“Claire,” her mother would call. “Teatime, darling. You’ll strain your eyes reading in the sun.”
Of course, I didn’t understand what she was saying at first, although I could make out Claire’s name, but the words were repeated every summer, so my memory blurs all those summers; in my memory I understand Mrs. Tallmadge perfectly from the start.
Claire was studying because next year she would take her higher-school certificate; she wanted to read medicine—again, I only learned this later. The sister, Vanessa, was five years older than Claire. Vanessa had some refined little job, I don’t remember what now. She was getting ready to be married that summer; that I understood clearly—all little girls understand brides and weddings, from peeping over railings at them. I would watch Vanessa come into the garden: she wanted Claire to try on a dress or a hat or admire a swatch of fabric, and finally, when she could get her sister’s attention no other way, she would snatch Claire’s book. Then the two would chase each other around the garden until they ended up in a laughing heap back under the pergola.
I wanted to be part of their life so desperately that at night I would lie in bed making up stories about them. Claire would be in some trouble from which I would rescue her. Claire would somehow know the details of my life with Cousin Minna and would boldly confront Minna, accuse her of all her crimes, and rescue me. I don’t know why it was Claire who became my heroine, not the mother or the bride—maybe because Claire was closer to my age, so I could imagine being her. I only know that I would watch the sisters laughing together and burst into tears.
I put off their house until last because I didn’t want Claire to pity me. I pictured my papa as a servant in her house; then she would never sit laughing with me on the swing. But in the letters that still passed between England and Vienna that summer, Papa kept reminding me that he needed me to get him a job. All these years later I am still bitter that Minna couldn’t find a place for him at the glove factory. It’s true it wasn’t her factory, but she was the bookkeeper, she could talk to Herr Schatz. Every time I brought it up she screamed that she wasn’t going to have people pointing a finger at her. During the war, the glove factory was working treble shifts to supply the army. . . .
Finally, one hot August morning, when I had seen Claire go into the garden with her books, I rang their doorbell. I thought if Mrs. Tallmadge answered I could manage to speak to her; if Claire was in the garden I was safe from having to face my idol. Of course it was a maid who came to the door—I should have expected that, since all of the bigger houses in our neighborhood had maids. And even the small, ugly ones like Minna’s had at least a charwoman to do the heavy cleaning.
The maid said something too fast for me to understand. I only knew her tone was angry. Quickly, as she started to shut the door in my face, I blurted out in broken English that Claire wanted me.
“Claire ask, she say, you come.”
The maid shut the door on me, but this time she told me to wait, a word I had learned in my weeks of doorbell ringing. By and by Claire came back with the maid.
“Oh, Susan, it’s the funny little girl from over the way. I’ll talk to her—you go on.” When Susan disappeared, sniffing, Claire bent over and said, “I’ve seen you watching me over the wall, you queer little monkey. What do you want?”
I stammered out my story: father needed job. He could do anything.
“But Mother looks after the garden, and Susan cleans the house.”
“Play violin. Sister—” I pantomimed Vanessa as a bride, making Claire burst into gales of laughter. “He play. Very pretty. Sister like.”
Mrs. Tallmadge appeared behind her daughter, demanding to know who I was and what I wanted. She and Claire had a conversation that went on for some time, which I couldn’t follow at all, except to recognize Hitler’s name, and the Jews, of course. I could see that Claire was trying to persuade Mrs. Tallmadge but that the mother was obdurate—there was no money. When my English became fluent, when I got to know the family, I learned that Mr. Tallmadge had died, leaving some money—enough to maintain the house and keep Mrs. Tallmadge and her daughters in respectable comfort—but not enough for extravagance. Sponsoring my father would have been extravagant.
At one point Claire turned to ask me about my mother. I said, Yes, she would come, too, but Claire wanted to know what kind of work my mother could perform. I stared blankly, unable to imagine such a thing. Not just because she had been sick with her pregnancy, but no one expected my mother to work. You wanted her around to make you gay, because she danced and talked and sang more beautifully than anyone. But even if my English had allowed me to express those ideas, I knew they would be a mistake.
“Sewing,” I finally remembered. “Very good sewing, mother make. Makes.”
“Maybe Ted?” Claire suggested.