The Great Husband Hunt Read Free

was cherry, and I liked the sound of that. I knew, too, that for the best blintzes you had to go to Delancey Street, a dangerous place teeming with something Ma called “the element.” I worried that one of those nights Pa wouldn't come home. Murdered by “the element,” and all for a cherry blintz.

3
    It was Tuesday night when Harry brought the news. There was no sleep. Honey cried until she made herself sick. Aunt Fish said she had always doubted the flotation principle. Harry steadied himself with a hot buttered rum, advising us against plunging into despair before the list of survivors had been published. And the Irish, who could hardly keep her eyes open, was kept from her bed, letting out the side seams on Ma's mourning wear. Unaccountably, every gown had shrunk in the years since Grandpa Minkel's passing.
    Wednesday, there was still no news and Ma was on her second bottle of Tilden's Extract, a tonic she usually only resorted to in order to face the rigors of giving a dinner. By Thursday our house was in a permanent state of receiving. Mrs. Schwab and Mrs. Lesser called, and the Misses Stone and Mrs. Teller. Maids came with soup. And Uncle Israel drove down to Broadway three times in search of information and came back with none.
    Aunt Fish was exasperated with him. “Go back, Israel,” she said, “and stay there until they tell you something.”
    My poor uncle. Sometimes he seemed to be as much of a disappointment to my aunt as I was. Once again, it was Harry who delivered the goods. He called by telephone, a device my mother had never wanted in the house because of the extra work it would heap upon her. She refused to answer it, and Honey would never do anything Ma wouldn't do, so I was the one to take the call.
    “Poppy!” Ma chided. She was at a loss to know what to do with me. Two whole days had passed without my hair being straightened or my slouch corrected, but she was too distracted to insist. And now there I was, crossing the room at an unseemly pace, snatching up the hated telephone and chewing my fingernails.
    “Tonight,” Harry said. He was breathless. “The
Carpathia's
expected tonight.”
    Aunt Fish loosened Ma's collar.
    “Bear up now, Dora,” she said. “Israel will represent you. There's sure to be a crowd and it'll take a man of Israel's standing to get to the head of the queue.”
    “Harry will go,” was all Ma would say. “Harry will go.”
    Harry didn't realize he had a passenger in the back of his automobile. I waited until he turned onto Columbus before I emerged from under the pile of blankets Ma and Honey had had brought out. They seemed to imagine Pa might still be wet from the sinking.
    “What the hell are you doing there?” he said. “Get out! Get out at once!”
    “Make me,” I challenged him.
    “Oh please, Poppy,” he whined. “You're going to get me into hot water.”
    For all his talk of turning around and taking me home, he carried right on driving. He knew who'd win if it came to a fight. Harry's trouble was he didn't have any backbone.
    I said, “When Pa steps off that boat I want to be sure the first thing he sees is my face.”
    “There you go,” he said. “Getting your hopes up. Well don't come crying to me. I never invited you along.”
    Around 32nd Street we began to see people. Hundreds of them hurrying down to the Cunard pier. Harry parked the Simplex and we joined the crowds. There was thunder rolling in over the Palisades and the
Carpathia
was on her way up the Hudson, with tugs and skiffs and anything else that would float swarming around her and blasts of magnesium light flashing from the newsmen's cameras. She was making slow progress, and then word came up she had paused, down by Pier 32, so that certain items could be taken off. Lifeboats. Property of the White Star Line.
    Harry whispered, “They'll fetch a pretty penny, as curios.”
    But they didn't. As I heard years later, they were picked clean by human vultures before anyone could