Later on he wondered what would have happened if Esther had been more forthcoming. He wasn’t expecting her to go all the way, but if she’d at least given him maybe a hand job once in a while, in the darkness of Fletcher’s Field at night, away from the lights of the street, the touch of a hand that wasn’t his own to take the edge off. Wasn’t he responsible, working the way he did to help support his family? Day in, day out, seven days a week—didn’t that entitle him to more than necking and a feel outside the bra? But always she refused. “When we’re married,” she’d say, “you get the whole package. Until then, only the wrapping.”
In the factory there were girls who flirted with him. French-Canadians who packed dresses under his direction, who wore light cotton dresses in summer and called him Ar-tie, laughing at the French he tried to speak, correcting his pronunciation so he sounded more like them. One girl named Francine—he was sure she’d go to bed with him if he asked her out. Sometimes when they worked side by side he’d smell a musky odour coming off her body and he’d get an erection and have to lean against the shipping table to hide it. She had jet-black hair, shiny and straight, and a round, pleasant face. Lousy teeth but that was par for the course with the Frenchies back then. A little bit plumper than he liked but if she were naked underneath him, God, he’d take that extra flesh, take it in his mouth and—and—Jesus, he had to stop thinking about it. Sometimes had to disappear into the dingy little bathroom at the back and masturbate as fast as he could.
If he and Esther didn’t set a wedding date soon, he thought his head or his body would explode, maybe both in quick succession. So on a Friday night in July, at her parents’ dinner table, all the windows open to get a cross-breeze going in the heat, the white lace curtains hanging limp, not moving an inch, he spoke to her father, laid out his financial situation, and it was agreed they would get married the following April. Not the 20th because that was Hitler’s birthday and who wanted that as an anniversary, but the 27th, at the Chevra Kadisha synagogue. Nine months to go. He had waited this long, what was nine months more?
Nothing. A blink of an eye in the long run. But a week later, Francine called him aside to say one of the other girls was quitting, moving back to Lac-St.-Jean to care for her father, an asbestos miner who had some kind of lung cancer. Was it possible, Francine asked, that her own sister Micheline could take her place? She was eighteen and a hard worker, Francine said. A high school graduate who was good with numbers and writing, who’d even make a good secretary once she improved her English. Artie said it wasn’t up to him, he’d have to speak to Mr. Schiff. Couldn’t he just say hello to her, Francine asked. She was right outside. Just a quick word and he would see what a good prospect she was, someone he could recommend to the boss. So Artie said okay, just for a minute because they had a big order to get out to Eaton’s, and the truck was already at the loading dock and you never wanted to be late for Eaton’s because they might refuse the order, and then their buyers wouldn’t take your calls anymore.
One minute, he told her. No more. Francine thanked him and went out to the loading dock and came back in, leading her sister by the hand.
Micheline had the same dark hair as her sister, shiny like the mane of a coal-black horse. But her eyes were blue, her cheekbones high, and when she smiled her cheeks dimpled, and her teeth were white and straight. The dress she wore was a vivid flower print, sleeveless with a V-neck. Nothing plunging or untoward, just low enough to reveal a fine gold chain with a small cross that hung above her breasts. Her legs were bare and her feet visible through white sandals that looked like wicker. She held out her hand and Artie shook it. He smelled something light and floral, what he imagined rosewater would smell like. He felt his heart beat faster. He knew he should say something but couldn’t think what that should be or what language it should be in. The floor might just as well have opened like a trap door and sent him plunging to the basement. Or somewhere farther down.
“Wait here,” he said. He turned and walked out the door that led to the front office and showroom and told Mr. Schiff a girl was quitting but he had found a fitting replacement.
Micheline proved to be as good a worker as Francine suggested. She was prompt, polite and precise. A little shy, compared to her older sister, never one to make jokes, but when she laughed, Artie laughed too, even if he didn’t get the joke. He started shifting his work in ways that brought him closer to her. He’d ask her to help him prepare orders so they could stand side by side at a table, lost in the light scent of roses. To put her hand on the seam of the box as he wet the thick, fibrous tape they used to seal it. To come down to the basement to help load bolts of cloth into the freight elevator to take up to the cutters.
He asked everything but what he really wanted to ask, which was whether she’d go out with him sometime. He couldn’t; he was engaged, for God’s sake. And she probably had a boyfriend. How could she not, as pretty as she was? He thought of roundabout ways he could find out, like asking her what she was doing on the weekend, seeing if she said, “My boyfriend and me, we’re going to the movies …” Francine always talked about her boyfriend, Vincent, and the dances they went to, the movies they’d seen.
But he never asked Micheline and she never volunteered.
About three weeks after Micheline was hired, on a sweltering Sunday night in August at Hammerman’s soda shop, so hot behind the counter that Artie had to keep putting Johnson’s baby powder on his forehead and forearms so sweat wouldn’t run into the drinks he was mixing, the bell rang over the door and three girls came giggling in, speaking French. You didn’t hear much French on Park Avenue in those days. That’s where the Jewish kids hung out, walking along holding hands, driving their father’s cars—those few whose fathers had cars—up and down, back and forth, calling out to friends or groups of girls on the sidewalk.
When Artie looked up and saw Micheline with two friends, his heart fluttered, then quickly sank. Seeing her outside the factory was something he had thought about constantly, but not like this; not with powder on his arms and face like a clown, serving cones and squirting coloured syrup into glasses. He’d wanted her to see him dressed in his best poplin jacket, striding up the avenue, ordering in a restaurant.
Damn it. Damn it damn it damn it.
So pretty, so light on her feet. He made himself smile and say “Bonsoir” to her and her friends, and she gave him a beautiful smile in return, a real hummer, and said, “Ar-tie,” the way her sister did, with the accent on the second syllable. “How many jobs you have?”
He took their orders, scooped ice cream into their cones—she ordered strawberry, of course she did, and he bet her lips tasted like strawberries the rest of the night. Maybe always. He was glad they went to sit at one of the rickety white tables outside because the sweat was running freely and he had to powder up again.
The next morning he wasn’t sure what he should say to her about it. Maybe nothing. Maybe avoid her completely. But she spoke first, saying he was lucky to work at an ice cream shop where he could probably have all he wanted. “Me, I love ice cream,” she said. “I would have one every night if I could.”
“Always strawberry?” he said.
She smiled and said, “Ben, non. I would have a different one each time. Strawberry one night, chocolate the next. Then vanilla, pistachio—what else you have at that place?”
He stammered out the complete list of flavours, watching her eyes sparkle with each new one. And couldn’t help himself, didn’t want to stop himself, and said, “Come next Sunday night and I’ll make you something special. A triple scoop with strawberry, chocolate and vanilla.”
“Non!”
“Yes.”
“Oh, mon Dieu, that sounds great. I’m gonna do that. I’m gonna see you there next Sunday.”
The week dragged by. There were orders to fill, the fall lineup going out to the stores, wool dresses and skirt-jacket combos much heavier than what the girls were wearing now in the summer heat. Micheline almost always wore s
omething light and sleeveless. Micheline. What do you look like naked, he wondered. What do you smell like when a man holds you in his arms and breathes in the tang of your sweat, the musk of your—oh, God, he had to stop himself and march off to the washroom, splash cold water on his face. And quickly touch himself.
On Friday night he had dinner with Esther and her parents and they took a walk after, the two of them, and necked awhile in Fletcher’s Field. For the first time in months he didn’t try to feel her up. And the kissing grew tiresome after a while. Too much spittle passing between them, pooling in the corners of his mouth. He walked her home to Jeanne-Mance after half an hour, saying he was tired and needed sleep before going into the factory for the eight-to-noon shift.
“My parents don’t like that you work Saturdays,” Esther said.
“Mine neither.”
“Once we’re married, I hope you won’t have to. It would be nice to go to synagogue together. Especially once we have children. That’s how you meet other families,” she said. “The kind we want to be friends with.”
That Saturday morning, after his half-day selling goods for cash, Irving Schiff paid him eight dollars, as always, and Artie gave his mother seven.
“Not eight?” she asked.
“I need one,” he said. “To buy something for Esther.” But it wasn’t for Esther. It was to buy ice cream for Micheline and maybe something else.
Sunday wasn’t as hot as the week before so he didn’t need the baby powder. He just worked his shift, pocketing the odd penny tip he got, keeping his eye on the door, looking up every time the bell chimed.
“Watch it, sport,” one customer said. “You almost got black cherry on my shirt.”
By eight-thirty, he started to wonder if she would come. At quarter to nine, he decided she wouldn’t. Why the hell would she? He was English, Jewish, not bad-looking but no Cary Grant. Working in a factory and a soda fountain. If she was ever going to take a second look at a Jew, wouldn’t it make sense to go for a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant? Even the salesmen at Dominion Dress made good money and drove nice cars. They wore suits and ties and some of them had pinkie rings that sparkled, maybe with real diamonds.
Not a minute later he heard the doorbell chime and she walked in alone, in a peach coloured dress, her gold cross shining against her flawless skin. She sat at the counter right in front of him and said, “You have something for me?”
Willy Hammerman, the owner of the shop, let him leave early that night. While Micheline had her three-scoop cone, he washed up, put on the fresh white shirt he had brought with him just in case, sucked on a mint and combed his hair, and by nine-fifteen they were walking together east on Villeneuve toward the Main. Away from Park Avenue, where someone might see him and say to Esther, “Who was that Artie was walking with last night? The shiksa with the cross around her neck?”
They kept going past the Main to St-Denis, then along Gilford, a quiet street, with small two-storey flats crowding close to the sidewalk. As the sky darkened behind them, they spoke to each other in English, because Micheline wanted hers to improve. “Tell me when I make errors,” she said. “I’m not going to stay a shipper, you know. I can type good and I am learning about bookkeeping too.”
Should he tell her that “type good” wasn’t correct, that she should say “type well” instead? No. Nothing she said tonight could be wrong, not when she was walking at his side.
He walked her all the way home to a cold-water flat not unlike his, on Rue Chabot, not far from Delorimier Stadium where the Dodgers’ top farm team, the Montreal Royals, played. She said thank you for the ice cream and he said, “De rien.”
“English only, please,” she said. “Okay, Ar-tie?”
“Okay.”
The first kiss came three days later. It came because it had to, because he couldn’t stand it anymore. They were in the basement together, hauling out bolts of light blue wool—one of this year’s big colours, something a woman could match with a white blouse, or cream or navy—and his blood was pounding through his veins, rushing like the St. Lawrence River in spring. He looked at her hand first, pale against the cloth, and he put his hand over it. She turned and looked at him and he knew it was going to happen and when it did the sweetness of it almost made him fall over. Their lips met, her teeth parted, her tongue slipped out and their bodies pressed together. His erection sprang up almost immediately and he pulled away from her but she moved with him. His back was against the wall then, he had nowhere else to go, and their bodies pressed so close, so completely, that all he could do was whisper her name into her ear and breathe in her scent like he’d dreamed of doing and it was as warm and rich and beguiling as he’d imagined.
That’s as far as it went that day. They broke off the kiss and she smiled and put her hand on his cheek and then they brought the cloth up in the freight elevator. He was sure everyone in the shipping room could see right through him. “I kissed Micheline Mercier” might as well have been stamped on his forehead. And his heart.
Esther could have been in China for all he thought of her. Yes, he had dinner there on Friday, he had to, but on Saturday night, instead of taking Esther to see All About Eve as he had promised, he begged off sick.
“But it has Bette Davis,” she complained.
“Next week, okay? I promise. It’s just I don’t feel so good.”
That night, he took Micheline to a place called Rockhead’s Paradise, where they saw a young pianist named Oscar Peterson, along with a bass player, drummer and saxophonist. Abie had told him about Peterson—“A genius, Artie, I swear to God, the Mozart of our time”—and they walked out of there so feverish, so electric, that they were wrapped in each other’s arms the minute they hit the sidewalk.
One week later, on Friday night, after dinner at Esther’s but no trip to Fletcher’s Field, Artie Moscoe lost his virginity to Micheline. They did it in the showroom of Dominion Dress, on the couch where Irving Schiff sat with buyers as his salesmen showed samples of the new lines, the couch covered with a sheet Artie had brought from home. Artie had let them in the back door of the factory with a key Mr. Schiff had given him for early Saturday openings.
He ejaculated almost as soon as he entered her. He barely got to enjoy the sensation, the warmth and wetness of her. Still, it was like the first breath of air a miner takes in when he emerges from the dark underground, the first pearls of water a man feels on his tongue when he crawls out of the desert into the green of an oasis.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Why?”
“That you are not my first.”
So she knew. Knew that this was his first time. But it didn’t matter. She stroked his back and his neck and it wasn’t long before his desire returned and the second time, it all took longer. Now he felt like a lover, in control of himself. What did he know at that age? What did he understand about women’s bodies and orgasms? Nothing. She looked happy enough, naked beneath him, wearing nothing but her cross on its chain.
“Micheline,” he said after coming the second time.
“Ar-tie,” she said.
He told her how beautiful she looked and she smiled.
All the next month, he teetered between ecstasy and agony. Ecstasy when they were together, agony when they were apart—especially when he was with Esther, going through the motions, playing the role of fiancé. He saw Micheline at least two or three times a week. He held back more of the money he was making, telling his mother he needed to save for his wedding.
“But her father’s paying,” his mother said.
“For the house then, Ma.”
He used the money to take Micheline to dinner, to Rockhead’s, even once to the Gayety Theatre for a burlesque show. They went for walks, they stole into the showroom. They used the apartment of one of Micheline’s neighbours when they went to the Laurentians for a week.
Miss Montreal, he called her sometimes.
“Because it’s the company name?” she asked.
“Because you’re the prettiest girl in the city.”
“Ben, non.”
“Oh, yes. If they had a contest you’d win.”
“I’m too skinny. The girls who win the Miss America, they have big curves. They have more up here.”
“You don’t need more. You’re perfect the way you are.”
The High Holidays came early that year and things were busy at home in September as his mother cooked and cleaned in preparation for Rosh Hashanah. There were errands he had to run, shopping to help with, floors to sweep, services to attend, relatives to visit. An entire week went by without seeing Micheline once. And before he knew it, it was Yom Kippur. More services, more relatives, more things to help out with.
And after the holidays, back at work, Micheline seemed distant. They never showed affection openly in the factory—Mr. Schiff knew Esther’s father—but he could tell something was wrong. She came out of the washroom one morning crying. She huddled with her sister more than usual. She didn’t want to go down to the basement when cloth needed to be brought up. She didn’t come to the ice cream store on Sunday.
Miss Montreal Page 18
