The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street Read online

  Within a single month in the autumn of 1944, the United States converts this blip into the largest secret naval base in the world.

  A port is constructed holding seven hundred vessels. An airstrip is cleared. Floating dry docks repair enormous battleships. An entire water-distillation plant is anchored beside a bakery large enough to grind out thousands of loaves of bread, cakes, and pies daily.

  Every day, Ulithi gushes out bullets, boots, K-rations, bayonets, compasses, radio equipment, explosives, helmets, parachutes, industrial lubricants, playing cards, antiaircraft rockets, flashlights, gasoline, chocolate, mosquito repellent, batteries, grenades, and syrettes of morphine tartrate.

  And in 1945, still another vessel pulls into the port. It is called simply the “Ice Cream Barge.”

  The Second World War. You want to know about Kristallnacht and Iwo Jima and the Battle of the Hedgerows? Well, there are books and movies for that. Go take yourself to a library. What I can tell you, darlings, is that, with the start of World War II, nearly every nation on earth stopped producing ice cream. Sugar was too scarce. Equipment had to be redirected to the war effort. In Italy, Mussolini banned ice cream simply because he woke up one morning and decided it was “decadent.”

  Only the United States of America deemed ice cream “an essential item for troop morale.” And so it alone continued producing, ordering ice cream freezers on submarines, ice cream freezers on tankers, ice cream freezers on cargo ships. Over the course of the war, the United States military became the largest ice cream manufacturer in history.

  This Ice Cream Barge in Ulithi was commissioned to be the world’s biggest “floating ice cream parlor.” Made of concrete, it did not even have an engine. It was a refrigerated leviathan that had to be towed across the Pacific.

  And among its crew of twenty-three soldiers was one civilian who had been given a special dispensation from the Army Corps of Engineers. He alone was in charge of overseeing the enormous ice cream freezer that churned out fifteen hundred gallons of ice cream per day. For the duration of the war, he toiled inside the concrete hull, personally ensuring that the machinery he himself helped to design remained in perfect working order.

  This man, of course, was my Bert.

  The telephone call came in those frigid first months of 1942. We had twelve Dunkle’s franchises by then, though most had shuttered for the winter. That March the sky seemed perpetually shrouded in twilight. Air-raid sirens droned across the city. As soon as the wailing began, New Yorkers were instructed to click off our lights and yank down our window shades, plunging our neighborhoods into darkness, bracing for the evening when German bombers finally succeeded in flying across the Atlantic. Our secretary at the Dunkle’s plant, a prim, prune-faced woman named Mrs. Preminger, kept a flask in her drawer for just such occasions.

  Now she stood in the doorway in her boxy wool suit. “Mrs. Dunkle,” she announced, “there’s a man on the line from the War Department.”

  Bert happened to be out that afternoon training with the Civil Defense Authority. As an air warden, he would have the responsibility during the drills of scrambling up onto the roof and watching for enemy planes.

  I took the call at his desk. The man on the phone identified himself as a Mr. Orson Maytree Jr., deputy secretary of the War Procurement Board. “Ma’am, I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I was wondering if you might take a few minutes to answer some questions we have about your husband’s ice cream formula?”

  Isaac was crawling around on the carpet by my chair, revving a toy locomotive along its legs. I signaled to Mrs. Preminger to take my son out into the hallway and shut the door. Cradling the receiver with my right shoulder, I pulled off my pearl clip-on. Through Bert’s office window, I could see out across the East River to the smokestacks of Manhattan. We lived only a few blocks away from our plant in Hunters Point now, yet it felt like we spent our whole lives in the factory.

  “What exactly do you need to know?” I tossed my earring onto the desk. “We use only corn syrup as a sweetener, so there should be no problem with exceeding our sugar rations.” This man, I assumed, was an inspector of sorts.

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that, ma’am,” he said. “I happen to have your file from the Patent Office right here in front of me. Frankly, it’s impressive. I don’t imagine we could have come up with a better set of ingredients ourselves if we tried.” He had a deep southern drawl, this Orson Maytree, like warm butterscotch poured over custard. When he spoke, he sounded as if he were leaning back on a veranda with an iced drink in his hand. His sweetness, however, teetered on insincerity; I wondered if he was mocking me.

  “To be honest, ma’am, none of us here had ever heard of your ice cream until last Thursday. I was driving back from a shipyard when I saw one of those big, fancy Dunkle’s signs you’ve got posted on Route One.”

  Our new billboards were adorned with the Dunkle’s logo I had designed myself, thank you very much—of the Statue of Liberty lifting a red-white-and-blue, star-spangled ice cream cone in place of her torch. I had insisted Bert place one on every major highway in the area.

  “Very eye-catching, those billboards, I must say. Very patriotic,” Orson Maytree said. “And they must have worked their magic on me, ma’am, because wouldn’t you know? I stopped at the very next Dunkle’s I saw, that one up in Stamford, and ordered myself a vanilla cone. The little gal behind the counter, she showed me that system you have, where you just pour the ice cream mix right into the machine. I have to say, I was mightily impressed.”

  “I see.”

  “She said, ‘It’s so simple even a girl can do it.’”

  “Well, yes. That’s the whole point. You can serve it soft or freeze it again overnight for traditional hard,” I said with a tinge of irritation. It was unclear to me exactly where this Mr. Maytree was going with all this. From the reception area, I heard Isaac holler, “No, no! I want it there!” If he threw a tantrum, I’d have to call our domestic and cajole her to come fetch him again, even though it was her day off. Often, it seemed my son was ill-​behaved just to spite me.

  “We manufacture the machines and the ice cream mixes ourselves, Mr. Maytree,” I said brusquely. “All anyone ever has to do is push a button.”

  “And this magic formula of yours—just how many quarts do you produce a day, Mrs. Dunkle?”

  “Excuse me?” Twirling the phone cord around my finger, I stopped. I was about to tell this Mr. Orson Maytree that our production numbers were none of his goddamn business when it hit me: why the deputy secretary of the War Procurement Board was calling, sniffing around like this. Oh, Lillian, I thought. You imbecile.

  “Mr. Maytree. However much ice cream mix our troops need right now,” I said quickly, “that’s how much we can produce.”

  “Well, well.” He chuckled. “Aren’t you the clever little saleslady?” Then he exhaled. “Here’s the thing, Mrs. Dunkle. Right now we’ve got 1.5 million troops to feed, and that number is only going to grow exponentially. The Nazis are a vicious foe. The Japs are hardly even human. And the Commies may be our allies now, but not for long, I expect. We have to work quickly.”

  A million and a half troops. Already I was doing the math. If Dunkle’s provided them with our ice cream formula, why, we’d likely have to supply them with our machines as well. A government contract was almost too marvelous to contemplate.

  “My husband and I would be deeply honored to serve our country in any way that we can, Mr. Maytree,” I said. “Our ice cream formula is at your disposal for however long you need it. And perhaps you should know, too, that my husband still retains the patents on all his soft serve machines as well.”

  “Well, that’s certainly good to know. Good to know indeed.” I heard a light scratching; he wrote something down.

  “But here’s the thing of it, ma’am,” he said, his attention returning. “No one ice cream company in America is large enough to supply us with everything we need. So we’re contacting all the biggest we ca
n find. Up in your region, I see, there’s Muldoon’s. Louis Sherry. Candie. High-Ho. Schrafft’s. Yourselves, of course. A few others. The boys here have put together a list. My team and I, we’d like to pay you a visit. Take a look around the facilities. See exactly what we have to work with and who all we might get on board. Maybe invite the others over to see your factory, in fact, if you don’t mind.”

  A sickening feeling took hold within me like dye seeping into fabric. “Other companies,” I said.

  “Ma’am, it’s wartime. It’s what I call an all-hands-on-deck situation. From what I hear, High-Ho Ice Cream has a plant right near the shipyards in New Jersey, which could be enormously beneficial. The Candie Ice Cream Company has a big factory right on the waterfront in Brooklyn. Schrafft’s has a big outfit up in Boston. I’m telling all of them same as I’m telling you, Mrs. Dunkle. We have to consider every option. We’ve asked the auto industry to work together, and we certainly hope you folks can do the same.”

  “I see,” I said faintly. “Of course.”

  “One thing I can assure you, though. Your husband’s ice cream formula could prove a godsend. Not having to ship ice cream frozen? Or transport all the ingredients separately?” He let out a low, admiring whistle. “Your husband, Mrs. Dunkle, why, he might be able to do more for the U.S. military than any other ice cream man in history.”

  The night before the meeting, I sat in our kitchen. I picked up my fork, jabbed a boiled potato, and set it back down. Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Cocktail” played softly on the radio, an antidote to all the bad news broadcast earlier. “I should have known there would be a catch,” I said to Bert bitterly. “The thought of those mamzers in our factory. In the place that we built—”

  Try as I might, the Candie Ice Cream Company was still thriving, belching out its ten flavors at its fortress over in Brooklyn. Occasionally I saw grainy photographs of the Dinellos in the Ice Cream Manufacturers’ Gazette. Or in the business pages of the newspapers. Bert himself had run into Pasquale several times at the Associated Dairies.

  “Did that bastard say anything to you?” I pressed afterward.

  “It happened too quickly, Lil. Pasquale was coming in, I was going out. He tipped his hat at me. I tipped mine at him. That was all.”

  I, however, had studiously managed to avoid all of them. Industry events were easy enough to bypass. Often, as just a wife and a cripple, I was not even invited.

  Now, however, we’d be ushering the Dinello brothers right into our very own offices, sitting them down at our very own table, showing them our very own machinery. The men who betrayed me, who had cast me out onto the street. Oh, how desperately I wanted to beg the war board to exclude them! Yet what reason could I possibly give? Just that day, thirteen U.S. warships had been sunk off the coast of Indonesia. The first trainload of French Jews had been deported to Germany. Nobody cared a whit about my little personal vendetta. Even I knew: It seemed petty.

  “Lil, the way I see this, it’s simply wonderful news.” Reaching across the tablecloth, Bert stroked the back of my hand. “Uncle Sam wants us. Our ice cream. And why shouldn’t we join forces with the others? We’re at war.”

  “We certainly are,” I said petulantly. I sounded like Isaac. That was the difficulty I had with my son: Too often I looked at him and saw not Bert but my own unlovely, unvarnished self reflected right back at me.

  “Lil, the Dinellos are coming to us. To our plant, to see our ice cream. Isn’t that a victory in and of itself? We’re the ones the government is most interested in.”

  “You,” I grumbled. “You’re the ice cream man.”

  Bert tilted his head at me with indulgent affection. “Me, you. You, me. What’s the difference, doll? We’re Dunkle’s. And we’re as big as the Candie Company. I think it’s time to lay the past to rest, Lil. There are so many bigger battles now.” Bert stroked my forearm. “The Dinellos, Candie—they’re not the enemy.”

  I frowned, got up brusquely, dropped a napkin over my plate, and set it in the icebox with a clatter. But as I stood gripping the sides of the sink, I suspected, in my heart, that my husband was right. We had a child now, and a real business, and the world was on the brink of cataclysm. I should know better, be better. Furthermore, the drive to compete with the Candie Company, it was becoming exhausting. Perhaps the Dinello brothers had grown softer and more generous with age, too, just as their grandparents had. Perhaps a whole new set of possibilities—of alliances—could be born.

  Staring at a smudge of rust by the drain, I could not tell, darlings, whether I felt furious or thwarted—or relieved. Or even something strangely akin to hope: All of us, finally, banded together. I took a deep breath, brushed my damp wrist across my forehead, and turned back toward my husband.

  * * *

  When Orson Maytree Jr. and his men arrived, Bert and I had been at the factory two straight days. Bert had meticulously oiled and cleaned every bit of machinery until the entire plant gleamed like a metropolis. While Isaac slept with his stuffed dog and his locomotive on the little couch, we transformed the main office into a conference room. I hung a large American flag across the back wall beside an article we had framed from the Ice Cream Manufacturers’ Gazette: “DUNKLE’S NEW FORMULA HITS A SWEET SPOT.” I even brought in from home a photograph of Isaac dressed as Uncle Sam for Halloween. The Bible that Mrs. Dinello had given me for my confirmation. Bert’s new white AIR WARDEN hat and his binoculars. A collection box for the war effort. I positioned all of these props as casually as I could atop our desks, where the war board would be sure to see them. One could never appear too patriotic, too all-American.

  As I stood in the doorway smoothing my new dress, I felt as flushed as I had back on Mulberry Street, waiting for Bert to arrive for his tutoring.

  “Well, Mrs. Dunkle. Thank you very much indeed for your hospitality,” Orson Maytree Jr. said, shaking my hand. He was a large oak tree of a man with the most magnificent dollop of white hair. Although he was dressed in a civilian jacket and tie, the military was evident in his bearing—in his pinned-back shoulders, in the gleam of his belt buckle. His masculine assurance filled our little conference room like aftershave.

  He seemed to take no notice of my leg or my cane. “Let me introduce you around. Gentlemen.” I smoothed my new dress again and shook hands nervously with each member of the war board, one after the other after the other. “Welcome to Dunkle’s.” I attempted to smile like Rita Hayworth. “So glad you could come.”

  Dewey Muldoon arrived, the owner of Muldoon’s Ice Cream, dressed foppishly in a bow tie, his forehead glistening with sweat. A representative from Schrafft’s had made the trip—I overheard him boast—all the way from Boston. The president of High-Ho Ice Cream shook Bert’s hand and tucked a red paper daisy—High-Ho’s trademark—crisply into his buttonhole. All the bigwigs of the Northeast’s ice cream industry were gathering right there inside our factory with their bluster and gimmicks. I had plucked our prettiest worker, Sonia, off the assembly line and paid her an extra dollar to put on some nylons and Tangee lipstick and circulate among the men with a coffeepot and a tray. Yet none of them helped themselves. The mood in the room was peculiar. We were an elite group summoned together by the War Department like the Knights of the Templar. There was the frisson of having been selected, anointed. Yet also: unease. Were we all compatriots now—or still one another’s competition? A lot of money was at stake. The men stood coughing into their fists and smiling uncomfortably, groping for conversation.

  Can you believe those Yankees? Trading Holmes for Hassett and Moore?

  Well, at least they’re letting the soldiers in for free. Five thousand seats is a lotta tickets. That’s gotta hurt.

  As the room filled, Bert sidled up to me and placed his hand in the small of my back. “Doll,” he murmured.

  There, in the doorway, stood Rocco Dinello handing his coat and hat over to Sonia. I had seen him, of course, in those blurry newsprint photographs over the years, yet the reality of him was
jarring. He was dressed superbly, I saw, in an expensive three-piece suit with a silk pocket square. His thatch of slick hair was nearly pewter now, and the feral boniness of his face had vanished: Both his chin and stomach were girdled with fat. He was not merely stocky but gelatinous. Yet his smug, boyish grin was still intact, glinting out from the bloat of his face, and although he had aged, he carried himself with expansive agility, slapping the other men on the back as he moved through the room, pantomiming brotherly punches and feints, his gold cuff links winking in the light.

  My spine went cold. I stood among our guests, feigning attentiveness, a dumb smile glazed on my face. Yet I was aware only of Rocco’s animal presence behind me and the friendly commotion he was creating as he made his way through the conference room like a slow-moving tornado. Dewey! Richard! How’s business up in Boston, fellas? Hey, Archibald. Congratulations on the new grandson. As always, he seemed to know everyone. I felt a strange bolt of anguish and panic and nostalgia all mixed together. What would I possibly say to him? I could not help it. Despite whatever I had told myself back in the kitchen with Bert, my reaction to Rocco, it was chemical.

  I swallowed and patted my lips. Perhaps Rocco and I could simply manage to politely ignore each other for the duration of the meeting, conducting an elaborate sort of do-si-do. Perhaps that would be best.

  Yet in a flash he was towering before me. “Well, look who we have here. Albert Dunkle. Compadre. Great to see you. Great to see you.” He slapped Bert on the shoulder. Stepping back theatrically, he feigned surprise at seeing me, too. “And who is this? Could it possibly be?”

  His outsize warmth: I was wholly unprepared for it.

  “Rocco Dinello. How do you do?” Gingerly, I held out my hand.

  “Please, Horsey.” Scowling, he aimed both his thumbs at his chest. “Who do you think you’re talking to here?” Spreading his arms wide, he enveloped me in a crushing bear hug. “Been a long time, eh?” As he patted me heartily on the back, he smelled of brilliantine, cotton sheets washed in brown soap mixed with sweet vinegar and onions. It was so familiar, such an intimate scent, so utterly Rocco, that for a moment I felt a stab of heartbreak.