The One-Star Jew: Stories

by Evanier, David

  “I asked him, ‘What does she give you?’ Rupert replied, smiling, ‘Oh, women don’t give you anything!’ Then he hitched his jacket up and said ‘Look!’ He proudly showed me the patches on both knees of his pants.

  “His other girl friend—the eighty-three-year-old one with one eye—saw him with the girl with the black teeth. The next time he saw her, he told me, she punched him in the stomach so hard she knocked his breath out. He tells me this with a smile, Bruce, and a giggle!

  “The other night he went into a bar and just began playing the piano. He told me that after a while the bartender put a mug on the piano. At the end of the evening he looked up and there was three dollars in it.”

  My father paused. “His wife would get drunk every night and beat him, and he still loved her. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “My mother slapped and hit me,” I said.

  My father stopped smiling. “There’s no comparison.”

  III

  After a while, my father said, “When I was a boy, Bruce, every time I saw a girl I liked, I died a thousand deaths. I always had a dark complexion. I like clean girls. Like mommy. Clean white skin. She was as cute as a button when I met her.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. I was afraid of everything, Bruce. I was afraid of my father, I was scared to let him know I was in the house. I was ashamed of my clothes with girls. And I didn’t know how to dance. If I liked the girl, I would be so confused I would forget the step.

  “That’s why when your mother liked me, I was in seventh heaven. I had nothing. So many fears, and I had to be Jewish too. They weren’t hiring Jews so fast in those days. I met mommy when I was already thirty-two. She was only twenty-one. She was so small and pretty, and not like the other girls. She wasn’t fast, cheap. She never used foul language. She was shy with people. She would hold onto my hand. I felt like a million bucks. She told me I was the handsomest man in the world.” He laughed. “And boy, was I ugly! She had to be in love with me to think I was handsome.

  “I look around me today, Bruce, and I still think, after all these years, mommy is the prettiest girl. And she loved you, Bruce—”

  “She called me ‘it’—”

  “She wasn’t cheap like other women—”

  “She called me a moron and an idiot—”

  “She even got upset when I used to make up the adventures of Moishe Pippick for you when you were a little boy! Do you know what pippick means, Bruce?”

  “Belly button.”

  “Mommy didn’t like me to use that word—she said it was dirty.” My father laughed softly.

  IV

  My father watched the Friday ads in the New York Post for singles dances and shaped his weekend around them. Being handsome and a fine dresser, he was frequently invited by mail, but otherwise he went to a dance advertised in the Post and paid $3.50. He usually went with his friend, Louie, a dentist.

  He did not need to go to them—many women sought him out—but he preferred the freedom, ever since his affair with Lillian. During the period my father was seeing Lillian, he lost twelve pounds and looked gaunt. He could not eat. “Men sit on her staircase on their lunch hours,” he had told me, “eating their lunch out of paper bags and waiting for her. She has eighteen bikinis.”

  Now he stayed free. He didn’t even like the idea of the bookshelves crammed with my old books at his apartment: “I feel like I’m married—I can’t move!” he said.

  “This Chinese girl in the brokerage office keeps bothering me, Bruce. She’s not too attractive and I think she’s marked lousy—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s a girl who doesn’t get invited to these dances, so she has to look at the ads in the Post and pay to get in.

  “She asked me for my phone number and she keeps calling me. ‘I want you to hold me in your arms …’ she says. ‘I’m going to quit my job. I can’t stand this anymore, seeing you every day. I’m ashamed of myself.’ Then one afternoon I went to the office and I said hello to her. ‘Get lost,’ she says. I figure, well, maybe she doesn’t know the English that well. ‘Get lost?’ I say to her. I laughed. ‘You’ve been chasing me!’

  “I wanted to make her feel better, so I took a photograph to the office, of myself and this beautiful blonde at a swimming pool. I wanted to show it to her to explain why I couldn’t possibly be interested in her. She refused to look at it.

  “When I go into the office, she grabs my hand. And she keeps calling me. Then yesterday she grabbed me behind the coatrack and said ‘Please kiss me. Please.’ What an iron grip she has.”

  My father cut his piece of cake in half, wrapped the second half in a napkin and put it in his pocket. He saved it for dessert later in the evening at home. He was embarrassed about it. “I’m afraid that if I die, they’ll find me with a piece of cake in my pocket,” he said, laughing.

  “We went up to the Concord for the weekend, Louie and me. There was a get-together party, and for some reason, I don’t know why, Louie really got mad at a guy there named Sid. He said, ‘I just hate that guy!’ There was a fellow standing with us, Larry, who I give rides to, and he said to Louie: ‘You hate him? I hate him too. You see that girl he’s with? I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to fuck her for you.’”

  “Why would that be a favor to Louie?” I asked.

  “You ask me questions I can’t answer, Bruce. That’s what he said. Anyway, last night I got a phone call. It was from Larry. He said, ‘Don’t tell Louie. But I fucked that chick for him.’”

  I shook my head. “Why shouldn’t you tell Louie? I thought Larry was doing him a favor—”

  “I agree with you, Bruce. But the moral I get from this is … everybody uses people. Larry uses me for rides to dances, and then lies to me.”

  “How does he lie to you?”

  “He must be lying, or he wouldn’t mind if I told Louie!”

  V

  Later in the year, my father told me more about Larry. During the rides that my father gave to him, Larry talked angrily about Bill Harris, who went to the same dances and socials. Occasionally my father would also give Bill Harris a ride up to the Concord or Grossinger’s. Shortly after Larry had exploded for the third or fourth time about Bill, my father was riding in his car with Bill when he suddenly perked up his ears. Bill Harris was saying, “Larry’s a user. I’m going to destroy him.”

  The next time he was going up to the Concord, my father took Larry along in the car. Within five minutes Larry was going into fits of rage about Bill Harris. Larry suddenly asked my father if he would introduce him to my father’s friend Otto Blickstein, a lawyer. When they got back to Manhattan, my father took Larry to the Governor Cafeteria, to meet Otto Blickstein. Otto sat alone at a table, brooding. He was married to a younger woman, in her fifties. Otto had told my father he entered into his second marriage with the philosophy that ninety-seven percent of all marriages were unhappy, and so you had to work that much harder to make the marriage work, and do all the things that you really didn’t want to be doing. This made your marriage happy and enlarged you as a person, he said.

  Larry shook Otto’s hand earnestly and said, “Counselor, I need your advice. I need a weapon.” Otto asked why. “Counselor, my life is in danger from this big bruising hulk of a man who is threatening me at dances. He jabs me with his elbow. He takes my Jell-O.”

  Curious, my father interjected, “Who is that?”

  Larry replied, “Bill Harris.”

  Otto explained to Larry that he needed proof, such as an actual physical attack. Larry said to Otto that Bill was needling and bugging him at singles dances, and that he was frightened.

  At the next singles dance, my father took Bill Harris aside. He told him to lay off Larry and not bother him. Bill said to my father, “Larry? I’m scared of that guy. I’m not kidding. I’m afraid he’s going to stick a knife in me.”

  Then there was the unnamed man at a dance who baffled my father, and made him fume. My father was with a girl named Sylvia who had a
trick knee. The unidentified man came over to my father’s table and asked Sylvia to dance. He kept Sylvia with him the rest of the evening. The next morning, my father, angry, saw him and said that he had some nerve the night before, taking Sylvia away like that.

  “What? I wasn’t interested in her, pal. There was this other guy with a girl I liked. I thought this other guy might like Sylvia and I could get a shot at the other chick.” The man glared at my father. “What are you so huffy about? It had nothing to do with you,” he said, and walked away.

  VI

  These are some of the stories my father told me on those afternoons at the Governor, watching my face to see if he had made me smile—much like the first time he agreed to eat a hamburger. It was at the Bun ‘n’ Burger last year. He laughed with gladness at my reaction.

  “What’s so funny?” I had said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he had said. “I like your enthusiasm.”

  Food had been a source of friction between us for years: his fear of my chili-eating, my hamburgers, my consumption of spice.

  “You’re a man, Bruce,” he said. “You’re thirty-three years old. You’ve made me so proud of you. If you would only ease up on the pepper and salt, I’d be the happiest man in the world.”

  Our talks always moved back to his childhood, my childhood, and my mother. When I walked down the street to meet him at the Governor, he still hid behind a storefront or a telephone pole and suddenly appeared, grinning, realizing it was the same thing he had done when I was a child.

  “That puppet!” he suddenly said one evening. “When you were in the eighth grade, I looked for a puppet for you for months. Bruce, when you went away to boarding school, you came home on weekends carrying a shirt on a hanger. What was the shirt with the hanger for? Do you remember, Bruce?”

  I showed him my passport picture. “You look like a grown man there!”

  He paused. “When I was a kid, Bruce, my father gave me a penny every Tuesday. You remember him, Bruce. Everyone said he had such a good sense of humor, but I never saw it. All I remember is that on cold winter nights he made me hold candles for him in the basement”—as he spoke, my father’s hand went up in the air as if he were holding the candle, and then it came down again—“and if I said I was cold, he beat me with a poker. He gave me nothing. Nothing. I’m amazed I function as well as I do. I never had any decent clothes. I couldn’t retain anything in school. I kept thinking about my problems. Singing! I couldn’t keep a tune. Woodwork—I’d die a thousand deaths. My father wouldn’t let me do anything. I wanted to play the saxophone, and he said no. I pleaded with him. He said, ‘Let the rabbi decide.’ The rabbi came to the house. I think my father gave him a couple of dollars. The rabbi said no, that it would be bad for my lungs.

  “I worked as a waiter for the summer and gave him my salary. He said unless I gave him the tips as well, he wouldn’t let me go to high school! I didn’t, and I didn’t get to go.

  “Then when I met Jake, with his Stutz Bearcat—Jake’s friendship gave me the confidence to go out looking for a job. When we met, it was like two girls. Jake is so sick now, Bruce.

  “My father’s English wasn’t good. I heard him say on the phone about himself to his tenants that he was coming over to collect the rent and that they should look for the man with the bird. He meant beard. I remember listening and thinking, ‘What can he mean, the man with the bird?’”

  VII

  The workshop had finally gotten around to considering my Sinatra story. Waiting for their reactions, I could not raise my head. They all knew I was a published writer and had taught creative writing.

  The instructor, one year older than I, was bemused. “Not too bad, really.”

  They were all amazed at the innocence of the idea of a serious young writer traveling to Hollywood and getting in to see Sinatra at his mansion.

  Having dreamt the scene over and over before I wrote it, I did not see what was so funny. I perspired, my hands trembled, I almost fell backwards with my chair.

  Alfie, a fellow my age who lived with his roommate and mother in Bayside, said, peering at me over his glasses, “I think the persona should come on out of the closet; that would clear up the déjà vu.”

  “How do you know he’s in the closet?” I piped.

  A significant pause from Alfie. “Oh, come on.”

  The instructor said, “Of course, these things do sometimes happen in life. The star looking upon the young man as fresh sex, taking him under his wing, a pleasant diversion. I’d like to see if he seduces him—”

  “Oh, never, never!” called out Alfie.

  “That’s not what I intended,” I said, but they did not hear me.

  Not wanting to go home yet, I tagged along when they adjourned for a coffee klatch at the Blimpie Base. I had raised their spirits. They chirped around me. Alfie took pity and sat next to me, pressing his leg against mine. “I’ve heard worse. Much worse,” he said. He paused. “And better, too.” Alfie placed his cigarette in its holder and blew.

  VIII

  My father and I talked easily now about things that once had ignited my embarrassment. He reminded me of how I had cried at Al Jolson’s death, and I chimed in with the date: October 24, 1950. He talked about taking me to the Palace every week when they revived vaudeville in 1948, and about how much I had wanted to be a singer and a comic.

  “You were so outgoing, so lively in those days, Bruce. What happened?”

  I did not answer him.

  “You corresponded with so many of those stars, you called them up on the phone. Dorothy Loudon is a big star now, Bruce. Remember when she was a newcomer on ‘The Big Time’ radio program with Georgie Price? You wrote her a fan letter and she sent you a picture inscribed ‘to my first fan.’ Then you called her on the phone. I don’t think I ever told you this. Eight years later she was appearing at a night club. She was walking down the aisle and I said from my table, ‘I’m Bruce Orav’s father.’ She screamed. She sat down at my table and we had a drink.”

  Then he said, “There are things I can tell you now, Bruce … after mommy and I were separated, we decided to try again after a while. But I rented a room at the Paris Hotel for six dollars a week just to get away to when I was upset … and in case things didn’t go right … A friend of mine, Hal Saperstein, offered to share the cost of the room. He would use it on certain days and I would use it on others. Then I came in one day and he was there—with a woman! I was so mad I didn’t speak to him for months. I assumed he wanted the room for the same reason I did: I never dreamed he wanted to play around. I never cheated on mommy.”

  IX

  My father came to visit me, my wife, and my stepson Danny on a Saturday. It was his birthday. He would not eat and he always felt he was imposing when he visited people’s homes, so it was a victory to get him into the apartment.

  He was upset about his best friend, Jake, who was very sick and lying in the hospital, near death.

  We mentioned the news story about Mama Cass choking on a ham sandwich and dying in a London hotel room.

  “I thought the story was anti-Semitic,” my father said.

  “But she did die that way,” I said.

  “It’s still anti-Semitic.”

  “You know,” he said, “you’re half my age now, Bruce. We’ve come a long way together. I’ve told you about Rupert Pike. Well, sometimes at the office I’ll use his stapler, to staple some papers. Yesterday he suddenly said he was going to do me a favor. He said he had bought his stapler for five dollars, but would sell it to me for three. I said I didn’t need one. Boy did he get angry!

  “He just needed the three dollars, and I guess in his mind he had it all worked out beforehand. I said why are you so angry, and he said he needed the money to get by. So I just gave him two dollars.”

  “Did you take the stapler?”

  “Oh no. I just let him have the money.”

  The cat came into the room and my father looked at it. “Does she real
ly recognize you when you come home?” he asked.

  We said she did.

  “I had mice in my apartment. I came to like them, though. I bought a little mousetrap, and some cheese, and set traps for them. When I came home, if a mouse wasn’t there, I’d miss him. Like fishing. It’s creative—you should understand, Bruce, it’s like writing.”

  We all went on the Staten Island Ferry, and sat outside, looking at Manhattan and the water and feeling the spray on our faces. My father held Danny’s hand, and I sat listening.

  “Did you ever realize, Danny, how amazing it is: we all have a nose, two eyes, and ears, and yet everyone looks different. Look at all those faces.” They gazed at the people passing by them as they came onto the ferry. “How can that be? Of course, it has to be that way, otherwise it would be so confusing, trying to tell each other apart. It just goes to show, though, there must be someone up there … And voices! We all have different voices. It’s so amazing. Look at those faces …”

  X

  I had lunch with my father Rosh Hashanah eve at the Governor. Jake had died a month before. My father was preparing to go to services sponsored by a singles group in Great Neck. He was miffed; the ad had said the services would be held in a synagogue. Now “spillover” was causing the services to be moved to a church.

  “I was thinking of Jake today, Bruce. He’s been gone a month now, may he rest in peace. I never told you this before, Bruce, but I can tell you now. After separating from mommy, I hadn’t slept with a girl in six years. Jake was worried about me. He said you had to exercise it or you would never be able to use it again. So he got two prostitutes when his wife was away. We went to his house in Forest Hills. He went running up the stairs, this fat little guy, closing all the window shades in the house so the neighbors couldn’t see. Although they saw us arrive anyway. And he said he was doing it for me! But he brought along one for himself anyway. You remember him, Bruce … this fat little guy on his short legs running up the stairs. Afterwards he asked my girl if I had done all right …”