The Last Princess (59 page)

David thought, there it was … the dream, the wait-and-see that nobody really believed. Still, everyone needed an island. For David it was books that took him out of the world he could not otherwise escape, for Solly it was the movies. Were they so different … “What time do you go to work, Solly?”

“Six-thirty. I got time.”

“About last night—”

“I’m real sorry, Dave, honest I am. I don’t know why I got so damned mad, honest—”

“Look, it doesn’t matter what happened last night. Did you tell Birdie we had no date?”

Solly bit his lip. “No, not yet, and I’m not looking forward to it either.” Hurriedly he added, “But that’s got nothing to do with you, Dave. That’s not your problem.”

“Why would she be so mad at you if I didn’t want to go?”

“You ever have a steady girl?”

David shook his head. “No.”

“Well, let me tell you about Birdie. I love her, but like they say, nothing’s perfect. She’s got her faults and I got mine. I know what she thinks of me, that I’m a slob, I’ve got no class.” He hesitated, bit into the strudel, chewed, swallowed, then began again. “One thing I’ll say about Birdie, she’s got a lot of guts. When she wants something, she never takes no and she wants to think I’m the same. I’m not.” He paused, looked at David, and then slowly continued, “I guess I was trying to prove to her that maybe I had more guts than I have. No use talking, I guess what it all amounts to is, I wanted to look good in her eyes. That’s really what it is, Dave.”

David watched as he sipped the coffee; there was silence between them for a moment, then carefully: “Tell me about this girl.”

Solly shrugged his shoulders. “What’s to tell? I might as well be honest with you. You’re not going to take her out anyway, so why should I give you the old baloney. She’s a girl, a plain girl.”

“What is she like?”

“What is she like?” Solly repeated, groping for a description. “She’s a skinny girl, not like Birdie with two gorgeous grapefruits out in front. I like her because she’s Birdie’s friend.”

“She’s really so bad?”

“No, she’s a very nice girl. A little bit strange, but she’s really a very nice girl.”

“What does she look like?”

“To say I would call her a beauty, I wouldn’t. A contest she wouldn’t win. And she speaks funny. I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t understand her half the time.”

“What do you mean?”

“With an accent like I never heard. She’s a greenhorn.”

“Oh, she hasn’t been in this country very long then?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Where does she live?”

“With Birdie and her family. Her mother and father are dead and it’s some kind of a long story who the hell wants to go into.”

David had been sitting with his own thoughts, not really listening too hard as Solly spoke on. It wasn’t too necessary to describe her. Hester Street was full of such girls coming from Europe; he knew the type. He didn’t even have to ask her name, and as he looked at Solly he asked himself how different could this girl be from Birdie or any of the others? But he said, “Look Solly, let’s forget all that. I’m going to ask you a question.”

“Sure, Dave, anything.” He took another bite of the strudel.

“If—I decided to go out with her, would that take you off the hook with Birdie? I mean just once, that’s all,” he added emphatically.

Solly almost choked on the strudel, and small morsels spewed from his mouth as he shook his head in disbelief. Catching his breath he said, “You mean you would?”

“Maybe, just once, Solly, just one time. Let’s get that straight, no strings attached.”

“Oh my God, Dave, I can’t believe this!” He almost screamed, he wanted to kiss David. “Yes, yes and how!”

“O.K., then, I’ll take her out, but not alone.”

“You’d do this after what I told you about her? God, Dave, how can I ever thank you?”

“Forget it. What night do you want to go?”

“Sunday night I don’t have to work, if that’s O.K. with you?”

“That’s fine with me. What do you want to do?”

“The best thing is go to the movies, but I’m going to pay,” he insisted.

“Forget that. You just make all the plans and let me know.”

Solly looked up at the clock on the wall and saw that it was almost six-thirty. He shook David’s hand and thanked him profusely, wondering what had changed David so.

After he’d left, David sat at the small round table, feeling a little uneasy that he had allowed Solly to get under his skin.

Solly couldn’t wait to tell Birdie about his victory. When his little brother came to the theater at eight o’clock to bring a hot corned beef sandwich, which his mother sent to him every night in fear that the big breadwinner might die of malnutrition between the hours of five and eleven, he said, “Hymie, go to Birdie’s house on the way home and tell her to meet me here after the show.”

Birdie was standing in front of the theater when the marquee was turned off. Solly came out whistling and said smugly, “O.K., baby,” trying to imitate Humphrey Bogart, “what’s there in it for me if I tell you I got the job done, baby?”

“Solly! You mean Katie’s got a date with David Rezinetsky?”

“That’s right … baby.”

“Oh, Solly, how did you do it? Tell me quick.”

“Wait a minute, not so fast, what’s there in it for me?”

“Stop all this foolishness, for God’s sake, and tell me what happened.”

But Solly was going to savor this for a while. Let Birdie get a little excited, this was his moment “Let’s go and get ice cream and sit down and I’ll tell you all about it.” This moment was too sweet, like honey in the mouth, to be wasted on the street. He needed a relaxed atmosphere to confide his saga of conquest. No hurry, let her wait …

Solly was now deliberately licking the cone, very slowly, but Birdie couldn’t wait, not another minute. “All right, Solly,
what happened
?”

He took a bite of ice cream and let it melt slowly in his mouth. Then, eyes smiling, he began to tell her how difficult it had been to get David to go out with Katie. Without telling her any of the real facts he made it seem that now David was eating out of his hand; he had sold him so completely on Katie’s charms he could hardly stand waiting to meet her, wanting to do it that very same night. He sounded so convincing that even he began to believe his story, then laughed to himself as he decided the movies might be make-believe but they sure set you up to deal with the big problems of the world.

She listened to him with elbows on the table, face clipped between her hands. When he finished she said, “Solly, I love you. That’s terrific, I honestly didn’t think you could do it.”

He felt ten feet tall. “Why not? It really wasn’t that tough.”

Birdie spoke to him with new respect. “Did you make any arrangements?”

“No, only that we have a date on Sunday night to go to the movies, the four of us.”

“Oh, Solly, I can’t believe this, I’m so thrilled! And mama will be too.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute, slow down.” He put his hand up. “He didn’t ask her to marry him yet, so don’t get that excited.”

“I know, Solly, but it’s a beginning for Katie.” Then her expression changed, she looked at Solly and said, “You know, we got another problem?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, now what? You and your problems—”

“Don’t get mad, not a real problem. I mean we have to figure out a way to get them together, because if I tell Katie we’ve cooked up this whole thing behind her back, it would embarrass her so much that maybe she wouldn’t go. So how do we do it?”

“Well,” said Solly confidently, as though he suddenly knew all the answers, “that is absolutely no problem. What we’ll do is this. You tell Katie you want her to go with you to buy a new dress.”

“Where would I look for a new dress, Solly?”

He looked at her as though he was getting tired of her being so dumb. “At Saks Fifth Avenue,” he said, waving his hand. “Where would you go to buy a dress? To Bloom’s Emporium! Pick out a dress, tell them you’re bringing your girl friend in. You don’t have to buy it.” He stopped, looked at her and then, shaking his head, said, “What’s the matter with you, can’t you use your imagination, a smart girl like you? I’m surprised.”

She pursed her lips together and squinted her eyes, “O.K., smart ass, don’t get so fresh. I didn’t know if Katie would believe me. I don’t want her to catch on, that’s all.”

“All right, now let’s continue on with the plan, O.K.?”

“O.K.”

“Go to Bloom’s at four o’clock and look at the dress which should take you what, five, ten minutes? Then walk down toward the Bijou. Now Dave and me by coincidence will be walking up the street at four-fifteen, got it?”

She nodded in an unaccustomed show of deference.

“When you see us, you say hello to me and Dave; then like it wasn’t planned, you introduce Katie, and the four of us just walk along the street together. Then I’ll say, ‘How about us all going to the movies?’ How does that sound?”

Instead of jumping up and kissing him for his inventiveness, she just sat mulling it over in her mind, every detail. Did it seem too made-up, she wondered? Would Katie catch on? … Maybe not. She hoped not. “Do you think it’ll work?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Won’t she think it funny bumping into you and Dave and him joining us to go to the movies?”

“Of course not, why should she? You only think so because you know all about it.”

“O.K., I’ll take your word.” Her eyes were warm; to Solly she looked incredibly sweet sitting across from him, even in the harsh overhead light. There was softness in her voice as she said, “Solly, darling, I love you so much. I’ll just never forget what you’ve done.”

Slowly they walked through the night holding each other’s hand, and when they got to Birdie’s house they went up to the roof.

Sunday had finally come and not too soon for Birdie. For four days now she had endured the suspense of not letting on to Katie; the deception and the secrecy were driving her wild. For one thing she was afraid that either she or her mother might let a word slip and give the whole thing away, so she carried the burden of romance alone. Nervously she contemplated how she could get Katie to wear her beautiful French dress.

Hannah had seen it one day in the window of a small exclusive London shop and had made up her mind that Katie was going to have that dress, no matter how; and she saved and scrimped until she finally had accumulated the money. For Hannah it represented more than just a dress, much more. She knew that perhaps this would be her only legacy to her child. Not a dress, really, but a cherished memory, a memory to recall through the years so that out of Katie’s lonely, sequestered childhood she would remember that one precious moment. Everyone needed an important memory in a lifetime. It made no difference that Katie would wear it only once. Once was enough for Hannah, the day she saw her child graduate from school. She had wept tears of pride and gratitude that God had allowed her to live to see that day….

Saturday night accidentally on purpose Birdie washed the only other dress that Katie could have worn out on the street on a Sunday afternoon. The dress had shrunk so that Katie would never be able to wear it again. For this Birdie was sorry, but she knew God would forgive her for being so devious. How else could she have gotten Katie to wear her best dress just to go to Bloom’s? Now she would have no alternative. When Katie objected Birdie said, “So what if you do wear it? It’s such a beautiful day.” To make it appear that she too would make a sacrifice Birdie said, “Tell you what, as long as you’re going to wear yours, I’ll get dressed up too and we’ll go to the Jewish Center dance. It’ll be fun.”

But as she dressed, Katie thought this was not the time or the place to wear her most treasured possession. This dress had been meant to wear only on the most important occasions of her life. To wear it to Bloom’s was almost an affront to her mother’s memory. Gently taking it from its resting place, she held it up to herself and looked at her reflection in the mirror, remembering the day her mother had given it to her, and in spite of herself she began to cry. “Oh, Mama, I miss you so.” And then suddenly as she stood looking at herself, she did want to wear the dress. By some magic, for this brief moment it seemed she and her mother were terribly close, as though her mother were here now and that they were once more, miraculously, together.

When she finished dressing, Katie took one last look at herself. How she loved this dress. She felt again the excitement she had felt that first time she had taken it out of the box. Never had there been such a dress, never! She touched the exquisite white embroidered silk organza with a tiny bunch of French violets attached to the black velvet ribbon around her waist, feeling as she stood here the same as she did that other day, like a fairy princess, and one loved so very much.

After Birdie had rushed Katie through Bloom’s, the two girls walked through the multitudes of screaming people—women trying to buy a bunch of carrots for a penny cheaper than they had been that morning; the push-cart peddlers haggling over a pound of potatoes; the ragged children playing in the street which was their playground, their park; old men in skull caps discussing the Testaments, each one arguing the fine points of the Talmud and each one thinking that the others were idiots. The garbage cans overflowed. But for Katie there was nothing squalid, nothing ugly, nothing sordid in all of this, feeling as she did that she belonged to all of them and they to her, all bound together by a heritage that had survived so much. She didn’t feel at all out of place in her lovely dress as they now walked toward the Bijou Theater.

From a distance Birdie saw David and Solly approaching them. She had butterflies in her stomach by the time Solly said in feigned surprise, “Hi, Birdie, where are you going?”

She swallowed hard, and when the words came out she was so nervous she stuttered a little. “We’re coming from Bloom’s,” and pointed in its direction. Then she heard herself asking, “How are you, Dave?” For a second her mind was blank; she was so rattled by the strain of deception that she forgot to introduce Katie. Then, finally, “Dave, I want you to meet my very best girl friend, Katie Kovitz, and Katie, I want …”