I Shudder

by Paul Rudnick

  Paul Rudnick

  I Shudder

  And Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey

  For John Raftis

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  The Sisters

  Lordy

  I Shudder: Hallie Tesler

  Hewen and Schifty

  Sixty Seconds

  I Shudder: Yumbies

  Good Enough to Eat

  Enter Trembling

  I Shudder: Intimacy—Why?

  In Pieces

  I Hit Hamlet

  I Shudder: Good and Evil

  Life and Death and New Jersey

  I Shudder: Mr. Christmas

  At the Chelsea Hotel

  About the Author

  Other Books by Paul Rudnick

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  I have changed a few names in the nonfiction pieces,

  to allow private citizens to remain private.

  All of the fictional pieces are true.

  The Sisters

  1.

  My first apartment in New York was a fifth-floor walk-up on Charles Street in the West Village. On the first Saturday after I’d moved in, I got a visit from my mother and her sisters, my Aunt Hilda and my Aunt Lil. All of these women were stylishly dressed, including leather handbags and silk scarves, and they all wore those oversized eyeglass frames which are known as “Tootsie” glasses, because Dustin Hoffman wore them when he was in drag. Actually, Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie could have been a fourth sister, because he wore such nice wool challis skirts and exhibited a proud, feminist outlook.

  The Klahr sisters—their maiden name—always wore their hair slicked back in matching buns, like their mother, and their many steel hairpins sometimes set off the metal detectors at airports. They were all brunettes; blondes, along with anyone who spent too much time on their hair, were considered suspect, trivial, and, inescapably, Gentile. The sisters aimed for a certain dignity and finesse; they resisted the trophy minks of their outlying cousins and preferred heavier ethnic jewelry over anything gold and garish.

  My mother, Selma, is the baby, and she was considered rebellious and even bohemian. This was because she read poetry and had moved, with her family, to the New Jersey suburbs; Jersey was considered exotic when compared to Long Island. Hilda was the elegant middle sister who tended to be the peacemaker, despite her dry and often subversive sense of humor. Hilda was the person to sit next to at a Passover seder, because she’d murmur, “Oh, come on already, get those Jews out of Egypt. Let’s eat!”

  Lil was the all-powerful eldest sister, a compact, solidly built dynamo with the staunch, gimlet-eyed mien of a Navajo priestess. Lil was an accomplished person. During the Depression, with no money, she’d founded a nursery school, aided by my Uncle Rudy, a peppy gym teacher, and she’d continued to rise, ultimately becoming a Superintendent of Schools. Lil had also recently departed from the sisters’ code of subdued good taste. She’d started having a local dressmaker whip up a closetful of polyester tube dresses in bold, almost tropical prints, sometimes with bobbing ball fringe at the hemlines. These dresses had high necklines and short sleeves, and they resembled colorful, off-season covers for patio furniture. “These dresses are so practical,” she’d tell her siblings, “you should get some.” Lil’s greatest gift was her magnetic, raw confidence. She had strong opinions, and she knew exactly what you should be doing with your life, and she had no problem with letting you know.

  I could hear the sisters climbing the many flights up to my apartment, with expressive groans and remarks like, “How much further?” “Why does he live here?” and “I think I’m having a stroke.”

  “Look who’s here!” my mother called out, entering the apartment and kissing me.

  “Look who’s here!” said Hilda, hugging me.

  “Look who’s here!” said Lil, adding, “So there’s no elevator?”

  “Of course not,” explained my mother. “That’s why he lives up here—so we won’t come and visit him.”

  “Well, I guess we showed him,” Hilda chortled.

  “I’m not kidding, there’s no elevator?” asked Lil.

  “There is,” I replied, “but it’s restricted. This is a nice building.”

  “Oh, very funny,” said my mother.

  “Mr. Ha-Ha,” said Hilda, grinning.

  “So this is your apartment?” said Lil, looking around. With the addition of a bed, myself and my relatives, the ten-by-fifteen-foot studio was packed.

  “Of course this is his apartment,” said my mother.

  “What else?” said Hilda.

  “Is this the whole thing?” asked Lil. “Or is this the foyer?”

  “Actually, there are five more bedrooms,” I explained, “but they’re being painted.”

  “There are not,” said my mother, “he just graduated. This is perfectly fine; it’s a studio.”

  “It’s lovely,” said Lil. “See, I’m being nice.”

  “She’s being nice.” said Hilda, “Write that down.”

  “Hil?” said Lil, wary of insubordination.

  “I didn’t say anything!” Hilda insisted.

  “So it’s a studio?” asked Lil. “Why do they call it that? So it’ll sound fancy? Why don’t they just say, it’s a broom closet up a lot of stairs with a bed and, I hope to God, a bathroom. Is there a john?”

  “I just go out in the hall,” I said. “There’s a bucket.”

  Hilda laughed, but after Lil glanced at her she stopped, claiming, “I’m not laughing, it’s not funny. I’m sure there’s a john.”

  “It’s right in here,” said my mother, supportively opening the bathroom door. “Come on in, we’ll take the grand tour.”

  The three women peered inside a bathroom the size of half a phone booth.

  “Look, he has a toilet,” said Hilda, approvingly. “Very nice.”

  “And a sink,” added my mother.

  “It’s like the Waldorf,” Lil concluded. “Are there bugs?”

  “Of course not!” my mother protested, and then, to me, “You don’t have bugs, do you?”

  “I can’t afford them,” I said. “It’s sad.”

  “You know,” said Lil, “when Mama and Papa first came to this country, they lived on the Lower East Side, in a tenement, just like this. And now here you are.”

  I’d never really known my grandparents, who’d died when I was little. My grandfather had been a tireless garment factory worker, a cutter who skillfully sliced through many layers of tweed and gabardine; he was also known for such remarks as, “Like the monkey said when he peed into the cash register, ‘This is running into money.’” My grandmother, who made Lil look like a trembling ingenue, had been especially concerned with her family’s internal cleanliness. For Hilda’s eighth birthday, without telling Hilda or her guests, she’d frosted a batch of cupcakes with melted Ex-Lax, so that the kids would all stay regular.

  “Look what we brought you!” said Hilda, handing me a shopping bag. Gifts are like passports in my family, since no one is allowed to travel without carrying many wrapped packages. My aunts always bring something, even if the gift makes no sense. “It’s the gesture,” Lil would say, “it marks the occasion.” Over the years I’ve received, among other things, Mexican papier-mâché marionettes, a tennis sweater, a notepad with an appliquéd felt cover depicting a man in a vest playing a banjo, and a bamboo back scratcher. Hilda would find many of these treasures at an outlet store on Long Island called Girl Meets Buy.

  At my apartment, I opened Hilda’s shopping bag to find washcloths, a wicker cover for a box of Kleenex, and a plastic toilet brush. While these were actually thoughtful purchases, the women began handling the vario
us housewares as if they were uncut rubies, or newborn infants, to be adored and inspected for flaws.

  “This is a very nice toilet brush,” Lil told Hilda. “Where did you get this?”

  “At the store near me,” said Hilda. “It also comes in taupe.”

  “I love these washcloths,” said my mother, nuzzling one first to her own cheek, and then to mine. “Feel how soft.”

  “And look, wicker,” said Lil, holding the Kleenex caddy up to the light. “I could use this.”

  “Give me that,” I said, snatching it away.

  “So you’re going to climb all those stairs,” said Lil, “and then you’re going to sit here, probably on that bed, since I’m not noticing a chair, and you’re going to write something. So what are you going to write?”

  “Leave him alone,” said Hilda, “he just got here.”

  “He has to make a living,” said Lil, who had a point.

  “He’s going to write whatever he wants to write,” said my mother, “and it’s going to be wonderful and we’re all going to love it, as long as it’s not disgusting.”

  While my mother was concerned about, in ascending order of importance, how I was going to support myself, what I was eating, and bugs, I think she was thrilled that I’d moved to New York. She’d been raised in a home where, while culture had been revered, it wasn’t practiced. Money was scarce, so schooling, and finding both a husband and a Job With A Future had been paramount. Throughout her life, to the distrust of her sisters, my mother had worked at places like a literary magazine, an organization that booked orchestra tours, and a ballet company. As her sisters would delicately inquire, “And they’ll pay you for that?”

  “You know what you should write?” Lil advised me. “Those thrillers, like you can buy at the airport. The people who write those books, they do very well. I love those books.”

  “Or you could write children’s books,” suggested Hilda, who was an ardent grade school librarian, “like Dr. Seuss.”

  “Or you could write a diet book,” said Lil. “Those books make a fortune. Although, personally, I always want to tell people, here’s a diet tip: stop eating.”

  Happily, my father, who’d been parking the car, arrived to interrupt this discussion. My dad was a very supportive, good-natured man who’d been attracted to my mother’s vitality, although he was somewhat overwhelmed, not to mention outnumbered, by the full sisterly onslaught. All of the men the sisters had married shared this quality, of having to brace themselves for holidays, or any occasion, when the women reunited. Lil was a particular challenge. Once, my parents were in the front seat of our car as my dad was looking for a parking space in midtown. I was in the backseat with Lil, who was championing her greatest cause, Israel. “When there’s a cure for cancer,” she told me, “it’s going to come from Israel.” Then she leaned over the front seat, informing my father, “If we were in Israel right now, there’d be parking.”

  “I love this apartment,” my father told me, back on Charles Street, “but who are all of these strange women? Are they staying?”

  “Norman,” Lil asked my father, “be honest. Do you think that a person can actually live in this apartment?”

  “Yes,” my father decided, “I think it’s just fine. And look at all of those nice, big, healthy bugs.”

  “Where?” Hilda asked, panicking.

  “I told you!” said Lil, triumphantly.

  “NORMAN, THAT’S NOT FUNNY!” said my mother, as my father and I laughed. “See,” she continued, disgusted with both of us, “they think that bugs are funny.”

  “Maybe late at night, while I’m asleep,” I proposed, “maybe the bugs will write something for me, like Rumpelstiltskin.”

  “We’re going,” my mother announced. “Hil, Lil, let’s go.”

  After more debate about whether I should buy a chair, where I should buy a chair, whether I owned a bedspread, whether my bedspread had any matching accessories, whether my relatives would be able to make it back down all those stairs without having heart attacks, whether there were any good restaurants in the area, without bugs, and whether I needed more toilet paper, a subject which the ladies discussed as if toilet paper might not be readily available in Greenwich Village, Lil and Hilda departed, while my parents held back.

  “Call me up when we get back to New Jersey,” said my mother, kissing me, “and don’t talk to strangers or stay out all night or do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “And have fun,” said my father, hugging me.

  “How?” I asked.

  Once everyone was gone, I sat on my bed in a room which somehow felt palatial, because the apartment was mine, because I was brandishing a sparkling new toilet brush as if it were a royal scepter, and because I was finally alone. I heard a noise, and I looked out my tiny window. Across the courtyard, on a lower floor, I saw two men having very verbal sex, atop a butcher-block kitchen table.

  “Fuck me, you bastard!” one of the men demanded.

  I was home.

  About eight months later, in January, I had to move because so much snow and ice had accumulated on the roof of my building that my ceiling caved in, dumping large chunks of filthy, sopping wet plaster right onto my bed, which I luckily wasn’t in at the time.

  “It was a sign from God,” Lil told me the next time I saw her, “and do you know what God was telling you?”

  “What?”

  “Never live on the top floor.”

  2.

  I moved to an even smaller apartment a few blocks away, on the ground floor of a deeply ugly building on Perry Street, next to a parking garage. This apartment was basically a short hallway with a slight bulge at the end, for a bed, and it was so depressing that the sisters were not allowed to visit, for fear it would upset them too much.

  “Is it that bad? Worse than the other one?” Lil asked me, at a family get-together back in New Jersey.

  “It’s like living in a drawer,” I told her.

  “I don’t even want to think about it,” said my mother.

  “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” said Hilda. “How could it be that bad?”

  “It’s so bad,” I told the group, as if I were sitting atop a bunk bed and delivering the capper to a summer camp ghost story, “that even the bugs spend the weekend somewhere else.”

  There was a silence.

  “Now all I’m going to think about are the bugs,” said my mother.

  “So where do they go on the weekends?” asked Lil, weirdly interested.

  And then a few weeks later I was robbed. I wasn’t home when a junkie broke into my apartment. A helpful neighbor, hearing some commotion, called the police, who came right over and arrested the burglar while he was still on the premises. As they were putting him in handcuffs, the phone rang, and one of the officers picked it up. It was my mother.

  The officer explained the circumstances to my mom, who had only one question: “Oh my God,” she said, “this guy, the burglar, what did he do to the apartment? Did he destroy things, did he turn everything upside down?”

  “Well, ma’am,” said the officer, glancing around, “the place looks pretty terrible. There’s clothes and boxes everywhere. It kinda looks like a tornado hit it.”

  “Oh my God,” said my mother.

  When I finally got home, the apartment was of course exactly how I’d left it. Which I never told my mother.

  A police detective arrived the next day to take my deposition. He was unbearably handsome, with a mustache; to this day, I’m convinced that the police and fire departments deliberately staff gay neighborhoods with especially hunky men, as a vicious tease.

  The detective couldn’t have been nicer or more professional, and I couldn’t have been more swoony and hideously embarrassing. I fell all over myself thanking him, and I offered him free tickets to an Off-Broadway play I was working on. He thanked me but said that he wasn’t allowed to accept gifts in the line of duty, though he added that if I wanted to, I could write a letter of commendation fo
r his departmental file.

  After he left, I composed at least fifteen drafts of this letter, each of which would’ve gotten the detective fired. “Dear New York Police Department,” one draft began. “Let me tell you, from the first time I laid eyes on Lieutenant Ramirez, I understood what they mean by ‘New York’s finest.’”

  I eventually came up with a version that didn’t sound as if it were being written in hot pink Magic Marker, on lined and scented notebook paper, to a member of a boy band, and I sent it off. A week later I got a phone call from a woman who identified herself as the girlfriend of my burglar/junkie. “You know, Jimmy was already breaking his parole, so he’s gonna go back to jail anyways,” she said, in an impatient whine, “so do you really wanna press charges?” She thought that Jimmy’s already being a convicted felon somehow made him more sympathetic. I didn’t want her to rush right over and kill me with a rusty razor blade, so I told her that I’d think about her request, and I hung up. Here’s the saddest part: Jimmy wasn’t a very bright junkie, because I didn’t own anything worth stealing. He’d tried to heist, among other items, a ceramic mixing bowl half-filled with pennies, and a huge rhinestone which a friend had sent me as a gag birthday gift.

  I did still wonder what I would do if I became the target of Jimmy and his girlfriend and their inept but possibly bloodthirsty drug ring. I decided that maybe I’d call up Lieutenant Ramirez and beg him to come over right away, claiming that I was too scared to spend the night in my apartment alone. But then I concluded that if I ever really needed serious protection from armed criminals, the person I should call was my Aunt Lil.

  3.