Olivia

by Judith Rossner

  I walked back to Katz’s, ordered a pastrami on rye and a bottle of beer, although the first boy who took me to Katz’s had tried to convince me that Dr. Brown’s Celery Tonic was de rigueur with pastrami. When I told my father I’d been there, he remembered that during the war Katz’s had a sign up that said, SEND A SALAMI TO YOUR BOY IN THE ARMY. (It was still there.) The people eating around me now, black and white, did not look Jewish.-1 put down my sandwich. I had always laughed when I heard my parents say that someone in the newspaper looked, or didn’t look, Jewish. This was the first time in my life I’d found myself doing it. I decided I’d have to talk to my father about Livvy’s anti-Semitism, preferably sometime when my mother wasn’t around. My mother would just sit there, never saying anything objectionable, but just getting an I-told-you-so expression, without specifying what it was she’d told me. While my father had the ability to tackle problems in a practical way, free of sighs and glances and little remarks about what might have been, free of the weight of the past.

  My mother’s mother had been a terrible cook. She’d been the family’s free-thinker, the reader, the socialist, the atheist, the active anti-racist who’d joined the NAACP and laughed at the thought of joining the UJA. A mamzer (roughly translated as bastard), her husband would say, shaking his head in anger and admiration. She had sneered at the dietary laws, made it a point, when she was at our house for a meat dinner with the other grandparents, who were kosher, to ask where the milk was for her coffee. We’d stopped having it in the house when all four visited, to avoid doing the unacceptable. (In a kosher household, dairy products aren’t served with a meat meal.) Was it only difficult people who discarded tradition?

  Beatrice said after one of those visits that Grandma Rose should have been a doctor or lawyer and never married or had children. My mother laughingly thanked Beatrice, but her ability to laugh might have come from the fact that her father, who, by the time she was born, had a grocery in the same building as their apartment, gave the children much of the affection they did not receive from their mother.

  My father’s mother was an excellent cook. She made a pot roast I don’t feel I’ve ever equaled; maybe my mind’s tastebuds imbue it with a quality only childhood can lend. She prepared her own herring, and it had actually been from her, early on, not from Anna, that I’d learned to make a good chicken soup. Her borscht and stuffed cabbage were to die for, and until she was well into her seventies, she was putting up her own pickles, tomatoes, and fruit compotes. She was a docile, unintellectual woman who practiced Judaism and Jewish custom as it had been practiced by her family in the ghetto for generations. She might still have been living in a ghetto, for all the times she ventured to walk outside her own neighborhood, or to meet people she didn’t know from the temple or the building where she lived. She’d been an infinitely more peaceful person than my mother’s mother, and there was no question in my mind that her peacefulness was framed by, and rested upon, tradition.

  How long did it take to create a tradition, and of what might that tradition consist in an age when tradition had become nearly synonymous with constriction, when people were forbidden the pleasures as well as the limitations of even sexual stereotype? And how would I ever persuade my daughter that we needed to share something in the way of custom, when it was often more than she could bear to share a two-bedroom apartment with me?

  The next day I broached this question to Leon, who sympathized over my difficulties with Livvy but was unwilling to turn his mind for a moment to the matter of custom. For my benefit, he ran through a typical day, then week, in his life, beginning with six A.M., when he woke to the alarm, going on to the time he was expected at his hospital office, which times he was due at the clinic, when his kids expected him home, and so on. He said that if there were one more job, obligation, ritual—whatever you wanted to call it—to think about, he might go out of his mind. Furthermore, Leon said, I had no reason to assume my grandmother was peaceful because she was traditional; she might have followed tradition because she was peaceful and unadventurous.

  I could not, of course, demand anything of him in this regard. It wasn’t as though we were married. Or he had any ties to Livvy. Or our own relationship was growing more complex in any way.

  I consulted my parents, who thought a family conference might be useful. We debated whether they should tell Livvy there were matters we needed to talk about, or simply invite us to dinner, but it turned out not to matter. When I told her my parents wanted us to come up one Friday evening, they’d hardly seen us since the summer, she informed me that she’d found a job for Friday and Saturday nights, she was almost through her summer money. Her allowance barely covered lunches and phone bills were astronomical. I was floored. Aside from any other issue, she wasn’t yet sixteen years old. When I asked what kind of job she’d been hired for, she said she was going to be a waitress at Moffetta’s Restaurant, on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. She would be paid off the books.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  She didn’t explode, as she would have if she hadn’t known I could stop her.

  I asked how this was going to affect her homework, and she said that if her schoolwork was affected, she would quit.

  I asked how she would get home at night.

  She said, “Mr. Moffetta’s son is going to bring me. Tony. He has three cabs and he promised to drive me or put me in one of the cabs.”

  “My goodness!” I said. “They must like you a great deal.”

  “His daughter doesn’t speak Italian.”

  “I see. And how old is Tony Moffetta?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” She was dripping sarcasm. “He has three children.”

  And doubtless a wife, which of course made him safe. As safe as Angelo. Olivia was a sexy, full-bosomed, good-looking girl I’d have assumed was becoming more attractive to males even had I not overheard any conversations that were probably with same. She’d regained some of her lost weight, then gone down again and up again in a pattern I assumed was more about America than any eating disorder. At least I’d seen no sign of the latter.

  “Do they know how old you are?”

  She hesitated.

  “You probably told them you were sixteen.”

  A reluctant nod.

  “I don’t know that that’s so important,” I told her. “I worked off the books when I was in school. It’s not my idea of a serious issue.”

  “They’ll pay me twenty dollars a night and I’ll make fifty or more in tips.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Not only could she make endless phone calls, but she’d be able to buy various items central to life, like Justin boots and audio component parts, for which she’d otherwise have to wait until her birthday.

  “Well, then, I guess . . . I’m going to have to check them out, and then—”

  “You don’t think you’re going over there! “she shouted.

  It hadn’t actually occurred to me, but it was the simplest way.

  “That’s exactly what I think,” I told her. “Furthermore, any Italian father will find it quite natural that a mother wants to check out her daughter’s employer. Even if she’s sixteen years old.”

  “You sound as though every Italian’s the same,” she flashed out. “You wouldn’t think that if you were a real Italian instead of a fake one.”

  I smiled. “Touché. I guess any group’s more varied from the inside. The Jews certainly are. That’s what I am actually. A real Jew who likes Italy and Italian food. Not a fake Italian.”

  She turned away, paced for a moment, came back to face me.

  “We’ll eat there. Mr. Moffetta’s usually at the register. We’ll go on a Sunday or Monday. When it’s slow. I’ll introduce you to him . . . You’ll probably have to pay. Can I go now?”

  “Okay,” I said. “Except, I’d just like to know how you heard about the job. It wasn’t advertised, was it?”

  She hesitated, decided that even i
f the question was absurd, she’d best answer it.

  “Billy Moffetta, the other son, he has a salumeria on Bleecker Street. I go there sometimes with my friends.”

  I probably knew the place; there weren’t so many. Anyway, this was the first I’d heard of her going to the Village since I’d tried to interest her in it during the weeks after her arrival.

  “Oh? And you started talking?”

  My questions were so incredibly stupid that she grew calm, as though she were talking to a child.

  “Usually they know people who come into the store who pronounce everything right. Billy didn’t know me, so he asked where I was from.”

  “And he told you about the job.”

  She shook her head. “That was last year, when I first went down there. We talk whenever I go with my friends to get a sandwich. He knew I was looking for a job. Now can I go do my homework?”

  I nodded. I was thinking that her abandonment of everything Italian had been less thorough than it seemed. And indeed, as she started toward her room, she turned back to me.

  “When we go, please speak Italian. I told them we mostly speak it at home. They think . . . They don’t know . . . you’re . . . American.”

  Ralph Moffetta was a tall, sad-eyed gentleman who told Livvy that now that he saw how her mother watched out for her, he understood why she was such a good girl. He joined us briefly for an espresso, promised me that one of his sons would drive her home or put her in one of Tony’s cabs. Whoever drove would make sure she was in the house with the door locked behind her. It would never be later than eleven.

  He said, “My girls don’t want to speak Italian or work in my restaurant.”

  I smiled back. “Livvy was lucky to find you.”

  “My mother calls me Livvy sometimes,” my daughter said with the sweet smile I’d seen frequently since we entered Moffetta’s. “I don’t know if I told you, she was born here.”

  On an evening not long after that, while I was teaching, a male voice called on my phone. He said he was Pablo, he’d been trying Olivia’s number for almost an hour, and he had to leave work now. Would I be so kind as to tell her he needed to talk to her? I went to her door and told her to call Pablo, then returned to my class, certain that it wasn’t a boy’s voice, but a man’s, that I’d heard.

  Later, I told her I hoped she’d feel free to have her boyfriend, if Pablo was that, come to the apartment.

  She said he wasn’t her boyfriend, just a friend, so I shouldn’t worry about it.

  I asked if Pablo went to her school. She said no and waited to see if I was going to push it.

  I said he sounded a little older, like a man, not a boy.

  She said he was twenty. (He was twenty-seven.) I asked where she’d met him. After a struggle with herself, she decided to tell me. He was a friend of the guy who’d installed her phone, who’d taken her to a party where she’d met Pablo.

  “Oh? When was that?” I asked, hoping I could pass for casual.

  I couldn’t.

  “What do you mean, when}” she asked. “What night of the week? It was a Saturday night, right after the phone was installed.” She smiled nastily. “You were upstairs.”

  I nodded. “With Leon.” I wasn’t going to get aced on this one. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me about that?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’ve known Leon for a couple of years, and I began sleeping with him this past September.”

  Unless I was mistaken, her lip was curling in disdain. It seemed like a good idea to continue.

  “I’m thirty-five years old, divorced, delighted to have a nice lover, and I use a diaphragm all the time to make sure I won’t get pregnant. I hope that when the time comes when you go to bed with someone, you’ll protect yourself with—”

  “You don’t think . . .” She appeared to be genuinely shocked, but recovered sufficiently to retrieve disdain. “I’m a Catholic. We don’t believe in sex when we’re not married.”

  I shrugged. “A lot of people get pregnant who don’t believe in it.”

  She said, lofty again, “Pablo’s a Catholic. I go to church with him.”

  “Oh?” I asked, not even meaning to catch her, but just trying to let the conversation move where she wanted it to. “Which church is that?”

  She couldn’t answer, struggled for a moment, finally said she didn’t know what difference it should make to me. She was poised for flight again.

  “Look, Livvy. Olivia. I’m out of the house more than I used to be, and even if I were here, it wouldn’t mean . . . All I’m trying to tell you . . . For now, let’s just say, a young girl who wants to go to Harvard shouldn’t do anything to complicate her life.”

  I’d done it. Harvard, the promised land you got to go to if you were good enough, might make her protect herself as I could not.

  I asked what Pablo’s last name was.

  Another struggle before she said, “Cruz.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Is he Puerto Rican?”

  “He’s an American.”

  “Puerto Ricans are Americans,” I pointed out.

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “I guess I was trying to get some kind of handle on him. I mean, I hope I’ll meet him sometime soon, if he’s just a friend, but meanwhile . . .”

  “He was born and raised in New York City.”

  I smiled. “So was I. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a Jew.” It wasn’t a precise parallel, but maybe she wouldn’t notice. She grew more alert.

  “Where does he work?” I asked quickly.

  She struggled with herself for a while, finally practically gagged on, “For the phone company, too.” She paused, finally spat out, “And he’s not married.”

  “Oh? Does it disturb you that Leon’s married? His wife has lived in California for seven years. But it’s true, technically, he’s married. On the other hand, you might not think it was a real wedding, since his wife’s family are all Protestants, and he’s a Jew.”

  Her head snapped up. There was no question that she was startled.

  “You didn’t know he was Jewish?”

  She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t get it out.

  “It’s funny, a lot of people who don’t like the Jews don’t exactly know who they are. Anyway, that’s not what we need to talk about now. I just wanted you to know . . . that if the time comes when you need advice about making sure you don’t get pregnant, or have any of the other complications, diseases that people get these days, I’ll be happy to help.”

  Maybe under other circumstances, she could have resisted, but not now. She smiled at me, sardonic if not triumphant as she got up to go to her room.

  “I don’t really need that kind of advice. Maybe you should talk to a couple of the Jewish girls at school. They’re the ones who’re the whores.”

  But the impression that I had something to worry about was reinforced when I met Pablo, a nice-looking, shy but well-spoken, clearly hetero and distinctly sexual man, who appeared to be crazy about my daughter. If he was restraining himself for any or many reasons, or if Livvy was holding him back from sex, I couldn’t believe such restraint would last. At some point, preferably before she went to bed with him (or with anyone, for that matter), I was going to have to figure out how a Jewish whore who believed in contraception could talk to her snotty Roman Catholic kid about the necessity to use it. Leon had said that the women who came to the hospital who were more or less Roman Catholic had often turned out to be more when it came to contraception, less when it came to admitting it. Pressed, they would say that their husbands didn’t like it.

  Leon agreed that I had to impress upon Livvy the need for condoms if she had sex. Aside from AIDS, there was still pregnancy to worry about. She was a teenager. Teenagers were all impossible. The Jewish stuff, too, he shrugged off.

  “So maybe she’s a little anti-Semitic. Who’m I to be critical? I was more than a little. You think it was an accident that my first wife was a WASP?”

/>   “So what are you saying, Leon? Did you know you were anti-Semitic? Or did you just think you went for WASP types?”

  “Female WASPs. Males, it didn’t matter.” He laughed. “I didn’t know what was good, I just knew what I liked.”

  “Maybe it’s still what you like.” I was getting more and more upset.

  He didn’t notice, shook his head playfully. “I was converted by my first matzo ball.”

  I was not amused.

  “Well,” he said, “I was converted by something. First of all, I didn’t do so well with my fancy Gentile, did I. Then . . . being around the hospital, you sort of lose your sense of—Jesus, I don’t know how the hell you’ve managed to put me on the defensive. You didn’t exactly marry a Yeshivah bocher.”

  “But it was an accident, in a way. I mean, I don’t think I would’ve married him if I weren’t pregnant.”

  “Did you date Jewish guys?”

  I nodded. “Both.”

  “You could’ve had an abortion.”

  “But I didn’t want an abortion, I wanted a baby.”

  “Ah, yes. I see them bringing in their kids all the time. Women who wanted babies but had no idea of what it meant to take care of them.”

  “But I did want to take care of her.” I was angrier than I’d been with him since I’d osmosed into love. “I loved the whole idea of taking care of her. Hugging her. Kissing her.”

  He nodded. “The idea and the reality are different. The reality is it can be pleasant having a baby if you’re a sane person with full-time help.”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying.” I was on the verge of tears. “I never needed full-time help. I just needed to have someone there, especially when Angelo was away. At first I didn’t even need someone there, I needed to feel there was someone around who cared about me. Anyway, I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”

  He knew. He said that he hadn’t been in love with Christina but he’d been ready to settle down. Sooner or later he might have thought about marrying her if he hadn’t been certain that sooner or later she’d want children. He’d seen it happen over and over with men who already had kids and women who didn’t. He needed me to know, before we went much further, that he’d finished being the father of babies.