Carnovsky's Retreat

by Larry Duberstein

  Likewise with Jimmy, I exercise patience. Snubbed by him again, on the staircase. Did this estrangement occur one inch at a time, during my leave of absence, or all at once for some reason I missed. Is it Snider again? I will have to ask him, as soon as the smoke clears.

  Meanwhile a few more improvements. Picked up a little carpet from Monty Ward, blue with a turkish trim, and a set of coffee cups with saucers, brand new. A couple of books by big-name writers to dress up the shelf on my wall, Meyer Levin and Steinbeck.

  Finished improving and fried two mackerel. Rice and salad, a nice dinner, then radio music and a Gonzales. The life of Riley, except the truth is I was waiting for the telephone to ring. Having installed it in my quarters I expect it to ring and be her. Not a chance of course, I never even forced the number on her.

  But I find my “peace and quiet” disturbed by guilty feelings. Sitting next to this silent telephone, I think of Tanya and what if she minded a great deal, more than I imagined? These emotions don’t always show. Doesn’t show to Caddy in the morning breeze at Jamaica Park, how much I wish for the telephone to ring at night. She couldn’t guess.

  Although with her, maybe she could. She reads my mind. Like making sure to announce she is “not interested” and then the assurance “it’s nothing to do with age.” She knows it all, this lovely girl.

  She still likes a racing story best and today I recalled a good one for her, the false start that took place right over at Jamaica back in the early Thirties sometime. Rideaway battled Clock Tower from wire to wire, neck and neck all the way around, and beat him by a nostril but the race was negated. It had been called for a false start, they just could not rein in those horses, so they let them go around and then loaded them back in the gate to race again.

  The second time, for the money, the same two battled it out, only this time Clock Tower prevailed by an eyelash. And it was maybe the sourest crowd in history that afternoon, the ones who thought they won the same race twice and had to tear up their tickets.

  “I was there,” I told her. (A lie.)

  “Really! Who did you have?”

  “Neither one. Nothing ventured. Anyone asked me how I saw the outcome, I tell them ‘dead heat, no question’ and leave it at that.”

  I recall the race very clearly from accounts in the Eagle but of course I was busy selling shirts in downtown Brooklyn instead of sunning myself out at the racetrack. And in those days of my youth I would never place my bets with a bookmaker off-track.

  Still I like a story to include me when possible and I have a reputation to maintain as the Ghost of Racing Past. Let it be. It is wonderful to have a common interest. Tanya has a zero interest in handicapping, to the extent she would never even worry (as some do) about losing the milk money. I could walk in rich as Croesus or flat broke as a Bowery bum and neither way get a rise out of my wife. I could mention in passing that I put five thousand big ones on Trigger the Wonder Horse in the 14th race over six miles in the mud and she would say, Well it’s nice you enjoyed yourself, Oscar, and never notice a thing.

  Of course I know I shouldn’t complain. It’s to Tanya as her dancing is to me—she is glad for me and does not meddle. She understands I want to go. That’s nice and maybe that’s all you ask. A lot of wives don’t give you that much without taking a little skin off your nose. To enjoy it with you, might be asking too much.

  “Why do you waste your time talking to me?”

  “What choice do I have? You’re the only one who will talk to me.”

  “All right, why do I waste my time.”

  The truth is I am pussyfooting it today, fishing around, and really hoping that she will do the work, take the tough hurdles for me.

  “Because you like me.”

  “And so you humor me, correct?”

  “Do I?”

  “Now you don’t be coy. You do humor me. I was turning thirty when you were cutting baby teeth.”

  “So were my parents. Do I humor them?”

  “I’m sure you do. In any event, I am not your parents, I am a social acquaintance, which is different.”

  “You just don’t see it, do you? If you were born the same day as I was, in the same place, then we would know the same things, roughly. Being older makes you more interesting to me, not less. You’ve been where I can never.”

  “And lived to tell it! You mean I’ve seen the Man O’ War.”

  “And the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression. Even the War—what can I know about that?”

  “Plenty. You don’t have to get shot to know what a bullet is. You think that I’m a history book.”

  “No, a person.”

  “Well a person, Caddy, knows what he knows outside history. The Great Depression is nothing to me. A label. I saw the breadlines, yes, the homeless souls, Hoovervilles. Someone took pictures, so you can see them too. But I was working. I sold shirts, I sold beer—I made a decent living. So did my friends, and none of us were geniuses. In 1938, Great Depression, I put a down payment on a house. And what’s so special about me?”

  “I don’t know, tell me.”

  “Zip. I don’t sing, I don’t dance, and I don’t tell jokes. I don’t even like the books I read.”

  “A person knows what he knows outside books.”

  “Touché I’m sure. Horse, man, and money.”

  “That’s a new one on me. Who said it, Hemingway?”

  “Hemingway Wiley, a little old man in the clubhouse. He’ll be in soon if you like to meet him.”

  “Oscar, do you know that way back in May I saw you. Talking to your friend—”

  “Hearn?”

  “Maybe. With the boy. And I knew you were nice. I could tell you were funny. And that I would like you.”

  “Funny?”

  “A little funny, yeah. And all the time you were pretending not to notice me but I saw you not noticing. So now when you are pretending not to be interested, I can see that you are. And I don’t want to embarrass you but it just makes me uncomfortable to pretend anything. I’d rather have it out.”

  “You can not be just nineteen years old. It isn’t possible.”

  “I’m twenty years old, and never said otherwise.”

  “You are older than I am, in any case. Tell me please, Caddy, all about the Roaring Twenties.”

  “Please, Oscar. I’ve only got a minute more.”

  “Then let’s leave the subject for another day. What if it took more than a minute. Hypothetically, of course. As yet I don’t know what the subject is—”

  She knows me, this one, she’s been stealing my signs from the catcher. It’s more like years of friendship between us than only weeks of it. Imagine her reading me like a book in the spring and never said a mumbling word.

  But I don’t know what the subject is, even if she made a face at me when I said it. She declares that I am “interested” in her. To be sure I am. Why is that a subject, however, unless she is interested in me too? If it’s a one-way street, what’s to discuss? Politeness would demand she leave me alone with it.

  Or does a girl make a man declare himself only to shoot him down? Some might, but not this girl—she doesn’t need my scalp, or anyone else’s either. So what does she need? Therapeutic sex? Dream on.

  I am in demand socially, with a pair of invites for the same day. Timothy Myers stayed home from work to watch the Series game and made me welcome to join him downstairs. A nice gesture, and I would like to watch some of it, except there is the problem of Jimmy still. He is cool to me, not welcoming, and it is his house too.

  All I can think is Ebbets Field. Maybe he was waiting out the regular season to see if I would come through on my word and in the end pfft, the hell with Oscar. This kind of reasoning is possible with a child—to hold a little grudge and stand injudgment of adults. They don’t know they are dirt, no one told them, so they think they are royalty sometimes instead and if you cross them up then it’s off with your head.

  Anyway Newcombe took a real shellacking and I
’m glad I didn’t subject myself to it.

  I did take up Wiley, however, and joined Himself and Mrs. Wiley for the evening at his place up on Riverside Drive. Rode the train both ways. Nice suite of rooms, with a view of the Hudson and a doorman in the foyer. Stands there like a pheasant under glass as you approach, then pops to life to let you come inside. Mrs. says she feels safe having a doorman down there, but this old trooper couldn’t stop a poodle pissing on the carpet.

  Very polite lady, who towers over her husband. Does a dinner the proper way, a new set of dishware with every course, a glass for every beverage, and she keeps the coffeepot inside a little tent on the table in case we should want our refills hot. Like her son Noel she would like to see Wiley hang up his bow-tie (not too long before this prejudice emerged). I tried to keep in step with her on most points but here I diverged for my friend’s sake. Give the man a helping hand I figured. So I told her, “Whatever makes him happy. Right, Mrs. Wiley? He knows best, I’m sure. And believe me, we do most of his work for him anyway.” (That got the little rooster crowing!)

  We adjourned to the parlor for brandy and cigars, a real first class operation they run. She left us there, a pair of social lions. Talked politics, for what it’s worth. Ike is going to win and everyone knows it. What’s more, no one really cares. As Sid pointed out, you look at a Berlin or a Hungary, with all those Russian tanks sitting shivah, and you have to concede we would be having it good even if Francis the Talking Mule was in the White House next year.

  A wonderful evening, though once or twice my mind wandered. Up on Riverside Drive I wondered if down on Battersea Street my telephone was ringing off the hook. And when I got back, late, I tried to see if by looking at it I could tell whether or not it had rung in my absence.

  Encouraged one day, discouraged the next, always by some microscopic detail I uncover in our talk. (Which I record and study in the aftermath.)

  One thing I know: I do suffer from the condition of too much respect for women. Maybe growing up among sisters, Lilly and Sarah who took care of me and Florence whom I sometimes took care of myself. But to other men, there is no need to wrestle around with the question of women. It can be a game to them, the occasion for fun, as it is with the Duke of Kent or as it was with my old chum Albert Kronstein, who would travel Friday nights to the cathouse in Neptune City. I let him drag me along one time and ended up sitting in his father’s DeSoto for two hours.

  Albert loved this joint in Neptune City and went there all the time, and if you mentioned respect for women I’m sure he would answer they set the price and he met the price, and leave it at that. Like the Duke telling me up north, “A girl who makes her living being wanted—it’s an act of disrespect to respect her.”

  Maybe I’m not respecting her, maybe I am just respecting myself. After all, she is a prostitute. But whether with her or with a real woman, I’m sure the problem remains the same—easy for some and not so easy for others. You fall on the leaning side, that’s all. And so you must give yourself a push forward, play the part, or you sit out in the car all night respecting yourself.

  Another question is why a shiksa girl. I should ask The New York Post, but I am asking myself instead. Is it the appeal of a forbidden fruit or just a girl who hits me right? And when they tell you Don’t mix with shiks, are they voicing a prejudice or only making common sense? Furthermore, if prejudice cuts both ways on this issue, does it cancel itself out or become twice as bad?

  Caddy to me is just Caddy. And no one can say I am a social climber. Used to be you looked at a girl like this and they would automatically assume your motivation was getting into her old man’s business. At least I am too far gone to play the young buck with hat in hand. Imagine myself in the posture: “Yes sir, Mr. Moore, I have a very good head for business, honest as the day is long, and just exactly what sort of an arrangement did you have in mind, sir?”

  I would have to dress Republican for the occasion, some green and yellow checkered slacks and golfing shoes of the finest Italian leather. Tell him I like Ike, that’s right, a kike for Ike. Sky would be the limit for a promising young fellow like that!

  We all watched the coal-mining strike on the news and it went off just like a horse race—everyone had an opinion.

  Sid: They are out on strike because they hate their work. It’s an excuse. They are all secretly hoping none of them ever has to go under the mountain again.

  Wiley: It’s nothing to them to go under the mountain, they did it all their lives and daddy before them. All they want is a reasonable safety and reasonable dough, like anyone else.

  The Duke: What’s the difference?

  Mr. Nevas: (a late-staying regular of Wiley’s, whose vocabulary is enriched by scotch) If it’s that hard to get the goddamn coal out of there and so goddamn dirty and dangerous, then probably God never meant for them to get it in the first place. That’s why he put the goddamn stuff under the goddamn mountain in the first place.

  And they say that’s what makes horse-racing. I occupied no position in the debate, although not in the same way as Mickey Klutz. I’m sure it does make a difference what we think and what is real, but what can you know from a two-minute news broadcast? Just taps into your bias.

  What I saw was how specialized these men and women are. You sit where you live, New York, and assume we are all of a piece from coast to coast, from north pole to south pole the world over. A bagel and cream cheese may be unknown in Texas, yet we all eat lunch.

  Then you see these people. Tribes. The coal-miners in the mountains or even the fishermen who come into South Street pier at two in the morning to unload a catch. The ones who spend those dark hours carving up fish and crating them, loading them onto trucks. These men go home after a long day’s work when the sun is coming up, one hour before my bell starts ringing. That’s not a job, or even a tribe, that’s a culture unto itself.

  They might as well be living in China, for the hours they keep, and who would understand one but another one?

  Still small talk—not the Big Talk—with Caddy. Re-run the Six O’clock News. There’s a lot going on in the world and you don’t always see it in the paper, I tell her. (The man of parts, the big sophisticate.) Coalminers, I cite for her benefit, and the fishmarket at four in the morning.

  “Eskimos,” she cites me back, because eskimos are U.S. too, though I am not sure they vote. Maybe Stevenson can turn it around by getting out the eskimo vote while there is still time.

  “It’s a melting pot, but no one melts. You stay who you are.”

  “It’s more like a stew pot, maybe,” she says. Small talking, that’s all. “It would work out better if everyone changed lives now and then, changed jobs—like musical chairs.”

  “Not so easily done. People build up a pension and so forth.”

  “Did you know a famous writer once argued that everyone in the world should take on a new line of work every seven years? I mean, just for the sake of sanity, and health.”

  “All except Ike. He should change after four years. But listen Caddy, I changed. I have already launched my new career.”

  “Not me. I’ve been a student for a lot more years than seven and I’m ready to try something else. Something where I feel the time is well spent even if I’m just earning money. Because I can always give the money away, to a poor eskimo, or a coalminer.”

  “He wouldn’t take it, I saw those guys. But in school your time is well spent. Look what you learn—change jobs every seven years. I never knew it.”

  “You not only knew it, you did it. And I never read that in school, I read it on my own, for fun. In school I read stuff like Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. Try him some time.”

  “I’ll try him, but I know I can’t hang in there on a guy like Hawthorne. I’d rather read the Brooklyn phone directory than the House with Seven Gables.”

  “The Manhattan book is easier.”

  “For you, maybe. Lefkowitz versus Smith.”

  Did not mention my year-and-a-half at co
llege. Some places you impress them with a year-and-a-half, other places you have to know a miss is as good as a mile. And I didn’t care to explain it. I spent ten years explaining it to my father, who wanted me so badly to do it. Now I wouldn’t try explaining—just hand him the Gables and let him have a go.

  Caddy pretends, for my benefit of course, that she is sorry to be leaving New York. But I disagree. Of course she is going and why shouldn’t she? She will miss out on the Jockey Club Gold Cup and maybe she will miss our chitchats too. I believe her when she says so. But it’s no big deal. She is bound for higher ground and there is no future in lagging back just to chat with the Genius of Racing Past.

  A long day to relate. Entitled “A Cup of Coffee with Caddy”—the long awaited. I was up very early for a change and walked the waterfront to do my thinking. And first I thought, Okay I am on the edge of this continent, then took out my thermos. Water a dark green, sun rising a bright orange over Rockaway, seagulls in a chorus line on the early barge.

  And I had it worked out, at last. I knew exactly what I wanted, or needed, whatever you call it. To go with this girl one time: no more, no less. If it never happens, what’s to keep me from feeling bereft in her absence, as I did in August? But you beat the system, take back the normal, by going once and once only—take the edge off and melt away the magical mystery, so that a girl can become a person to you again and not a raving angel goddess.

  Is this idea too crazy? Is it immoral? Do I care if convicted on these particular counts? In the gut I thought to myself, Eureka. Because I can live with this nicely, better than with the alternative positions (nothing doing versus a serious romance). And if she blew up in my face about it, I could tell her I was joking—an idea like that, she would have to believe it. Putting in an escape hatch is what made it possible for me to actually make the proposal later on in the day.

  (Which I did do, and will record when I get back here around eight. I just remembered a promise to bring up a pail of chicken chow mein and eat it with Mrs. Vickers. I go from one plate of food to the next, always in the best of female company.)