Diane Lederman – ‘Ida Schine’s Tsuris’

 

(This is the ninth story in a collection called Saving Democracy about the impact of the Great War on the West End in Boston. )

 

 

 

Ida Schine’s Tsuris

 

As she dropped a tin of Golden Rose coffee into her basket, Ida Schine heard whispering and her husband’s name. It wasn’t the first time.  Since the stories in the newspaper last week, she heard the name Max Schine twice in the hallway in her apartment building and once from the secretary at the maternity clinic where she worked. 

Now, at the end of the aisle behind a stand of crackers, she glimpsed the two gossips – women she knew from shul. Seeing her, both turned quickly to their lists held in gloved hands. Ida didn’t understand why some were amused, and others unkind.

She turned to set the coffee back on the shelf and leave, but stopped, then strutted toward the women, appreciating the perfectly aligned cans of peas, salmon, and sardines that seemed to part for her approach, and smiled. 

 “Mrs. Kaplan, Mrs. Reuben, good afternoon to both of you.” She felt a pinch of delight seeing Mrs. Kaplan blush. “Or good evening more appropriate.” She forced a chuckle. 

“Good evening,” Mrs. Reuben said, nodding slightly, her bobbed hair perfectly in place. She was a year or two older than Ida and married to a manager of some kind at Filene’s. Her cheeks were slightly rouged. “How is Mr. Schine? I saw about him in the papers.”

Ida absently touched her hair, again surprised by its short length, and wondered which story they read – about him wandering the Boston Common without shoes or when he was sent to the asylum. Maybe both. She wanted to say there’s nothing amusing about his circumstance, but saying less was best for she and Max. 

“Yes, he was there,” she said, “in the papers. But he’s on the mend. I thank you for asking.” 

Neither of their husbands served. Maybe being wealthy kept them out, got one of those jobs she read about because they knew someone. Or maybe some kind of medical condition earned them both an exemption.

Max said serving was the right thing to do, President Wilson said so. Rabbi Berger agreed. Maybe Mrs. Kaplan and Mrs. Reuben should be ashamed – assuming the obligation to fight for democracy wasn’t theirs – and yet here they were mocking her husband who served for them. But they wouldn’t see that now would they.

While Ida didn’t understand what was wrong with her husband, she would defend him as if she did.

“My nephew arrived back last month. My sister Mrs. Evelyn Sachs’ boy Stephen,” Mrs. Reuben said.

“Can’t say I know him.”

“We were quite thankful.” She touched her heart. “He wouldn’t trade the experience but was glad to come home, as you can imagine, and return to his job with the bank. He has so much talent, they held his position.” 

“Imagine so,” Ida said, chewing the inside of her mouth to keep from uttering something she would regret.

“Did Mr. Schine have, you know what’s the word, troubles before he went to France? Something the medical people might have missed?” Mrs. Reuben asked. 

Mrs. Kaplan raised her brows and pursed her lips as if to scold her friend for asking. “We certainly hope he gets better,” she said quickly turning to Ida. “And I must say, your hair style becomes you, where did you have it done.”

“White’s,” she said, trying to hide her annoyance with the question. 

“They’re lovely there,” Mrs. Kaplan said.

“Have you seen him? In the hospital?” Mrs. Reuben now asked. 

The doctor asked Ida to wait. “Let your husband get acclimated and rest, a week or two,” he told her but that wasn’t for them to know. 

“Well nice to see you. Better finish my shopping.” She smiled again, a smile that drained every last bit of energy she had. “Maybe we’ll see each other at shul.” 

She wandered the aisles, clutching her list. She did well, she told herself. Little victories. She didn’t let them glimpse her discomfort that felt as tangible as the straw basket hanging on her arm. She was embarrassed by her husband and uncertain about her marriage, although she didn’t want to dwell on either thought. Thinking would only add weight to her worry. 

She found herself staring at boxes of cereal. Thinking about how much Max liked corn flakes, she tossed in a box. When she was sure the women had left, she went to the register to pay.

“Mrs. Schine, nice to see you.” Louis Bernstein was behind the counter, wearing a white shop apron and brown cap. His cheek was nicked from shaving. He smelled lightly of lilac. She liked the scent. Max hadn’t cared for it. He left the bottle she gave him in the cabinet, and she imagined the scent now unpleasant with age.

She hadn’t seen Louis since he went to France. He seemed quieter. Normally he or his father had a joke or a bit of neighborhood gossip – the latest on who was getting married or having a baby, or who had just passed away. Mrs. Bernstein had the best neighborhood news, though, but was careful not to say too much. Ida looked around but didn’t see her.

“How’s Mr. Schine? Sorry to hear about his troubles,” Louis said as he started unloading her basket.

“Still in the hospital.”

“Soldier in my unit,” he shook his head. “It’s tough to see. Tried hanging himself, but the rafter in the barn broke. Just hope now being home, his family can help.” Ida felt a sourness in her stomach. Max wouldn’t do that. Yet, she hardly knew him.

“Sorry Mrs. Schine. Don’t mean to be so glum.”

“How’s Lenny? He home too?”

Louis’s eyes opened wide, bright like a cat coming face to face with a dog. He shook his head slightly and picked up a can of soup from Ida’s basket and rolled it between his hands. “Lenny didn’t make it. Was killed.”

            Mrs. Schine reached for the counter to steady herself. “I’m sorry, Louis. I hadn’t heard.” What was the matter with her she didn’t know, but she was so taken up by Max. He and Lenny were the same age.

“We didn’t find out until last month, it happened in October. So close to the end. It doesn’t seem real.”

“Mrs. Schine. Mrs. Schine,” Edward Bernstein shouted as he came in from the back room with a case of Wheatsworth Crackers tucked under his arm noisily slapping it on the counter.

She was surprised by his good cheer. 
            “Your son just told me about Lenny. I am so sorry.” 

 “We’re lucky to have Louis back.” He slapped him on the shoulder, knocking Louis against the counter. As slight as his son was, Mr. Bernstein had grown quite portly. His stomach was straining against the buttons on his shirt. A cigar protruded from his pocket.

“Army said Lenny was a real hero, gave up his life crossing a field so they’d know where the Huns were hiding.” Mr. Bernstein shook his head in awe. “Have to be proud of that. I was amazed. Now, Louis here on the other hand, I wouldn’t have been surprised.”

Mrs. Schine felt an ache in her heart she didn’t understand.

“Better get these crackers out,” he said. “Carry on, Louis, Mrs. Schine.”

After his father left, Louis leaned over the counter.  “I don’t know any more Mrs. Schine if this war was worth dying for. I shouldn’t be saying that. But Lenny he never had time to live. And Oscar in Lenny’s unit, no one knows what happened to him. He’s been missing since that battle. I hope they find him. Don’t need any more West End boys killed.”

            He straightened up, readjusted his cap, and shook his head, as if scolding himself. “I better get myself right.”

“You can say what needs to be said,” she whispered, seeing the lines about his eyes and lips tight as if seeing something in his mind. She thought of that line from the Talmud “God takes nothing from the world until He puts something else in its place.” But what had he put in it Lennie’s place?

 “What do I owe you?” she asked after Louis put everything back in the basket.

 “Looks like $4.25. I’d like to see Mr. Schine when he gets home.”

“I’m sure he’d like that.” She handed him $5 and collected seventy-five cents in change.

“Glad you’re standing by him. Got a friend, his wife took a look at his face and filed for divorce, on the grounds of cruel and abusive treatment just because how he looks. Doesn’t understand how lucky she is to have him home.” 

Outside, Ida swallowed. The air was cool and felt nice on her face. She didn’t know if Reba was coming home tonight or tomorrow. She hoped it was tomorrow. 

That first night Max came home from France, he looked like a child fearful of the dark. She tried to touch him, but he was skittish. Luckily, Reba was with a friend for a couple of days to give them privacy and didn’t witness it.

“This is home, Max,” she reminded him, trying to hide her own unease. “Remember? For now.” 

Said he felt funny in his skin. “Like I’m all froze up and need to thaw out.” He couldn’t sleep in the bed and took the blankets to the floor. 

“Please,” he said when she tried to coax him back, but the truth was, she didn’t mind. He smelled of tobacco and sweat and she wondered the last time he washed. He woke screaming. 

“You’re safe Max, you’re home,” she said. But her words didn’t reach him. He moved to the living room, wrapped in a blanket shaking. “No more sleep,” he said. 

By the time her sister saw him two days later, he was ragged as an old coat. Pulling Ida into the kitchen Reba said she should divorce him. “You don’t need this. You haven’t known him for long, barely married. Just divorce him now. You’d have a new suitor in weeks, be relieved and won’t even know how much until it’s over. The army can take care of him.”

Reba wasn’t married, hadn’t been close to it, so, what did she know? Ida was not someone who gave up easily, especially since Max could recover. While no one said anything about that, no one said he wouldn’t either.  

Ida wouldn’t mention Mrs. Kaplan and Mrs. Reuben. What happened would only stoke her sister’s certainty. 

Rabbi Burger had smiled when she asked about Max after she first met him. “A mensch,” the rabbi said. Max was a wizard at fixing things and one afternoon the rabbi had stopped at the drug store where Max worked and mentioned a flickering lamp at the shul. “I joked that maybe it was a dybbuk.” The rabbi laughed as he explained.

“Max comes after work and fixes it, easy as blowing out a candle. When he has time, he comes, says ‘Rabbi, can I be of service.’ Of service, I liked that,” the rabbi said. 

Maude, her high school friend, also sang Max’s praises. The pair had been working together at Liggett’s Drugs for more than a year. “He’s a love,” she said. Ida wondered if Maude was smitten herself even though she was the one who introduced them, an encounter Max said was bashert.

            She had gone to meet Maude to go the picture show and Max was leaving then too. The three talked for a few minutes, Max seeming to have his eyes only on Ida. She was both flattered and nervous. Before they parted, he asked if he might telephone her. She told him her number but doubted he would call; he hadn’t written it down. He took her out for dinner a week later.  

He was handsome and polite and neatly dressed, his shirt as white as clouds and his trousers sharply creased. He was shy too and didn’t talk about matters that didn’t interest her or do things other boys tried. They saw each other again one week later.  He was learning to repair watches. “You can control time,” he said and laughed. He wanted to learn automobiles too. “Before I own one, I want to know how to fix it, so if it breaks down I’ll know what to do. I’ll teach you if want to learn.” 

She wondered if he would be able to repair his mind. 

As she walked along Leverett Street, passing Smith’s furniture, Solomon’s Tailor shop, and the bottling plant, she could almost imagine a life where she would be going home to Max who might even have made her dinner.  When he took her to the Commons for a picnic, he had prepared the lunch – brown bread and cheese, peanut butter and crackers and sandwiches of sardines and boiled eggs. He said his mother taught him to cook a little and he liked it. 

A pair of new men’s trousers displayed in Lorraine’s window stopped her. Max would love those blue serge pants and she had to pause for a moment against the window, resting her head against the glass. 

“Miss, you alright?” A man wearing an olive drab Army uniform with three stripes on his arm looked at her, his blue eyes searching hers to see if she was going to topple.

“Yes.” She looked away, embarrassed. Turning back a moment later, she saw he had a handsome face, stronger than Max’s. He put his cap back on and left.

When he was courting, Max was as kind as that young man. Two weeks before he left for camp, wearing a new blue and white striped shirt, and Alice blue tie, he got on one knee and asked to marry her. She giggled and told him to stand, lifting him up by the elbow.

“But will you?”

She wanted to know him better, but soldiers were marrying even after just having dinner with soon-to-be wives once, she agreed without pressing her mind too much. 

He was so joyful, like a puppy. Holding her gloved hand, he said, “now, I have purpose to fight and return to you.” His grin showed his dimples. “Someone lovely,” he added, with a slight blush.

She wanted him to be safe. It was patriotic, she told herself, to marry him, yet that night she felt she had swallowed a stone that lodged in her stomach, and she hardly slept.

 She was just seventeen years old, old enough by most standards but in other ways, not old at all.  “You don’t have to,” Reba said. “Marry him just because he asked.” 

She pulled on her collar, shifted the basket to her other arm and started walking again, stopping when she heard music coming from Miss Ecker’s apartment. Hearing her play was always a delight. She had seen her perform at Jordan Hall, a benefit for the maternity clinic. When Max was better she’d take him. Music would soothe him. Ida admired Miss Ecker, carrying on with her life even with her brother Oscar missing. 

Outside her window, Ida felt the neighborhood’s tsuris. So many families pained by war, yet they kept going, but what other choice did they have? 

A man approached her now and looked so much like her husband, she got a chill. He tipped his hat as he passed and was gone.  She was just tired, seeing things that weren’t there. 

The music stopped and Ida waited, hoping Miss Ecker might emerge. She wanted to ask if she had any news about Oscar.  She could go up but didn’t want to intrude. After waiting for a few minutes, Ida left for home.

She and Max married three days before he left for France, just her sister, a cousin, Maude, two of Max’s friends and the rabbi, who managed to get away from the temple for a few minutes. The unadorned ceremony in her apartment suited her, and the occasion fine. If her parents were alive and the country not at war, maybe they would have had a more traditional wedding. 

Max told her they’d find a place to live when he came back. “No sense spending money now. Stay with your sister.” Then he was gone, and his face in her mind progressively replaced by the soldiers she saw in the daily causality reports in the paper. She had wished she had a picture to keep him close, to remind her of who he was and proof she had a husband, and the marriage hadn’t been a dream. 

She promised she’d write every day. She liked recounting her days. Writing shaped them, gave them meaning. She was happy with his letters too; getting to know him, seeing what he noticed, how he reacted to things. 

“This is a great country, and the French people they’re taking care of us,” Max wrote in January just after his transport ship landed. He was so casual, sounding like he was on vacation. Maybe the war would not be as harsh as she feared. 

He described the weather, the roast beef they ate, and the joy of taking a bath. “Sure was nice to get clean, first in two months,” he wrote. “We all smell like babies now.” She laughed. 

Later, he told her “winter is so cold, it’s like strapping a block of ice to your back. You said to let you know if I need anything. Well boy do I need leather gloves and mittens. And if you could, send a few extra pair for my buddies. And socks.”

Pleased having a mission, she enlisted friends and others at the maternity clinic to help and between money collected and mittens and socks knitted, she sent more than one hundred pairs of mittens and gloves and an equal number of socks.

“You made us so happy,” he wrote. “All my friends here love you and so do about a dozen French kids. The cigarettes – talk about icing on a cake.” 

She was proud, showing the note to Reba then pinning it to a bulletin board in the kitchen they used for messages.

She saw a change, though, in the spring when his letters had turned, from sweet like melon to sour like lime, and she looked for clues just like she did when reading William De Morgan’s The Old Madhouse. She loved solving mysteries before the answers were revealed. She hoped to figure out Max.

“God awful load of rats keeping us company in these trenches. The stench, packed in like that with all the others. And blue bottle flies…Two good buddies gone. Buried at a nearby cemetery. Tried to mark their graves as best we could. Could have been me. No truer friends.”

He didn’t write for nearly two weeks, and she fretted he was hurt. Reba said they hadn’t received a War Department telegram so he likely was fighting. Still Ida was only reassured when a letter came.

“Pretty tired, got just a four-day break. Don’t know how we’re still standing. A cup of coffee and a cigarette and hot chow are helping. Tomorrow a bath, chance to wash our clothes, repack for the next assault. I don’t know, Ida I don’t know.” 

The War Department telegram came a week later. Max was injured but no other information was given. She tried to remember the battles she had read about but had trouble holding the unfamiliar names in her mind. 

When he wrote again, his handwriting was different, shaky, as if he wrote riding on a trolley on a rickety track.  

“Got what they say is nervous exhaustion and shell shock. I’m not the only one like this. The doctors might try electric shock. I don’t like hearing what some of the nurses are saying, that we’re weak, cowards. They think we can’t hear them, but we do. I’ll be back on my feet soon enough and show them that’s for sure. No cowards here.”

Two weeks later when they were back on the front line he wrote that they had strict orders- take no prisoners.  “I fired on three Huns taking shelter. A few minutes later, they came out, bleeding, crying for mercy, didn’t know if that meant killing or helping them. But we had orders. And they were mean as hornets, anyway. Still it was hard to look into their eyes.” 

Then it was over, he was coming home. There were no endearments, ‘no I can’t wait to be home.’ He seemed to be empty of feeling. Rather than be happy he was coming, she became progressively anxious. Her sleep was restive, the cuticles on her hands red and raw. She had no memory of pulling at them. She had heartburn all the time.

He came home with awful headaches that left him lying in the dark until they went away.  His skin was gray as ash. He often muttered to himself, sometimes sharply. Last week when he seemed more like he was, she asked if he was thinking about going back to the drug store or trying something else. She had saved the soldier’s pay he sent home, so he didn’t have to decide right away. With his discharge pay, he could wait a few more weeks, but work would give him something to do. Idleness was giving him too much time for cogitating. Reba was miffed. “He makes me nervous,” she said more than once.

Ida felt tears in her eyes, understanding that Max was home in body only, the Huns had stolen his soul. 

 The night before police arrested him, Max met a friend at a legion organizing meeting. She was thankful he’d be with other veterans.

Hearing a commotion on the stairs, she was startled awake and saw Max push through the apartment knocking over an unlit lamp, his friend right behind telling Max to hush. Five minutes later her husband was snoring on the sofa where he had collapsed.  She hoped none of the neighbors woke. 

“Ma’am,” his friend said, taking off his hat. “I’m Pvt. John W. Henry. Sorry I couldn’t contain him better. Went for a bit of refreshment after the meeting and well.” He gazed at Max.

She covered her husband with the navy and white quilt her sister had made, glad her sister was visiting friends in Vermont on vacation. Ida would be embarrassed if Reba witnessed this.  

“Private Henry, you all right, being back?”

“Yes ma’am but didn’t have no shock of it like your husband. I was in the hospital sick with the flu and missed that attack on Meuse-Argonne. Mrs. Schine, tell Max to telephone me. See if we can get him right.” He doffed his hat again and left closing the door quietly behind him. 

The next day, police found him sitting on a bench in the North Union station, said he was babbling about a hand grenade and the Huns. Said they were hiding everywhere. 

A judge sent him to the state hospital and a detective called on her and asked to look around. She told the officer that she had helped him unpack and hadn’t see any kind of war souvenirs. The officer told he didn’t expect to find anything but still had to look. 

Once the potatoes were peeled and cut, she set them to boil in a pan of water. She didn’t know if her sister would be hungry or even if she was hungry herself, but the routine calmed her. She took an onion and peeled that now to fry in a little butter.

As the tiny bubbles formed in the pot, she telephoned the operator to connect her to the asylum. When she heard a confident-sounding woman speak, she asked for the director but was told he had gone home. “Can I help you?”

“I was calling about my husband, Max, Maxwell Schine. I wanted to see how he is and if I could visit tomorrow.”  

“I’ll check with the doctor.” 

Ida waited. A man’s voice came on. “Mrs. Schine. I’m Dr. McLintock.”

“Yes,” she said, feeling a twisting in her stomach at the formality of his tone. 

“I was about to telephone you. Your husband apparently has absented himself from our premises about thirty minutes ago. At least we think it was then. We’ve begun a search of the grounds. I’m sure we will find him but in case he comes home, please telephone us right away. I’ll give you my direct line.”

“Thunder frightens him,” she said. Two weeks ago, during a storm, she found him soaked in sweat and trembling underneath their bed. She thought of her little gray cat when she was a girl clinging to a branch on a towering elm tree afraid to come down.

            “We should have checked patients when the storm came but we’re short nurses.”

“Max scares my sister, do you think…”

“No,” he said saving her from asking. “More likely hurt himself if anything.

Max is probably somewhere on the grounds asleep. I’ll telephone you when we have news.”

“Will I be able to see him soon?”

“I think so, might be good for him..” 

Hearing footsteps coming up the stairs, her heart pounded. The door opened, it was her sister. 

“Ida, what?” her sister asked, coming to her now. “Something’s burning.” 

At the stove, she pulled the pan from the burner. The water had boiled away, and the potatoes were charred. Her sister looked at her but didn’t scold.

 “Max? Is he here?” Reba looked toward the bedroom. She grabbed Ida’s elbows, “Did he hurt you?”

Ida shook her head no.

“You need to decide,” Reba said. “This is no life.”

Ida didn’t want him to give up, to feel he had no reason to live. Because she had an awful feeling that Louis’s words were a warning she hadn’t understood. She’d been thinking only about herself. 

 The telephone rang. She looked at her sister. If she didn’t answer, it wouldn’t be true. It wouldn’t be her fault and he’d be coming home because he’d know she wanted that. Her sister stepped toward the telephone; “Just let it ring,” Ida said.

“Ida,” her sister scolded. 

Ida shook her head. Her sister reached for the telephone handle and said “Hello. This is Reba Schwartz. Yes, she’s here.” She handed the telephone receiver to Ida who shook her head no.

 

_____

 

 Diane Lederman was a reporter for 40 years and has had stories published in Jewish Fiction. Net, Adanna Literary Journal, Verdad, and Kestrel. Two stories from Saving Democracy have been published at JerryJazzMusician.com.