Miri
The Osners’ living room glowed. The Hanukkah bush was gone, replaced by a fire in the fireplace, and, at the baby grand from Altenburgs on East Jersey Street, Dr. O sat on the upholstered bench, covered by a needlepoint canvas hand-stitched by Corinne. His fingers danced over the keys, never hesitating, the same fingers that worked magic in his patients’ mouths. The guests were singing around the piano, glasses of Scotch and rye and bourbon resting on coasters to avoid getting water marks on the polished ebony. If anyone was careless, Mrs. Barnes was there in a flash, slipping a coaster under a glass here, scooping a crumpled cocktail napkin into her pocket to be deposited in the trash in the kitchen, where Mrs. Jones and her daughters, Rhonda and Jamison, were stacking up Sloppy Joe sandwiches on silver platters.
Mrs. Jones was also the Osners’ laundress, spending every Thursday at their house, washing and ironing the Osners’ clothes, their bed linens. At the end of the day Natalie’s blouses, every one perfect, would be lined up on hangers in her closet. Never any last-minute ironing with the ironing board set up in the Osners’ kitchen, the way it was at Miri’s, so that when you put on your blouse it was still warm. Mrs. Jones ironed their pillowcases, the tops of their sheets and Suzanne once told Miri that Mrs. Jones ironed their towels, but Miri hadn’t believed her. “Why would anyone iron towels?”
“I don’t know, but she irons Natalie’s dungarees, too. You can see the creases. And Corinne’s underwear. I’ve seen her ironing Corinne’s slips and nightgowns.”
Sometimes, when Miri was ironing one of her Ship ’n Shore blouses she pretended she was a laundress, like Mrs. Jones. But the one time she’d tried to iron a bra it had melted into nothing. Poof, and her pretty blue nylon bra was gone forever.
Miri and Natalie joined the singers around the piano. When someone called out the name of a song, Dr. O didn’t hesitate. He moved right into it. For the first time every song spoke directly to Miri. He dances overhead, on the ceiling near my bed. Yes, she thought. One day you’re a regular girl, two weeks later, you’re someone in love—and wasn’t that also the title of a song?
When Rusty and Tewky came to the piano, Miri stopped singing. Rusty knew every word of every song and sang them too loud, smiling at Tewky, enjoying herself. Not that Rusty didn’t sing in her room, or when she was in the bathtub, but out in public? This was something new to Miri, and she found it embarrassing.
By then the dining room table was laden with platters. Not just the Sloppy Joe sandwiches, but a chafing dish of spicy meatballs in sauce, brisket sliced as thin as paper with white horseradish, cucumber salad, potato salad and pickles. There were trays of cookies and tarts. And rugeleh from the Jewish bakery.
Fern ran around the table in circles, like a small, badly behaved dog, and if not exactly barking and snapping at people’s ankles, then close to it. Mrs. Barnes tried to catch her but Fern was too fast.
After the buffet supper the guests headed downstairs to the finished basement, where she and Mason had first danced together. She wished he could see it tonight, with gold and silver half-moons and stars hanging from the ceiling. At the bar, bottles of Champagne sat on ice waiting for midnight toasts. And the music—instead of Nat King Cole singing “Nature Boy,” the jukebox was filled with dance music for Corinne and Dr. O’s crowd—the samba, the rhumba and the newest craze, the mambo.
“You’d think Pupi were here himself,” Miri heard one of the guests say, reminding her that Uncle Henry was dancing with Leah to the real, live Pupi at the Riviera.
Miri had to admit Tewky Purvis was a good dancer, the way he twirled Rusty but never lost control, the way Rusty was able to follow his every move. As far as Miri knew, the only place Rusty danced was in her bedroom, though sometimes she’d turn on the record player in the living room and try to get Miri to be her partner. As a little girl, Miri had loved to jitterbug with her mother, but not anymore.