“He said he was transferred from Lublin to Lodz. He mentioned his wife, his father and his brother, but very briefly. I think he said he had a son.”
“What happened to them all?”
Mimi shook her head and shrugged. “He didn’t say, and I didn’t pry. Maybe they didn’t survive. He told me that the Nazis killed almost every Jew in Lublin. Forty thousand people.”
“So sad, so horrible. Well, bring him the cake and tell him I wish him a happy and healthy New Year.”
Mimi knocked on Eli’s door and waited. She was just about to leave when the door opened. Mimi held out the box. “Happy New Year, Eli. L’shana tovah. Grandma baked this just for you, and I know you love cake. It’s a honey cake for a sweet new year.”
“That is so kind. Please thank her for me. And you know my weakness—I do love cake! Come in for a moment. Can I offer you a cup of coffee? A soda?”
“If you have a Coke, I would take that, thank you, but I can only stay a minute.”
As Mimi waited, she noticed a Samsonite suitcase bearing a Washington Dulles baggage tag sitting in the hallway. Her attention was also drawn to the small black-and-white photo in the silver frame. It depicted a young boy in short pants and a sport jacket. Standing next to him was a woman with dark curly hair. She had her arm around the boy and was smiling proudly. “May I?” Mimi said.
Eli nodded, and Mimi gently picked up the picture. “Is this your wife?”
“Esther.”
“She’s beautiful, and she looks very kind and loving.”
“More than you can imagine.”
“Is that your son?”
He nodded. “Izaak.”
“He looks young in this picture.”
“He was five. It was right before the war.”
Mimi smiled. “My, what a handsome boy.”
Eli looked away. An uncomfortable silence followed, as though neither one knew where to take the conversation. Finally, Mimi put down the picture. “I’m sorry, Eli, I didn’t mean to pry. It’s Rosh Hashanah and I brought you a cake. Do you have plans to go to synagogue tonight?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t connected with a synagogue in a long time, Mimi. In Lublin, synagogues were targets, places of persecution. People were killed in synagogues.” He looked at Mimi with sad eyes. “I prayed and I prayed, Mimi, sometimes as hard as a man could pray, and I came to believe that no one was listening, because if He was listening, and He let it all happen, then … what’s the point? It’s beyond my understanding.”
“What you and the Polish people endured, no one will ever understand, certainly not me. I’m just a twenty-five-year-old journalism grad. I never took a theology course in my life and I didn’t really pay attention when my mother sent me to religious school. I was taught to believe that God is pure, good, all-knowing and all-powerful. But now I question the same paradoxes. Reason tells me that when He made the world, He could have made it any way He wanted. So why didn’t He make a world that couldn’t conceive of a Holocaust? Why didn’t He create a utopia instead of a world where people are free to be evil? I have no answers, and yet I still go to synagogue and pray and I hope my prayers are heard. I still seek answers to those questions. I guess that’s what faith is all about. Perhaps someday I will come to a better understanding. At least a workable compromise. And you, Eli Rosen, are welcome to come with my family tonight to seek the same answers if you like, but I can appreciate why you would decline.”
“Are you sure you’re only twenty-five?”
Mimi chuckled. “Just twenty-five.”
“Maybe one day we will sit, and I will tell you of my family and my life in Poland. You are an easy and comfortable person to talk to, Mimi Gold.”
“Thank you, Eli. I would be honored.”
“I don’t know about honored. I’m not all that mysterious.”
Mimi smiled. “My mom thinks you are. She thinks you’re with the CIA.”
“Ha, ha. Please tell your mother that I am definitely not with the CIA.”
Mimi bit her bottom lip and looked at him askance. “FBI?”
Eli furrowed his eyebrows. “That’s enough talk for today. Happy New Year, Mimi.”
* * *
“I knew it,” Ruth said. “I knew he was a G-man. Baggage tag for Washington? Unexciting government desk job, my giddy aunt!” She leaned forward. “Who do you suppose he’s investigating?”
Mimi twisted her lips. “I got an idea. He asks a lot of questions about Vittie.”
“Vittie!! Oh, my goodness, he’d better have both barrels loaded taking on one of the most powerful men in the country. Why do you think it’s Vittie?”
“I don’t know; I just have a feeling. He seems very interested. Unusually so. He’s asked me questions about Vittie, about who was at the party and the wedding, and he also asked Nathan questions about him. He even wanted to know about Preston and what he did in Vittie’s office.”
Ruth smiled. “Imagine that. All this intrigue going on in my building in Albany Park.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHICAGO
SEPTEMBER 1965
The Chicago Bears, the Monsters of the Midway, played their home games at Wrigley Field, the home of the Chicago Cubs. It took imagination and creativity to convert a 1914 baseball park into an NFL football stadium for four months of every year. Temporary stands, like those at a high school athletic field, were erected in front of the right field bleachers to seat an additional four thousand fans. Goalposts were set close to the brick wall in left field and on the first base line in front of the baseball visitor’s dugout. Padding was installed all along the left field wall ever since 1932, when Bronko Nagurski ran headlong through the end zone and slammed into the brick wall. Though he was wearing his leather helmet, he wobbled back to the bench and told Coach Halas that the last guy gave him “quite a lick.”
Preston, Christine, Nathan and Mimi shuffled down the aisle toward their tenth-row box seats on the forty-yard line for the home opener against the Los Angeles Rams. Preston proudly boasted that the seats were fringe benefits he received from being Vittie’s “number one administrative assistant.” So was the new metallic-blue Bonneville convertible that Preston drove to the game.
“Are you kidding?” Nathan said to Preston. “Who gets fringe benefits like that?”
Preston smiled. “I do.”
They settled into their seats, and Christine commented, “I hope the Bears play better than they have so far this year.”
“Home field magic,” Preston said. “And keep your eyes on number forty. He’s a rookie from Kansas named Gale Sayers.”
Before the kickoff, when Preston and Nathan left to get hot dogs and drinks, Mimi turned to Christine and said, “So how is married life treating you?”
“Pretty great. I mean, when you live with someone full-time, there’s bound to be arguments, but we’re doing okay.”
“Arguments?”
“Mostly about my job. I’ve been working crazy hours. I came home late again Friday night, and Preston was furious.”
“I kind of understand it. You work a lot of nights, Chrissie. Doesn’t your boss have a family to go home to?”