The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [164]
“Nu, so what does such a smart lady want with the Perelmans?” she asked, staring enviously at Missie’s expensive blue coat.
Missie peered past her into the room she knew so well, only now it looked different, strangely quiet, neat and tidy with no children’s clothes and toys scattered around. Yet there were the same old sticks of furniture and Rosa’s bits and pieces of china and pots and her Shabbas candlesticks. It was all Rosa’s and yet it didn’t look like Rosa anymore. She hardly dared ask where Rosa was, she was so afraid something bad had happened to her.
The young woman shrugged. “Gone,” she said, “and good riddance to her. What a man like Meyer Perelman was doing with such a lazy slut I’ll never know. Every night he would come to the union meetings and tell me about how lazy she was, how she neglected his kids, squandered his money … so finally he kicked her out.” Her hard dark eyes were defiant as they met Missie’s. “Soon as he is divorced he will marry me. I will be the new Mrs. Perelman.”
Missie gripped the doorpost, numb with shock. “Where did she go?”
The girl shrugged. “Meyer was too good to her. Even though I said he should not do so much, he gave her money to feed the kids. Next we hear she’s taken off and gone to California. Hollywood, no less.” She smirked disparagingly. “Maybe with her looks she thinks she’s gonna be a movie star. She should be so lucky!”
“Where is she living?” Missie stamped her foot angrily.
The girl shrugged. “Meyer doesn’t know, and what’s more he doesn’t care.”
“But what about the children?”
The girl stared at her thoughtfully for a few moments, “You know, kids is kids,” she said finally. “Meyer says he can have a dozen more kids if he wants.” She shrugged again, aiming a lazy, malicious smile at Missie. “A young woman like me can give a man like Meyer Perelman everything he wants.”
Missie thought of Rosa and her girls, kicked out of their pitiful home for the sake of this hard-faced bitch, and she wanted to kill her. She reached out suddenly and slapped her hard across her cheek. “Don’t you ever call Rosa Perelman a slut again,” she cried. “It’s you who are the slut, living here openly with a married man. A father who cares nothing for his own children! You and Meyer Perelman deserve each other.”
Fighting back her tears, she turned and ran down the stairs, nauseated by the scene and the familiar reek of rotting vegetables and fish. Outside, she stopped and looked around at Rivington Street: The vendors were still loudly hawking their wares and the women were still proudly striking their bargains; dogs and cats and small children still lurked underfoot among the pushcart wheels. Nothing was different—and yet everything was changed. Sofia was gone, and O’Hara; Zev, and now Rosa. She knew she no longer belonged there.
After stopping to buy an enormous bunch of flowers, she walked quickly to St. Savior’s, where she went inside and lighted a candle for Sofia. Then she placed the flowers on her grave and sat for a long time, remembering. Finally she thought about her future. She could hardly go to O’Hara and ask him to help her, not after she had gone and married someone else. And now Zev had disappeared too. She must just go to Hollywood and find Rosa.
After hurrying from the cemetery, she took the el back up to Second Avenue and hailed a cab. On an impulse she asked the cabbie to drive past the New Amsterdam Theater, peering from the window at the marquee blazing with familiar names. Only now there was a new “featured” Ziegfeld girl. Verity Byron’s brief spurt of fame was already forgotten and she was yesterday’s news, the one who had married the millionaire and gone to live in Europe.
She had two thousand four hundred dollars in her purse, no small sum if used carefully, and she had certainly learned how to do that. She would have to find a new way to make her living, for now she had two enemies to hide from, because Eddie Arnhaldt was as ruthless a foe as the Cheka. But Hollywood was a place where everybody gave themselves a brand-new name and a new family history and