by Joshua Braff
Gabe lowers his chin.
“In . . . the sum-mer of 1977, remember? My . . . my. Come on. My daddy and two brothers drove to California. Remember now? One night in Memphis they stopped to see a movie called Annie Hall. Okay, now you.”
Gabe looks up at me for a second and then back at my dad. His eyelids are half closed.
My father says, “When the . . . when the . . . cha-rac-ter of An-nie . . . ordered a pastrami on . . .” He waits with his head tilted, his eyes wide with mascara.
“White . . . bread,” Gabriel whimpers.
“Right. Good.”
“My . . . daddy . . . laughed harder than he ever . . . ever laughed.”
“Good! Good, boy! Little faster. A lot louder. Now you’re almost there. “It’s . . . safe . . . to . . .”
“. . . say . . . that my daddy and my brothers . . .”
“. . . wwwwerrrrre . . .”
“Were the only Jews for . . .”
“For what?” my father says, his hands spreading apart. “For . . .”
“. . . miles,” says Gabe.
“Good boy! Great boy! Okay,” he says, with a sigh and smiles hard. “Fabulous. I knew it was in there. Now, come closer so I can draw these glasses on you. This is the cutest idea. Now from the top. In the summer . . .”
I watch my father press the wet tip of the pen into Gabriel’s cheeks. “Turn this way now. No, this way. Good, stay still. Okay, ready? In the summer . . .”
Asher and my mother walk back in the room. “It’s Bernie Shapiro, Dad. He says you told him to park on the lawn.”
“What the hell are you doing?” my mother says. Gabriel has a black circle around his right eye. He starts to touch it and it smears to his nostrils. “I told you not to draw on his face.” She grabs the marker from his hand. My father jumps to his feet and runs at her. “Give me that marker this second, Claire.”
She grips it with both her hands. “You . . . heard me, Abram. Why would you ignore me? If I did that to you, you’d . . . go insane.”
“Hand it to me.”
She brings the marker behind her back. He lunges for it but misses.
“What are you doing?” she says.
“I told you forty times that pen is safe. Give me the pen. Give me the pen.”
“I’m not giving it to you. Step away, Abram!”
“A child,” he says, grabbing her wrist.
“Stop, Daddy,” Dara says.
“Let go of me,” my mother says, with tears in her voice.
“Daddy, get off.”
“Asher,” I say, walking toward them.
“Whoa,” Asher says. “Dad!” He tries to step between them and takes my father’s elbow in his hand. “Whoa, whoa, take it easy, take it easy.”
My father lets go of her and she slides to the floor with the pen in her grip. “What the hell is that?” he says to Asher. “Keep your hands off of me, hero. Mister clown pants.”
“Just . . . calm down. You have a party going on out there.”
“The voice of reason,” he says, and throws his arms to the ceiling. “Come to save his mama. Yay the clown. Yay the clown!” he barks.
“Don’t do this now,” Asher says softly.
“You think I’d hurt my wife?” he says, stepping into his face.
“No . . .”
“Abram,” my mother says. “Take the pen.”
“The savior? Gonna save us all?” My father hooks his finger into Asher’s belt loop and yanks down. Asher spins away, stepping back.
“You’re gonna tear my pants?” he says. He smiles at me. “Ya know you got friends out there, Dad? Outside that door? A lot of them. Tell me you know that.”
“Come over here,” my father says and points at the floor. “Right now!”
Asher just stands there blinking with amazement. “That’s what you want. You really . . . do.” He lowers his chin to his chest and laughs out loud. “Wants to rip my pants.”
“Abram,” my mother says. “Let’s start over!”
“Why? To humiliate me? Twelve cars in the driveway and he wants a . . . rrriiippp down memory lane. Here. Wacko. Take it.” He skips toward my father. “I’ll stick my leg out for ya. Go on, tear’em, ya lunatic. Spend it, right here, in front of your family. Spend it!” he yells, and his smirk fades to rage.
My father gets a finger inside and yanks down with all his strength. The pants don’t tear. He drops to his knees and goes again with both hands. Nothing. Dara starts to cry and my mother surrounds her in her arms. Asher looks down at the top of my father’s head. He begins to find a smile. “Look at you,” he says. Another jolt of the arm, a tiny tear. Another and another quickly, his glasses flopping to the floor. Gabriel moves to my mother, his eyes pinned on his dad.
Someone knocks on the kitchen door.
“Abram, stop now,” my mom says. “They’ll hear you.”
He jolts again and Asher wobbles, nearly stumbling, with a lazy laugh.
“Anybody home? Claire?” I step toward the door and my mother does too.
“Time’s up,” Asher says, and bows over his own knee. In a blink the fabric is torn clear off his right leg and fills his fists with floppy red flags. He throws them at my father and they drape over his slumped shoulders. My mother opens the door and sticks her head out. I wait for the tantrum, we all do, the metal in his molars. But he doesn’t move. His overall straps have come undone and the dust of his makeup now peppers his beard. He breathes hard on his knees and just stares at the floor.
“What is it with you?” Asher nearly whispers. “Your children are watching.”
Out of the corner of his eye, my father sees me. He is lost in this moment, startled from the dream. He looks cold and somehow childish, exposed to even himself. No one goes near him. My mother shuts the door and leans her back against it. “I’m not going to live like this anymore,” she says. “I’m just not.”
I reach under the table for his glasses and hold them out to him. “Dad. Here. Take these.”
His chest and shoulders begin to cave as he lowers his forehead to the floor. I see his mouth widen and lock as a very high and soft sorrow whines from his throat. My mother kneels toward Gabe and Dara and buries her face in their clothes. We listen to him together. We listen to him fall.
Another knock. “Anybody home?” says a voice from the hallway. “Abram? Claire? I got kugel here. It’s heavy.”
My mother stands from the floor and wipes her eyes. She walks to the door and slips out of the room. My dad lifts his head and breathes deep; he stares at his hands. Asher bends to lift the strips of red denim off his back. He tosses them in the garbage and faces me. “Go get the lawn furniture, okay? I’ll help you bring it in.” Two men laugh out loud in the dining room and one of them claps his hands.
“Dara?” Asher says. “Dara?”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“He’s . . . gonna need more makeup. You helped him before, right?”
She glances carefully at her father’s hunched back.
Asher points at his own face. “Freckles,” he says. “He’s gonna need new freckles.”
Curtain
Temple congregant Gabby Minkowitz went to high school with my dad. She stands in the sea of guests and waves vigorously at the cast members before chasing a piece of popcorn down her wrist with her tongue. I sit right behind her on the living-room floor. Two of the actors wink at her in unison and wear white cowboy hats and droopy plastic holsters, while the third wears overalls like my dad. The cowgirls are in long denim skirts and boots with pinkish white frills, and Jonny, who sits next to me, says one of them is a lunch lady at our school. I think he may be right. The ten-foot movie screen is set up to the right of the cast and ripples in silver waves from all the commotion. When I look behind me I see my mother, kneeling and mingling amid the Altmans and the Schaffers and the Kriegers and the Harsteins and the Ryzmans, the Bulawkos, the Meirs, the Krasnobrods, the Weisses, the Barneses, the Wendels, the Reselbachs, the Grossos, the L
antos, the Mautners, the Kozlowskis, the Levys, the Schwarz-bats, the Offens, the Gabanys, the Tennenbaums. And then there’s the accounting firm crowd that all sit on lawn chairs by the far windows: the Nelsons, the Browses, the Perlsteins . . .
“J,” Jonny says, leaning close to my ear. “Where’s Asher?”
As I look back at the projector the crowd roars with applause as my father runs in the room shooting the only cap gun that has ever been allowed in this house. He dips his hat to his guests as he hops over their legs and finally makes his way to the “stage.” An obese guy the cast calls Jocko is wearing an Indian headdress and sits behind our piano. He hands my father a microphone in exchange for a friendly mock punch to the jaw.
“Howdy, loved ones!” my dad yells into the mike, and Jocko starts a two-key intro for the big welcome. My father taps the mike against his palm to the beat and gets the audience to do the same.
“Whoooooo’s got the stuff that made the Wild West wiiiiiiild?”
“You do, Abram!” yells Judy Sempel from behind me and the crowd laughs.
My father shuts his eyes and smiles as Jocko keeps the beat. “My vaudeville partner of twenty years, Mrs. Judy Sempel, ladies and gentlemen!”
Laughter through the rhythmic clapping. Judy stands and curtsies.
My father steps three rows deep into the crowd and stands above me. “I said, whoooooo’s got the stuff that made the Wild West wiiiiiiiild? Whoooo pleases eeeeevery wo-man, man, and child?” His hand ruffles my hair and Jonny cackles with his mouth wide. “I’ll tell ya! I said I’ll tell ya, buckaroos! The cast of the Leiland Community Theater’s Annie Get Your Gun! That’s whoooooo!”
All nine of the cast members pull out cap guns and start firing them at the ceiling. Jocko sweeps his hand down the row of piano keys and kicks into the intro to the main event. The cast lock elbows and begin to do-si-do their way around the small square of space as the crowd continues to clap. After a solid minute of this, Jocko snaps three times and they all shoot their guns and line up to face the audience. “Two, three, four . . . ‘There’s no bus’ness like show bus’ness, / Like no bus’ness I know. / Ev’rything about it is appealing, / Ev’rything the traffic will allow; / Nowhere could you get that happy feeling / When you are stealing that extra bow.’” They all bow. “‘There’s no people like show people; / They smile when they are low. / Yesterday they told you you would not go far, / That night you open and there you are, / Next day on your dressing room they’ve hung a star—/ Let’s go on with the show.’”
The applause goes on for a while. Gabby is standing and clapping and rocking her giant Jewess hips near Jonny’s face. My father wipes his forehead with his bandanna and lifts the mike off the piano. A standing ovation begins and Jonny and I look around the room before slowly joining the masses.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the chorus of Annie Get Your Gun!” he says over the applause. “May fifth through the fifteenth at Wilford High School in Radison. Take I-80 north and exit at Tankhill Road. If you see the Howard Johnson’s tower you’ve gone too far. Thank you. Thank you, aren’t they superb? Thank you. You’re wonderful, thanks.” The applause rages on and my father hugs each of them and faces the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, Bruce Finkel, Diane Mead, Henry Tasko . . .”
The applause climbs.
“Margerie Danes, Brian Levy, Fran Angel, Pauline Crane, Kim Woo, and Gail Trotsky. The chorus—and heartstrings—of this beloved American classic.”
Applause.
“They are wonderful, wonderful people to work with and to know. The show is just dynamite because of them. Truly, I mean that,” he says, and bows to them with his palms pressed together.
Applause.
“Thank you so much. Thank you,” he says, lowering everyone with his hands. “Shhhhh. Thank you. Thank you so much. We did an abbreviated version because of time but it’s a taste and we’d love to see you out there. Thank you so much for your energy. We really feel you.”
“We love you, Abe!”
Laughter and some light applause.
My father shades his eyes and looks out on the room. “Who said that? Irv? Is that you, Irv Dreisen? I’ll get the twenty I promised you right after the show.”
Laughter. Irv blows a kiss.
“Shhhhh. All right now, thank you. Settle down now, thanks.”
The sound slowly dies out.
“Now before we hit the lights and break into the wonderful world of Woody, I’d—”
More applause.
“I’d like to introduce my family to you. It’ll just take a second.”
Jonny pats my back and says, “Show time,” into my ear.
“My oldest—Asher says to me, ‘They all know us, Dad. Come on, give me a break.’ Well . . . to that I say . . . one day you’ll know how proud it makes me to be your father. Ladies and gentlemen, I love him like a son—” My father bops himself on the forehead. “Wait a minute, he is my son. Asher Green.”
Jesus Christ, he does it. The one thing he asked him not to do. I look down into my lap as everyone in the room claps for Abram’s firstborn son.
“Anyone seen him?” he says into the mike, and I look up. My father’s blinking nervously and searching the room. “Asher?” he says with a chuckle, and I stand to search the room for myself. The Friedmans, the Kramers, the Brewsters, the Milks. He’s not in the room. I stand quickly and step over Jonny. “Excuse me, I have to get by,” I say, and start to shuffle through the bodies and legs. He’s up in his room, I’m sure, or definitely in the kitchen or something, hiding out until the intros are done. “Jacob,” my father says into the mike. “I’ll go find him,” I say, not facing him.
“Wait, wait, wait, come back here—we’ll just move on. My blond boy, Jacob. Come on up here for a second.”
Nearly out of the room and straddling Lilly Jacobs, every face around me lights up with celebration. I’m a son they can see. And I’ve just been announced. I carefully step back over Gabby and the Gilmans, Milt and Sari, and walk straight for my dad, into the spotlight. He puts his arm around me and kisses my ear. He gazes out at his audience. “Can read and sing Hebrew better than Theodore Bikel, Moshe Dyan, and Golda Meir all wrapped up into one.”
Some laughter.
“It was stunning when he read from the Torah, wasn’t it?”
Some applause.
“Well, he’ll be doing it again. Soon I hope. What else could a father ask for?”
I smile out at the audience and have no idea what he’s talking about.
“And this semester . . .”
Good Lord.
“. . . he’s gonna get a B in math for the first time in his life. He promised me.” As the applause starts I glance up at him. He reads my eyes and tries to dilute his words.
“Overcoming . . . obstacles is . . . to me . . . one of the hardest things in life, and my son can overcome anything you put in his way. He’s a hurdler. And I love him. Friends, this is Jacob, let’s hear it.” He leans in to kiss my head but I dodge it. I walk back to my spot with a tingly burning on my cheeks and neck, trying to avoid eye contact with all seventy-five people. My son, the retard!
“Dara and Gabriel? Where are they? Quickly, both of you.”
Applause as they make their way to the front of the room. I get eye contact with my mother and mouth, “Where’s Asher?” She shakes her head and shrugs.
“Down in front,” yells Rod Strauss. I drop to my knees but still search for my brother. I can see the staircase if I move forward. I ask Gabby for some room.
“Dara . . . the beautiful,” my father says, and pecks at her head with his lips. “Looks just like her mom, doesn’t she? Still the fish of the family. Took fourth in her age group on Sunday, but don’t you worry,” he says, bumping her hip with his, “her coach says she’ll be just fine. Dara, my only daughter!”
Applause as she steps back into the crowd.
“And my Gabriel. Looks sharp today, yes? He’s off to his prom after this.”
As they laug
h my father licks his finger and swipes at the faded dots of marker on his cheek. Gabe ducks and cringes.
“No limits here. Bright, funny, just look at that face, folks, that punim.”
Light applause.
“Gabe works with the lighting crew for the show and . . . the whole cast,” he says turning to them. “You just eat him up, don’t you?”
They all nod with too much energy, the way chorus people do.
“Seven years old and knows more show tunes than all of us combined. The not so baby of the family. Gabriel!”
Applause as Gabe steps forward and bows. I see someone on the stairs and I stand to get a better look. Saul Dardik.
“And now, my wife. Come on up, baby.”
Through whistles and applause, she slowly makes her way to the front.
“Before anything else—before lights, before cameras—I’d like you to see the greatest gift that God has ever given me.”
When she arrives he puts his arm around her waist and pulls her close to him. “How beautiful is this woman?”
Whistles and more applause, a light chant of her name.
“‘Along the garden ways just now / I heard the flowers speak; / The white rose told me of your brow, / The red rose of your cheek . . . / The lily of your bended head, / The bindweed of your hair: / Each looked its loveliest and said / You’—Claire Green—‘were more fair.’”
Some applause.
“I just love this poem. I call it my ‘Poem de Claire’ because . . . it . . . helps me . . . encompass, in so few words, the . . . love . . . I have for my wife. The true love. I think she looks a little like Annie Hall, don’t you?”
Many in the room agree. Gabby turns to me, nodding.
“Would you like to say anything to our guests, love?”
He holds the mike out for her. At first she shakes her head and just smiles out at the room.
“Come on, just a hello. They love you. Brief.”
Another body comes down the stairs. It’s Nora Butensky and her daughter, Sil.
My mom reluctantly takes the microphone and glances out at us. “Thank you. Thank you all for coming to our home today.”
