Replacement Child (7 page)

“Well, what do I do now?” he asked his friend. “Can I ask her out now? Is it okay?”

“You’ll have to talk to my father first, then you can ask her.”

Desher had retired to his easy chair with his pipe. He was stoking it when my father walked in. Somehow, the right words came out, and Desher gave a nod of his head, a wave of his hand.

“Go back out on the front stoop and I’ll send Florence out,” Arty instructed.

In a few minutes, my mother appeared. She smoothed the apron that covered her Sabbath dress, looking down at her sensible black shoes. My father offered his hand to help her sit beside him on the step.

“I like your family,” he said, grinning.

My mother rolled her eyes, took his hand, and said, “They’re not easy, that’s for sure. But they’re mine and they mean well for me.”

“I know, I can see that. That’s why I like them so much.”

They sat and talked about movies, about the new singer they just heard, Frank Sinatra, until they heard:

“Flurrrrennnce . . . in!” Desher, standing at the front door, yelled in his thick Hungarian accent.

I
N THEIR WEDDING
photo three years later, my father stands tall in his tailed tux, looking proud to have snagged this beauty. My mother is in her white Belgian lace dress with the forty buttons up the front. Her flowers are drooping slightly in the one-hundred-degree heat of August 8, 1937.

JANUARY 22, 1952
(DAY OF THE CRASH)

7:40
AM

A
FEW BLOCKS AWAY
from my family’s home, at 611 Broad Street, Captain Thomas John Reid was getting ready to pilot American Airlines commuter Flight 6780 from Newark to Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo and back again that evening.

Just a month before, Captain Reid flew to Japan for American Airlines on a mission to return Korean combat veterans. A plane on a similar mission crashed in British Columbia, killing thirty-six people. He tricked fate once.

He was experienced, with 7,062 hours of piloting, and the fog and frost of the day didn’t pose a problem for him on this short flight. Maybe he was thinking about his new baby that was on the way, or his mother-in-law’s birthday party that night.

D
ONNA WAS AN
only child for five years before Linda came along. She was the nucleus of the small family, the sun around which all revolved.

After the crash, a scrapbook of letters written by all her second-grade classmates was given to my parents as a tribute. Letters like “Dear Donna, I know you are up in heaven now. We will miss you, but we know you are happy.” Or “Dear Donna, I hope they have your favorite vanilla cupcakes in heaven.”

We had at least one thing in common: We both loved picnics in the park with my mother. My mother had a way of making an ordinary outing into an event, so I know how Donna felt when they spread out a quilted blanket on the expansive green lawn and unpacked her favorite snacks. I bet my mother invented her grape cone for Donna before me. That was when she would spiral aluminum foil into a cone around her fist and then fill it to overflowing with green or red grapes. She made the bottom into a handle of sorts, so I could carry it around and play while I ate the grapes. I was a fidgety child who couldn’t sit still for very long, which was another reason for the grape cone, but it doesn’t seem
likely that Donna and I shared that restless trait. The image I was always given of Donna was of a perfect, calm, and obedient girl.

My mother would bring a grape cone with her whenever she got a call from school that I was sick. I always felt calm as soon as she came into the school nurse’s office.

“She’s not feeling well, again, Mrs. Mandel,” the nurse would say.

I wouldn’t look at the nurse, who suspected me of faking. She interrogated me every time I got sent into her office, at least once a week when I felt sick to my stomach and on the verge of throwing up.

My mother didn’t ask questions. “Let’s go, honey,” she’d say. “We’ll go visit the ducks.”

I’d get up silently and take her hand, avoiding the nurse’s gaze. My mother’s blue Dodge Dart was parked right in front of school, and I hopped in the front seat. This already made it a special day since I usually had to sit in the back.

We’d drive down Springfield Avenue until we got to the center of town. At the bridge, we turned left, passed the white gazebo, and drove along the riverbank until we got to our special spot with the park bench. By that time, my stomach had settled down and the nausea had subsided.

The ducks sensed our arrival and clustered at the river’s edge. They scrambled for the few pieces of bread I’d throw into the river.

My mother would be beside me, bundled in her brown quilted car coat with the fur collar. Her oversized pocketbook was filled with bread for the ducks and snacks for me.

There’d be a sandwich with two slices of bologna, on white bread cut in quarters, with just a touch of mustard. The grape cone would come out when she saw I couldn’t sit still any longer. Then sometimes a package of Twinkies to share.

“Nerves,” our family doctor said about my constant stomachaches.

“What kind of nerves can an eight-year-old have?!” my father said.

The doctors in New York City didn’t know either. They made me drink chalky white liquid and wait hours for it to run through me in order to take X-rays. Or they’d pump me full of the stuff from the other end.

My parents were convinced that my stomach problems were caused by my worry over Linda. There was some truth that my illness coincided with her hospitalizations. My mother always pointed to the comment on my kindergarten report card that “Judy carries the world on her shoulders.”

Or maybe I just wanted to feed the ducks with my mother— have her all to myself for a change, sit in the front seat and have my own grape cone. And every once in a while, have my mother put her arm around me and give me a squeeze.

Other than our love of picnics, and my mother, it didn’t appear to me that Donna and I were anything alike. The portrait I was given of Donna was painted with small, deliberate strokes. Her image took shape through layers of stories, sideways glances, and quivering sighs. I was told that when Linda was born, Donna felt the baby was brought home from the hospital just for her. She took my mother’s lead and held Linda with loving care, begging
to feed and diaper her. My mother said it was Donna’s nature to envelop her new baby sister in her love, and to instinctively know that her parents had enough love to give to both their girls. There was never a moment of jealousy, according to my mother. Linda was her new playmate, her cherished baby-doll.

On a day not long before the crash, she asked my parents if she could bring home a new friend for dinner one night. They agreed, and when the evening arrived, my mother said she was shocked.

“She never mentioned that her new friend was a Negro girl. That just wasn’t done back then.”

My father might have used a different word, and was probably much more alarmed. But it was their first sign that their daughter might be there to teach them something.

People called Donna “ahead of her time” or “too good for this world.” Maybe she would have changed it.

“She was such a special child,” my mother said. “She had a kindness within her, a quality that made everyone want to be near her.” Donna was their “little angel.” The comparison between us was unspoken, but always present. My father would admonish my mother for spoiling me, catering to my selfish nature, for example, by buying me a balloon at the checkout counter at the grocery store or the new toy I saw on TV.

The angel legacy was reinforced by actual documentation. Eleanor C. Delaney, the principal of Woodrow Wilson School 19, where Donna had attended second grade, wrote a condolence letter to my parents, published in
The Elizabeth Daily Journal:
Donna will always be, to you and to all of us who loved her, the Donna of yesterday—sweet, lovely, unspoiled. She will always be, to all of us, a child we love who will be forever fresh and young and innocent.

Her outstanding native ability could have made her disliked by children who had less ability, except that her sweetness, unselfishness, and genuine consideration for others prevented her from ever wanting to monopolize the scene—as she could have done so easily. It was your influence which kept her unspoiled in spite of her unusual native gifts of attractiveness, intelligence, and everything it takes to make a wonderful girl.

I could imagine my parents’ disappointment at having that angel replaced with a mere mortal. When I was a toddler, our family would often get together with my Aunt Maxine. The adults would sit around the dining room table and talk for hours while they sipped coffee and nibbled on cheese or prune Danish. My mother would get out her matching coffee cups and dessert plates and would be sure the percolator was full. Linda would sit at the table and listen to the retold family stories. My cousin Henry and I were close in age, and we would play with Tinkertoys or Lincoln Logs in the living room, in view of our parents. My Aunt Maxine told me they would watch me play and compare me with Donna. Did I share the same way? Did I play as intelligently, or show the same empathy that she would have?

“She’s not like Donna,” my father would say. “Donna was something very special.”

“But she’s a sweet girl,” my aunt would defend me.

I’m not sure my father ever forgave me for being here when Donna was not.

The only time I remember my father ever speaking of Donna was when we talked about planning his own funeral. He was in his eighties then, nearly fifty years after Donna’s death. We were sitting out on the porch at their condo in Florida. He was playing solitaire with the deck of cards he got on the first plane trip down years before. The sun was low in the sky, giving the room a luminescent glow. I needed to talk to him about any plans he and my mother had made—I struggled to find the right way to say—for their final arrangements. I wanted to be sure I knew what he wanted when the time came. I fumbled around with the words until the quizzical look on his face relaxed and he seemed to understand what I was getting at. He stared down at his cards spread out on the table, a losing hand.

“I want to be cremated,” he told me. “I want to burn like Donna had to burn. My poor girl—she must have suffered so much in the last moments, knowing she was burning to death and no one was coming for her. I often think of her dying from the outside in—slowly losing consciousness.”

It was the only time I ever saw my father cry.