The Tin Horse A Novel - By Janice Steinberg Page 0,93

I emptied our tin of bobby pins to use as an ashtray. Barbara, clearly tipsy, lounged unselfconsciously in her slip and said things she might otherwise have kept to herself.

“Oh, Elaine,” she sighed. “He has the most exquisite hands. Musician’s hands.”

“Oscar?”

“Umm.” She took a slow, luxurious inhale.

“Isn’t he in his twenties?”

“God, it isn’t like high school, where it’s a huge deal for a sophomore to date a senior. We’re artists working together.”

“Does Danny know?”

“About Oscar’s hands?” she teased.

“You know what I mean.”

“Danny Berlov doesn’t own me. No man is ever going to own me.”

The words may have been borrowed from Pearl, but the sentiment, I came to understand, was pure Barbara. She continued to date Danny officially—the dates announced to Mama and Papa and Danny picking her up at the house—while she saw Oscar under the pretext of socializing with her dance-class friends. That lasted for a month or so. Then Oscar disappeared from her conversation, to be replaced by a dancer named Ted.

I had no idea if Danny was aware of the other boys—the men, really—in Barbara’s life. Though I did my best to avoid him, there were times I couldn’t help seeing him—for instance, if Mama invited him and his father to Shabbos dinner. I was at the table sometimes when Barbara gushed about her new friends, her classes, rehearsals for a student show. As for Danny … for all that he’d molded himself into a muscular, take-charge young Zionist, I kept seeing the barefoot kid I’d met when we were five, a boy who lied to cover up his shame over his absent mother and feckless father.

Love! In my mind, the word took on Pearl’s weary tone. I loved—well, I used to love—Danny. Danny loved Barbara. And Barbara … Poor Danny, his real rival wasn’t Oscar or Ted, it was something he could never compete with. Barbara loved freedom. Not that any of us—Danny or Barbara or me—could have articulated it at the time, but Danny felt it keenly. “No one will ever have Barbara,” he’d half sobbed—and as the world of Hollywood and the dance studio became more and more her world, I saw that he was right.

Although part of me vengefully relished Danny’s distress, I did feel sorry for him. And one Saturday in February 1938 I stopped hating him. Actually, my hatred had long since faded. My private tears had stopped a few weeks after our fight in September. And in November I’d gone to the homecoming dance with Fred Nieman, who’d grown enough during the previous year that he now looked like a short young man instead of a child; he even needed to shave. Fred didn’t become my boyfriend, but he was a regular date. Eventually it was simply habit that made me go cold when Danny was around.

On the Saturday afternoon when I buried the hatchet, I got home after working at the bookstore and found Danny scrambling on his hands and knees on the living room floor; Harriet sat astride his back, kicking his sides and whooping, “Ride ’em, cowboy!” He often played with Harriet when he’d come by for Barbara, but had to wait because she was late getting home from the dance studio. I mumbled hello, planning to pass by and go to my room, but then Danny looked up with an expression so forlorn that instead I laughed and said, “Harriet, give the poor horsey a rest.” I plucked her off his back and distracted her with some hard candies I had in my pocket. Danny asked me how things were going, and for the first time in months I did more than choke out a few polite words to him. By this time, I’d been promoted from just running errands at the bookstore to waiting on customers, and I told him about a bizarre woman who’d come in that day: she was six feet tall, wore a sort of magician’s robe, and was looking for books about the worship of cats.

“You mean lions?” he said.

“No, house cats.”

“A lion, I could understand.”

“I want a kitty!” Harriet piped up.

“The ancient Egyptians worshipped them,” I told Danny.

“No wonder their civilization died.”

It was a silly, awkward conversation, but after that he and I were able to talk again. And we had very serious things to discuss.

HITLER’S FLURRY OF ANTI-JEWISH laws had appeared to culminate in the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, as if his madness really had burned itself out; or at least, as if ordinary, decent Germans had decided enough was