Page 60 of Barre Fight
“Not a lot. History classes at Hillstone High were just Captain Cook and Gallipoli, six years in a row.”
Ivy laughed. “Sounds about right. Nothing’s ever happened in Australia except being ‘discovered’ by England and then sending a bunch of men to die for England.”
“And the time our PM was fired by the Queen of England, don’t forget that shining moment in history,” he said, turning and leaning on the railing. He left an inch or two between them, but he was close enough to smell her perfume again.
“Of course not,” she smiled. “Anyway, Australia wasn’t that keen on Jewish immigration before the war, or during it, but they took a lot of refugees after it ended, including my grandpa. He got out of Vienna on the Kindertransport, which was this massive effort to evacuate as many Jewish kids out of Europe as possible. There’s probably something about it in here, actually,” she said, waving in the direction of the door and the rest of the permanent collection. “A lot of them ended up in England like he did, and a lot of the older boys were put in ‘enemy alien’ internment camps like he was. It happened in Australia, too, though they’d let in far fewer Jews than England had.
“After the war, Australia wanted immigrants—white immigrants, anyway—and lots of Europeans arrived from countries that had been wrecked by the war. The government called them ‘New Australians.’ The locals called them ‘reffos’ and didn’t exactly welcome them. So Opa changed his name to something less Austrian and Jewish sounding and thanked his lucky stars he’d spent the war years in England and learned to speak fluent English.”
“Do you remember him?”
“Oh, yeah,” she smiled, and her eyes were glassy but hersmile was fond. “He moved in with us when I was about ten. By then, he’d gotten more comfortable talking about the past, so he never hid it from us. He never practiced again, as far as I know, but as he got older he made friends with a few other Jews, people who’d come from Hungary or Czechoslovakia. I think that was his version of a Jewish community.”
“What was he like?”
“Pushy as hell,” she said grudgingly, and he couldn’t help but laugh.
“What’s funny?”
“You, uh, don’t think that might be a genetic trait? One that grandfatherscanpass down?”
“Oh, I see. Well, if it’s genetic, it must weaken from one generation to the next, because if you think I’m pushy, you couldn’t have handled Opa. He was on another level. Though I guess he had to be, to survive what he did,” she mused. She glanced over her shoulder at the piano.
“He came from money. Not this kind of money, I don’t think, but his father was a pharmacist for the Jewish upper class, so they were pretty well off. He once told me that the year he turned thirteen, his family went to the opera every night for a month. His parents didn’t survive whatever concentration camp they were put in. I don’t know which one—some things he never wanted to talk about. And he was an only child. So when the war ended and they let him out of the enemy alien camp, he had no one. He’d always thought he’d go to university and become a pharmacist or a doctor, but instead he ended up working odd jobs to save up for the fare to Sydney, and when he got there, he worked in a brick factory in Erskineville.”
“Thank god he survived,” Justin said quietly.
“And went on to be pushy as hell,” Ivy smiled. “And pass it on to me.”
“I like it,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” She swayed to the side, and her shoulder pressed briefly against his arm.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, leaning over and pressing back. “You were pushy as hell with me, and it worked. You’re good at this PR stuff.”
“Mmm,” she replied vaguely. She didn’t move away, and neither did he. A few other patrons wandered by and cast curious looks at the two of them, and at the room beyond. Justin willed them to keep moving so he and Ivy could stay where they were and keep talking.
“He’s the one who made me love musicals,” she said after a long moment, when the other patrons had disappeared into the next room. “He didn’t have the money for the opera once he got to Australia, but musicals were close enough, and the forties and fifties were the golden age of musicals.Oklahoma,My Fair Lady,The King and I.”
“AndThe Sound of Music,” he added.”
“Obviously that one. Anyway, there was this joke he used to tell, aboutMy Fair Lady, when it was thehit show, sold out every night, and people would do anything for a ticket.”
“Go on then. Give us the full Opa joke experience.”
“Okay,” she grinned, turning to face him. He missed the press of her arm against his, but her eyes were alight, and she looked like she was gearing up for a real performance. “There’s a woman and she’s sitting alone in the front row atMy Fair Ladyat Covent Garden in London, and there’s an empty seat next to her. The man on the other side of her taps her on the shoulder and says, ‘Excuse me, madam, I can’t help but notice that that seat is unoccupied.’ And she says, ‘Yes, my husband was supposed to come with me tonight, but tragically, he passed away.’ And he says, ‘I’m terribly sorry for your loss, but couldn’t you have asked a friend to come with you instead?’ And she says, ‘Well, I would have, but they’re all at the funeral!’”
Justin guffawed, not at the joke, which wasn’t especially funny, but at the evident delight on her face as she recited the punchline. For the briefest of moments, he pictured a young Ivy, perhaps with longer hair and sparkly plastic glasses, in her school uniform or her ballet leotard, laughing uproariously as her grandfather told her the joke for the first time.
“He sounds like a wonderful man,” Justin said. “You must miss him.”
Ivy nodded, and her smile faded from her mouth, but he could still see traces of it in her eyes. “He had a good life, and he loved us a lot. He really liked to watch me dance. He liked the classical music. Said it reminded him of the opera.”
“My grandad used to say it reminded him of customer service hold music.”
She chuckled, then sniffled, then took one last glance over her shoulder at the furnished room before she pushed herself off the railing and wandered away. He followed slowly, giving her space to collect herself and allowing himself to enjoy the way her ponytail bobbed and swung as she walked. And he let himself marvel for a moment at how far they’d come, from silence and sniping back at the ANB studios, to joking and confidences and strewn clothing and bagels in bed.
Would she want more of that after they returned home? Or was this new, delicate thing just for now, just for New York? Part of him wanted to ask, but a larger part of him wanted to delay for as long as possible seeing the look on her face as she realized she’d have to let him down gently. Tell him that once they got back on the plane, this—whatever this was or was becoming—would end. There were still four more performances, and five more days left, before they went home. If this wasn’t going to last beyond New York, he was going to make sure those five days included as many jokes and confidences—and strewn clothes—as possible.
