasure to make them.

Do you hear about the war? We don't get much news here, and I imagine that even this letter will be censored because I used the word “war.” WAR! WAR! WAR! What do they want from us? Sometimes I think they would like to remove us from the world entirely.

I feel really sad about the Jews, by the way. It's just one thing after another these days, Goldie, don't you agree?

My family was so surprised and happy to have news of you. Did I tell you that Henry has become a wood carver? I know that's funny, but really, Goldie, we have become like a primitive people. Still no baby for Henry and Akemi.

I console myself with the notion that I will return to San Francisco and open a dress shop full of my own creations. Everything is ugly here, so I dream about silk and cotton and wool and velvet, everything beautiful.

With love to you, Goldie, Mayumi

Over the next month, the friendship became charged with new purpose, and Goldie found herself writing to Mayumi two, three, sometimes four times a week. Once, Mayumi wrote, “Mail from you keeps me going.” Goldie felt the same way, but her own emotional state had become so fragile by then that she couldn't even express such feelings. Marvin, off somewhere on his Liberty ship, could only rarely post a letter, and when mail from him did finally arrive it contained so many revelations of his own anxiety about his parents that it did nothing to comfort her. Late at night, she found herself staring out at the sky, asking herself the same question: What will happen when the baby arrives?