A Long Island Story

by Rick Gekoski

  Perle objected each time. But some opportunities were too good to miss, and when he returned from his occasional triumphs, pockets full of cash, she’d be mollified. Sometimes even more than that. Talk about blessings!

  She’d watch him drive off, suit jacket folded on the seat next to him, his shirtsleeves rolled up, arm resting outside the window. By now he had more hair on his arms and chest than on his head, but he looked good going bald, not like the rest of the shrivelled alter kockers. Even at sixty-one he was a fine figure of a man, noble-browed, browned, still with that body that had once given her such pleasure. In his twenties he’d played the occasional semi-pro baseball game, to help put himself through night classes in law. Five bucks a pop playing for one of the many New York teams. It came in handy, though more often than not he spent it going to a Yankee game himself – tickets, subway fare, few drinks with the other ballplayers and a meal afterwards.

  When Addie and baby Frankie were still at home, he’d find an excuse to go out to the Polo Grounds, catch a Yanks game. They were great years, just after the First War, people with smiles on their faces once again, anxious to get dressed up and get out to one of the new speakeasies that were growing up round the town, desperate for a cocktail, a steak and a dance. They were a heedless crowd and he knew how to work them.

  That’s how Morrie saw it. He could afford to, he had it all. And them all, most of them anyway. Their friendship, their trust, their business, their favours, occasionally their sexual favours. He was not a philanderer, God forbid, but with a few drinks in him he liked some fun. There was one girl. He met her at the Stork Club, not a waitress or hatcheck girl, nothing tawdry, just the niece of one of his acquaintances, with a taste for mature men. He treated her well, and she didn’t ask more than the occasional meal and bottle of hooch, and some pretty clothes. He could supply all of those, and he was a better lover than her young suitors. He made her crazy, for a while.

  She was in a compartment, and happy to stay there, part of that life, not this one. Out of her company, he couldn’t think of her. Lying in bed at night with Perle, an image of Flora would have kept him awake for hours. Best to read.

  He was a poor sleeper, and glad of it. Even after a few hours’ rest he felt fresh in the morning, and managed to read two or three books a week during the nights. History and biographies mostly, but an occasional novel too. Howard Fast perhaps, nothing fanciful, something with a good story that you could learn from.

  He had a bookplate designed with a black and white image of books on a bookshelf, with one obviously missing, and glued it into his books: STOLEN FROM THE LIBRARY OF MAURICE KAUFMANN. He liked lending the books to friends in the sly hope that they might forget to give them back and be caught out by a visitor looking casually through their bookshelves.

  Worse than getting lost, way worse, was what was coming to them all, and soon! Addie quailed at the prospect, the children caught her anxiety, only Ben was immune from the fear. Even when they were an hour away, the children could see their mother withdrawing, opening a bottle of pills and tossing one in her mouth, swallowing it without even a sip of water. How could she do that?

  The threat was called the Holland Tunnel. Not that this particular tunnel was so frightening – they might as well have taken the Lincoln Tunnel, a few miles down the road, or that other one on the other side of the city that they would have to take next.

  Addie had explained it to the kids when they were little. The tunnel went under a river – the Hudson River – so you could get to the other side. It was built with extra care, it was perfectly safe, the water that surrounded it couldn’t get in. It was dry, it was totally dry! And safe, safe as houses!

  Once they had entered the fearsome underwater space, the spooky darkness only partially lit, there would be a terrible hissing of tyres, and Addie and the children would peer out the windows and scan the walls anxiously for moisture because that would mean the tunnel had sprung a leak and they would all drown when it filled up. Unless they kept the windows up! Then the car would just float until they got rescued by the frogmen.

  Jake dealt with his mounting anxiety as his father might have, by goofing around. He peered out the window, raised his finger and shouted: ‘There! There! It’s coming out, it’s spouting out! The pollute is coming to get us!’

  If Addie could have smacked him she would; instead she punched Ben, who was giggling away.

  ‘Both of you shut up. It’s not funny!’

  There was moisture! Everywhere the walls were wet, drops ran down them. Addie hunched down in her seat and held her breath, Becca began to cry. Your lungs would fill with water, you wouldn’t be able to breathe.

  Ben tried to explain once again. Outside the walls was dirt, not water. It went under the riverbed, not through the river itself.

  That was pretty stupid.

  Ben resumed humming his arias, to soothe them. When they emerged on the other side and began making their way crosstown to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, Addie said she’d had enough and threatened to get out at the next red light. They should go uptown, she said, and take the Triborough Bridge. She trusted bridges: the water couldn’t sneak up on you.

  She was rather surprised when Ben refused.

  ‘It will take an extra hour almost,’ he said. ‘It’s a schlep, you’re going in the wrong direction! And you’ve already done the hard bit: the East River is drek compared to the Hudson, you can get right under it in a minute!’

  Addie looked at the children, who nodded weakly, accepting their fates.

  ‘OK . . .’ she said.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Ben, ‘if we drown I will take full responsibility.’

  Becca put her hands over her ears, closed her eyes and hid on the floor.

  Though a man’s man in most respects, Maurice was genuinely interested in women’s clothes, kept abreast of fashion, studied the designs of Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli – none of your American schmatas – and instructed his designers and fabricators to make inexpensive versions of haute couture classics, strong on style and low on quality. He talked fashion with the girls, and unlike his fellows was more interested in getting them into clothes than out of them.

  He made a great market for Chanel-style clothes (with Chanel labels!) which he produced off site and off the books. He was a fashion bootlegger, and patrolled the clubs and bars stealthily, insinuating himself into conversations and cliques, making his market. The girls loved him, and they loved his clothes, so airy, so dreamy, so light, they made you feel free. To be, to move, to dance: thanks to Morrie! He hugged them, took their cash, watched their tuchuses sway and their bubbies bounce, freed from the constraints of stays, heavy bras, girdles, garters, their bodies released, no dread demarcation of top, waist, bottom, just one organic unit, freed at last.

  There was less to the new dresses than met the eye: they may have been sheer and free-flowing, nothing to them at all, but they were lies, like their owners. Sheer fabrications, he would joke, but nobody ever got it. His bootlegged versions never looked quite the real thing. But their new owners weren’t the real thing either, it was a fair deal, everyone gained, especially Morrie.

  He talked about fashion with such enthusiasm that some of the girls supposed him a homosexual. In fact, he cared about flapper’s finery as much as he cared about pogo sticks or flyswatters. If he’d been selling either he would have done so just as knowledgeably and enthusiastically, citing statistics about jumpability and squashability, producing references from satisfied customers. Two feet in the air! Dead flies galore! His enthusiasm was for the process, not the product.

  He was always paid in cash. He believed in paying tax – the country needed schools and roads and hospitals – but you could take such rectitude to excess. He got away with it. It was the gangsters and bootleggers who attracted the eyes of the IRS – tax evasion brought down Al Capone, you can steal and murder your heart out, but the government has to get a cut – and no one was going to enquire about Maurice Kaufmann and his lit
tle sideline.

  It saw him through the Depression. When he later bought the bungalow in 1939, he pretended to Perle that it was going to be a stretch. He’d have to work extra hours, burn some midnight oil drumming up business. In fact, he paid cash and spent those extra days and nights on the town, anxious for the next drink, and deal.

  He met some swell people. Babe Ruth was round town most evenings during the home stands, tanked up, surrounded by well-wishers and floozies, heedless, with a talent so immense that even a man of his indiscriminate appetites couldn’t abuse it. Maurice spent some evenings in his company, even got in a few words one night at the Cotton Club with the Bambino, who never had much to say for himself: ‘Hey, kiddo, good to see ya, have a drink!’ He was an immortal, but Maurice soon left him to his whores and sycophants. The Babe. Perfect! He was a big baby.

  Maurice had a hero amongst those Yankees, but it was the catcher, Wally Schang. He wasn’t a big shot, you didn’t see him drunk and surrounded by girls. You could learn a lot watching him. Sure, he made some errors, but he had a great arm and called a shrewd game. Maurice would sit in a box behind home plate, head cradled in his hands intently, eyes fixed on good old Wally.

  Maurice was a catcher too, a good sandlot player, squat and durable, with a reliable glove and a quick arm, a decent hitter, though ponderous round the bases. His teammates called him Sparkplug after the horse in that catchy song that Eddie Cantor sang. ‘Barney Google’. It was one of those darn tunes you couldn’t get out of your head.

  He would be humming it as he reversed the car down the drive, jaunty, already in city mode, remembering his youth. His own man. Sparkplug! Sparkplugs got things started, were the basis of the power to come. And he was faster than a lot of them gave him credit for!

  In the car, things went fast, then slow. Not because of the traffic but because of the odd paradoxes of time – time passing quickly and sluggishly, time enjoyed and time dreaded. Addie was no philosopher, she rather despised abstract thought, but there was something fascinating and frustrating about their ride. At first with the kids asleep, as she nodded off with her head against the window, time seemed hardly to exist, the first three hours passed in a jiffy, pleasingly enough so that her bad mood was threatening to evaporate. She could sense a feeling of well-being coming on, tried to stifle it – what did she have to feel good about? – yawned, collected herself.

  As soon as the kids were awake any lifting of her bad mood was impossible; she felt worse for having felt better. The ceaseless fidgeting in the back seat was intolerable, the whinging, arguing, the inanity. Children! What a lot of crap they talked, with their Howdy Doodys and Mickey Vernons, how self-referring, how needy of attention they were!

  ‘If you two don’t sit still and shut up,’ she said firmly, ‘there’s going to be trouble!’

  ‘What trouble, Addie?’ asked Jake slyly. ‘You going to confiscate our jellybeans?’ He felt invulnerable in the back seat, well provisioned, territorially secure.

  ‘Yeah,’ added Becca, catching the drift without knowing what confiscating consisted of but aware that jellybeans could be problematic. ‘What sort of trouble?’

  Perle watched Maurice reverse down the drive, waved a limp hand and turned back to the front door. Hers was not a marriage in which she was in the back seat, she was lucky to get in the car at all. Maurice chose the cars, paid for them, polished them over the weekends. He only bought Cadillacs (used), the present incarnation (Ben made that into a pun: that was where Morrie lived!) a black 1948 coupe with plush velour seats and snazzy little fins, made him feel a macher. He bought cheap – I have contacts, he would brag, and of course they had him – and paid dearly. The cars were always breaking down, rust made its home on their sills, they were expensively and incompetently serviced by that chazzer Bert, the local German mechanic, whose annual holidays were financed entirely by Maurice’s follies. Talk about being taken for a ride!

  She didn’t drive, she was driven. Crazy. Maurice would grudgingly take her shopping into the village, to the A&P, Wolfie’s, the pharmacy, waiting in the car, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. She bought her personals in the city, when Maurice gave her some money.

  They didn’t educate girls when she was growing up: after the requisite few years at school they stayed at home, learned to cook, clean, knit and sew, kept house in a way that would make the family proud, looked after ageing relatives, did good works and waited anxiously for a prospective husband. There were eight children, the boys bright and ambitious, the girls consigned to helping at the counter in their Morningside Heights bakery, dusted by flour on top of their own talcum powder, flirting shyly with the local boys when they came in to buy an iced bun.

  Maurice Kaufmann smiled shyly at her, seemed to take notice. She wasn’t a looker, Perle, but there was something warm and toasty about her, something almost delicious, as if she’d been produced out the back, fresh out of the oven. She was three years older than him, old enough at twenty-three almost to be on the back shelf with the other stale buns, increasingly desperate to find a husband, if only to shut her mother and sisters and aunts up. Anything to get out of that house, and Maurice was a lot better than that. He was something, with his pretty ways and beguiling smile, his willingness to loiter for a moment, make conversation, ask after her.

  He was a real catch – going to law school! A good looker! – and she was immediately struck by his quickness and confidence. Every morning, before he’d popped in for his bun and chat, he’d already finished the Times crossword puzzle, he was a wizard at that, and he did them with a pen, never had to cross anything out! He’d show her, proud but a little shy, what the hardest clues were and how he’d solved them.

  ‘Capital of Belgium!’ he’d say. ‘Easy!’

  She’d pretend to be astonished.

  ‘You couldn’t know that! You looked it up!’

  ‘Never, I swear!’

  Most days she neglected to take his money, gave him a quick and rather forward glance as he started to reach into his pockets, shook her head imperceptibly. The first time she did this he started to protest, he was an honourable young man and didn’t want to get her into trouble, but he soon fell into line. Those nickels added up, and if he could save a quarter a week, well, that was something. She liked him, that was for sure.

  He was equally taken by her, though it was her capacious bosom that first turned his eye and touched his heart. He was curiously reticent in that way, and it was she who had initiated first physical contact. Sitting in the Yiddish theatre one evening, on their fourth date, or perhaps it was their fifth, it depended on whether going out for a cream soda counted, she reached gently across the seats to where his arm was resting and took his hand. Gently, gave a little squeeze. That did it, and things progressed nicely, naturally, and quickly from there to the chuppah. She smiled, remembering that day, and night. Afterwards – for years afterwards, until the children were born – he was always desperate to tear off a piece, as she called it, crazy really. She enjoyed it, but enough was enough. After Addie was born she more or less lost interest, but she was an accommodating woman and a good wife, and life was easier when Maurice was satisfied.

  Addie! They were so different now, young women – educated, with jobs of their own, outspoken, wanted to be equals with their husbands. Not all of them though, thankfully: Michelle was traditional, a good wife to Frankie, happy in her role as a mother and homemaker. She should maybe have a boy one day, that would be perfect. Knowing her, she would keep trying!

  Addie couldn’t even cook. No, that was wrong; it was hard to find the right words. Addie wouldn’t cook. She could have learned, anybody could learn to cook, but she wouldn’t. Was it beneath her, with her fancy ways, her political causes and social work? Perle hoped not, that it was merely a matter of being uninterested, or too busy, food merely something that you took on as fuel. If Addie despised cooking, what did she make of her, her mother? Was it contempt she sometimes sensed in her daughter’s tone and sharp
looks? She certainly wasn’t a girl you shared an exciting new recipe with. Addie looked at Michelle the same way she regarded her mother: sharp, disapproving, superior.

  Michelle was a good cook and a wonderful mother. Addie was, what? Did she have to say it straight out, if only to herself? She wasn’t, please God, a bad mother, it was unfair even to think that. So what was she? The absence of the right word was alarming. She wasn’t a mother at all. Didn’t think like a mother. Didn’t worry or fuss, hardly cared what the kids ate or how they dressed, if they bathed often enough, cleaned behind their ears, washed their hair, got constipated. She liked reading to them, as if they could eat words; they’d taste better than her dinners.

  Addie could shape a meatloaf, though she thought egg or onions or breadcrumbs were unnecessary, just add salt and pepper to the deflated football lump in the baking tin before putting it in the oven. Put out the ketchup, heat up some frozen fries in the oven, cut an iceberg lettuce in quarters, mix some Russian dressing to pour over it. She could overcook a steak or a pork chop. Slap together a sandwich on white bread, add mayonnaise or mustard.

  Even the kids noticed: ‘This is delicious, Addie, did you defrost it yourself?’ they’d say, and giggle like Ben. Anyway, that was unfair, not everything needed to be thawed. Sometimes she opened cans or packets as well. But the notion that meals were something carefully assembled, to think about, to take pride in, as Perle took pride in her chicken fricassee, stuffed cabbage and pot roast . . . her chopped liver, egg and onion, fresh challah laden with schmaltz. No, not at all. Addie ate them, made the right noises ingesting and thanking, but she didn’t care. She took no pride in eating either.

  In the morning she made toast, dark brown and crispy, and scrambled some eggs, which she would crack directly into a frying pan hot with butter, stir quickly with a fork, as globs of albumen floated amidst the overcooked yolk. The kids were fussy eaters, would pick at their plates, though she didn’t care if they finished or not. They had recently decided they didn’t like eggs, nor indeed oatmeal, which Addie produced in great lumps because she couldn’t be bothered to stir the pot. Instead they developed a passion for the new wonder cereal Sugar Frosted Flakes. With a sliced banana! They tried to get Poppa to try it, but he made a face, turned away, disgusted.