Heart of Stone by James W. Ziskin

a good girl—said nothing to contradict or correct their impressions. But the other half of me wanted to prove my worth. To be fair, they had no reason to suspect I knew the first thing about modern orchestral music, the operatic canon, or even Italian. But the fact that I could recite chapter and verse on Bartók and correct Isaac’s Italian meant nothing as long as I kept my mouth shut.
    Isaac flashed his white teeth and sparkling eyes at me. From the radio, Nat King Cole sang “Don’t Try,” accompanied by what sounded like three squares in checkered jackets. I swallowed my whiskey in one go, trying to pass my frown off as the result of the strong drink.

    After the opera singing, everyone collapsed on wicker chairs and lumpy sofas and refilled glasses with various libations. I continued sipping whiskey. I knew if I let myself go, I could drink the men under the table, but that’s not a good impression for a girl to make. I wanted to be accepted. I’d missed that feeling of belonging since losing my own family, and I longed to find it again. I craved Isaac’s approval most of all.
    We discussed everything from the fence the Soviets had thrown up in Berlin that week to Eichmann’s trial in Israel to books we’d been reading. Simon had just finished To Kill a Mockingbird , which had made quite a splash the previous summer, and he pronounced it “a balm for white guilt.” Everyone else said they’d loved it.
    We talked of the old days, with the men dominating the conversation. Miriam, Rachel, Ruth, and I nursed our drinks while the boys argued over exactly who had capsized Mr. Wasserman’s dinghy on an unauthorized fishing expedition twenty years earlier. The boat sank and was never recovered. David said it had been one of the older boys, but Simon insisted it was young Isaac’s rocking that had tipped the boat over.
    My family had known the Arcadia bunch well, and I remembered my father having praised Simon’s dad, a poet and novelist, for his vociferous support and fundraising for the Republicans in Spain. Isaac’s mother had died a few years before, and his father, Jakob—the man who’d startled me at the door—was a painter of note. My mother, an art dealer, had admired his paintings, which were deeply rooted in German Expressionism. Jakob had grown up in Dresden, and, given the paucity of his work, his paintings were highly sought after by some collectors, who paid extraordinary sums to acquire them. Shortly after the Kristallnacht pogrom, during which his family’s business was razed to the ground, Jakob was interned for a month at Buchenwald before he and his wife were forced to emigrate. Thanks to a wealthy patron’s sponsorship, Jakob Eisenstadt managed to sneak under the quota and secure a visa to the United States. He arrived in New York with his wife, Lisa, their young son, Isaac, and daughter, Rachel, in February 1939.
    â€œWhatever happened to those friends of yours?” I asked the group. “There was one named Andrew something. He was always very funny.”
    â€œAndrew Kline,” said Isaac. “He served in the navy in the Pacific during the war. I heard he met a girl in the islands and stayed there.”
    â€œThat’s not true,” said Simon. “He had psychological troubles after the war and is in a sanitarium somewhere in Oregon.”
    â€œHis parents passed away,” said Rachel, “and nobody knows for certain what happened to him.”
    â€œOf course, poor Howie never made it back,” said Isaac. “Remember him? Howard Feingold?” I did but only vaguely. “He was the oldest of our generation. Killed in action in North Africa.”
    The mood grew melancholy, and a long discussion of the scourge of the war ensued. It had touched everyone in the room, everyone across the country.
    â€œWhat about the one named for Lenin?” I asked, trying to move the subject