by Joshua Braff
“Not open yet,” my dad says. “Eleven o’clock.”
“You’re the owner,” the man says. “You’re Marty, right?”
My dad nods.
“I hear you’re fuckin’ the help, ya lucky Jew bastard.”
My father puts his box on the curb. “What’d you just say?”
“Brandi Lady,” he says. “Aren’t you and her doin’ the—”
“Hey dickhead!” my dad says.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “Dad?”
“This is my son. Okay, prick? My son. You talk to me like that in front of my son?”
“Just let it go, Dad.”
“I didn’t know he was your boy, Marty.”
“So you call me a Jew bastard? Who the fuck are you?”
He glances at me. “Nobody,” he says. “Just a kike from Queens.”
My father puts his hand on the man’s chest and lightly shoves him backward. “Have some manners,” he says.
Thankfully, my father unlocks the door and we’re in the lobby. The first and only time I was here, the other night, there was a party in this room for my father’s partner, Ira Saltzman. Now, empty, I see a much larger space than I thought, with its own chandelier that sparkles over the faded red carpet. There’s a small man on his knees with a bucket near the ticket booth.
“Toilet overflowed,” he says to my father. “Someone crammed a diaper in there and kept flushin’.”
“A what?” says my father.
“Hi, I’m Jocko,” he says to me. Jocko’s right eye wanders and the knees of his black pants are soaked with toilet water.
“I’m David.”
“Marty’s boy?”
I nod.
“I heard you were here the other night.”
“Just for a few minutes. My dad had to—”
“Is that him, is that David Arbus?” A huge black man with a giant bald head walks up to me. He offers his hand. “Leo. Nice to know ya. Sorry I missed you at the party. Your dad’s a prince.”
“I’m trying to show my kid how beautiful the theater is and I got scumbags outside and piss inside.”
“We’ll get it cleaned up,” Leo says, looking up at the wet bubbled ceiling.
“Brandi here?” my father asks.
“Not yet,” says Jocko. “Should be soon, though. Donny left for the airport a long time ago.”
My father pats his pockets for his cigarettes. “Tell her I’m upstairs when she gets here. Follow me, David.”
We head down a long hallway of black, ceiling-high drapery. It leads us into the stage area where a disco ball throws bits of white light onto the catwalk and walls. The aisle slopes downward like in a Broadway theater and ends at an orchestra pit and a long, empty bar. The night I was here, a dancer was on stage but no one was in the room because of the party in the lobby. I felt sorry for her as she went through her routine with no one watching. She was beautiful, of course, but I was pretty far away.
I follow my father up the stairs behind the bar to his office. As he opens the door he yells, “I knew it, I knew it! They were pullin’ my chain?”
A woman wearing a tall, beehive wig the color of a fire engine is standing on his desk in a white bikini bottom. There are two matching pasties over each of her breasts and with both hands, she holds a scarlet feather.
“Brandi Lady,” he says.
“Who’s that?” she asks. My father steps closer to her and she hops off the table. He kisses her and holds her as he sings in a faux Yiddish accent. “Don’t do that dance, I tell you, Ms. Sadie. That’s not a business for a lady. Most everybody knows that I’m your loving . . .”
“Is that your son, Marty?”
“Arlene, you have no idea how happy I am to see you.”
“Marty?”
“Yes, love?”
“There’s a boy behind you.” As he turns to me, she reaches for a bathrobe on the couch.
“My son, come meet my son.”
The phone rings loudly on my father’s desk and the lady lifts it in stride. “The Imperial,” she says, and we both stare at her. Her eyes widen and soon she’s leaning with her back arched and her hand over her forehead. She hands the phone to my father. “I’d say it’s your wife.”
My stomach burns as I sit on the edge of the sofa. My father puts an unlit cigarette in his mouth, then takes the phone from her hand.
“This is Marty.”
Pause.
“Excuse me? What did you just call me?
Pause.
“No, what did you just call me, Mickey?”
Brandi walks over to the sofa and sits down. “Hi,” she says, extending her hand.
“Hi,” I say.
Her lips are wet and red and her eyelashes are longer than normal and globbed with black.
“A pornographer?” He slams the phone against his hip and returns it to his ear. “I wasn’t a pornographer when you used to spend every dime I made, you hypocritical wanna-be yenta!”
He’s making it worse. Name calling, screaming.
“So,” Brandi says. “I hear you’re a photographer.”
I nod and realize I’m sitting on my camera. When I pull it out from behind me, Brandi takes it.
“Okay, give me your best pose,” she says.
I turn it on for her and try to smile as my father drags the receiver away from his desk.
“Right, Mick. You got Deb and I got him.”
“You look like your dad,” Brandi says. “Same mouth.”
“That’s bullshit, I deserve to see them too.”
Leo pokes his head in the door. “Was he surprised?”
“Conditions? Fuck that. What conditions?”
“You should have seen his eyes, Leo,” Brandi says.
“Oh yeah, yeah, Mick, just like you’ve always said. Your people, your people. Well, ya know something? I sleep at night. Maybe it’s you. Maybe you’re the guilty one. Ya ever think of that?”
I can hear my mother’s voice through the phone. When she gets this upset she starts to shriek.
Brandi turns and looks at my dad. “Just give her what she wants.”
“Wait . . . Mickey? Mickey? Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I said it. Are you there?”
“This time make a stupid face. Get in there, Leo, I’m takin’ pictures.”
Leo puts his polar bear arm around me, squeezing me into him. Brandi lifts her nostrils with her fingertips and sticks her tongue out. “Crazy like this,” she says, and I stare at her tongue, long and pink like bubblegum. “Make a face,” she says, and I do, my eyes crossed. Click.
“Fine, fine. I’ll bring him. I’ll bring him home this second if you agree to drop them off tomorrow.”
Pause.
“Yes. Tomorrow.”
Jocko comes in the room, still holding a mop and a roll of paper towels. “Was he surprised?”
“Yes!” Brandi says. “You should’ve seen his face.”
“Yes or no, Mickey. Do you want him home or not?”
Pause.
“Then make a decision already.”
Pause.
“Two hours? What am I gonna do in two hours? Ya gotta give me half the day. Mickey. Mickey?”
Brandi stands with the camera as my father smashes the phone down twice and glares out the window onto Broadway.
“Marty?” she says. “Can I take your picture with your boy?”
He pushes out a smirk and waits for me to walk over to him. “Of course, of course, it’s just your goddamn mother had a lot to say and—”
“Forget that now,” Brandi says.
“This, David, is who I wanted you to meet. Isn’t she amazing? Just look at her.”
“Put your arm around him,” says Brandi.
My father pulls me toward him. “She’s the real woman in my life.”
“Say cheeeeese!”
“And the woman I’m going to marry.”
I face him, but he keeps his eyes on her.
“Neither of you is smiling. David
!” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Smile!”
Click.
Verboten
STUDENTS OVER THE AGE of five years and six months who are admitted to Yeshiva Bais Esther must attend Yizkor, a class to prepare themselves for their new lives as baal teshuva/Hasids. The main text for this class is called the Shulchan Aruch, the book that lists the laws of halakhah that must be adhered to if one is to be worthy of Hashem’s rewards (see “Rewards of Halakhah” in the Introduction on page xvi). The word halakhah comes from the Hebrew word for “going” but a literal translation equates more accurately to the phrase “the way to go.” Each student must keep a log for one full year indicating his or her successes and failures as they pertain to the daily requirements of halakhah. “And you shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and show them the way wherein they must walk and the deeds that they must do” (Exodus 18:20).
Students will each be given a packet to help them track their mitzvahs. For example:
A. I,________, was _____ successful / ______ unsuccessful in adhering to the Laws of Washing the Hands in the Morning as stated in chapter 2 of the Shulchan Aruch for the week of _______, 1975.
B. I,________, was _____ successful / ______ unsuccessful in in adhering to the Laws of Dressing and Conduct as stated in chapter 3 of the Shulchan Aruch for the week of _________, 1975.
C. I,________, was _____ successful / ______ unsuccessful in adhering to the Laws of Proper Practices in the Lavatory as stated in chapter 4 of the Shulchan Aruch for the week of _________, 1975.
It becomes remarkably important to Leo that I receive an “initiation lap dance” before my father takes me back to New Jersey. He brings me to a small room downstairs and tells me to choose from three dancers.
“I’d rather not,” I say.
“What do you mean?” Leo says.
“I don’t want to.”
“Sure you do.”
“I was supposed to be home two hours ago.”
“It just takes a minute. Tiki, Vera, or Paulette? Who do you like?”
“I’ll do it next time,” I say.
“Tiki wins,” Leo says, guiding her over to me. Then he leaves us alone. She is the girl I saw dancing a few nights ago. Tall with brown eyes, huge breasts, and a yellow bikini with a bull’s-eye on the rear. I have a boner before she sits on me and when she does I’m in trouble immediately. She’s pressing her pelvic bone into my groin, actually bending my penis.
“You’re Marty’s boy?” Tiki says.
“Uh-huh.”
Amy Posner in the ninth grade. Two minutes after we turned on the “4 O’Clock Movie,” she walked out of her kitchen with no top on and yanked my pants down to my ankles. No one had ever done this to me before: boom, she put it in her mouth and boom, I finished as they say, right there, and she, I don’t know, wasn’t ready. Wasn’t happy. It was horrific, all of it.
“Does this feel good?” she says.
“I have to go back to Jersey.”
“I usually do this to music.”
I shift my right leg and she slides a little and kisses my cheek. “Thank you,” she says, and it’s over. I’m so happy I didn’t come in my pants. She stands, winks at me, and passes my father in the doorway. He leans in the room with Brandi over his shoulder.
“Let’s go already,” my father says. “Your mother’s gonna kill me.”
I GET OUT of the car in Newstead just before 9 p.m. The lie I’m considering is that I was dropped off at school and I’ve been at my friend Seth Greenstein’s house all this time. My father honks when I get to the porch and I wave to him. A note on the door reads At the Levitzes’ for Shabbos dinner. We need to talk.
I’m smiling when my head hits my pillow. She is not here. I am alone. No arguing, no guilt, no Jew quotes, no mother. Over and out. It’s so much easier to be in this house without her. It is so much easier to be with Tiki in my mind and not in person. Her bathing suit and her skin and hair. The smell of coconut. I go into the bathroom for some hand lotion and put it on my penis. It’s freezing but I try to get things going anyway. Tiki’s mouth and lips and body and the coconut and how close she was to me, on me, with her tropical scent. I look at myself in the mirror, banging away, my cheeks all flushed and sweaty. It’s not working. Back in my room I reach under my mattress. A Hustler from June 1973. The girls are so familiar now: Heather and Lily from Arizona State and all the other sorority girls of the Pac-10. Football pants on girls, yes, and Lily’s having a slumber party in her dorm. Still not happening. Tiki is on me and she’s grabbing my penis and I tell her to stop or there’ll be trouble but she doesn’t listen, nope, she just keeps on . . .
“David?”
Great. I turn my light out and roll on my side. My mother’s on the stairs already. She knocks on my door but I say nothing. She opens it and the hallway light blares off my wall.
“You asleep?”
Sound asleep.
When I hear the door click closed, I shut my eyes. No arguing, no guilt, no Jew quotes, no mother. Good night.
Tiki?
Yes, David.
Let’s start again.
Okay, David.
I won’t shift so much.
Okay, David.
The elastic in your bathing suit is bunching. See that?
You’re right. Look at that. Can you fix it, David?
I can try. I can only try.
Mickey
I WAKE UP TO MY mother sitting on a chair in the corner of my room. She allows me to blink a few times before handing me a packet of stapled papers. “Take it. Take it and read it,” she says.
“I’m sleeping.”
“I don’t care. Read it to me. First sentence. Read it out loud.”
“Mom?”
“‘Students over the age,’ go, read it!”
I sit up and look at it. “‘Students over the age of five years and six months . . . who are admitted to Yeshiva Bais Esther must attend Yizkor, a class to prepare themselves for their new lives as Hasids.’”
“Keep going. ‘The main text for this class . . .’”
“‘. . . is called the Shulchan Aruch, the book that lists the laws of halakhah.’”
“Keep going.”
“No.”
“Please, one more line.”
“I’m not, Ma. I’m sleeping.”
“‘These are our rules. We follow these rules . . .’”
“I know, Mom.”
“I will not let you take everything I’ve worked so hard to build and crush it in front of my face.”
“I heard you.”
“You lied to me.”
“I tried. I tried to get home sooner.”
“You failed! And there’s no way I’m taking you to see him today.” She stands and I hear her march down the stairs.
“Was that Mom?” Debra says through the wall.
“Get dressed,” I tell her.
“What?”
Downstairs I find her kneeling into the refrigerator. “Mom?”
“Not negotiable. Everything’s going to change, starting today.”
I have to laugh. “Today?”
She shuts the fridge and moves to the table. “Your sister wanted to know where you were all night.”
“So tell her.”
“Tell her? Tell her you were with your disgusting, smutty father at his place of business?”
“Don’t blame him.”
“I blame you,” she says. “I’m just putting a stop to it.”
“I forgot it was a Friday night. It got busy there and Dad had things to do.”
“And I forgot it was Saturday,” she says and smiles at me. “You forgot it was Friday and you came home eight hours late without calling me. And I forgot it was Saturday. I don’t drive on the Shabbos, David. You and your sister won’t be going to New York today.”
Debra walks in, dressed, and sits at the table. “Why is everyone yelling in whispers?”
“Because Mom’s made a deal
with Dad,” I say. “We’re going into New York to see his new place today.”
“Today?”
“Yup. He’s excited about it. Mom made a deal last night on the phone.”
My mother is glaring at me. “There is no deal.”
“I was very late and I didn’t call. I apologize.”
“You weren’t home when we left at five o’clock. You blew the deal. I don’t drive on Shabbos.”
I stare at the back of her football helmet–shaped wig as she walks away. An actress, that’s what she is. Playing a role, wearing the costume, the pensive and protective farm girl who thinks the truth about Martin Arbus will destroy her daughter and all that she may become as an adult. The vile, revolting truth that she kept from me for thirteen years. He owns a theater. Big fucking deal. And Debra probably knows, she must know that he isn’t really in “real estate.” Maybe she doesn’t. Maybe she’s as fragile as my mother wants her to be, needs her to be, begs her to be. Your father owns a strip joint, Deb. Let’s go see it. Let’s go visit it together.
“So we can’t go?” Debra says.
“How about the train?” I say. “We’ll take the train.”
“No, David,” she says. “No trains either.”
“Then let me drive.”
“Just stop.”
“Mom! Don’t be a . . .”
Both of their heads pop up and glare at me.
“Don’t be a what, David?”
“People compromise. Hasids compromise on some of the laws, they must. It’s not like you’re a real Lichtiger, right? You’re an American . . . born in Nutley. Not White Russia or wherever . . . Poland. Didn’t you once put gefilte fish in a bowl of matzah ball soup during a seder?”
“This is not a negotiation. You broke the trust. You betrayed me. Call your father and tell him. No one is going.”
