The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street Page 27

  For a moment I was unsure of how to proceed.

  “Mr. Maytree, there’s something I think I need to share with you.” I looked at him cautiously. “This is delicate. Not even my husband knows. Nor should he ever.”

  I gave Mr. Maytree a concentrated, vehement look. I had his attention now, I saw.

  “Normally I wouldn’t have said anything. America is a free country, after all. And we’re all entitled to believe as we please. But given that we are a nation at war…”

  Taking a deep breath, I unsnapped my pocketbook and carefully removed the old, cracked Bible. The binding flaked as I opened it and drew out the petition from the workers’ meeting that Bert and I had attended so many years ago in that basement off Delancey Street. Its edges had aged to a biscuit color. Gingerly, I unfolded it and passed it to Orson Maytree.

  “What is this?” he said.

  With some difficulty I brought my chair around so that I was adjacent to him. I pointed to the Daily Worker letterhead with its hammer-and-sickle logo, then to the paragraph typed beneath it, beginning, “Comrades, we, the undersigned, unite,” demanding the release of Sacco and Vanzetti.

  “A petition,” I said. “Issued by the Communist Party of America a few years ago in support of two known Italian anarchist murderers.”

  As soon as I said this, I could see Orson Maytree’s back stiffen. “Oh?” He pushed his empty pie plate across the table with a clatter and unfolded his reading glasses from his breast pocket. As the waitress approached, he waved her away.

  “It’s not mine,” I added quickly. “Back when Bert and I were first courting—” I swallowed. I could feel my face flush. I smiled at Orson Maytree as best I could.

  “I had heard a rumor that a new girl in the neighborhood was sweet on my Bert. I did not know her name, only that the boys called her ‘Red.’ I thought this was on account of her hair. One night when I saw her stepping out, I followed her. I couldn’t help it. I was sure she’d be meeting him.”

  As this story I’d invented unspooled on my tongue, I felt like myself yet not myself. The words felt spontaneous, each one coming to me like one of the little songs I used to invent as a child.

  “Instead I tracked her to a basement. She wasn’t having a tryst with my Bert, I discovered, but conducting a political meeting,” I continued. “She and a young man were addressing everybody as ‘comrade’ and circulating this petition for the members to sign. As soon as it came around, I tucked it in my coat and ran out. I had no idea what it was. I just wanted to learn the girl’s name.”

  I pointed at the sheet of paper, to a random name. “Violet Bromberger. There. ‘Red.’ But it honestly wasn’t until much later, Mr. Maytree, when I was going through some old papers of mine, that I came across this again. Only then did I see who the young man leading the meeting had been. The one calling everyone ‘comrade’ and demanding the release of the anarchists.”

  With my finger I directed Orson Maytree’s attention midway down the page to a signature.

  “Rocco Dinello?” he read aloud.

  “The co-owner of the Candie Ice Cream Company,” I said grimly. “Who was at the table this morning.” As I said this, it felt as if a Roman candle had gone off inside me. “He was the other chief organizer, you see.” And in that moment I became so dedicated to my lie that I actually believed it. I remembered Rocco not as he had been all those years ago, leaning disinterestedly against the wall of that awful, mildewed basement off Delancey Street, but standing before the benches of activists, boldly, a prime Communist agitator in dungarees and a work shirt, scorching the walls with his calls for revolutionary justice.

  A look of alarm came over Orson Maytree’s face. Clicking open the briefcase that sat beside him on the banquette, he riffled through his folder for his list of ice cream manufacturers in the Northeast. He carefully checked the name there against the one on the petition. He had the sign-in sheet from the meeting at our factory that morning, too. He placed the petition I’d given him beside it. The signatures must have proved one and the same, because he looked stricken.

  “Now, Mr. Maytree,” I said quickly, “when you first mentioned the Candie Company to me, why, I was not even sure Rocco Dinello still owned it. And I believe it is only right that you know that, as fellow ice cream makers, the Candie Ice Cream Company makes a decent enough product, I must say, even if they do cut corners, perhaps, in ways that I myself might not consider ethical. But with all the talk these days about spies and ‘the enemies within’ and the Red Menace—and with what you said this morning about the Russians not really being our allies—well, I just could not in good conscience let you risk enlisting a Communist—”

  “Indeed, ma’am,” Orson Maytree declared, “you should not.”

  “Truth be told, I wasn’t even sure if I should give this to you,” I said, making a great show of reluctance. “After all, as you yourself said, we Americans are supposed to set our personal differences aside right now and—”

  “Oh, no. Ma’am,” Orson Maytree said with adamancy, “you did exactly the right thing. This is war, not a garden party.” His hands trembled as he continued studying the petition. “You know, out there in California right now, they’ve got them under curfew.”

  “The Communists?”

  “No. The Italians. I have to tell you, ma’am, when I see things like this—” He shook his head. His face reddened. “If you don’t mind,” he said, opening his folder, “I’d like to bring this to the attention of Francis Biddle.”

  “The attorney general?”

  “And the War Relocation Authority. And the Dies Committee. You know, Martin—excuse me, Congressman Dies—he’s an old, personal friend of mine. Grew up in Beaumont, same as I did. Even went to the same elementary school.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “And he knows, as I do, that Commies, anarchists, Italian radicals—​they pose a grave threat to us, Mrs. Dunkle. They need to be weeded out and dealt with. They’re enemy insurgents.”

  I looked at Orson Maytree Jr. The violence of his reaction surprised me. Certainly it had not occurred to me that he might take the petition all the way to authorities in Washington. While I did not know what the War Relocation Authority was, I had certainly heard of the Dies Committee before. It was the congressional commission dedicated to hunting down Communists. Would they actually investigate Rocco? I felt an odd mixture of shock and queasiness and glee. My own cleverness astounded me. Was it really that easy? I had half expected Mr. Maytree to see right through my little ruse—to dismiss it as the desperate gambit that it was. Surely a man like him would not be duped so easily by fear and stereotypes—would he? But I knew the answer already. I’d been born into a town decimated by pogroms, after all. And frankly, while I was surprised by the potency of my own lie, it felt unexpectedly marvelous to be on the other side of the manipulation for once—to be the one fomenting the prejudice instead of its victim.

  Struggling to conceal my delight, I said contritely, “Oh, Mr. Maytree. It would have been so easy for us to work with the Candie Ice Cream Company, seeing as they’re practically our neighbors.”

  Then, just as I had on Orchard Street, I made my eyes tear up on cue. “Yet as you said, this is war. And I just want to do what’s best for America.”

  “That’s absolutely right, ma’am,” Mr. Maytree said, nodding. “I greatly appreciate your honesty.” As I dabbed away my tears, he sat back and studied me, seeming to assess me anew. “We need more citizens like you in this country,” he said, removing his reading glasses and slipping them into his pocket. “Mrs. Dunkle, I cannot thank you enough for your honesty. And your vigilance.”

  That Friday, as promised, Bert received a phone call from Orson Maytree. Ten days later he was to come down to Washington to finalize and sign the contracts that Dunkle’s was being awarded by the United States government.

  “Did he happen to mention if the Dinellos got a contract, too?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

  Bert
shrugged. “All he said was to bring our lawyers.”

  The morning of Bert’s meeting in Washington, I dropped Isaac off at his nursery school and headed over to the factory. I was dressed in my very best green gabardine suit and a hat with a black silk rose pinned to the brim. The wind off the river made everything smell watery. Rising light glinted off the chrome refrigerator trucks. Gulls circled overhead, cawing, heralding the promise of spring.

  As I crossed the parking lot, one of our truck drivers called out to me. “Hey, Mrs. Dunkle. Can I ask you something?”

  I stopped.

  “You wouldn’t be looking to hire any more drivers now, would you, ma’am?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My buddy over in Brooklyn,” he said sheepishly. “A 4-F like me? And with the shutdown?”

  I looked at him curiously and hobbled on. No sooner had I switched on the overhead fixture in the office and hung my coat and hat on the hook, however, than the telephone rang.

  “Mrs. Dunkle,” a familiar voice said over the line. “Artie Flent over at Durkee.” Durkee supplied us with over half a dozen flavorings. “I don’t suppose you folks have any interest in purchasing an extra eighty-case shipment of vanilla flavoring, do you?”

  “Vanilla?”

  “Guess you didn’t hear the news yet. The Candie Ice Cream Company just went bust. No warning at all. And I’ll be damned if their latest order isn’t sitting on one of our trucks already halfway up the turnpike. For two days now I’ve been calling, but no one’s answered the phone.”

  When I hung up, I sat back, stunned. For a moment I did not know what to do with myself. Was it true? Quickly, I dialed our wholesalers, our dairies, even the Chamber of Commerce to see what anyone had heard. All I learned was that the Candie Ice Cream Company had shut down abruptly over the weekend. “Oddest thing. One week they’re producing like gangbusters, the next, suddenly, ka-pow,” our paper-cup supplier said. “But I guess if you’re not making bullets these days, it’s tough going.”

  Finally, our accounts man over at Niff-Tee told me he’d heard a rumor. “According to my guy at the docks, a bunch of feds just came in and seized the place overnight. Confiscated everything. The entire factory. No real reason at all. Just something about the waterfront being ‘strategic.’”

  The phone went leaden in my hand. Had that really happened? But it was all so fast. It couldn’t possibly be right. I realized I was trembling. I could not tell what I felt: Delight? Nausea? I looked down from the window at our production floor. The workers had not yet arrived in their crisp white kerchiefs and aprons; our assembly line gleamed beneath me like an enormous silver serpent, the industrial refrigerators, ventilators, and compressors hissing and throbbing in unison.

  In the parking lot, our last delivery truck was about to depart. Hurriedly, I knocked on the side of the cab. “Drive me to Red Hook,” I ordered. This time, I was not going to take anybody else’s word for it.

  What I would do once I got there—providing the rumors were right—was unclear. Would I stand gloating? Offer my condolences? Tell them in a sugary voice how sorry I was, how much Bert and I had truly been looking forward to working with them? I felt in my pocketbook. I had brought Dunkle’s checkbook with me. Why, perhaps I could offer to buy some of their equipment; perhaps that would seem the noble, charitable thing to do. Suddenly, I imagined the workers. Scores of them with their kerchiefs and caps and aprons and lunch pails, with bull’s-eyes worn away into the soles of their shoes. Would they be gathered there weeping? Clamoring for their pay? Saying, Now, how in the world am I going to feed my family? What the hell would I do then? What could I do then? I simply could not bear to think about this.

  When our truck arrived at the waterfront, however, it became clear that I would not need to contemplate any action at all. The gate in front of Candie’s lot was padlocked shut. Beyond it, the brick building stood silent, absolutely dark. The garage doors were chained. Wind whipped in from the river, sending a single brown paper bag tumbling end over end across the lot before catching in the swirl of dead leaves and debris from the gutter. The red-and-white peppermint-swirl trademark presided over the abandoned facility like a single rheumy eye.

  “Wait,” I told the delivery-truck driver.

  We sat there in the frigid cab, staring out at the bleak tableau of brick through the windshield. I kept expecting someone to come along eventually—a delivery truck rumbling in, perhaps. Or the Dinellos themselves alighting from a car with brooms and cartons to clean out their offices. For an instant, at the far end of the parking lot, I saw a solitary man in a tattered coat, keeled over on the pavement. I rolled down the window. “Sir?” I called out. But the wind blew violently, and he disintegrated; indeed, he appeared to have been only a trick of the shadows. After nearly an hour, nothing more stirred.

  Was it all a big coincidence, or had I myself done this—just as I swore I would thirteen years before as a young bride, barely twenty-one, cast off and humiliated in the streets of New York?

  Regardless, it was over. It was done. Yet, blinking out at the dark factory, I found I felt no satisfaction at all. Only a sensation of something needling. And turbulent. And horrible.

  Word traveled, of course. All afternoon while Bert was in Washington, people in the industry called. The consensus was that the Candie Ice Cream Company had simply gone bankrupt. Me, I was all too happy to perpetuate this rumor. “Well, you know,” I said to our dairyman as I sat at my office desk with my shoes kicked off, “Bert and I could easily be in the same boat if we hadn’t switched to corn sugars awhile back. Candie just didn’t have good business sense, I guess. If you followed what was happening in Europe, you saw the writing on the wall clearly enough.”

  When Bert arrived home from Washington the next evening, I had a bottle of Great Western chilling in an ice bucket. I had no reason to feel bad at all, I kept telling myself.

  “Oh, doll, it’s been a very big day.” Bert loosened his tie and raised his glass jubilantly.

  “To our brand-new customer. To Uncle Sam and the War Department!” I chimed. The bubbles tingled and burned in my throat. I raised my glass again. “And to them choosing us but not Candie.”

  “Oh,” Bert said abruptly, shaking his head. “We shouldn’t toast to that.”

  “Why? Why not?” I twirled the stem of my champagne glass and tried to appear nonchalant. “Was something the matter?”

  “Well, apparently, our government is not keen on doing business with Italians right now,” Bert said grimly.

  “Oh?”

  For a moment Bert’s gaze remained fastened on the dark street beyond our living-room window. Because of the war, all the streetlamps had been dimmed. It was like living with gaslight again.

  “Lil.” He turned to me suddenly. “Did you know that a law has been passed requiring all Italians who don’t have U.S. citizenship to register at the post office as enemy aliens?”

  “Excuse me?” I gave a little laugh. “Bert, that’s absurd.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. But apparently it’s true. And if Italians own shortwave radios, or flashlights, or any property near the ports or along the water, it can be confiscated?”

  “No. That can’t be right. That can’t be right at all, Bert. Here.” Nervously, I picked up his glass and refilled it.

  “Some guys at the barbershop, they were talking a few weeks ago. They say that if you’re an enemy alien and the government thinks you’re up to no good, they can ship you off to a camp somewhere or send you back to Italy. They’ve got something here now called the War Relocation Authority.”

  The War Relocation Authority. What Orson Maytree had mentioned to me. I felt my chest constrict.

  “Please,” I said quickly. “This is America, for God’s sake, Bert. Not Germany.”

  “That’s what I said, too.” From somewhere outside, a siren screamed past, throwing manic, bloodred light across the living-room wall for a moment. One little piece of paper, I had handed over. That
was it.

  Avoiding Bert’s eyes, I took a sip of champagne and forced a bright, airy laugh. “You don’t honestly think Candie was declared to be an enemy of the state or some such nonsense just because they’re Italians? Please, Bert.” I waved at the air. “I’ve known those shmendriks a long time.” Reaching for the bottle, I refilled my glass again. “Trust me. I bet the war board took one look at how badly they run their operations and simply realized it would be a boondoggle.”

  “I suppose,” Bert said haplessly.

  “Tonight it’s about us.”

  “Absolutely, doll. You’re right. It’s good to be home.” Squeezing my thigh, Bert raised his glass and touched it lightly to mine. “To our good news.”

  I took one more sip of my champagne, then another, and closed my eyes. All day long I had been waiting for a sense of relief and exaltation—clouds in the heavens parting, a great beam of triumph shining down like sunlight. Yet instead I kept thinking of my visit to Red Hook. I kept seeing that lone shadow of a man, keening in the shadows. I had imagined him, hadn’t I? Flashes of Mr. and Mrs. Dinello appeared in my mind’s eye—him with his sad white mustache and his modest cart rattling over the cobblestones, mournfully singing his arias—she in her hairnet with her hawkish gaze, sweating and smelling of rose water as she cranked the old ice cream maker with me in the dank tenement kitchen. We make you strong, Ninella, capisce? And then, for some reason, I thought of Rocco, small and bony, sob-riddled as he curled in my arms after his mother had died—and how he’d leaned back on his heels in my factory just a week before, boasting about how good his little boy was at baseball. Certainly the U.S. government had not deported him. I remembered the day well when we had all become American citizens—all of us together at the clerk’s office downtown, standing solemnly beneath the flag with our hands raised. Afterward we had gorged on sfogliatelli and rhumbaba to celebrate. But the Cannolettis? And the factory workers? Had they been herded onto steamers bound for Naples and Palermo?