by Sidney Hart
“What? You know that’s not true, you know that I’m your friend and I’m interested in what you think.”
“Harlan, I’m really upset about Sarah’s going to see this Hank guy, so upset that I can’t think straight, yet you’re telling me to put on this act as though it would be no big deal to pretend being a goddamn prince!” My voice was loud when I said prince and there was a sudden silence in the dining room. With a frown on my face I looked around at the remaining waiters and busboys and then waved my hand at them as if to say, “never mind.”
“You really are on edge aren’t you. You know that’s not going to work for you when you meet Sarah. If you can’t have more control of yourself you can’t have any control over the situation with her, it’s that simple.”
“Control? You think I can have control over her? You really are different, aren’t you. Sarah has been telling me she thinks I trust you too much and this kind of talk makes me think maybe she’s right.”
“Sarah said that? What does she know about me that gives her the right to judge me like that?”
“It’s the way you are around women.”
“It’s the way women are around me, Jack, and you know that’s the truth, you’ve seen it for yourself. I don’t have to do anything but show up for things to start happening.”
“But you do more than just show up. Listen to the advice you were just giving me, doesn’t that say you know what to do all the time? Look, I’ve seen you with that blonde woman on the tennis court and the woman on the softball field, the woman who wanted you to give her kid diving lessons, all the women in the kiddy pool, it’s everywhere you go.” The accusations the steely eyed Joe had made also came to mind but I wasn’t going to list them. Nor was I prepared to warn Harlan just yet. I hadn’t decided how to avoid Ben B’s demand and alert Harlan without ending up in some Catskill jail.
“So? Jealous? Envious? What are you saying?”
“Well, what about Heidi, what does that say about her? Isn’t she enough for you?”
“Enough? I don’t understand. I’m with her every night she wants to be with me. I have never deliberately hurt or disappointed her, I … wait a minute. It’s Sarah who’s off with somebody else right now, Jack, not me. Don’t you see what she was doing? She was setting it up for you to be so upset with me you wouldn’t turn to me for advice when she put you in this position. Boy, that’s something. Do you think this girl really cares about you or is she just trying to torture you?” I was stunned into silence by what he said. It hadn’t occurred to me to scrutinize Sarah in the same way she asked me to examine Harlan. But hurt as I was I wouldn’t allow myself to be positioned that way.
“I don’t see it that way. Let me alone for a while please I need to think about some things.” Pursing his lips, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head in assent, he slowly rose from his chair, crushed his Lucky Strike in the ashtray, said, “See you later,” and left. That conversation with Harlan had Augusted me.
3.
Later that day, Ron attempted to cheer me up. I doubted that he had ever experienced the kind of threat I was feeling from someone like the durable if invisible Hank, but then he was not one to reveal himself that readily. We had just finished the lunch meal and were heading back to our room when he grabbed me by the arm.
“Come on. Mel, let’s tackle something you can really handle, let’s tackle the Abe Melman problem. What’s with Abe? It is your turn, you know, and time is running out so give it a try. I was not particularly enthusiastic about playing. There had been such preoccupation with Sarah and with Harlan that I couldn’t imagine being clever and humorous about Abe. Nor did I feeI it was my right to reveal what Ben had disclosed to me about him. I shrugged, not a full-fledged denial but not a rejection of the proposal either.
When we were midway between the kitchen and the waiters’ quarters. a drenching rain came down all at once, intense and loud and soaking, as if we had blundered under a waterfall. Confused, I hesitated trying to determine which shelter was nearer so I could get under cover before my shoes and trousers were soaked beyond use but Ron ran directly to our room without a second’s thought. When I got there he had already stripped off his clothing and was stuffing newspaper into his shoes to absorb the water from them. I stood in the room dripping, shaking the water from my hands as it ran down my arms, trying to be a silent clown like Buster Keaton. Ron laughed.
“Get out of those wet things or I’ll tell your mother,” he joked “and then let’s hear your story of ‘What’s with Abe?’” I peeled off my clothes, stuffed my shoes with newspaper, pulled on a sweatshirt and climbed up into my bunk.
“Okay, let’s see. I’ve thought about this some, lately.” Then I began. “Abe and Leah met in a small shul in the Morrisania section of the Bronx one bright, autumn morning on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. A new year, a new love, a first love for both. They began to date, if you could call the tortured silences they shared walking up and down the Grand Concourse dating, and when …”
“I like that ‘tortured silences’. It’s a nice touch,” Ron said.
“Shhh! But thank you ladies and gentlemen. And when Abe went off to City College to study Shakespeare and accounting, Leah took a job in the bookkeeping department at Alexander’s Department store on Fordham Road. Abe was a very serious student and he burned the midnight oil three nights a week so he could work at Feinberg’s bagel bakery the other three nights for the money to pay for his books, his clothing, and the shoe repairs requisite to his long walks …”
“Boo!”
“Shut up! Every Friday night he saw Leah because Feinberg the bagel baker was orthodox and his business was closed for the Sabbath, so between school work and his job, Abe had only one night off, Friday night. Meanwhile, Leah was seeing a new and more glamorous side of life from inside the walls of the immense department store. On her lunch breaks she would gobble down the small sandwich her mother packed for her and then spend the rest of her time walking through the more chic women’s clothing departments of the store. Seeing the cashmere sweaters, the glamorous tight fitting skirts, and the silk blouses, Leah began to feel a craving for these finer things. Three years passed. Every Friday night Leah saw Abe and every Tuesday night Abe would call to arrange a date for the following Friday. It was the rhythm of their relationship, and its steady and reliable pace had all the glamour and excitement of fingers drumming on a table top.” I paused. I made most of this story up as I went along and I was not certain where I was heading just then. I leaned over the edge of my bed and looked down at Ron who was lying on his back, eyes closed, a smile on his face. Outside, the rain poured down and hissed at our windows. This was cozy.
“Go on.”
“Leah had taken to wearing nylon stockings because that was how the women who shopped in Better Dresses dressed, and she began to use a darker red lipstick as well, and to wear simulated pearl earrings and a small string of simulated pearls around her neck. She didn’t let Abe see her wearing the jewelry, however, because she was certain that he’d disapprove. After all, there was a depression going on and every cent counted, so spending money so frivolously …”
“No, no, no. Your story is all wrong,” Ron interjected angrily. “Why would she get nylon stockings for God’s sake, and where would she come off buying costume jewelry? Come on!” I was surprised by how seriously Ron was taking this story and how real Leah had become in such a short time.
“Okay, okay, but let me finish. This is a good one. Okay. So she took to wearing dark red lipstick and painting her nails and for a while even flirted with cutting her hair short. She ached for change, for risk, for something daring and even dangerous.” I paused, timing the effect of this intermission by the sounds of Ron’s twisting on his bed and then said, “Because there was a man at work who blushed whenever Leah caught him staring at her, a very fair, very blond, very Irish man …”
“Aha!”
“ … and, while Richard Doyle spent many nights spilling his seed into his bathroom sink
, imagining the many delights of the dark Leah’s Jewish sexual mysteries …”
“Like whining at his touch?”
“Shhh! He pined for a deeper and purer relationship with her and would not defile her pristine person with the touch of that impure nether appendage he abused for his depraved release. The priest in the confessional was growing weary of Richard Doyle’s ritual self-abuse and frustrated that the ‘Hail Marys’ and the ‘Our Fathers’ he prescribed did not deter this sheep from dreaming like a wolf …”
“You’re starting to lose it again, Melvin, what the fuck do you know about ‘Hail Marys’ and ‘Our Fathers?’” Ron’s voice was very angry.
“In the spring of the fourth year of Abe’s courtship of her, Leah became aware that Richard Doyle had begun to follow her, and while this titillated her, it also aroused a nagging and persistent anxiety. What if he approached her? What if he asked her for a date? What if, she trembled at the mere thought of it, what if he touched her. Yet, as the weeks passed, strange feelings began appearing inside her, warm and exciting feelings that she had not known before, feelings that she had never experienced with Abe. But the thought of Richard Doyle, she began calling him ‘Dickie’ in her fantasies, released an urgent sensation, a lava flow of longing. Abe, meanwhile, had mustered the courage to propose marriage to Leah, convinced that their weekly walks testified to his commitment and respect. It was almost summer and he would be graduating from college in just a few weeks. As they walked down the Grand Concourse that June night, the lights from Yankee Stadium illuminating the sky off to the south, Abe took Leah’s hand and stopped her progress. ‘Leah,’ he faltered, ‘Leah, you know how I … Leah, I …’ he couldn’t say the words. Leah knew what he was trying to say but would offer no assistance. In fact she had begun to dread the coming of this night, the night she would have to tell him that she did not love him and could not, could never, marry him. ‘Marry me’ he blurted out. But before she could say anything in response, a figure came out of the shadows, a tall fair-haired man who, saying only her name, swept Leah up in his arms and ran down the street with her. And what pained Abe more than his frightened paralysis, his horrible helplessness and inaction, what tore at him that night and forever after, was that Leah never once screamed or cried out to him for help.” The hissing of the rain was the only sound in the room for what felt like a long time. We both lay silent and quite still in our beds.
Then, Ron said, “You’re afraid that that’s what’s happening with your Sarah now, aren’t you. That she’ll be carried away, someone else will take her away from you. Don’t let that happen, Mel. Don’t let it happen.”
Sick with helplessness I said, “It was just a story, Ron, just a story about Abe. It could never really happen.” But we both knew it very well could.
4.
In mid-August the late afternoon sun, more than halfway along its course of return to the autumn equinox, illuminates the landscape with a precision that makes each tree beckon you to scrutinize its every leaf. You look up from the field of wild asters and suddenly nature seems to say to you “Presenting the Sugar Maple,” a patch of red and orange-yellow smeared on its upper leaves like a shock of white in a head of black hair reminding you that there is a change of season approaching. The leaves, a dark lustreless green, hang heavy and weary from their branches fatigued by the long season in the sun, waiting. It is my favorite time of day in my favorite time of year. How I so envied the members of the band, the camp counselors, the tennis pros and lifeguards who could relax and celebrate that special, peaceful stillness of the late summer afternoons. Being a bus-boy one rarely got to luxuriate in it for more than an hour before having to return to the kitchen. Still, at that enchanted hour on the Saturday of Sarah’s return from the city and her meeting with Hank I did nothing to distract myself from the glory of the landscape. Whatever was awaiting me at our reunion, whatever changes and uncertainties might be revealed, the beauty of the hills and their turning trees and the gurgling of the water in the lake would still provide me with solace.
I had expected Sarah back around three o’clock so after a shower I went down to the lake and sat on the dock, my bare feet dangling over the water. It was four p.m. The day camp had already had its turn with the rowboats and now some hotel guests drifted around in them rowing only to keep from running aground at the shore or from colliding with one another. They bobbed idly in the late afternoon sun, the men sprawled out and asleep, one of the women tentatively dipping her fingers in the cool water, cautious and timorous, as though a school of piranha lurked in the darkness waiting to devour any flesh she bared to them. I didn’t know if Sarah would come looking for me there but were she to seek me out this was the place I’d most likely be.
We had declared the lake to be ours alone only the week before. We’d come to the dock in the evening and looked over the untroubled, slowly rolling waters to the cottages on the other side and, like officious landlords, complained about the obtuse tenants’ lack of appreciation for the amenities provided by the setting. There were no campfires with marshmallows toasting, no telescopes trained at the sky, no sounds of laughter or raucous conviviality. And that night, while we were pretending to be the landowners, Sarah admitted to me she had lied about Sandy Koufax being her cousin.
“I guess I was a little insecure. I thought you’d be more interested in me if I added that story about Sandy Koufax.” I told her that it hadn’t mattered enough to me even to bring it up again. She was perfect just as she was, with or without him, though I have to admit to some disappointment at the news. I was already imagining good seats at the World Series if the Dodgers and Yankees had another October match.
I said, “You know, in some ways I’m even more impressed with you now that you’ve told me Sandy isn’t your cousin. You’ve got a hell of an arm.” We laughed and cuddled and what had started out as a takeaway ended up bringing us even closer together. That’s why this Hank business was so confusing and disorienting; I’d thought we were both in love. It was while I wandered in this reverie that Sarah quietly sat down next to me on the dock.
“Hi,” she said softly. I felt a strong adrenaline rush rampage through me and batter at my insides.
“You’re back,” I said, without looking at her. All my imagined dialogues, all of the ‘I say and then she says and then I say’ fantastically scripted exchanges came apart and scattered like a stack of loose pages in a violent wind. I sat there feigning a stolid demeanor but inside myself the desire to plead and beg her not to leave me battled with a ferocious passion to berate her for what I took to be her betrayal and deceit.
“I’m back,” she echoed in a small voice. Was this the voice of shame and remorse or the voice of the bad news to come? “Are you Okay?” she asked, her voice now registering concern. Not as stolid as I’d wished to be, I thought, but then said the words that had come to me just that morning while in the shower, words intended for lighthearted use at a hoped for more relaxed and intimate time of reunion.
“I’m fine. It only hurts when I love.”
“Ohhh,” she wailed softly. “I’m so sorry. I did a terrible thing to you.”
“Don’t tell me!” I shot back in a panic.
“No, no nothing like what you’re thinking. You couldn’t possibly know what I’m referring to.” She put her hand on mine. “I put you through hell for no reason, well, there was a reason but I should have known better than to tell you.”
“You mean you should have lied.”
“Yes. No! Well, I just shouldn’t have told you about Hank. I should have said I was going home and left him out of it.”
“Does this mean that he’s not as important to you as you were thinking he was?”
“It means you are important to me.” She was writing her own script. She was avoiding my questions and giving me answers that should have made me feel reassured. But they didn’t. Instead I felt mistrustful of her in the same way that I had come to feel mistrustful of Harlan. It was as though words no
longer had meaning, as though the words didn’t mean what they were intended to mean.
“How come what you say doesn’t make me feel reassured, huh? How come?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m being pretty clear. Would this make it clearer?” And she turned me around and gave me a French kiss.
“Well, that says something but I’m not sure I got all of it. Could you repeat that for me?” She kissed me again, putting her arms around me and squeezing me to her while her tongue worked its way inside and around my mouth. There was a whoop from one of the boaters on the lake, then a loud whistle and some hand clapping. We both ignored the voyeurs. But wonderful as her kiss was, delightful as her hugs and remarkable tongue work, there was still a dark climate of doubt lurking inside me, still the dank air of suspicion and mistrust. And though I wished to shake myself free of it, wished for her love to feel as it had felt only days before, I could not let go of my distrust. With just a little more than a week left to us, sadly, something precious had been lost.
“So, the usual time tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t seem like yourself, Mel, still mad at me about going to New York?”
“No, just a little confused, that’s all.” She put her arm over my shoulder and gave me a sideways hug.
“It will be all right, don’t worry.”
5.
The Saturday night roast beef dinner was meant to set up the guests for the big Sunday lunch steak dinner send off. Sammy was busy telling stories so once again I had to do most of the work. After dessert he pulled me aside.
“Ben wants to know if you’ve started to do what he wants. I don’t know what he wants but you do, so have you started?”
“You mean he didn’t tell you about his plan to trap Harlan?”
“Don’t tell me anything, I don’t want to hear it.” he said, his hands raised, palms facing me as though I was a stick up man. “I’m just giving you the message. Ben knows that as headwaiter I don’t want any part of anything that makes my boys trust me less. I have a reputation to protect.”
