Sliding down the couch, he gave Sarah a peck on the lips. “Everything. Our children, our house, our wonderful life together—none of this would have been possible without you.”
Funny how fate works, he thought. When he and Sarah arrived back at Meyer Brothers department store after their first outing together, they found Cecelia cornered by Sarah’s parents. Sarah’s mother yanked her away, saying, “I knew you were up to something. Wait until we get home, young lady.”
Mr. Singer stayed behind to expel him from their lives for good. Abe would never forget what Sarah’s father said that day. “You are a gambler, a saloon keeper, a gad-about-town, a ne’er-do-well. When you were twelve, you were one of my brightest students. I hoped you would continue your education and rise to be a learned man. A teacher, maybe. Someone to make your mother proud. Instead you became a rowdy like your father. A card player. A carouser. As long as you continue on your present path, you are not worthy of my daughter.”
Those harsh words made him even more determined to have Sarah for his wife. To achieve his quest he had to gain her parent’s approval, and it seemed the only way to do that was to change his life. If Sarah were any other woman, he would have said, “To hell with them!” and walked away. But she wasn’t any other woman. Besides her beauty, she was educated—a school teacher. Without a doubt, he was positive Sarah would be his perfect mate. The children she would bear would be handsome and intelligent. How could they be otherwise, with parents like Sarah and him?
Sure, she espoused some peculiar ideas about women needing the right to vote, about wanting to travel the world like that Phileas Fogg character in that novel by Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days. Those were things enlightened, well-read modern girls like Sarah thought about before they found a man to take care of them. Now, having borne four boys and with another child on the way, she had forgotten all about those ridiculous notions.
He certainly showed her parents he was not a drunkard like his father, and he could do more than run a saloon. And he showed his brothers, too. When he told them he was planning to job silk yarn seconds, they stared at him as dumbfounded as they would have been had he told them he was going to run for president of the United States.
“Nu, what do you know by silk? How you make yet a living selling seconds?” David, his younger brother asked. Despite Morris Singer’s best efforts back in Latvia, David was not a great student and had trouble learning English. Also, he was the last to reach America. As a result, his grasp of the language was a bit disorganized.
David was right, Abe thought. His saloon had been surrounded by silk mills, yet Abe knew nothing about what went on inside those factories except hearing from his customers that it was thankless hard labor. But he had two advantages other newcomers who wanted to get into the silk trade didn’t. First, he knew people. His older brother Solomon and his customers labored in the mills, and David worked for a silk fabric house in New York City. They could teach him. And he was a damn good salesman! Throughout his whole life, the thought of failure never entered his mind, not in England, not in Ireland, and not here in America.
Solomon had asked a much more sober question. “You would give up your saloon for a risky business like jobbing seconds? Why?”
He shrugged and gave the only answer he could think of. “I’m tired of the night hours,” which only added to his brother’s lack of understanding. How could he explain to them that he was doing it to win the hand of a woman?
As it turned out, Sarah’s parents did him a great favor by forcing him to change his life. As a saloon-keeper he had been the low man in the pecking order of Paterson’s businessmen. Now his life was complete. He was wealthy, had a big house on the hill, four sons who would carry his name into the future, and a beautiful wife who made it all happen. When he walked through town with Sarah on his arm, silk merchants like him— the most respected men in town—nodded to him and tipped their hats to her, exactly like he remembered men of importance did to his Uncle Isaac and Aunt Sylvia back in Latvia.
Now he couldn’t wait to show his brothers how wrong they were. He had never forgotten his dream about him and his brothers working together in a family business. How could they not want all the luxuries he had, if not for themselves, then for their wives and children? All his brothers needed was a little guidance to make them realize what they were missing in their lives. If his new house couldn’t convince them to come into business with him, he didn’t know what would.
**********
Sarah stared at him. They’d been married eight years. She bore him four sons, had a fifth child on the way, and she couldn’t remember the last time he thanked her for anything. Yet she had no trouble remembering how she reveled in his response to her wanting to travel. They were on the chasm bridge looking at the great waterfall when he said, “We’ll see the world together.”
So overjoyed was she that her dreams were almost in her grasp, the flaws her parents saw in him dissolved into the thunderous roar of the falls. The cascading water hypnotized her like Medusa. She had fallen under his spell like an empty-headed school- girl. But she wasn’t brainless. She had read everything from Dickens to Marx to Balzac to Verne and Mark Twain. She had only been naїve—a naďve teacher working with her father, afraid she would never earn enough money to realize her dreams.
So seduced by his charm and sophistication, she made the biggest mistake of her nineteen years by pleading with him to see his bar. Why didn’t she acquiesce when he said, “It’s not a place for young ladies,” and go back to Meyer Brothers Department Store? Did she want to show him that she was a modern woman, as sophisticated as he? Or, maybe subconsciously she wanted exactly what she brought upon herself?
Then, in his apartment with his flattering words enveloping her in a warm glow, she had blurted out about his bar maids uniforms, “Do you think I have enough to fill it out?” What did she think those provocative words would invoke in him? Though he didn’t answer, she could guess his thoughts by the smile on his face and the direction of his gaze. She should have run. Yet she stayed in his lair that she had crept into by her own free will. Then they made love, and despite the pain from the first time, it was glorious.
After that day she ignored every derogatory thing her parents had to say about him. Whenever she could sneak away from their watchful eyes, she ran to him, and they lay together. Enfolded in his arms, he told her about the deal he made that would put him in the silk business, that he found a buyer for his bar, and the wonderful life they were going to have with beautiful children. She extolled the wonders of the world they would see. When her cycle didn’t come, she cried to him. He kissed her tears away, and with feigned expressions of joy from her parents, they married. And her dreams died.
Watch a video of Silk Legacy by clicking on the following website:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDaSCO2qfnU
Listen to an audio introduction to Silk Legacy at:
http://www.pagefreepublishing.com/silk/silk.html
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