The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman

Author:Susan Jane Gilman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

The night before the meeting, I sat in our kitchen. I picked up my fork, jabbed a boiled potato, and set it back down. Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Cocktail” played softly on the radio, an antidote to all the bad news broadcast earlier. “I should have known there would be a catch,” I said to Bert bitterly. “The thought of those mamzers in our factory. In the place that we built—”

Try as I might, the Candie Ice Cream Company was still thriving, belching out its ten flavors at its fortress over in Brooklyn. Occasionally I saw grainy photographs of the Dinellos in the Ice Cream Manufacturers’ Gazette. Or in the business pages of the newspapers. Bert himself had run into Pasquale several times at the Associated Dairies.

“Did that bastard say anything to you?” I pressed afterward.

“It happened too quickly, Lil. Pasquale was coming in, I was going out. He tipped his hat at me. I tipped mine at him. That was all.”

I, however, had studiously managed to avoid all of them. Industry events were easy enough to bypass. Often, as just a wife and a cripple, I was not even invited.

Now, however, we’d be ushering the Dinello brothers right into our very own offices, sitting them down at our very own table, showing them our very own machinery. The men who betrayed me, who had cast me out onto the street. Oh, how desperately I wanted to beg the war board to exclude them! Yet what reason could I possibly give? Just that day, thirteen U.S. warships had been sunk off the coast of Indonesia. The first trainload of French Jews had been deported to Germany. Nobody cared a whit about my little personal vendetta. Even I knew: It seemed petty.

“Lil, the way I see this, it’s simply wonderful news.” Reaching across the tablecloth, Bert stroked the back of my hand. “Uncle Sam wants us. Our ice cream. And why shouldn’t we join forces with the others? We’re at war.”

“We certainly are,” I said petulantly. I sounded like Isaac. That was the difficulty I had with my son: Too often I looked at him and saw not Bert but my own unlovely, unvarnished self reflected right back at me.

“Lil, the Dinellos are coming to us. To our plant, to see our ice cream. Isn’t that a victory in and of itself? We’re the ones the government is most interested in.”

“You,” I grumbled. “You’re the ice cream man.”

Bert tilted his head at me with indulgent affection. “Me, you. You, me. What’s the difference, doll? We’re Dunkle’s. And we’re as big as the Candie Company. I think it’s time to lay the past to rest, Lil. There are so many bigger battles now.” Bert stroked my forearm. “The Dinellos, Candie—they’re not the enemy.”

I frowned, got up brusquely, dropped a napkin over my plate, and set it in the icebox with a clatter. But as I stood gripping the sides of the sink, I suspected, in my heart, that my husband was right. We had a child now, and a real business, and the world was on the brink of cataclysm.

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