Potatoes Are Cheaper

by Max Shulman

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said.

  “Shut up, I’m talking,” Ma said. “So like I say, I got nothing to tell you. Just one little thing: between now and the wedding, every minute you ain’t with Celeste you’re gonna be with me, you hear?”

  “I hear,” I said.

  “Nu, Kaplan, how’s about a little peppiness?” said Ma. “It’s a celebration or not?”

  So Jonathan sang and danced and did some of his well-known imitations. I think the best one tonight was Tarzan seeing a toilet for the first time, although Pius the XIth singing “Where Do You Worka, John” wasn’t too far behind, believe me.

  Later on Jonathan came up to me and gave me a big smile and a nice hug. “Morris,” he said, “here’s for you a mazeltov and my very, very best wishes.”

  “That’s real nice of you,” I said, “seeing as how you’re the prick that thought I’d never pull it off.”

  “Well, kid, I’m glad I was wrong,” he said. “Deeply and sincerely glad. All the same, a one-in-a-million fluke ain’t exactly what you’d call a trend, and I certainly hope all your shlepper friends don’t start in thinking, ‘If Morris made it, why can’t I?’ Because there you got the curse of the world: people reaching longer than their arms. No, Morris, for your average shlepper I still say there’s only one way to win: steal small.”

  And there you got the flaw in Jonathan’s character—a wonderful guy, a big talent, a warm personality, but no vision. If only Jonathan had operated a little classier, how different his life would have been. And mine also, which you’ll see in a minute.

  Now I’ll take you to Easter Sunday, 1937, and my wedding.

  It was at the Nicollet Hotel in Minneapolis and I got to say it made Libbie’s wedding look like a distress sale. Don’t ask me who was there; ask me who wasn’t. You couldn’t spit in any direction without hitting at least a state senator. There must have been a thousand guests and every one was a Who’s Who in Twin Cities Jewry except for the groom’s side and naturally the goyim. And you remember Pflaum, that hoity-toity Reform rabbi who married Libbie? Well, Pflaum was there all right, but this time all he did was turn pages for the main rabbi!

  I could go on for hours about how many pounds of strudel, how many gallons of seltzer, how many this, how many that, but I’ll just tell you this one thing and if you’re honest you’ll admit you never saw anything like it at any wedding ever:

  After the ceremony when Celeste and I left the chupah, we marched between two rows of one hundred ushers holding up crossed swords that Warner Brothers lent Zimmerman from Captain Blood! Now go equal that.

  It was a sensational affair which they’re still talking about in the Twin Cities and I enjoyed every second of it—until the catastrophe, that is. The catastrophe came just about an hour after the reception started in, and believe me it couldn’t have happened at a moment of gayer merriment. The drinks and food were flowing, the guests were waltzing gracefully to the music of Si Silverman and His Society Strings—twenty-six men in maroon tuxes and a lady harpist in white—and everything looked so sparkling and hopeful that you couldn’t even imagine a catastrophe was right on the doorstep.

  But it was. All of a sudden a lady walked into the ballroom, about twenty-five years old, carrying a baby. The lady was a mess. Her hair was all straggly and she had on a brown sweater full of holes and her stockings were hanging. The baby was no collar ad either, if you want to know the truth.

  So people turned and stared at her especially Zimmerman. What was this shabby person doing at such a stately function?

  “You want something, missus?” said Zimmerman.

  “I am looking for my husband Kirby Schwartz,” said the lady.

  “So go try the Salvation Army,” said Zimmerman.

  “I’ve come all the way from Cleveland,” said the lady. “They told me I’d find him here.”

  “In Cleveland they told you?” said Zimmerman.

  “No, in St. Paul,” she said. “At the Katz residence on 701 Selby Avenue. The neighbors told me.”

  “What? What? What?” hollered Ma, running over.

  “Oy, there he is!” screamed the lady, pointing out on the dance floor. “Here, hold Arnold,” she said and gave Zimmerman the baby.

  Then she went tearing out on the floor yelling, “Kirby! Kirby!” and heading straight for Jonathan Kaplan who was dancing with the governor’s wife.

  Jonathan gave one look at this lady running toward him and stopped dead. “Excuse me, Mrs. Stassen,” he said to his partner and quicker than I can tell it, he turned around, ran out the door, ran down the steps four at a time, ran across the lobby, ran into Nicollet Avenue, and that’s the last anybody ever saw of Jonathan Kaplan.

  Or Kirby Schwartz, if that’s his name. It took a long time to find out because first the lady from Cleveland went into hysterics, then Libbie, and then Ma. And of course, Mrs. Zimmerman too, but she arrived in hysterics.

  But finally they got quietened down a little. A place was cleared for Mrs. Kirby Schwartz to sit down with Arnold, her baby, and everybody started in to gather around because naturally who wasn’t interested? Mr. Zimmerman did the questioning.

  “Why did you call that man Kirby Schwartz?” he said.

  “That’s what he told me his name was,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “I don’t know if it’s right though because he got another name too.”

  “Jonathan Kaplan?” said Zimmerman.

  “No, Winfield Feldman,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “At least that’s what the lady called him who came to my house a few months ago. She was from New York, and she had a baby also—a girl: Marilyn.”

  “And was she married to Kirby too?” said Zimmerman.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “Only she called him Winfield Feldman like I said. He jumped out the window and ran away so I don’t know who’s right.”

  “And you’re still married to Winfield?” said Zimmerman.

  “To Kirby,” she said. “Yes.”

  “So it looks like he got three wives anyhow,” said Zimmerman. “One in St. Paul, one in Cleveland, and one in New York.”

  “And one before that,” said Mrs. Schwartz. “From Hartford. She followed him to New York. Sherwood Goldenberg, she called him. She had a baby also. A girl, Ruthie, I think.”

  “Busy little fucker, ain’t he?” said Zimmerman. “Well, Mrs. Schwartz, here’s a dollar. You and Arnold go get something to eat. Celeste, come over here, I got to talk to you.”

  “Daddy, let’s don’t be hasty,” said Celeste.

  “Also let’s don’t waste time,” said Zimmerman. “Celeste, we got two distinguished judges here by the wedding, Judge Tannenbaum and Judge Swanberg. Pick either one and we’ll make an annulment one, two, three.”

  “We will, like fun,” said Celeste. “What do I care about Morris’s crooked in-laws? It’s him I love.”

  “And I love her,” I said.

  This caused a lot of murmuring from the crowd, about half pro and half con. But there was no doubt where Zimmerman stood. “Celeste, this is your last chance,” he said. “Are you gonna annul this cockaroach?”

  “No,” said Celeste. “Not yet anyhow.”

  “In that case, folks, this is still a wedding,” said Zimmerman to the spectators. “Silverman, play music.”

  So the orchestra started again and the guests went back to dancing, and Zimmerman turned to Celeste. “Well, good-by, Celeste,” he said. “Well send your clothes to Morris’s house. Good-by, you cockaroach. Come, Manya.”

  He picked up my mother-in-law off the floor and they walked out.

  That was exactly six weeks ago, and here’s how things stand today:

  My wife Celeste and me are living with my folks on Selby Avenue. We’ve got Libbie’s former room and Libbie, being single, sleeps on the davenport.

  Libbie still cries a lot naturally, but she’s a little more cheerful than she was because she finally had a date the other night. In fact, I arranged it. I thought of an eligible Jewish bachelor with a
job and I brought him home for supper. Mr. Harwood, who else? What the hell, he sure isn’t going to end up with the Homecoming Queen, not while his mother is alive.

  Nettie and Gittel are still with us of course because where the hell am I going to find $200 to put them in the home? As for hocking some wedding presents to raise money, forget it. From A. M. Zimmerman there was naturally no present at all and from the rest of Celeste’s fancy uptown relations all we got was pepper mills and nut-picks, which any pawnbroker will laugh right in your face. So at this moment the Nettie-Gittel situation is nothing to rave about.

  Now here’s one bright spot—two, actually. My cousin Crip is home from Rochester at last. And cured, isn’t that marvelous! After all these years he can finally shake hands and ride in elevators and in fact, he even got laid last week for the first time and came through without so much as a hairline fracture. What happened was, now that Crip wasn’t so brittle any more, he enrolled in the University. Naturally he wrote a few poems and he sent one of them to the L’Etoile du Nord and you guessed it: he met Bridget and pop went two cherries. I never saw a couple so crazy in love. Of course, it’s heading nowheres. When Crip’s mother finds out, he’ll wish he was back in the cast. But I don’t say anything to Crip. Let him enjoy while he can, the poor doomed fool.

  And Albert? You’d think God would get bored, wouldn’t you, torturing the same man all the time? Here’s the latest: Albert came home from the Brainerd workhouse and naturally started looking for a job again. So one day an idea hit me: as long as somebody was going to get paid for fixing Sister Mary Frances’s Angelus bell, why not Albert? True, he knew nothing about bells but so what? Wasn’t he a mechanical genius? So I sent him to the convent, telling him not to mention my name naturally, and sure enough he got the job. So he went to work on the bell and by and by it looked to him like it was fixed. “Okay, give her a yank,” he hollered down to Sister Mary Frances who was on the ground holding the rope. So she gave a yank. And Albert who as I said knows nothing about bells stood there with his head inside of it. Some of the doctors think it might clear up, but as of now he’s stone deaf.

  And that about wraps it up. If you’re wondering about me, I’m not in such bad spirits, all things considered. I mean, a guy’s got to keep up his hopes, otherwise you might as well jump off the Robert Street Bridge and be done with it. So I keep telling myself things are bound to get better. After all, Celeste is an only child. How long can that sonofabitch Zimmerman hold out? Sooner or later he got to start acting human. If nothing else softens him up, a grandchild certainly ought to do it. Not that Celeste is pregnant but it shouldn’t be long. God knows we do enough humping.

  And even if for some reason Celeste doesn’t get pregnant, probably we can get a baby from that nympho Reba Jorgensen over on Dayton Avenue and say it’s ours. Reba’s about due again. Or maybe come winter my father will fall down and break his tailbone once more. Who knows what might happen? The point is, you’re never a loser if you won’t say you’re licked.

  Well, that’s my story except for one last item. I saved this one for the end because it kills me, it really does. Listen to this: the other night Celeste says to me, “Morris, do you still love me?”

  “Of course,” I say. “What a dumb question.”

  “So how come you don’t write me any more poems?” she says.

  Well, I almost die laughing, but the next day I’ll be damned if I don’t go to Crip and ask for a poem. Here it is:

  TO CELESTE—AGAIN

  I searched for a flower I’d never known,

  I searched for a bloom I could not name,

  I wandered the earth, beset, alone,

  A ghostly player in a ghostly game.

  Heartsick returned I to my room,

  And there—praise God—’twas o’er, my quest!

  There was the flower and there the bloom,

  There in the garden called Celeste.

  Both garden and woman? ’Tis too uncanny!

  But, see, there blow the petals rife!

  There nectar drips from every cranny!

  Who else has such a blooming wife?

  About the Author

  Max Shulman (1919–1988) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer best known as the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951), and the popular television series of the same name. The son of Russian immigrants, Shulman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a celebrated column for the campus newspaper and edited the humor magazine. His bestselling debut novel, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943), was followed by two books written while he served in the Army during World War II: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). The Tender Trap (1954), a Broadway play co-written with Robert Paul Smith, was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. His acclaimed novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys! became a film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Shulman’s other books include Sleep till Noon (1950), a hilarious reinvention of the rags-to-riches tale; I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959), which chronicles the further adventures of Dobie Gillis; Anyone Got a Match? (1964), a prescient satire of the tobacco, television, and food industries; and Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971), the tale of a romantic Jewish college student in depression-era St. Paul. His movies include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse) and House Calls (with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson). One of America’s premier humorists, he greatly influenced the comedy of Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, among many others.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1971 by Max Shulman

  Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2786-1

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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