In His Father's Footsteps Read online

  They thought about moving into Izzie’s apartment, but Emmanuelle strongly preferred staying downtown on the Lower East Side, in the area where they had lived since coming to the States, in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Jewish. A month after he died, they put Izzie’s apartment on the Upper West Side on the market at a fair price and it sold quickly. There was nothing in it they wanted except for a few mementoes they kept out of respect for him. They kept all the photographs of him and his family, and sold the rest at auction. There was nothing of value in it, and the apartment needed remodeling. They had no regrets about selling it. And although they had options now, they liked the apartment they’d moved into two years before, and decided not to move. Jakob said sometimes he felt he would like to move to Greenwich Village, or someplace a little more upscale, but he continued to own their building as an investment, and Emmanuelle flatly refused to move. She needed time to adjust to their new circumstances. She’d never known financial security before, and the reality that they could do almost anything they wanted was new and unfamiliar to her. In her eyes, in her anxious moments, now they just had more to lose. Jakob understood that about her so he didn’t push her to make any sudden changes, but what Izzie had bequeathed them made a big difference to him. He decided not to sell any of Izzie’s real estate investments. They were all good properties, and lucrative to own, and would only continue to appreciate in value. He didn’t want to make any major changes in the business, and he knew that with wise and cautious ongoing investments, his family would be secure now, and Max would have everything they had dreamed of for him. Izzie had spared them all a lifetime of worry. It was an unspeakably generous gift.

  “We’re not going to start going crazy now, are we?” Emmanuelle had asked him with rising panic. She was thirty-two years old, Jakob thirty-four, and they had solid ground under their feet now, nine years after they had arrived in New York with forty dollars in their pocket, having lost everything they held dear. They had hoped to do well and find a safe home in America, but they’d never even dreamed of something like this. “I don’t want to move to a fancy apartment, or wear diamonds and furs, or show off,” she insisted. “I want Max to grow up with the same values we have. And he should know that he could lose the money, and have to start over like we did, if he’s not sensible and careful with it.”

  “I don’t want him to live in fear,” Jakob said thoughtfully, “that’s what Izzie gave us, the gift of not having to be constantly afraid anymore.” They had both been living in terror ever since they’d been deported, in his case for the last fourteen years, and in hers for twelve. It had marked them forever, but the reign of horror and fear was long over. They had the luxury now of making choices, and deciding how they wanted to live, while the money and the business continued to grow.

  Emmanuelle vowed to make no changes, and continued making her own clothes, which were prettier than what she found in stores anyway, and she made Max’s until he objected that what she made for him was too nice or too fancy, and he wanted what everyone else had. It pained her to put him in store-bought clothes, although she purchased them from stores on the Lower East Side in their neighborhood, in secondhand shops whenever possible. She objected strenuously when Jakob bought a few good suits, but they reminded him of his father and made him feel important and successful when he went to work. He told her it was good for business, so she relented. She still cleaned the apartment herself and balked at going out to dinner, and said it was a waste of money. And although he loved knowing that they were secure now, there was an element of fear for Jakob too, that someday they could make a bad investment and have serious reverses. He stuck to real estate for the most part, as Izzie had advised him, and bought several more buildings. He owned six on the Lower East Side. And looking at them, and the way they lived, no one would have suspected that he was a man of considerable means. He was discreet above all.

  The business continued to flourish without Izzie, and Jakob bought bigger and bigger stones of his own, and sold them at astounding profits that surprised even him. It seemed as though whatever he touched made money. It was a gift, and Izzie had been right about him. Jakob was a smart businessman and knew just when to take a risk and when not. And a year after Izzie died, Jakob asked Emmanuelle to come into the business with him.

  “What would I do there?” She was startled by the suggestion, but she didn’t dislike the idea. Max was eight and in school all day, and she had less to do at home. “I don’t know anything about diamonds.”

  “I didn’t either when I started,” he reminded her. “You’re the one who pushed me to apply for a job with the diamond dealers, and Izzie taught me everything. Florence is getting married, you could be the receptionist, greet the diamond merchants who come to see me, make the appointments. I’d love having you near me. We’d see more of each other, and you can leave in time to pick Max up at school.” Jakob had considered putting Max in private school, but Emmanuelle didn’t want him going uptown, and Max didn’t want to leave his friends in public school.

  “I’ll think about the job,” she said, cautious about every decision, but in the end she agreed, and once she started, she loved it. They left for work together every morning after they dropped Max off at school, took the subway uptown, and at night they had more to talk about, and he always explained to her what he was doing. When someone left an exceptional stone with him, he showed it to her, and had her look at it through the loupe, explaining to her about the inclusions, the clarity, the cut, and the color. She had a better eye than she knew, and within a few months she could usually guess the size of a stone and the color from across the room. She was a natural, and he loved working with her every day. It brought them even closer.

  They had never had many friends. They worked hard, spent as little as possible, and their experiences during the war set them apart from most people. They didn’t want to talk about past history, it was too traumatic, and their everyday life was based on hard work. Their every waking moment outside of work revolved around their son.

  Max started to complain about it when he was twelve. It hadn’t bothered him until then, and suddenly it did. His friends didn’t have doting parents like him, and didn’t worry about everything their children did. And they didn’t fret about every penny they spent. His friends’ parents all seemed like a lot more fun than his own. They had owned Izzie’s business for five years by then, and he was still a cherished memory for Max, who couldn’t wait to start high school in two years, and was beginning to like girls.

  “What’s wrong with him? I never complained about my mother the way he does about us,” Emmanuelle said to Jakob on the subway on their way to work, after they’d had an argument with Max at breakfast. He wanted to join a baseball team, and Emmanuelle thought the equipment was too expensive. Max had no idea what they had inherited from Izzie, and his parents always seemed frightened about something.

  “He’s growing up,” Jakob said, although he didn’t enjoy the arguments either, and they were becoming a daily occurrence. Max was always ready to do battle with them. He was a good boy and got good grades, but he was eager to spread his wings.

  “He’s only twelve,” Emmanuelle said, frowning. “If I’d spoken to my mother the way he does to me, she’d have sent me to bed without dinner.” Jakob’s parents had been more lenient and they had never talked about money, they hadn’t needed to. Neither did he now, thanks to Izzie, but it had become a habit with Emmanuelle after years of poverty and fear. He and Emmanuelle still had a wartime mentality, which wasn’t surprising given their experiences, after losing everything. It was impossible to feel totally secure, no matter what they had in the bank, the solidity of the business, or the property they owned. They had lived through an entire world crashing down around them, which no one had thought possible.

  Jakob bought everything jointly in both their names, which terrified Emmanuelle, who was sure he’d lose it all, and she’d b
e responsible for their debts. He had finally convinced her that owning things jointly was a good thing, and something he was doing for her.

  They had spoken to Max about the war in Europe, because they thought it was important and part of his history too, and he knew they’d met in a concentration camp, but they had never gone into detail about their experiences, and thought it was too terrifying for a boy growing up in a warm, comfortable home in New York. What had happened to them would have been unimaginable to Max.

  He had studied the Holocaust in school, but the worst of it had been glossed over, and Jakob had assured him that nothing like it could ever happen again, which Emmanuelle still disagreed with, but she kept her fears to herself. Jakob knew that for her, nothing had changed. And she had staunchly refused to have more children, in case they ever had to flee again, or were deported. It would be hard enough with one child, she wouldn’t risk it with two. There was no talking her out of her position. Jakob understood by now that she would spend the rest of her life in fear of being deported again, and losing everything, because they were Jewish. They had brought their son up with no religious training whatsoever, since neither of them practiced their religion. She still lit the candles for Shabbat, in memory of her own childhood, and they exchanged gifts for Chanukah, but it went no further. Jakob went to temple once a year on Yom Kippur, in honor of the family he’d lost. Most of Max’s friends in the neighborhood were going to make their bar mitzvah in a year, but he had no training for it, and was glad he didn’t have to spend hours studying Hebrew. He preferred to spend the time playing baseball, and his friends thought he was lucky.

  * * *

  —

  When Max was almost fourteen, in 1960, and his father was forty, Jakob took him on a tour of the neighborhood one day, and showed him all the buildings he owned, all seven of them within a four-block radius of their home. He tried to explain to him the value of real estate and solid investments.

  “When your mother and I came to this country after the war, we had nothing. We were sponsored by people we didn’t know. I had a job as a janitor and your mother as a seamstress in a factory. We had an apartment smaller than your room, and a bed that came out of a closet. A year later, I got a job with Izzie, and he taught me all about the diamond business. But we worked hard for what we have now, and Izzie left us the business, which was incredibly generous of him. When you grow up, after you go to college, you need to find a good job, work hard, save your money, and put it in things that are solid. There is no fast way to make money, no crazy deals with a lot of risk. The way to security is to be smart, work hard, and save your money.” It didn’t sound like a lot of fun to Max, and he never saw his parents do anything frivolous, or enjoy themselves. They never took a vacation, and he thought they were very dull people, worried too much, and paid far too much attention to him. They were constantly on him to study harder, get good grades, and watched closely who his friends were and were quick to disapprove of anything they thought dangerous or high risk.

  “Why don’t you buy buildings in other neighborhoods?” Max asked his father on their walking tour. He was surprised by how many buildings they owned. He’d never known before and thought they were poor, as his mother always said. Jakob didn’t tell him about all of Izzie’s real estate, which he still owned. “Instead of seven buildings down here, why don’t you buy two or three buildings uptown in a fancier neighborhood?” Max asked him, and his father smiled. His son had bigger dreams than he did. Jakob had learned to play it safe. And Izzie’s real estate represented far more money than he wanted Max to know about at his age.

  “It’s better to invest in what you know,” Jakob said firmly. “We know the neighborhood down here.”

  “Everyone here is Jewish,” Max said practically. “Why do we have to live in a neighborhood which has all one kind of people?”

  “It’s familiar,” Jakob said for lack of a better answer, “and your mother likes it here.”

  “Isn’t that kind of like a ghetto? The way they used to do in Europe hundreds of years ago? In America, everyone is mixed in.” But New York had its little enclaves. There were entirely Italian neighborhoods near them, and Chinese on Mott Street. The Irish had their own neighborhoods. And there was an area uptown where all the Germans seemed to live. And Russians were in another part of town.

  “Maybe it seems like a ghetto, but it isn’t. We’re all free to be here, or to live somewhere else. We’re not restricted to any one area. But it’s comfortable being with your own people.” Max looked as though it sounded stupid to him, but he was impressed by the buildings his father owned, and real estate made sense to him too, he just didn’t think all their buildings should be in the same neighborhood and that everyone around them had to be the same religion or from the same ethnic background. It seemed so limited. He had been taught in school that the country was a giant melting pot of people who had come from everywhere. John F. Kennedy was running for president, and the American Dream was everyone’s ideal. Max’s parents still seemed so European to him, so steeped in their own fears and traditions. The war in Europe had ended fifteen years earlier, but he could tell that it still affected both of them, and the choices they made every day. He spoke fluent French because his mother had taught him, but he was an all-American kid. He felt no ties to their histories in Europe. They had no relatives left there, and he’d never been there himself. He didn’t see why he had to be affected by their experiences before they came to this country, or even by the fact that they had been so poor at first. At nearly fourteen, he couldn’t conceive of what they’d lost there. Appropriately for his age, Max was looking to the future, while his parents were still looking over their shoulders and running from the ghosts of the past.

  * * *

  —

  In Max’s senior year of high school, Jakob helped him apply to the colleges he had chosen. It was a long list of illustrious academic institutions, mostly Ivy League schools: Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Duke, Columbia. He had good grades and was well thought of by his teachers. But Max wasn’t sure he’d be accepted by his top choices. He’d gone to public school all his life in his own neighborhood, and didn’t have the advantage of private schooling. When Izzie died, Jakob had wanted to switch him to a private school uptown, and Emmanuelle had objected. She didn’t want him going to school so far from home, out of their neighborhood, and she said that private schools were snobbish, and he would be ridiculed for being Jewish. Jakob was afraid she might be right and had finally given in, but with some regret for his son and the opportunities he might be missing. He had tried to convince her again when Max started high school, and got nowhere, and Max didn’t want to leave his friends by then, and added his own objections to his mother’s. So he had remained in public school, and even if his grades were outstanding, and his recommendations from his teachers excellent, getting into one of the Ivy Leagues wasn’t a sure thing. With the trust Izzie had left for him, and what Jakob had now, they could afford to send him to a top college, if he could get in.

  Emmanuelle was worried about his leaving home. She had suggested Brandeis University, and other predominantly Jewish colleges, but Max was ready to break out of the mold he had grown up in, and wanted to explore a broader world. He had his heart set on the schools he was applying to, and even if he got into Columbia in New York he wanted to be in the dorms. He didn’t want to live at home anymore. As far as he was concerned, he was all grown up.

  They sent all of his applications out before the December deadline, and he turned eighteen before Christmas. They had to wait until March to see where he was accepted, and he was on edge for three months. In his heart of hearts, Max was already gone. He made plans with three friends from high school to go out West for a month in the summer. They were going to roam around on their own and go to San Francisco and LA, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and the Grand Canyon. They were going to go where the spirit moved them. He had thought about
Europe, where he’d never been before, but both his parents objected. The thought of him going there upset them. The memory of what had happened there, even though twenty years before, was still too vivid for them, but they agreed to let him go West instead. One of the boys had been given a car for graduation, and they were going to drive, sleep in tents in national parks, and stay at youth hostels in the cities they went to. It was definitely not a luxury trip, and it was going to be Max’s first taste of independence away from his parents. He had never left them for more than a few days for his entire life, and he couldn’t wait. The thought of it kept him going for all the months waiting to hear from the colleges he’d applied to. Jakob and Emmanuelle were as eager as he was to see where he got in.

  When the letters came, he was accepted at his top four choices, and waitlisted at three others. He was on top of the world, and the decision was easy for him. He accepted the offer from Harvard the day it came in, and his parents were relieved that he’d be in Boston, which wasn’t far away. They said they could visit him for an occasional weekend, although it was the last thing he wanted. He didn’t want his parents hovering. As far as he was concerned, they had done enough of that for the past eighteen years. He wanted to be free now, and they just had to get used to it. It hurt his mother’s feelings every time he said it.