by Sidney Hart
“I didn’t bring … I forgot to bring my racquet, Harlan, but maybe we could shoot some baskets if you like.” I was a pretty good outside shooter, two-handed set shot, one-handed push shot, an occasional jump shot from the key.
“I don’t know Mel, you’re taller than I am and basketball was never my best sport. We’ll see.”
“Anytime you’re looking for a game of horse let me know,” Ron interjected. Suddenly my time was in demand and the feeling of acceptance that brought to me made me happy for the first time since my arrival at Braverman’s.
3.
When it was time to serve dinner Sammy took me by the elbow and moved me from the kitchen to the side stand at our station.
“The first thing I want you to understand Melvin is that this is my station. I have been working at Braverman’s for more than twenty years. Usually most of the people sitting at these tables have requested to be at my tables. That means they will expect me to give them my attention. You will be doing more work than the other busboys, but you’ll be better paid than any of them for that work. You’ll set up, you’ll break down, you’ll bring out my trays and bring in your bus boxes. I do all the serving, you get to pour the water and the coffee. Even the soup I do. Keep the bread baskets full, keep the butter dishes full, keep the water glasses full, be nice, smile, have a good time, make lots of money.”
Sammy had been firm, but friendly. These were his basic ground rules. What he was telling me was that I would be doing most of the physical labor for the two of us. All the other waiters would be carrying their own trays for the various courses, appetizers, soup, salads, entrees, and dessert, while Sammy would merely schmooze the tables. Then he’d lay out their plates and schmooze some more. I knew to expect this and was not surprised. I would do whatever it took to make the money.
“So, do you have any questions?” Eager to demonstrate my eagerness I had already prepared questions before coming to the dining room.
“Is the split still five and three?” This meant is the tipping practice still five dollars per person per week for the waiter, three dollars per person per week for the busboy.
“Yeah, that’s how it is usually. Of course my regulars do better than that, and I hope they’ll do the same for you. Sammy winked. “But this weekend no one knows what to expect. Harold Braverman has rented out the hotel to a Lions Convention from Utica. The whole place.” Sammy seemed to be sinking under the weight of this information even as he conveyed it to me. “He looks at your generation of Jews and sees no business for the mountains so he’s decided to attract some other kinds of vacationers. Goyim.” Indeed, Harold had been prescient. Recognizing in the sometimes surly, sometimes contemptuous attitudes of the dining room staff the likely loss of a whole generation of Jewish vacationers, cleverly he had begun to market the resort to the upstate gentiles. If he were to succeed with this venture he could secure his fortunes for another twenty years. Then he could sell out and the hell with the rest. Sammy narrowed his eyes and shook his head from side to side, agitating it minimally, his nose moving no more than one inch from center in either direction. “Goyim in the Catskills. Go know. Yeah, the Irish have a resort north of here, and they say there are even schvartzes in some part of the woods, but goyim? From Utica? It’s the end for me if that happens. I squeezed his shoulder, gave him a pat on the back, and mentally discarded my other questions.
While I filled my water pitchers for dinner my brother Jerry’s old busboy, Bob Gelman, came up behind me and gave me an affectionate goose which caused me to lurch and splash myself with the water.
“Hey!” I shouted.
“Hi ya Mel, how’re all the famous White brothers.” Bob was an annoying wise guy but I was glad to see a familiar face, and gladder still that he had missed my acrobatics over the turkey neck.
“Hey, wait ‘til you see this crowd of Lions. You’ve never seen anything like it. Terminal pastels, man, terminal.”
“Hi Bob, how come you’re still working here? I thought you were in law school.”
“Just waiting tables some weekends to help out and to grab some cash. Come July I have a job with a law firm for the summer. Hey, if you need a day off over the summer, you know a weekend day or something, I’ll come up and help you out. Two meals, fifty bucks.” Some bargain. Stuart Stein, the maitre d’hotel came into the kitchen fussily.
“Come, come, come. Let’s get out there and set up. The dining room opens in less than five minutes. I want everyone looking crisp and smart. Hal B wants to make a good impression on these folks so if you want to be here again tomorrow you’d better look smart tonight. And no funny business.” Stuart was a science teacher in South Fallsburg who could not leave his teacherly ways in the classroom. Steve used to say he always expected to see a pocket protector in Stuart’s short-sleeved white shirt, or chalk dust on his hands and in his hair. He was the kind of teacher who probably had to pull thumbtacks out of his ass ten times a term.
When the guests began filing in for dinner it was immediately obvious we were dealing with a different population, almost a different species of animal. An assortment of pale faces poised above pale pastel colored clothing entered tentatively, cocktails in hand, and advanced cautiously down the center aisle of the dining room. Bob and I exchanged smiles across several tables, the kind of smile that can be like a fuse on a bomb of hysterical laughter, and sensing the precariousness implicit in this smile I turned away and busied myself with the remaining napkins, folded like Bishop’s miters, to be placed in each guest’s empty water goblet. Bob coughed and cleared his throat loudly. I knew he wanted me to look up but I wouldn’t permit myself that indulgence because I could feel the laughter gathering in my stomach, roiling there, waiting for the opportunity to burst out of me in explosive, convulsive waves. My first night and I was determined to make my debut unmemorable, better still, invisible. I would not look at Bob.
“Ahem, good evening ladies and gentlemen, nice to see you all this evening. Welcome.” From the corner of my eye I saw Bob remove his side-towel from under his belt, wave it ostentatiously through the air, and then make a low, foppish bow, the towel extended at arm’s length from the tips of his left thumb and index finger. The members of the Lions Club, Utica Chapter, fidgeted nervously, the ice in their drinks tinkling musically, while they searched one another’s faces for some ruling of protocol. It was as though they suddenly had come upon an aboriginal who, if treated improperly, might slice them into steak tartare and devour them, pastels and all. “Gelman!” shouted Stuart Stein, fuming at the lectern he used for writing the table assignments. He glowered in Bob’s direction, but Gelman wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Gelman!”
“Gelman!” echoed Bob, bowing low to the parade of guests now tip-toeing past him, as if fearful that a loud noise might provoke pandemonium from the madman with the lunatic grin bent over in their path.
“Gelman to you too,” ventured a brave guest who then scanned the room for an approving face. When his eyes met mine I winked and gave a short, brisk nod as if to say, “right!” With that he hurried back along the line of Lions and their wives, whispering and gesticulating, an ardent interpreter of the new ritual he had just discovered. And as the line began to move again each person passing in front of Bob greeted him with a spritely, “Gelman!” and made way for the next visitor. Stuart Stein, scowling at his post, had a wise guy on his staff and that was not to be tolerated, but that night at least, there was nothing to be done. For the remainder of the meal the members of the Lions Club, Utica Chapter, exchanged “Gelmans” with the dining room staff as if they were “shaloms,” and after the clean up Bob Gelman was told to be gone. Working my first meal had been easier than I’d expected. The guests were polite and agreeable and I dutifully, if pointlessly, assured them that I was hoping to be a doctor when they inquired about my career plans. Sammy tried to make jokes with his new patrons but was distinctly uncomfortable with this non-Jewish crowd and eventually gave up his ambition to charm them. The other waiters a
nd busboys had been friendly and the ridicule I anticipated for my nose dive following Rudy’s performance hadn’t occurred. I had finished bussing the dishes and glasses, in that order, and was drying the silverware and sorting the pieces into their compartments in the drawer of the serving stand when Sammy began to hold forth.
“The dignity of hard physical labor does not extend to waiters and busboys, Melvin, so let this job be a lesson to you. Stay in school, get your degree, and become a doctor. If you become a lawyer, you may never get out of the mountains.” He was starting. I knew this was for Abe Melman’s benefit, not mine. “Did you know that Abe over here has a law degree? A lawyer and still he waits tables. Go figure. Why would an educated man, a man with a graduate degree from New York University want to wait tables, can you tell me? Please Melvin, I’d appreciate any help you can give.” Though groomed to answer questions, to be the bright boy, I had no idea and couldn’t even begin to improvise convincingly on the issue, nor did I have any desire to try.
“You can’t can you? Well, neither can I.” Turning in the other direction he said, “Ivan, wouldn’t you say that Abe is a parsimonious, penurious, pusillanimous putz?” Abe, setting his tables for breakfast, abided Sammy’s abuse with indifference, the way a Masai herdsman abides flies.
“Whatever you say Sammy,” Ivan said, sorting through his cutlery. I sat quietly at the serving stand counting my spoons. I didn’t like this kind of meanness but knew there was nothing that I could do. While each hotel dining room might have its own subculture, certain rules were transcultural. If you are new you must keep a low profile until you’ve had your place in the ordinacy defined. Were I to come in too quickly on Sammy’s side, despite his intense disdain for Abe he would suddenly recognize in him a friend worthy of my respect and admiration, and he’d call me an ass-kisser for trying to suck up to him at Abe’s expense. For the rest of the summer I’d be known as “Ass-Kisser” and summoned by that name in the kitchen, the dining room, the waiter’s quarters, and in the company of any girl I might try to link up with or impress. But come to Abe’s defense and the ignorance of that position would inflame Sammy, and then my name would become “Shit-head” in the aforementioned venues.
“I have to take a leak,” I said, trying to exit the scene. “You should wash your hands first,” Sammy called out. “What?” Disbelieving, I stopped walking. “What did you say?”
“You should wash your hands before you go to take a leak,” Sammy said approaching me. “People always get that backwards. Consider this. You took a shower before you came to the dining room tonight, am I right?” I nodded. “Then you handled food, plates, your dirty side-towel, the broom that’s been knocked over on the floor, all kinds of dirty things, but your washed and rinsed schmekele has stayed in your pants all night, right?” I nodded again. “So why would you wash your hands after you touch the one clean piece of your anatomy? Do you pee on your hands when you go to take a leak? Of course not! So go wash your hands first. Simple logic.”
I was flabbergasted. Sammy sounded completely insane to me.
“Keep your eyes straight ahead,” he called out to me again, “and remember, life is a one-way street.”
Back in the waiters’ quarters we took turns in the shower, the usual nervous jokes about bending over for the dropped bar of soap being made each time one waiter or busboy left and a new one came. The male dread of the possibility of homosexuality was at its peak because we were mostly new to each other and still young enough to worry that we might be secretly queer. “Gay” was not in fashion then and the derogatory names used to separate us real guys from those of the other kind were homo, pansy, fairy, limpwrist, queer, fag, and faggot, the latter two having broader usage to also define mama’s boys and those who could not reach the backboard from the foul line on a basketball court, or slide into third base on a diamond.
Ordinarily, after dinner the dining room staff was expected to show up at the casino or recreation hall and to dance with the daughters of the guests, but these guests had not brought their families with them. I hadn’t given much thought to the evening and was just grabbing my towel and drying off when I saw that Bob Gelman had been in one of the other shower stalls. We waved to each other.
“These guys have no sense of humor,” Gelman complained coming out of the shower. “Do they actually believe the Lions are going to make Braverman’s their vacation paradise? Haven’t they ever heard about oil and water not mixing?” By then we were standing in the middle of the corridor that divided the waiters’ quarters in half and Bob was declaiming to anyone who might listen to him.
“You always were a pain in the ass Gelman,” Sammy said, poking his head through his doorway. “Personally, I’m glad to be rid of you. Good riddance.”
“Fuck you, Sammy, who the hell wants to listen to anything you have to say. In five years everybody here, EVERYBODY, will be doing something useful, but you’ll still be right here telling your stupid anecdotes to college boys who don’t give a flying fuck about your stale old good times.” At that moment I felt a surge of guilt that demanded I accept some of the responsibility for this situation. After all, it had been my wink that triggered the Gelmanizing amongst the Lions.
“Cut it out Bob, calm down.” I pulled him into my room. “Why do you want to hurt Sammy? This is his whole life.” Ron snickered but Harlan, who was clipping his fingernails, looked up and smiled at me.
“Melvin, save the White righteousness for Yom Kippur. I don’t like being lectured to by a kid.” Stung, but undeterred I persisted.
“C’mon Bob, forget about it, there are plenty of other places where you can get weekend work when you want it. It’s just a job schlepping matzoh balls. No big deal.”
I spent the rest of that night keeping Bob company. We went down to see the show at the casino, an all purpose recreation hall where the entertainers performed and then the guests danced to the hotel band’s music. We had a few drinks, Tom Collinses, gin mixed with what must have been the precursor of unsweetened Fresca, and then headed back to the waiters’ quarters. As we passed by the main building we saw the Ford station wagon with the large rectangular signboard mounted along its roof. The message in bright blue letters said, “Jack Whitman for Better Lionism.”
“Oh boy, look at that. Do you see what I see?”
By that time of night my guilt had dissolved in the gin. I was feeling that Bob Gelman had been treated unfairly and that Stuart Stein was to blame for the debacle, not Bob, not me.
“Looky, looky,” I said. I was drunk.
“Come with me,” Bob said walking up the steps to the main entrance of the hotel. Normally timid, I fell in behind him and marched fearlessly into the lobby of the hotel like an apostle of temperance raiding a gin mill. Bob went directly to the registration desk where a woman, with hair of a red color so peculiar and unnatural as to make me wonder if she might be rotting from the inside out, was sorting through index cards. “Excuse me Belle, can you help me out?” The woman raised her head slowly and stared at him dully from under her heavy eyelids like a giant tortoise.
“Whaddaya want?” she asked in a raspy baritone.
“Some note paper, a blue pen, ballpoint is fine, and some Scotch tape please.”
“Whaddaya need it for?”
“I’m making a list. And checking it twice.” Leaning forward into the woman’s face he asked in seductive tones, “Have you been naughty or nice?” and he chucked her under the chin with the side of his index finger. She blushed, pushed some paper and a pen at him, and then, with a smile whose sleaziness was a match for Gelrnan’s voice, tore off two strips of tape and pasted them across Bob’s mouth saying, “Don’t be fresh,” but clearly meaning the opposite.
“Thanks Belle baby, you’re a doll.” I thought I’d choke. Outside, Gelman scribbled boldly on the paper and then ripped the page in half. He tore each strip of tape into two pieces and affixed a piece to the top and bottom of each one of the papers. “Take this,” he said handing me one of t
he papers. “When I say ‘Go’ slap this here,” he said pointing to a site on the signboard.
The next morning Ron woke me before my alarm clock had gone off. Standing in the middle of the room, right arm akimbo, left hand extended palm out in the direction of Harlan’s cot, like Betty Furness bringing her audience’s attention to the refrigerator of their dreams, he said, “Your buddy never made it home last night, Heidi, Heidi, Heidi, Ho.” I rubbed my eyes and squinted at the alarm clock for the time. “The question is this—did he spend the night under Heidi’s covers, or was he planting his seed under someone else’s bush?”
“What time is it?” The Tom Collinses of the previous night felt like they were sponsoring a Mambo festival in my head.
“It’s Howdy Doody time of course, time to say howdy doody to Harlan and his cutie. Get up. We’re going to Heidi’s room.” The dim, early morning light of dawn was visible in the sky through the room’s single window.
“Harlan is hardly my friend and I’m not going to look for him. And if it bothers you so much that he might be with Heidi take Sammy with you. I just want to sleep. I’ve got a headache.” “Up, up!” he said, pulling my covers from me. “Let’s go. We can be at the main house in a minute if we hurry. Come on!”
“What is the matter with you?” I was as much startled by his bold intrusion as I was irritated by his aggressive removal of my bedclothes. It had been less than twenty-four hours since my arrival and it seemed that Ron was behaving as though he were my brother Steve, and I resented his presumptuousness.
“What’s the matter Melvin, you scared?” This taunt, one that was time-honored on the city streets of my childhood, stirred the familiar stew of fear and anger in me. I was just about to respond when a loud noise in the corridor interrupted us. I looked at the clock again and with the blurriness cleared from my eyes saw it was only 5:10.
“Gelman you little shit where the fuck are you?” It was Moe Braverman, son of Ben, brother of Harold and Heidi, the family’s enforcer. “Gelman, get the fuck out here!” he railed. I was pretty sure this was about the signboard Bob and I had tampered with, but did anyone else know that I had been a conspirator in that escapade? Moe continued to stomp through the corridor shouting for Gelman, occasionally banging open the door to one of the dormitory rooms and demanding to know if Gelman was in there.
