The Milkman’s Daughter
Teplitsky tipped his hat as Mrs. M passed, Solly in her arms, Gilbert clinging to a fold in her skirt, behind her the pretty blondela Minnie herding Ruth and Lillian. At home, Teplitsky knew, Mrs. M’s son Frank slept, while Eva and Clara laundered their father’s work clothes in the battered wringer-washer. Teplitsky knew because he knew everything about almost everyone in this little corner of North Philadelphia. Strawberry Mansion it was called. Funny. The only mansion for the refugees who settled here was a wish in the mind.
Every morning from a bench in front of his candy store he observed Mrs. M turn the corner on to York Street and slip into the bakery for rolls, the butcher for marrow bones or brisket. In the dairy shop, a pinch on Minnie’s cheek came with an extra slice of butter from a gentleman from the Ukraine whose future granddaughter in another century would be a judge. About that, of course, Teplitsky did not know; in 1936 such a thing was not in his wildest imaginings, that a Jewish girl could rise to such heights.
Mrs. M nodded to Teplitsky. She felt no love for this man, the bane of mothers he was, hiring their sons to run numbers, enticing them to a fool’s game in his den of evils. She raised her chin and marched on, her babies kvetching in the August humidity, and allowed herself a moment of delirium, an image of a muslin easy chair, her feet upon a fringed stool. Perhaps some day…
“Tell Frank I need him this afternoon,” Teplitsky called after her, no aggravation intended; he didn’t know what she was thinking. He folded his Yiddish newspaper, sick at heart from the daily reports of a tyrant threatening to kill every Jew in Europe, then turned into his shop where, indeed, he did make book for the sons and husbands of exhausted women like Mrs. M, and run a nightly pinochle game in his back room. From all over Philly they came to sit under a single light bulb hanging from the cracked ceiling, cigarette smoke curling up, around and between them, aspiring, dissipating like dreams.
* * *
At home, Mrs. M checked on the progress of the laundry and woke Frank. “Teplitsky the gonef needs you, he said I should tell you.” Frank rolled over, his shirt soaked with sweat, and stretched. All night he played cards, all morning he slept, all afternoon he ran numbers. And each week he tossed a few coins into the household pushka; for this she was grateful. But not for the surprise visits from the police, the raids, when she would rush to gather the tell-tale numbers and flush them down the toilet, while he managed the questions in the front room. From those occasions she had palpitations and struggled to quiet herself.
The bread-and-butter sandwiches and sliced banana Mrs. M placed on the table soon vanished and a settled calm fell over the room. Frank put on a clean shirt and wandered out, Ruth and Lillian lolled on a settee that tipped precariously to one side. Clara and Eva returned to their chores. Minnie . . . Minnie was Minnie, preening for a blackened mirror as if for an audience. Sunday, at the flea market, maybe we can find a better mirror, thought Mrs. M, as she washed Solly and Gilbert, wrapped their bottoms with clean rags, and placed them in her bed for naps. A lovely girl should have a real mirror to see her possibilities, to map a future.
She heard the call of the iceman in the alley and ran out as he placed a chunk of ice in a metal box near the kitchen door. “Shush! The babies are sleeping,” she whispered.
“And the milkman’s daughter?” he called over his shoulder, mounting his wagon and urging his nag forward.
“You stay away from my Minnie,” warned Mrs. M, fed up with the lewd comments endured by her pale beauty. Where did she come from? they asked. How did she land in a family swarthy as Gypsies? A pogrom, Mrs. M never said but wondered. Or a rape on a dark lane beyond the shtetl, in another country, another time. Century upon century, havoc, terror. Memories etched in the bones, the brain, tattoos on the long arm of time.
But here in their tiny house with its marble stoop and bouncing floors and neighbors like family there was a sense of safety. Not a feeling in the heart. That could never be for Mrs. M and her old-world friends. Safety would exist in the hearts of her children and their children, God willing.
For her Minnie, maybe. Her Minnie had airs. No one’s mind worked like hers. What she saw for herself they did not understand. One day she was a movie star, another day a princess. (Was the rapist a prince? Mrs. M sometimes mused.) Her daughter drew pictures of castles, houses with flowers and trees. When she read books about other children, she longed for their lives. Their parents wore beautiful suits and dresses and helped them with their homework. Police did not barge through the front door and scare them. Everyone spoke English.
Mrs. M’s husband, Jake, often ordered her to shake Minnie free of her daydreams, prepare her for her lot in life. She would marry a boy from the neighborhood, maybe a roofer like her father, with a little luck a shopkeeper. She would have babies. There would be no flowers, no trees. Just these endless rows of dilapidated houses, peeling linoleum, rag men traipsing through the alley. Of what use are daydreams? he would shout. They are steps on the path to a good life, Mrs. M would think, but never say aloud. Her Jake did not tolerate defiance. A few years later, wracked with lung cancer, he would mellow and she would be in charge. But now, she protected her daughter’s freedom to dream in silence.
* * *
They didn’t go to the flea market that Sunday. It was too hot. A new mirror for Minnie would have to wait. Instead, they piled into Jake’s tar-splattered old truck at dawn and headed for the beach. Joy as they crossed the Delaware River turned to tears on the White Horse Pike, as the motor overheated and they waited for it to cool. The children were nauseous from the smoke, the heat, the rocking of the truck bed, but as they approached Atlantic City, the ocean breeze vanquished their misery.
Mrs. M had arranged to visit her sister, whose husband owned a small hotel on the boardwalk. “Minnie, you come with me,” she announced, when Jake parked the truck. “We can’t all pile in, but Rivka will be happy to see at least one of my children.”
Minnie groaned. “Do I have to?” She wanted to fly across the hot sand and dive into, under and over the white crests of the sea.
“You have to.”
Rivka was waiting in the lobby when Mrs. M and Minnie arrived. “Such excitement,” she said, hugging and kissing them. “I couldn’t wait for you to get here.” She led them up a flight of stairs and into her apartment, which was the entire second floor. “Max is with his partner, so it’s just us for lunch.”
“Don’t go to any trouble,” said Mrs. M. “We’re only here to say hello. Jake and the kinder are on the beach already.”
“Okay, okay. You’ll eat and then you’ll go to the beach. Meanwhile, I’ll get to know my niece. Now, both of you, go wash up.”
When they returned, Rivka ran her hand through Minnie’s thick curls. “What grade are you in now? Do you like school? A boyfriend?”
Minnie ignored the questions, drawn to a shelf covered with tchotchkes. “What’s that, tante?” she asked, pointing to a crystal object.
“A giraffe, my darling. A gorgeous animal from far away. Do you like it? You can have it.”
“No,” said Mrs. M. “She doesn’t need an animal we don’t even know what it is. It’s enough we have a hundred stray cats where we are.”
Rivka laughed. “Like the Colosseum.” She saw that Mrs. M was bewildered. “A place I visited on my honeymoon. It was filled with stray cats.”
“I want to see it,” said Minnie.
“You will, my darling. You’ll see everything, go everywhere, like your Aunt Rivka.”
“When?”
“Some day,” said Rivka, placing a plate of sandwiches and a pitcher of lemonade on the table. She pulled out a velvet-covered chair for Mrs. M. “Sit, Anna. Enjoy.”
“But, when?” Minnie asked again.
“Some day,” said Mrs. M.
“The Milkman’s Daughter” appeared in the Fall 2026 issue of Vistas & Byways.
Evening Star
Near the end of his life Cliff understood what had always been missing.
Imagine! The pang of the lack, not of something once possessed then lost, but rather never had, with no ability to seek it, to imbibe what once he would have found cloying, now, now revealed as essential. Awash in hallucinatory passion, he longed to be submerged in another.
“Snap out of it!” His father’s voice, his north star, forever with him, swatting away reverie, demanding excellence. Cliff disentangled himself from his damp bedsheets and sat up, unsure if he could stay up, shivering.
Where is the hearty boy, he wondered, triggering the loop that accompanied his days, the story of his life. The boy who knew what he wanted and set out to bring it all into play. Study, sports, the right college, apprentice to the right star, a star in his own right.
The search for the right wife guided by his mother’s admonition: “It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as a poor one.” And one day there she was. A shiny girl in tennis whites, solid, accomplished. Over time upon their walls a cavalcade of photos: Shiny tots on the laps of a multitude of Santas. Teens in prom attire. Weddings. Grandchildren cuddling bears and bunnies. An embassy garden party in Paris. Proof that it all happened.
Though in his heart, untold, a wall with no photos, vignettes swept under the rug, the void that lurked under the whirl of accomplishment. A beloved baby boy lost. A shiny little girl who morphed into an angry stranger (the getting around that with bribery, warnings, cajolery, until, shiny again, she sailed off boldly).
The right wife who moved on, out of their circle into her own. Then gone, really gone, seized by the insatiable Crab, cancer. Cliff mourned as if they hadn’t been apart for decades; the mother of his children, with whom he’d shared Thanksgivings, birthdays, gone. While he marched into and through old age, one bony foot in front of the other. Soldiering on. Greeting the day with a mantra of gratitude, de rigueur.
Speaking aloud only of the shiny, hear hear, here here!
He rambles. It’s what he does. A ramble eternal, internal, for it would be disdained by friends and family. His dejection rejected. Snap out of it! Be happy. Cast aside this sudden dream of wild passion, rarely, if ever, his modus operandi. Certainly never during these last few years, as he’d transited from colonial, to condo with a view, to assisted living.
Unbidden passion triggered, no doubt, by his pretty nurse, Gretchen. Diligent, getting the job done. Like the charming, competent girls he’d hired in his day. A pleasure to have around. Great legs, shiny smile. An occasional brief affair. Passion was in the moment. In a bed in a room in a hotel far from the global ad agency he called his second home. It went no further. No furtive calls pledging lifelong allegiance. Hardly any lies. It was what it was.
So how to account for this drowning feeling now? Why is this crotchety, barnacled hull of a man sinking into a pluvial morass at this late date? He observed Gretchen, busy with vials and droppers. She must sense what he’s feeling. Was she laughing, her back turned to him, accustomed to needy old men, well-versed in playing dumb so as not to encourage entreaties, demands?
In any event, he had to pee. He could still manage that, the shuffling from bed to tiny ensuite bathroom. He needed to shower, but settled for a moist cold cloth pressed upon his face, forcing himself to look in the mirror at what he had become. This formerly gorgeous jock, as observed by his mother and grandmother (and his wife when she was in her shiny prime), now a speckled wreck of the Hesperus.
And what was the Hesperus anyway, and why did it come up in so many conversations with himself? He tottered back to bed and considered asking Gretchen to google Hesperus for him. He couldn’t face googling anymore. He’d had enough googling to last a lifetime. Now he just wanted to lie in his bed awash in longing, to imagine what had never been.
Suppose, he wondered, suppose when looking for the perfect wife, he’d come across a girl who whumped him and flumped him, who had no trust fund, no resumé, no compulsively updated rolodex? Would he have succumbed, marched her to the nearest justice of the peace and lived happily ever after? What kind of children would they have had? And what photos would have lined their walls? Certainly none taken at embassy parties. He would have been too busy whumping and flumping to worry about the perks of stardom at a corporation to which he’d have faint desire to kowtow. All desire would have settled on that simple girl. There was a song: You don’t have to be a star to be in my show. She would have been his non-star star.
Star schmar. It never happened. He’d never come upon that fork in the road, had never been torn, had never been prey to that eternal tug-of-war, passion vs sense. Miss Shiny appeared and in the blink of an eye, her ring finger boasted a three-carat solitaire, her apartment filled with shower gifts, on hold until their Bermuda honeymoon was history and his closet overflowed with pleated skirts and little black dresses.
A kind of love, you could say, but not what he ultimately came to understand. What “they” were all about. The ones celebrating their sixty-fifth anniversary, lovers since high school, the “we” gang, the secretive pauses and smiles that made him feel intrusive. Seen, they were seen, one by the other. Devoted. Her back bent from exhaustion, as she tended to his needs at the direst end. He, turning down invitations far beyond the expected period of mourning. There was no one for them but that particular other.
Suddenly his doorway filled with the bulk of Joe, his favorite orderly. “Hey, Cliff. You got your cell phone? Your grandson called to say he can’t reach you. Wants to know if he can come over for a game of chess this afternoon.”
Cliff searched under the blanket and pulled out his phone. “It isn’t charged. Tell him yes.”
“You can tell him. He’s waiting for your call.” Joe plugged the phone into a charger on the night stand, then turned to Gretchen. “How’s my girl?”
An enchanting blush rose from her collar to her forehead as she looked up at him. Speechless, Cliff saw. That would have been his non-star, certainly, speechless at the sight of him. Besotted. He turned away and phoned his grandson, his lovely, loving grandson who never gave up on him, who found the stories of an ornery old fool charming.
“Tim. Timmy.” He stumbled. What he wanted to say, to announce with abandon, was, I love you beyond words. What he said was, “Hey, mate. Me here.”
“Hi Pops. You up for a game of chess? I could drop by around 2 o’clock.”
Cliff smiled at the sound of Tim’s voice, once a halting mezzo, long an embracing baritone. “That’d be swell. Hey, I want you to google something for me. Wreck of the Hesperus. Why do we say that?”
“You remember. It’s a poem by Longfellow, about a ship that went down. ‘Such was the wreck of the Hesperus, in the midnight and the snow…’ Remember? You read it in college, or high school.”
Cliff strained to recall, wanting to please Tim. “It’s on the tip of my tongue . . .” He fell back, spent. “And Hesperus?”
“Search. It’s there, deep in your busy old brain. With the Greeks. Hesperus. The evening star.”
“Like me.” Askew among the pillows, Cliff gazed at the ceiling. “An evening star. Night, actually. Never again to see the morn.”
“Ah, c’mon Pops. Don’t be sad. Have you showered yet? Ask Joe to help you shower. Have lunch. Then prepare to meet your grandson on that most ancient battleground, the chess board.”
Cliff brightened. Yes. Shower. Lunch. One foot in front of the other. That’s the way, had always been the way. “Bring it on,” he cackled, and from the far reaches of his busy old brain spilled the words he’d struggled to retrieve: “For I can weather the roughest gale that ever wind did blow.”
“Bravo! That’s my Pops,” said Tim. “See you soon.”
“Evening Star” appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of Vistas & Byways.
Do I Dare?
Do I dare disturb the universe?
― T. S. Eliot
“My head is boiling,” he said, and that was the beginning.
From there, strange turns of phrase animated every conversation. I hadn’t heard this command of language in the husband I’d loved for sixty years, and as a bashful girl in high school. I’d bop with friends at our Friday night sock hops, and there he’d be, on the sidelines, jocular with the boys and not ever with a girl. “Ask him to dance,” Winnie would whisper, but I never did.
One could point to inevitability, karma, in the way we finally landed together. He’d gone to Drexel, I to Penn, then home again and the first rung of our career ladders. At Winnie’s wedding I was the maid of honor, he the best man. Champagne flowed. We danced and drifted toward a merger.
We wove a tiny universe that expanded with each child’s arrival. I’d smile, feeling fortunate that we all got on so well, among the Schwinn Sting-Rays strewn along the perimeter of our well-tended lawn, bats and paddles, book bags and board games, a popcorn maker all black and shiny, a gift, not something I would buy. And before we could say ‘Jack Robinson,’ they were gone, the boys and their paraphernalia.
Life sometimes seemed as dry as dust, but then a grandchild and we were gay again.
We plied our trades, muddled through early days of retirement, volunteered and dabbled in local politics, waxed ecstatic about our Kindles, learned how to Google and bank online. And stream: on any given evening we were ensconced in matching recliners, rewatching movies we’d loved, or learning the truth about our late heroes in documentaries that featured yapping heads revealing bouts with drink and drugs, glory and redemption.
Until his attention began to wander and the TV remote control became a toy to be poked unto death; my meticulous husband seemed to have been swallowed by a pre-pubescent boy. No. No, no, no, no, no, I told myself. This is not happening to us. I programmed a new remote control and kept it hidden in my sweater pocket and went on watching, plying him with popcorn popped in the old black popper that was not shiny any longer but did the trick.
And then a neighbor called to say he had parked in her carport, and Safeway called to say he was wandering the aisles and couldn’t identify himself. And his sister said, “Spill the beans,” when he couldn’t identify her. “What’s going on with my brother?” I could not bring myself to say.
And here we are. I’m pedaling for two our well-worn tandem. The tires need air. I struggle and breathe heavily. I am Sisyphus.
Last night, as I slept, he figured out how to unlock the ornery contrivance on our door meant to protect him and slipped away. Someone found him crouched in hemlock dripping ice and brought him home to me.
“My head is boiling,” he said, the remaining fragment of his repertoire, though altogether he was cold. I led him to a warm shower and tucked him into our safe bed. But what is safe? Do I hold him here, dreading his next escape? Or do I hand him off to a place where no one will know who he was: jocular yet deeply still, my oldest, dearest friend?
Do I dare disturb our universe? There is no longer time to wonder.
“Do I Dare” appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of Vistas & Byways.
The Late Great Betsy Ann Harris
FLASH
If you can’t be there when someone you love dies, a good substitute for sitting shiva is reading emails you’ve exchanged through the years.
Today I am laughing, crying, commiserating with the late great Betsy Ann Harris, as we face the slings and arrows of approaching old age and its thunderous arrival. Together.
Betsy Ann Harris September 9, 1942 – April 6, 2026
________________________________________________________
You Belong With Us
Judith and despair were becoming one. She felt that as she entered the restaurant and friends stood to greet her. In their eyes she saw sorrow; in the warm grasp of their hands, two holding her one, she felt their desire to reassure her, their need to convey: “We are with you. We are here for you.”
Greg held out a chair for her and she sat, acutely aware that the neat, universally prescribed table for four had been reconfigured. A fifth chair had been added, an anomaly, an odd mole on a face with otherwise perfect features.
Ed leaned over and pointed to the appetizers on the menu that had been thrust into her hands. “We’ve ordered shrimp cocktails, but feel free to get anything you like.”
“We”
“Feel free”
“Get anything you like”
This was the new vocabulary that would define her. She would never be “We” again. She would be expected to “feel free,” to “get anything” she liked, without consultation, negotiation, without concern for another’s allergies, his likes and dislikes. Judith’s eyes misted over, blurring her choices as she perused the menu. She would have to learn what she liked, what she alone could tolerate.
She forced her eyes to focus. She would not order the shrimp cocktail. Lars had developed a nasty rash after they’d shared shrimp at the Washington marina. That was more than fifty years ago and she’d never had shrimp since.
“Can you do a Caesar salad for one,” she asked the waiter.
“I’ll share with you,” Susan and Doris interjected in unison.
The waiter smiled. “Caesar for three, it is.”
“We’ve ordered a couple of bottles of Medoc,” said Ed. “We know you favor red.”
‘No,’ she wanted to say. She’d been drinking red with fish for a lifetime, but it was Lars, her meat eater, who always ordered red for both of them.
Judith smiled at her companions. So caring. They meant well. “You belong with us,” was what they wanted to say. But she didn’t, she knew. She belonged only to herself now.
“If you don’t mind,” she said softly, not wanting to offend, “I’d like a glass of Chablis. I’m having the halibut.”
You Belong With Us appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of Vistas & Byways.