“Of course, the Sommers family also bought a policy they can’t collect on. Although I don’t think it was the company that defrauded them, but the agent. I wish I could see Fepple’s file.”
“Not today, Ms. Warshawski. I’m not giving back your picklocks until I board that 777 on Tuesday.”
I laughed and subsided into the sports section. The Cubs had gone so far into free fall that they’d have to send the space shuttle to haul them back to the National League. The Sox, on the other hand, were looking pretty, the best record in the majors going into the final week of the season. Even though the pundits were saying they’d be eliminated in the first round of the play-offs, it was still an amazing event in Chicago sports.
We reached Orchestra Hall seconds before the ushers closed the doors. Michael Loewenthal had left tickets for Morrell and me. We joined Agnes and Calia Loewenthal in a box, Calia looking angelic in white smocking with gold roses embroidered on it. Her doll and dog, festooned with ribbons in matching gold, were propped up in the chair next to hers.
“Where’re Lotty and Max?” I whispered as the musicians took the stage.
“Max is getting ready for the party. Lotty came over to help him, then got into a huge row with both him and Carl. She doesn’t look well; I don’t know if she’ll even stay for the party.”
“Shh, Mommy, Aunt Vicory, you can’t talk when Daddy is playing in public.” Calia looked at us sternly.
She had been warned against this sin many times in her short life. Agnes and I obediently subsided, but my worries about Lotty rushed back to the front of my mind. Also, if she was having a major fight with Max, I wasn’t looking forward to the evening.
As the musicians took the stage they looked remote in their formal wear, like strangers, not friends. For a moment I wished we’d skipped the concert, but once the music began, with the controlled lyricism that marked Carl’s style, the knots inside me began to unwind. In a Schubert trio, the richness of Michael Loewenthal’s playing, and the intimacy he seemed to feel—with his cello, with his fellow musicians—made me ache with longing. Morrell took my fingers and squeezed them gently: separation will not part us.
During intermission, I asked Agnes if she knew why Lotty and Max were fighting.
She shook her head. “Michael says they’ve been arguing off and on all summer over this conference on Jews where Max spoke on Wednesday. Now they seem to be fighting about a man Max met there, or heard speak, or something, but I was trying to get Calia to hold still while I braided the ribbons into her hair and didn’t really pay attention.”
After the concert Agnes asked if we would drive Calia up to Evanston with us. “She’s been so good, sitting like a princess for three hours. The sooner she can run around and let off steam the better. I’d like to stay until Michael’s ready to leave.”
Calia’s angelic mood vanished as soon as we walked out of Orchestra Hall. She ran shrieking down the street, shedding ribbons and even Ninshubur, the blue stuffed dog. Before she actually careened into the street, I caught up with her and scooped her up.
“I am not a baby, I do not get carried,” she yelled at me.
“Of course not. No baby would be such a pain.” I was panting with the exertion of carrying her down the stairs to the garage. Morrell was laughing at both of us, which made Calia at once assume an icy dignity.
“I am most annoyed at this behavior,” she said, echoing her mother, her little arms crossed in front of her.
“Speaking for both of us,” I murmured, setting her back on her feet.
Morrell handed her into the car and gravely offered Ninshubur back to her. Calia wouldn’t allow me to fasten her seat belt but decided Morrell was her ally against me and stopped squirming when he leaned in to do the job. On the ride to Max’s, she scolded me through the medium of lecturing her doll: “You are a very naughty girl, picking up Ninshubur and carrying him down the stairs when he was running. Ninshubur is not a baby. He needs to run and let off steam.” She certainly took my mind off any other worries. Perhaps that would be a good reason to have a child: you wouldn’t have energy left to fret about anything else.
A handful of cars were in Max’s drive when we got there, including Lotty’s dark-green Infiniti, its battered fenders an eloquent testimony to her imperious approach to the streets. She hadn’t learned to drive until she arrived in Chicago at the age of thirty, when she apparently took lessons from a NASCAR crash dummy. She must have patched up her disagreement with Max if she was staying for the party.
A black-suited young man opened the door for us. Calia ran down the hall, shrieking for her grandfather. When we moved more slowly after her, we saw two other men in waiters’ costumes folding napkins in the dining room. Max had set up a series of small tables there and in the adjacent parlor so that people could eat dinner sitting down.