Yeruchum began speaking as soon as he entered the room, his words edged with tension.

“Chanaleh, have you told Abe what happened?”

“No, Papa, we’ve….”

“Abe, Mrs. Burton has taken her daughter away. She blames her, and us, for Mr. Burton getting so drunk. We’ve got to do something.”

Abe and Annie looked at each other, communicating in that way of couples who’ve enjoyed more than two decades of happy marriage. A lifted eyebrow, an almost imperceptible nod — and a decision made.

Abe was the one who spoke. “Papa, right now Annie can’t help anyone. She’s got to take care of herself — and the baby she’s expecting.”

“But Marjorie…” A moment’s pause, as the words sank in. “Chanaleh?”

“Yes, Papa. I’m expecting.”

Yeruchum took a deep breath, walked over to Annie, and kissed her gently on the forehead. “Baruch Hashem, mein kindt.”

“We haven’t told anyone, Papa. I just found out myself. But the doctor has told Abe that I have to stay in bed, at least for the next four weeks.” The ramifications of a months’ bedrest suddenly hit her. “Abie, it’s a month to Pesach. How will we make Yom Tov? And who will take Ruchele to kindergarten and get the twins ready for school? And who will cook and clean and….”

Abe held up a warning hand. “Slow down, sweetheart.” He grinned.

Annie knew that grin. Abe was having one of his ideas. One of those sometimes brilliant, sometimes crazy, always unexpected ideas that he would occasionally come up with. To keep life interesting, as he put it.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to bring in a housekeeper, cook, and nanny. You, my dear, will be a queen, lying in your bed, reading those women’s magazines you like so much, eating chocolate bonbons and, if you want, knitting booties for your first grandchild and blankets for your baby. Miss Marjorie Burton will take care of everything else.”

“Miss… Marjorie? Are you mad?”

“Honey, it’s a great idea. Look, you’re going to need help. We’ll have to bring in someone. You want a non-Jew dressing Ruchele in the morning? Marjorie’s mother will be fine with this, trust me. She’ll hear that Marjorie is working for a reputable doctor — that’s me — and she won’t be in the hotel. After a month, hopefully the mad mama will have calmed down and Marjorie can come back to the hotel.”

“But Abie, she’s so loud. I get headaches just being near that girl.”

Yeruchum broke in. “It’s a good idea,” he said, with a grateful nod at Abe. “You don’t realize how important this is. I spoke with Mrs. Schwartz after they took Marjorie away. Chanaleh,” he said, with a strange break in his voice. “Miss Burton told her that she’s going to run away. As soon as she can, she’ll hitchhike to San Francisco.”

Annie’s eyes widened. “San Francisco?”

Abe looked concerned. “That’s bad. I heard about what’s going on there at my last conference. Kids head to California, get tangled in alcohol and drugs. One of my colleagues told me about a patient of his. Nice kid. Seventeen years old. Left school, started hanging out in Greenwich Village, hitchhiked cross-country to California.”

This was something Annie had never heard of. Teenagers? Hitchhikers? Drugs? “What happened to him?”

“No one knows. His parents haven’t heard from him for over a year.”

Another objection, and this one something that Papa couldn’t deny. “But we can’t have a young woman living in our house. What about Mutty and Artie? It’s just not right.”

Yeruchum looked lost in thought. Finally, he spoke. “Artie and Mutty can live over here, in the hotel.”

Annie’s emotional combination of happiness and anxiety were overpowered by a furious anger. “So you’re asking me to throw my children out of their home for a stranger?”

Yeruchum spoke quietly. “Chanaleh, I know this won’t be easy for you. It’s only for a short time. She’s a Yiddishe kindt. Think of your own children, wouldn’t you want someone to take care of them if they needed help?”

“But….”

He continued speaking, determined, relentless.

“Chanaleh, I never told you how my story with her grandfather ended.”

Annie took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. She shifted in her chair and prepared to hear more about her father’s hidden past.

“My best friend, Meilech, never returned to his house. He wasn’t a bad boy, though, and after a few weeks he wrote to his mother, telling her he was in Kovno, staying with a friend, and working.” The look of pain deepened. “He never wrote to his father. Never.

“I had just begun learning in Ponevezh when the first world war broke out. There was fighting, terrible fighting. The yeshivah had to constantly run away. From the German troops. From the Russian troops. Caught in the middle of two cruel beasts. There was starvation, disease, malnutrition.”

Annie listened intently. All thoughts of the future — of babies, grandchildren, a troubled redheaded girl — vanished, as she followed her father back to events that had taken place close to half a century before. Papa had never spoken about this part of his life. His voice was low, and she leaned toward him.

“Then the Tatte got sick. My mother begged me to come home. I left yeshivah. And then I found out that they were coming to get me, to draft me. We all knew what going to the army meant. Death. Of the guf, the body, and for most Jews, of the neshamah as well.

“My parents urged me to run. I left in the middle of the night. I stopped only to get a brachah from the Rav. I told him my plans — how I would somehow get to neutral Switzerland, and from there go to either Palestine or America.

“The Rav blessed me and then went to a drawer and pulled out a small postcard. ‘Gei tzi Amerika,’ he told me. ‘Find my Meilech, my Kaddish’l. Bring him back to Yiddishkeit.’ He kissed the postcard, as if it were a precious sefer. I promised I would do whatever I could. He told me Meilech had emigrated to the Unites States, and he would sometimes write to the rebbetzin on postcards. He wrote in Yiddish, but the return address was in a foreign language. English.”

Abe broke in. “So how did you get to America?”

Yeruchum sighed. “A langeh mayseh, a long story. Not for now. But with the Eibeshter’s help and nissim, I eventually got to American shores.”

“And then?”

“And then, once I had established myself in New York, I went to find my best friend.”

He closed his eyes. He was no longer in Coney Island. The war to end all wars was over, and young Yeruchum Freed was on a mission.

New York City 1919

Meilech Briskman, it seems, has done well for himself. He’s not living in the bustling, teeming tenements of the Lower East Side, where tens of thousands of his compatriots have settled, but in Harlem, a more prosperous Jewish enclave in upper Manhattan.

Yeruchum looks at the postcard that has not left his possession throughout his long and arduous journeys, checks the address, and knocks at the door. It is opened by a heavyset man with a florid face. There is no yarmulke on the man’s shock of red hair.

Meilech recognizes him immediately, and pulls him into a bear hug.

They talk. That is, Meilech talks, while Yeruchum listens in growing horror. Meilech — Mr. Morris Burton — has changed more than his name. He is working as a manager of a bookstore, he proudly tells Yeruchum, and hopes one day to open his own publishing company. Shabbos? Of course he works on Saturday, it’s the biggest sales day of the week. Yes, he’s married, and the missus, as he calls her, is expecting their first. No, she is not religious either; they have given all that up.

“Best thing you could have done was throw me out of your house,” Morris laughs. He speaks about his father, his life in Valiokei, in words too terrible for Yeruchum to hear.

Abruptly, Yeruchum stands up. He nods at this stranger, this apikores that was his best friend, and leaves.

He does not say goodbye.

Coney Island, February 1964

“I went home and told your mama what had happened. She told me I should have stayed. She urged me to go back, to try to help him. But I was stubborn, angry. I didn’t care about what the Rav had begged me to do. As far as I was concerned, Meilech had died the night he left Valiokei.”

Another sigh, deep and sorrowful. “I know now that I was wrong. Perhaps the power of Torah, the power of Shabbos, would have helped him, would have given the Rav a son to say Kaddish for him.”

Yeruchum’s ebony eyes met Annie’s blue ones. “Chanaleh, Hashem sent this girl to us. It is time for me to fulfill my promise to her great-grandfather.”

As Abe had predicted, the “mad mama” was putty in his charming hands. He gave her one day for her temper to cool, and, as he confided to Annie, who had reluctantly agreed to the idea, for Mr. Burton to recover from his hangover. Then he knocked at the Burtons’ door, suavely introduced himself, apologized profusely, and put himself into Mrs. Burton’s good graces by agreeing that men should never, ever drink anything more than one dry martini. Annie had told him that she’d shared a cordial, if cool, conversation with Mrs. Burton, and he appealed to her for help with his poor, bedridden wife.

The deal was done. Marjorie was told to pack her luggage. She would be working at the Levine’s home as a cook and nanny. And living there, for the duration.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 855)