Every so often a writer invents a story whose simplicity cannot disguise for more than a few moments a work of radiant beauty and sustained power. Mrs. Hornstien is such a book.
With a raw lyricism all her own, Fredrica Wagman writes of family, of passing generations, of love and striving, of grief and loss and renewal. Her narrator, Marty, begins with a day burned in her memory, when, as a young woman in love, she meets her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Hornstien. She ends her tale many years later, now a matriarch herself, poised to meet her own son's future bride.
Within the elegantly drawn arc of this natural succession Wagman gathers with unsparing honesty more than one lifetime's worth of wisdom about women's lives and the human experience. And standing stalwartly at the center of this pageant is the unforgettable figure of Mrs. Hornstien—a formidable being whose huge heart is, nonetheless, more than capable of being broken.
Every so often a writer invents a story whose simplicity cannot disguise for more than a few moments a work of radiant beauty and sustained power. Mrs. Hornstien is such a book.
With a raw lyricism all her own, Fredrica Wagman writes of family, of passing generations, of love and striving, of grief and loss and renewal. Her narrator, Marty, begins with a day burned in her memory, when, as a young woman in love, she meets her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Hornstien. She ends her tale many years later, now a matriarch herself, poised to meet her own son's future bride.
Within the elegantly drawn arc of this natural succession Wagman gathers with unsparing honesty more than one lifetime's worth of wisdom about women's lives and the human experience. And standing stalwartly at the center of this pageant is the unforgettable figure of Mrs. Hornstien—a formidable being whose huge heart is, nonetheless, more than capable of being broken.
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Overview
Every so often a writer invents a story whose simplicity cannot disguise for more than a few moments a work of radiant beauty and sustained power. Mrs. Hornstien is such a book.
With a raw lyricism all her own, Fredrica Wagman writes of family, of passing generations, of love and striving, of grief and loss and renewal. Her narrator, Marty, begins with a day burned in her memory, when, as a young woman in love, she meets her future mother-in-law, Mrs. Hornstien. She ends her tale many years later, now a matriarch herself, poised to meet her own son's future bride.
Within the elegantly drawn arc of this natural succession Wagman gathers with unsparing honesty more than one lifetime's worth of wisdom about women's lives and the human experience. And standing stalwartly at the center of this pageant is the unforgettable figure of Mrs. Hornstien—a formidable being whose huge heart is, nonetheless, more than capable of being broken.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466879096 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Holt, Henry & Company, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 08/26/2014 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 142 KB |
About the Author
Fredrica Wagman is the author of several novels, including The Lie and His Secret Little Wife. She lives with her family in Philadelphia and New York.
Fredrica Wagman is the author of several novels, including Peachy, Mrs. Hornstien, The Lie and His Secret Little Wife. She lives with her family in Philadelphia and New York.
Read an Excerpt
Mrs. Hornstien
A Novel
By Fredrica Wagman
Henry Holt and Company
Copyright © 1997 Fredrica WagmanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7909-6
CHAPTER 1
Part I
I remember the first time we met as though it were yesterday.
She was old and massive with great shoulders and heavy breasts as she came toward me then, so long ago, with such enormous eagerness — or was it simply a need, as I think about it now, to love someone.
Her name was Golda Hornstien and she lived in a palatial apartment high over Rittenhouse Square that had the whole zodiac in the vaulted ceiling of the library, white marble stairs, mahogany walls, and in every room of that enormous place, everywhere you looked, were huge pieces of black sculpture and gigantic paintings framed in swirls of heavy carved gold wood with little brass lights on top of them, making the whole place a maze of posh old world glamour. It was a richness I had never seen the likes of, but then, I was only seventeen years old that night, so I hadn't seen much of anything as I stood next to her son, staring at her.
"Mother," Albert said quietly as he held my hand, "this is Marty. Marty," he said, as I felt his grip tightening, "this is my mother."
"How do you do, Mrs. Hornstien," I remember saying as I put out my hand. It was a long time ago, almost thirty-five years, but I remember the tan cashmere sweater set she wore that night with the triple strand of graduated pearls and the large man's Hamilton watch with the stretch metal band pushed high up on her arm, over her sweater sleeve, like it happened yesterday.
That she was beautiful came in the next wave of impressions that swept over me as I stood staring at her deeply lined face, at her long, straight white hair, at her eyes that were the lightest blue I had ever seen. They were summer blue the way you'd imagine the colors of the sea and the sky in a picture poster of summertime. She had high cheekbones that looked almost Mongol, a small straight nose and big teeth that flashed when she smiled, making her dimples become lost in all the deep craggy lines of her face. But most of all it was a certain grandness she had. Mrs. Hornstien was, in fact, a smallish woman, but there was something enormous about her. A great raw power shot out of her in just the way she carried herself — her enormous spirit leaped out the instant she smiled to swamp all the sculpture and all the paintings and anyone who was standing there as she came toward me that first time and hugged me like she had been waiting for me for years.
Men have contempt for the kind of woman who loves too easily and too much — the kind of woman who has a secret hungry longing that floats around scanning for something to attach to, and looking back, I realize now that for Mrs. Hornstien I was that thing, only I didn't understand this then. Then I couldn't imagine what there was about me that made her take to me so fast. In those days I was a strange, quiet kid with swarthy skin, too much kinky hair and so shy I could barely say a word, but between Mrs. Hornstien and me something clicked. I liked her right off the bat in the same way she liked me, which was almost the way that Albert did, which I also didn't understand, but as I've said, I was only seventeen years old that night, so I didn't understand much of anything as we stood smiling at each other in the Moorish archway of the library while our eyes became two sets of bizarre instruments that could discern and detect everything there was about the other just by looking.
"Dear, dear child," Mrs. Hornstien beamed as she took my hand. "May I give you a cup of tea?" she smiled, as she looped her arm in mine and began leading me toward the kitchen.
And as I followed, my heart was pounding from knowing that I'd soon have to say something to this looming person who seemed to me then more like an apartment house or a bank or a department store than a regular woman. She kept beaming at me so broadly it felt like giant floodlights had been turned directly on my face, making me freeze in my tracks, like a deer caught in the glaring headlights of a car.
"MARTY!" she said. "What kind of name is THAT?" she laughed as if to say "POO! That's not a name — That's not ANYTHING!"
"How old are you?" she said, "and what does your daddy do?" she asked as we passed out of the huge front hall with its enormous paintings and great pieces of gigantic sculpture into the dining room on our way to the kitchen, and in looking back, how the dining room that night, even though I only saw it for a flash and in almost total darkness, became one of the great memories of my life.
Everything in there was Venetian glass and smoky mirrored walls and gray satin — the drapes with their heavy drooping tiebacks with gray satin balls hanging from them like Christmas toys, the shimmering gray satin dining room chairs lined up on both sides of the table like little soldiers waiting at attention, the ceiling that was covered in thick gray satin and the gray grasscloth walls that were gleaming in the dark in a kind of eerie incandescence like the last rays of daylight peering out through gathering black clouds so that for a moment the whole world looks a kind of silver before the storm, and in the middle of it all, floating over the long glass table, a huge crystal chandelier wrapped in gauze making it look like a ghost or a phantom or like the spirit of some ancient soul hovering up near the ceiling who saw and heard and remembered everything.
"We raised all the children right here in this house," Mrs. Hornstien said. "The boys had their bar mitzvah luncheons and their graduation dinners right here," she said, "and my daughter Doris was married right here with over three hundred guests at the wedding, and oh my God!" she said, "the entertaining we used to do — am I right son?" Mrs. Hornstien asked Albert as we were all sailing onward toward the kitchen, "didn't we have the most wonderful parties in this house, and all the luncheons I used to give and all the teas. I gave the weddings for my three nieces here as well as their engagement parties and all their wedding showers and they were the most beautiful parties you could ever imagine — am I right son?" Mrs. Hornstien asked Albert.
"Of course you're right. Whatever the Boss Lady says is always right. Everyone knows that," Albert answered with a kind of odd edge to his voice that I can still remember.
"When I was a girl," Mrs. Hornstien went on blithely as though she hadn't heard him, "I came from very poor circumstances. We came to this country with nothing, and I mean nothing!" she said. "We were so poor we only had four fingers on each hand," she laughed as she gave me a nudge with the elbow of the arm that was looped in mine.
"I never wanted jewels," she said, "not that I didn't get them," she laughed as she nudged me again with her elbow, "but I never cared about them one way or the other, like I never cared about furs or big fancy cars or designer clothes. All I ever dreamed of having was a beautiful home where we could raise our family, because a home," she said, "is the closest thing to a human being in the way it holds you in its warmth and protects you and soothes you. So when we saw this place," she said as she pushed open the swinging kitchen door, "I said to Daddy THIS IS IT — This is the home I've dreamed of all my life. This is where we have to raise our children so they'll be proud to bring home their little school friends, and be proud to have their parties here, and all their big important celebrations as they get older — am I right Daddy? Isn't that what I said the first time we saw this place even before all the walls were up?" she asked little Oscar Hornstien, who was walking with Albert just behind us as we headed into the soft brown light of the kitchen — "Well, Daddy," Mrs. Hornstien asked, "isn't that what I said?"
"That's what you said," I heard a voice pipe up, and then I heard Albert add, "whatever the Boss Lady says!" with the same little sarcastic edge. What's going on around here I remember thinking. Poor Mrs. Hornstien, I remember saying to myself. But in those days I didn't make a sound because in those days to give even the smallest hint that I was feeling something even slightly off would have been like crossing some invisible line I would never dare to cross because who was I, I would have asked myself — what did I know, and anyhow, what business was it of mine what went on between Albert and his mother, I would have told myself at the first hint of any impulse to stand up for Mrs. Hornstien about what seemed to me then the fact that her son was picking on her. In those days I was too afraid of making a fool of myself by saying something wrong so I never said anything. And that silence caused by a fear of being humiliated pervaded every corner of my life every waking minute of every day. In fact, if you were to ask me who I was, I'd say I was a living, walking breathing fear of being humiliated, so I never said two words to anyone unless I had to.
In school, that is, on the days I was allowed to go to school, because my mother had a terror of letting me out of her sight, the children used to shout "cat got your tongue" out on the playground hoping to make me speak, but I'd never give in, or else they'd call me "mute head" because I would talk to no one except another quiet kid who sat behind me whose name was Stephen Berg. Otherwise, I answered only the questions the teachers asked. I never laughed with the other kids or joked around or shared secrets, and at home it was pretty much the same. I never said anything to anyone unless I had to.
I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia called Bala Cynwyd, a simple place with semidetached Victorian houses that had stone walls in front with privet hedges on top of them, and there were big front porches and short lawns dark from too many trees so the grass would never grow out front, and on all the porches there used to be white metal porch furniture that rocked.
The school I went to was set in the middle of a small green field surrounded on all sides by what seemed to me then like some kind of enchanted forest, but in fact, all it was was a wooded patch behind the railroad tracks that was filled with trees and dead tree trunks and moss and wild growing things and broken sunlight and the constant sound of birds that would fill me with so much joy every time I went in there that tears would come.
When I was seventeen, which was the year I met Albert, I used to think a lot about God and about the weather which always seemed like a gift, and about the wind and its ferocious power. I used to think about the way flowers grew everywhere inside those woods and how marvelous it was on a summer afternoon to sit in there on the big rocks beside the creek with my feet dangling in the water. I didn't think about the way Albert picked on his mother because I didn't want to think about anything that might cast even a wisp of a cloud over the immense happiness I was feeling. It was wonderful to be sitting on the big rocks beside the creek thinking about Albert Hornstien or looking at him in the kitchen of his mother's palace high over Rittenhouse Square, knowing nothing then, not wanting to, and yet expecting everything.
The kitchen of Mrs. Hornstien's apartment was an artless little secret all its own. It was a somber milk-brown place where everything old and dingy melted into the brownness all around it. But as dreary as it was with old red linoleum furniture, chalky milk-brown walls, and a decrepit old black stove, this was the place where everyone gathered every night to drink their tea and eat their gingersnaps in peace, as if the absence of all the glamour, art, and marble was a relief.
Mrs. Hornstien knew that Albert and I were going to be married almost the first moment she laid eyes on me. It was an instinct she had, or else it's a sense most mothers have at certain times when they seem to be receiving information that nobody else seems to have any indication of, so she was very curious about my family — Who were we, she wanted to know, and in the next breath she wanted to know if we were German Jewish or if we were Russian Jewish because this was the silent line that divides the high-class Jews from the low-class Jews which I knew all about because I used to hear it all the time at my grandfather's house.
According to my Grandfather Kohn, German Jews were all snobs who looked down their noses on everyone who wasn't German, never gave a cent to any Jewish cause, hated Israel, never traveled there, weren't Zionists and never bought Israeli bonds, and according to my grandfather, Russian Jews were even worse.
True, my grandfather used to say, they were all Zionists which of course was to their credit, but they were also low-class peasants who ate with their fingers, mopped up their gravy with their bread, ran around barefooted, wore babushkas on their heads and spoke Yiddish which according to my grandfather was a humiliation to have to listen to. The fact that they supported Israel and knew how to spend was of course to their credit, except, they went too far as far as jewelry was concerned, but not as far as the Sephardic Jews, who in my grandfather's opinion were even lower on the scale than the Russian Jews, and of course no one was lower than the Polish Jews — But! According to my grandfather, our family! Now that was different!
We were American Jews, my grandfather used to beam. The old country for us was Girard Avenue across from Fairmount Park where my grandmother was born in her grandmother's living room, all of them here for generations, all of them originally from Czechoslovakia, which is neither Russia nor Germany but rather some kind of superior netherland of writers and artists and culture and history, but even that didn't matter according to Grandfather Kohn, because we had been here so long that it didn't matter where we came from. My brother Kal and I were fifth-generation American-born reformed Jews who sang the National Anthem in synagogue on the High Holy Days, and for Jews like us, there was no other country. There was no other history. We were American first and Jewish second, not the other way around like the Russian and the German Jews. But! This was only on my mother's side — on my father's side it was a different story.
As I was sitting at Mrs. Hornstien's kitchen table I was thinking how my mother's family used to call my father and his family "kikes" behind their backs which I later learned meant Russian Jews, and so, when Mrs. Hornstien took hold of my hand, flashed me another one of her gorgeous smiles and began closing in on me like an enormously good-natured octopus, I was worried that if I dared mention anything about my background, and then if it turned out that she wasn't on the same side of that invisible dividing line as I, she would instantly despise me the way my mother despised the whole Fish family.
"Now tell me dear," she said as she began warming into it, "what is your father's name and what does he do?" she asked as she flashed another one of her magic smiles.
"His name was Bernie Fish," I said. "He was a doctor," I remember telling her as I looked her dead in the eye so as not to feel the pang that either his name or his death or his life might cause in me.
"A doctor," I remember her saying offhandedly as though not impressed at all. "What kind of doctor?" she asked as she kept smiling at me.
"A regular doctor who made house calls," I answered feeling, I can still remember, like maybe a doctor wasn't good enough.
"Well, women make their fortunes through marriage, don't they dear?" she said. "A brilliant marriage for a woman is exactly the same as a man who makes a brilliant business deal," she smiled at me. "The mistake most people make is to confuse the two. Marriage is a serious business arrangement," she smiled, "while romance and love are very different matters — am I right Daddy?" she smiled at little Oscar Hornstien, who was leaning against the doorjamb grinning.
"I had our Daddy," she said, as she smiled at her husband again. His arms were crossed over his white cotton shirt, no tie, no jacket. He was a small man, just an inch or so above five feet — thin, wiry and red-faced, with a shock of thick white hair as he stood grinning at every word that came out of Mrs. Hornstien's mouth.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Mrs. Hornstien by Fredrica Wagman. Copyright © 1997 Fredrica Wagman. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Epigraph,
Part I,
Part II,
Also by Fredrica Wagman,
Copyright,