Free The Loud Silence of Francine Green by Karen Cushman Page A

porch, where Mr. Bowman and another man were sitting on lawn chairs.
    "I didn't know your father liked baseball. I thought he was more of a serious opera kind of guy."
    "He doesn't, but he likes Jacob Mandelbaum."
    "Jacob," Mr. Bowman was saying as we climbed the stairs, "others obviously agree with me. Irv Noren was voted MVP of the Pacific Coast League for 1949. Most Valuable Player."
    A man who looked like everybody's grandfather took a big cigar out of his mouth and said, "Feh, by me MVP means Most Visible
Punim
—a pretty boy who gets his picture in the papers. If you said Ozark Ike Zernial, maybe. That boy tore up the field. But I still think Frankie Kelleher, a California boy like me, is—"

    "Mr. M, you're not from California," Sophie said, kissing him on the cheek. "This is my friend, Francine Green. Francine, meet Jacob Mandelbaum."
    Mr. Mandelbaum stood up and bowed to me. "Sophie, darling, how did you do it, find the one girl in the whole world as beautiful as you?"
    I blushed and sat on the porch railing. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Mandelbaum," I said.
    He winked at me and sat down again. "Of course I'm a California boy, Sophie, my darling," he said. "Look at my driver's license: 445 Maple Avenue, Los Angeles 36, California. The great state of California says I'm a California boy. I am also a proud U.S. citizen, obey the law, pay my taxes, and fly the flag on the Fourth of July. A real Yankee Doodle and a California boy, that's me." He leaned back, and smoke swirled about his head.
    "Mr. Mandelbaum is an actor," Sophie said to me. "In the movies. His movie-star name is Jack Mann."
    A movie star? He didn't seem like a movie star, with his thin gray hair, sad brown eyes, and funny foreign talk, but my heart started to pound anyway. Did he, I wondered, know Montgomery Clift?
    "Jack Mann. Feh. Mandelbaum, it means almond tree.

What does Mann mean?
Bubkes,
nothing." He leaned forward. "They say my real name is too foreign. Too Jewish, they think but don't say"

    I cleared my throat. "I myself like
Mandelbaum
better," I said. "It sounds like part of a poem. But I suppose
Mann
is a better name for a movie star."
    "Movie star, no. No kind of star. A character actor," he said, blowing smoke into the air. "That means small parts, tiny parts sometimes, but not even them much right now. The FBI doesn't like my causes or my friends, and my studio dances when the FBI plays the fiddle."
    The FBI playing the fiddle? What was he talking about? I thought the FBI arrested bad guys and kept us safe.
    "All the studios are cooperating with the FBI, Jacob," said Mr. Bowman. "And as to your causes and your friends, why, it's a bad time to support the communists. We keep hearing about Stalin's atrocities—"
    "Joe Stalin, sure, he's a monster, with his labor camps and murder squads, but the communists don't have it
all
wrong. People are important, communism says, not property. People, peace, brotherhood, civil rights: When did these become dirty words? Communist words?" Mr. Mandelbaum stood up and ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up like beach grass. "I've had it good in this country, Harry, and I want that for every person—enough to eat, a job, the freedom to speak, to work, to protest, to—" He stopped. "Bah. Actors. You give us a line and we make a speech. I apologize." He bowed slightly and sat down again.
    I'd heard of Stalin, the evil communist dictator, but labor

camps and murder squads sounded awful. Communists must be worse than I thought, and here Jacob Mandelbaum was defending them. I'd never heard anyone have a good word for communists except Sophie, and I figured that was just Sophie being Sophie. Now there was Mr. Mandelbaum. I chewed on my lip and studied him. He didn't seem deluded or evil or stupid.

    We were all quiet for a minute. Finally Sophie cleared her throat and said, "Francine knows all about actors and movies and movie stars, don't you, Francine?" She nudged