“There’s a draft counselor on campus, Pops. There’s one on every campus in the country. I had several long sessions with him before I made my decision.”
But not even one short one with his father from East Fourth Street.
“And you’re satisfied that his advice was sound?” I said.
“Pops, it’s his field,” Jack said. “He knows all there is to know about it, and he told it all to me.”
“Did he tell you that draft boards are very hostile to young men who ask for C.O. status? That they are suspicious of them? And that they grant very few of these requests?”
“At the very first session, Pops. He told me everything.”
I wondered about that draft counselor. Could he have told everything to his own son?
“Did he tell you what the odds are that you will not be granted C.O. status?”
“He did, Pops.”
“Did he tell you that if you don’t get C.O. status you are at the end of the line? There is no further recourse? You can’t go back and say, oops, sorry, I didn’t really mean to ask for C.O. status in the first place? I didn’t have to? You see I wet the bed at night?”
“He told me all that, Pops.”
“Nevertheless,” I said, “you decided to take the risk?”
“I did, Pops.”
“Without consulting your mother or me.”
The scowl appeared again around the edge of the beard. “What good would that have done?” Jack said. “I’d already made my decision, Pops.”
It wouldn’t have done him any good. But it might have prevented Benny Kramer from learning at the age of fifty-eight that there were people who did not consider it such a wonderful thing to have been born and raised on East Fourth Street, and among those people was his own son.
“I’m a lawyer,” I said. “Many of my friends, many of my colleagues have sons your age. The draft comes in for a lot of discussion around me. I might have been able to tell you something helpful.”
Few things are more pompous than the language of a man trying to conceal a resentment he wishes he did not feel.
“I doubt it, Pops,” Jack said. “These campus draft counselors know more about it than any real-estate lawyer in the country.”
If you take fat fees from people like Shloymah Berel Schlisselberger, you have to be able to take a jolt now and then even from members of your own family.
“Suppose the board does not grant your request for C.O. status?” I said. “Have you thought about your next step?”
“Yes, I have, Pops.”
“Is it a secret?”
Another thing that is difficult for a man with a beard is adding to a troubled scowl the perplexed bite of the lower lip.
“Pops,” Jack said. “What are you sore about?”
The day my mother died, her doctor, who was an old friend of mine, had sensed I was in a bad way, and be had said to me: “Don’t worry, Benny. I’m here. We East Side boys always stick together.” Who was sticking by Benny Kramer today?
“I’ll tell you why I’m sore,” I said, and I laughed.
Laughs are the traditional beards that get hung on lies. I couldn’t tell Jack what I was sore about. What I was sore about could only have been understood by another boy from East Fourth Street. Jack was not a boy from East Fourth Street. He was a boy from 83rd and Fifth. He had just made that perfectly clear.
“I’m sore because I don’t think you’re giving yourself a chance with that draft board tonight,” I said. “Is that how you’re going to appear before that C.O. committee? In boots and blue jeans?”
“Plus the beard,” Jack said, and he laughed.
His laugh made me feel better. It showed that a boy from East Fourth Street could still put one over on a boy from 83rd and Fifth.
“Come on, Pops, relax. I know you think I’ve got a better chance with these jokers if I wear my Brooks Brothers blue blazer and take a quick, clean shave.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think that’s what I think.”
Anyway, that wasn’t all of what I was thinking. The rest of what I was thinking was too difficult for me to state on such short notice even to myself, much less to a boy from 83rd and Fifth. Benny Kramer feels deeply, but he thinks slowly. What had happened to Benny Kramer had just happened, in this room, a few minutes ago. It would take me a few days and a couple of sleepless nights to figure it out. When I did, it might prove to be worse than it seemed now, while the wound was still raw, but it wouldn’t hurt so much. Benny Kramer can handle anything, so long as he sees where the blow came from, how much damage it has done, and why it sought him out. Then he can tuck it away in one of his mental boxes, seal it, and hide the box on the back shelf in the dead file of his memory. Benny is finished with it. He is ready for the next blow.
“Look at it this way, Pops,” Jack said. “People in every war wear different clothes when they visit their draft boards. Think of the guys they rounded up to help Caesar divide up Gaul. Think of what those clowns were wearing. Think of the clothes you wore when you visited your draft board in your war. Now, what’s funny about that?”
“I wasn’t laughing at what you said,” I said. “I was laughing at the picture it gave me of the draft boards in my war. In my war it didn’t matter what you wore to the draft board. By the time the examination came around you looked like everybody else. Stark naked.”
“I know that,” I said. “Which is why I thought you might be interested in something Uncle Seb told me recently. This play he’s in now, there’s a kid in it who has the juvenile lead, and his draft board classified him One-A. So he applied for C.O., and when he went to his hearing he was surprised to find the members of the board were a different kettle of fish from the clerks he’d met who handled the papers. These men were all dignified, respectable, well-to-do members of the community who had volunteered their services and held these meetings at night after their day’s work was done. You know,” I said. “Doctors, corporation executives, stockbrokers, lawyers, a well-known priest.”
“Sure I know,” Jack said. “People like you, Pops.”
I walked to the triple mirror over his dresser and made an elaborate business of examining my reflection, as though a salesman in a clothing store had just hung a jacket on me. I turned left, then right, cocking my head and squinting judiciously.
“Yes,” I said. “People like me.”
Quite a few of whom had come from the East Fourth Streets of the world.
“Well, now, Pops, let me hand you a tough one,” Jack said. “Suppose you were in there with your buddies tonight as a member of his C.O. board. Now, forget it’s me. I’m just a guy named Irving B. Toklas, say.”
“Alice B. Toklas.”
“I know that, Pops. We had Gertrude Stein in freshman English at Harvard. I’m just trying to stop you from thinking of this kid as your son. Yes?”
Koyach, Benny, koyach.
“I’ll try,” I said.
“Okay, this kid comes in before you and the board,” Jack said. “He’s wearing blue jeans and boots and his face is all hung over with a lot of fuzz. Hold that image. Now focus on the next one. The kid comes in wearing a Brooks navy blue blazer, a white button down Oxford shirt, and a Hasty Pudding tie. Let’s throw in a pair of Peal’s wing-tip brogans. Now, Pops, you’ve got the images fixed in your mind?”
I nodded. I knew where this interrogation was taking me. I had heard hundreds like it in a score of courtrooms. I had even conducted dozens like it myself. Years of practice had given me the skill with which to avoid the trap of the inevitable final question. Even as Jack had been talking, I had already worked out the answer that would not be inevitable, the answer that would spring the trap on my honorable opponent, Your Honor, and cause him to fall flat on his prematurely triumphant face. But Benny Kramer knew he would not make that skillfully fabricated and totally unexpected answer. What a boy from East Fourth Street could do for a client, he could not do to a son. Even if the son did come from 83rd and Fifth.
<
br /> “I have both images fixed in my mind,” I said.
“Okay, then, Pops,” Jack said. “Would your decision to grant C.O. status to these kids, the same kid but in two different images, would your decision be influenced by what the kids were wearing? Who would be more likely to be looked on favorably by you? The kid with the beard and the blue jeans? Or the kid in the blazer and the Hasty Pudding tie?”
I was grateful for the fact that he had not reminded me sternly to be honest. Maybe it was an oversight. But Benny Kramer had reached the straw-clutching phase of his life. I wanted to believe firmly that Jack had felt it was not necessary, because the reminder would have been superfluous, to remind his father to be honest. So I was.
“I would look more favorably,” I said, “on the kid wearing the blazer and the Hasty Pudding tie.”
Jack laughed again. “I knew you would.”
“How did you know it?” I said.
“You’re a kid from Fourth Street on the Lower East Side and from Tiffany Street in the Bronx,” Jack said. “Blue blazers from Brooks Brothers and Hasty Pudding ties mean a lot to you.”
Why not? I had earned them. With years of hard work at C.C.N.Y., N.Y.U. Law School, and carrying hot pastrami sandwiches for Ira Bern. Something a boy from 83rd and Fifth never had to do.
“More than they mean to you?” I said.
“I’ve got a closet full of them,” Jack said. “You bought them for me. Don’t think I’m ungrateful. I was glad to get them. Just as I’ve been glad to get everything you’ve ever given me. It’s been a pleasure to take things from you, Pops. Because you never even hinted I had to say thanks. That’s how I learned that no matter what pleasure I got from the things you bought for me, my pleasure was nothing compared with the pleasure you got from knowing you’d earned the money yourself with which to buy them for me.”
As my mother used to say: You can say that again, Sonny.
“That’s true,” I said. “But I wonder if it’s important. After all, we’ve both had pleasure.”
Any good lawyer knows how to drop in the concealed jabs that in the end sway the jury.
“It’s very important,” Jack said. “You see, Pops, when you were my age there were no issues. It was all very simple. When you got out of high school, if you were lucky enough to make it through high school, you didn’t lie around in some acid-rock discotheque trying to decide what would be a relevant way to spend your life. There was no time. Thinking about relevance could cause you to die of starvation. What you did was go out and find a job so you could eat. You had to. Nowadays, kids my age, they don’t have to worry about eating. Nice guys like you, Pops, you provide the groceries. So we have time to worry about what we should do with our lives that’s relevant. Most of my friends don’t even worry. They merely discuss it. Endlessly. Most of the time lying around puffing grass.
“Well, Pops, I don’t know how good I am as a son, but you must have made a pretty good score as a father. Because I’m not like most of my friends. I know what’s relevant. It’s a negative thing. It’s in my head. I can hear the words. Don’t join the murderers. And because it’s negative, I’ve got to do it in a positive way. If I avoid the draft by convincing an army doctor I pee in bed, what have I accomplished? I’ve saved one skin. My own. Nobody will know. Except you and Mom and Dr. McCarran and me. You and Mom and Dr. McCarran won’t talk. For obvious reasons. But I’ll talk. To myself. For the rest of my life. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life listening to that kind of talk from Jack Kramer. So I’ve got to avoid joining the murderers in a positive way. Out in the open. Without tricks. Telling them the truth about how Jack Kramer feels. Maybe somebody will listen. If they don’t, to hell with them. They can dish out anything they’ve got. Including prison. I’ll keep on talking. Because I know what’s relevant, Pops. Just as you did at my age when you were saving pennies to go to law school at night.”
When the words would come I said, “Is that why you grew a beard for this meeting tonight? And why you’re going in boots and blue jeans?”
Jack nodded and gave me a friendly smile. Not bad, Benny. Boys from East Fourth Street may be willing to pee their way out of the draft, but they’re not so dumb. I had asked the right question. “That’s right, Pops,” Jack said. “I’m not asking these dignified, respectable, well-to-do stockbrokers and corporation executives to grant me C.O. status because I own a Brooks Brothers blazer and I picked up a Hasty Pudding tie at Harvard. I want them to grant it to me because I believe in what I’m asking for. I want to win this on my own, Pops.”
The doorbell rang.
You see, Benny? There are times when it is not necessary to hold out your hand for a few pennies worth of koyach. There are times when fate is kind and just tosses it in your lap. How else but by the clanging of a bell that had to be answered could a boy from East Fourth Street have got out of that room without making a fool of himself in front of a boy from 83rd and Fifth?
“Polish the other boot,” I said. “That’s probably Uncle Seb and Aunt Lillian.”
It was, of course.
“How does he look?” Lillian asked as I stowed coats in the hall closet and Elizabeth Ann came hurrying toward us from her bedroom, calling greetings and fumbling with the fastenings of a bracelet.
“Prepare yourself for a shock,” I said.
Neither Lillian nor Seb, however, seemed even surprised.
“Turn to the right,” Lillian said.
Jack turned to the right. Lillian examined him for a couple of moments in profile.
“I think it looks even better from the side,” she said. “Not that you could exactly call it a slouch from the front.”
She reached up and ran her fingers through the growth on Jack’s face. He giggled and squirmed.
“Hey, Aunt Lillian,” he said. “That tickles.”
“Quite handsome, actually,” Seb said. “Forbes-Robertson wore one exactly like it in his famous Othello. That’s why he was known as the bearded Moor. Any difficulties, Jack, of a tactical nature?”
“Well,” Jack said, “it’s safer to lean forward when you’re spooning up soup.”
“I should have thought peas would be the bugger,” Seb said. “They roll about so.”
“Not if you crush them down on your plate with the fork and make a paste before you lift them to the old kisser,” Jack said. “Now that the fuzz has passed muster, Mom, how about some vitamins? I don’t want to rush anybody, but neither do I want to be late for the big clambake.”
“All right,” Elizabeth Ann said. “I’ll go fetch. We’re eating on small tables here in the study because it’s quicker, if nobody minds.”
“I’m leaving at once,” Lillian said. “I hate those damned small tables. They remind me of the days when Benny and I used to work for Maurice Saltzman & Company and I used to eat my lunches from one of those chairs with a wide arm like a tray in Thompson’s cafeteria.”
“Lillian, stop clowning it up,” Elizabeth Ann said. “Jack, fix this for me, will you?”
She held out her wrist. He bent over to fasten the catch on her bracelet, and she kissed him on the forehead.
“Hey, Ma,” he said. “Not in front of the stiff-necked British.”
“Oh, shut up,” Elizabeth Ann said. “Benjamin, make drinks. I won’t be long.”
“Can I help?” Lillian said.
“You can bring in those damned little tables that you adore and the napkins and things. Come on.”
They left the room, and I was suddenly aware of something I had noticed before. Men abruptly left alone together are caught in a moment of shocked awareness, as though they did not really know each other except when women were present to act as intermediaries.
“By the way,” I said. “How did you know Jack was flying in tonight?”
“I was at Will’s late yesterday afternoon, having a drink with I forget who and somebody at the next table mentioned it.”
This, I knew, had to be untrue. Seb may have forgotten who the wif
e of Dr. McCarran was, because that had obviously happened years ago, but he could not possibly have forgotten with whom he’d had a drink twenty-four hours ago at Will’s. So I knew something was wrong. I went to the bar.
“The usual?” I said to Seb.
His usual was Scotch and soda. Except at Will’s where he admitted to drinking martinis because he did not want to upset or argue with the white-haired old lady in black bombazine. Sometimes, however when he was playing a part in which the author had written in some other drink for his character, Seb would order it offstage for a few weeks. It helped him, he said, to settle into the role. I could not remember what, these days, he was drinking onstage.
“No, thanks,” Seb said. “Nothing for me.”
I looked at him in surprise. He once told me he had long ago adopted Mencken’s rule for the consumption of alcohol: never accept a drink during the day; never refuse one at night.
“Technically speaking, because we’re eating so early,” I said, “it’s night right now, Seb.”
“No, thanks, Benjamin,” he said.
It was only the polite refusal of a drink, but somehow the three words seemed to carry some sort of additional weight that I could not figure out.
“Jack?” I said.
He shook his head. “Not now, Pops,” he said. “I may have one after I come back from the rodeo.”
“In that case,” I said, turning away from the bar.
“Don’t be an ass,” Seb said. “Go ahead and have one.”
“Sure, Pops,” Jack said. “Go ahead.”
“Not unless the girls want one with me.”
The girls did not want one. After Lillian had set out the tables, and Elizabeth Ann had set down the plates, and we were all seated, they did not seem to want the food either.
“I know it’s not as good as The Family Tricino,” Elizabeth Ann said at last, “but it’s not bad spaghetti, really it isn’t, and I assure you it has not been poisoned. Look.”
She lifted a forkful and put it into her mouth. I could see, however, that she was making an effort to chew and, when she swallowed, it was a real push. It was the last forkful eaten in that room that night.
Tiffany Street Page 33
