“I thought I’d lost you,” she murmured.
“I got caught,” he said. “There was an old fishing net down there, and I got the cuffs off easily enough, but I couldn’t get my legs free, and then I started losing air, and I couldn’t tell top from bottom. I started to pray, and Bess, I swear I could hear my father’s voice calling to me from somewhere down there. Then I saw the rope, and I managed to free myself and grab hold of it.”
Bess looked at him, surprised. Harry almost never talked about his father, and he certainly didn’t consider himself a practicing Jew any longer. She leaned toward him and ran her fingers through his hair. “You think your father saved you?”
“I don’t know. But I do know he was there.” His voice trailed off. “Somehow, he was there . . . It’s the first time I’ve ever been alone but felt . . . not alone.” He closed his eyes and laid his head against the edge of the tub. “I’m sorry, Bess.”
Bess blinked. “Sorry? What for?”
“I scared you. I didn’t do the trick right. I failed.”
Bess ran her hand over the top of his head. “Oh, no. It’s all right, darling. You didn’t fail me at all.”
Chapter 10
LONG ISLAND
June 1929
Bess spent the next two days at Mount Sinai Hospital, at Stella’s side, leaving only to check on the tearoom for an hour at a time. Abby had woken up that Saturday morning in a pool of blood, such a significant amount that the doctors immediately diagnosed a likely miscarriage. Abby was delirious with medication and grief; but by Saturday night, when Stella and Bess arrived, she claimed she could feel slight stirrings of movement in her belly. Stella worried she was imagining them, but by Sunday morning they were stronger, and there was no more bleeding; the doctors diagnosed her with placenta previa, in which, they explained, the placenta grows over the cervix; this was the cause of the bleeding. They ordered bed rest for the five remaining months of the pregnancy.
Bess felt a sense of culpability that Stella had not been there right away; nothing good seemed to come out of Atlantic City. Fortunately, she had never spoken to John Young again. After the pier jump she had begged Harry to go back to New York, to Gladys and to Mrs. Weiss, whom Harry had moved into the house. She longed to see their tiny dog, Carla, who yelped when she spotted them, ran in circles and then jumped onto the bed.
But that night—their first night home in several months—as they had lain side by side under the thick feather duvet Bess had purchased during their travels in Europe, Bess was certain she heard someone whispering in the hall outside their bedroom. Lazarus, the voice said, come forth.
She’d sat up immediately and found she could not breathe. It was as if someone was holding her by the throat. She had grown up believing in demons that never appeared, and now, it seemed, they had come for her at last. In the corner of the room, the shadow of a man appeared.
She had touched Harry on the arm, and he’d woken immediately. “Harry,” she had said, her throat thick. “They’ve come for me.”
Harry had looked across the room and shouted. He’d jumped from the bed, throwing himself at the shadow. “Darling, no!” Bess had said. “He’s here for me!” She’d watched the two forms, Harry and the dark man, wrestling in the dark. Then she’d heard Harry yell again, and when she lit the lamp she saw that the shadow was not a ghost, it was a man, and he was wielding a razor blade, and he had attacked Harry, slicing through the skin of his neck.
Harry had managed to wrestle the man out the door and into the parlor, where Mrs. Weiss, woken by the noise, had already called the police. Harry gained control of the weapon, but the man had escaped before the police arrived. Bess had found Harry kneeling in the foyer in a pool of blood, breathing heavily. He had been taken to the hospital, where his wounds were found to be superficial. They’d never learned the identity of the intruder. Bess had been unable to shake the feeling that their lives were in danger now, physically as well as spiritually, that she had brought evil into their life, and like a black tar it covered everything.