by Rick Gekoski
How could they possibly understand? Maurice was born in ‘the old country’ in 1892 – ‘the same year as Eddie Cantor,’ he’d say proudly, ‘only I’m eight months older!’ As a child – he didn’t remember how old, perhaps nine or ten? – he saw in the new century as a steerage-class passenger on a steamship to America, his mother and older sister with him, their tiny Bolekhov tannery hardly able to support the family. His father would join them later in New York, with the boys. Next year perhaps, or the next. God willing.
He remembered it well enough, the noxious smells that permeated their home and clothes, the rough trappers with their filthy clothes and dripping pelts, the vats of hot boiling water, the drying racks. He wouldn’t, perhaps couldn’t, talk about it. The children weren’t interested anyway, though he told them the story of having been given a soft and browning banana with his on-board supper, and told to peel and eat it. He’d never seen one, threw away the brown soggy fruit and tried to eat the peel. He made a face when he told the story.
‘I’ve never eaten one,’ he said. ‘They’re horrible!’
‘But, Poppa, you should try! You eat the middle bit! They’re good! We have them with our Sugar Frosted Flakes!’
He made the face again.
‘Never! Oy schtinksi!’
What do the children know of such things? He remembered the voyage clearly enough, in a series of images and feelings that had become constituent elements of his adult incarnation. The smell of hot iron and machine oil, vomit and urine, rotting sauerkraut and the rancid odour of unwashed bodies, the heat, the constant rolling of the sea, stumbling and tripping on the stairwells and decks, clutching the handrails wet with spray and sweat. It was such a long way from the bowels of the ship to the decks, and he felt so ill during the eleven days of the crossing, that he spent most of his time in his hammock, green and listless, as the ship tossed about like a toy in a hyperactive toddler’s bathtub.
What little he could eat and drink came back up soon enough. His mother wiped his face with a filthy cloth and let the older children look after themselves. He was the youngest, and her darling, born some eighteen years after her first.
It was hardly possible to sleep, save from pure exhaustion, after an interminable night kept awake by the deep throbbing of the insistent engines that sounded like they were next door, the snoring of the people around them, the vomiting and moaning, the indescribable stench. A few feet away an elderly man moaned ‘Oy vey iz mir’ through the night, ‘Oy gottenyu!’
He shook off the images, looked at the kids, whom he understood as little as they, him. Post-war – post two wars! – children of privilege, everything so easy that it had no value, had not been suffered for or earned. If they had souls, nothing would hone or refine them, they would get sloppy with lack of use. Best just to play, to tease and be teased, to keep away from what they could never understand, please God they would never have to.
They liked teasing Granny, too. Most evenings, when they had meat for supper, one or the other would ask if they could have bread and butter with it.
‘Please, Granny, please?’ they’d insist. ‘It’s to mop up the gravy!’
She never caught on, each time explained to them that it wasn’t kosher, wondered why they could never remember. Even Die Schwarze had learned within a week! That it was a childish joke would never have occurred to her. She was literal-minded, lacked any sense of humour, always asked to have a joke explained to her. Ben, who loved telling jokes, had long ago learned not to tell them in front of Perle.
‘Explain it to me . . .’ she’d begin, and since no explanation of a joke is funny, was confirmed in her lifelong opinion that they were stupid.
Unlike her mother, Becca wasn’t high and mighty, she was low and biddable. The little one was always delighted to help Granny in the kitchen, learned what was kosher and what was treif, stirred the bowl of cake mixture and got to lick the spoon (so did Jake, that wasn’t fair!), set the table for dinner, filled the glass dishes full of Jordan almonds and sugar-coated fruit slices, red, yellow, green and orange, and placed them on the side tables in the living room. She sensed that she was already a better woman than her mother, and rather regretted it.
She loved being with Granny and Poppa. You didn’t have to make your bed or clean up your toys or unset the table – constant areas of conflict in their apartment – because the Negro girl did that. She had the tiny bedroom next to the bathroom. She didn’t come out much, ate her meals in there, listened to the radio, read her magazines. She came out to clean the house, do the dishes and the laundry, wearily do the endless ironing, sometimes babysit if the grown-ups went to town. She never came to the beach, she hated the water, couldn’t even swim. She had a friend, Agatha, who worked in a house at the top end of their yard. She couldn’t swim either. They knew each other from the city.
The girl was called Ruby, but Poppa and Granny called her Die Schwarze, which meant a Negro like on Amos ’n’ Andy on the radio, but Ruby didn’t listen to that, made a face, went to her room and closed the door. Becca had no idea why; it was such a funny programme. ‘Ah loves you, Sapphia!’ Andy would croon. Or perhaps was it Amos? They both talked funny, the same. Ruby didn’t talk like that. She hardly talked at all.
In the back of the car, as they passed through the city and onto the Island, Becca gazed out the window, thought of going to the beach as soon as they got there, it was so hot, and sighed with anticipatory pleasure.
‘Are we almost there?’ she said.
‘Only an hour,’ said Addie. ‘Just hang on.’
But the kids were bored and restless, had eaten too many candies and drank too much Coke, and were beginning to push and nag at each other.
‘I know,’ said Ben, ‘let’s have a singsong!’
Addie looked alarmed. ‘We discussed this. No singsongs, you know how it yugs them up!’
A clamour arose from the rear of the car.
‘Yug us up! Yug us up!’
The kids had finished their sandwiches and jellybeans, demanded stops to have a siss, which they didn’t really need but used as a way of checking out the service stations for Twinkies and chocolate kisses. They were getting fractious, pushing the stick back and forth in fraught imperial combat.
‘I think we need some rules,’ said Addie. ‘The first rule is no more sisses till we get to the bungalow.’
‘What if I have to do a doody?’ Jake asked, loving a chance both to make a point and to say a rude word.
‘Yeah,’ said Becca, ‘me too! A doody!’
‘And the second rule,’ Addie said, ignoring them, already irritated beyond endurance by Ben’s constant humming of his arias, ‘is no more humming. And NO singing . . .’
‘That’s so unfair!’ interrupted Jake. Ben hummed on. Becca looked perplexed.
‘You didn’t let me finish! No singing “Doggie in the Window”!’
It was the latest hit, Becca sang it to herself all the time. Once it was in there, you couldn’t get the goddamn doggie out of your head.
There was a protest from the back.
‘OK,’ she said, ‘in that case, we can also have “Every Little Breeze”.’
On holiday in Florida last year Jake had been smitten by a little blonde girl whose name was Denise. Ben had teased him to the point of tantrum on the way home in the car, singing that popular love song about ‘Louise’, only substituting the name ‘Denise’.
That shut Jake up. If the dreaded Denise was the price of the doggie, goodbye mutt, and as for Becca, merely the incipient rendition of that dreaded song (the one that upset her so much) was enough to put the pooch in the kennel.
So Addie didn’t need to employ her ultimate threat: that she would sing herself, all alone and loudly, which would have caused shrieks of dismay as the children held their ears and went ‘UMMMMMMMM’ at the top of their voices. Addie didn’t hit an occasional false note, she didn’t hit any at all: or more accurately, as Ben had once computed, she hit more or less one in eight.
Eight notes in the scale, random success. And that didn’t count the sharps (ouch!) or the flats (ooch!).
Ben began his song slowly, voice increasing in volume as the first stanza unfolded. It was their favourite song, and they loved it almost as much as Addie pretended to disapprove of it. It was a potent combination, irresistible.
‘OOOOOH . . .’ began Ben.
The children joined right in, at the top of their voices.
‘Oh my name it is Sam Hall, is Sam Hall, is Sam Hall,
‘Oh my name it is Sam Hall,
‘And I ’ATES YOU ONE AND ALL
‘Yer a bunch of MUCKERS all
‘DAMN YOUR EYES!’
The children adored Sam, took him up the scaffold surveying the crowd below, proud to have broken the ‘bloomin’ ’ed’ of his victim’. Becca was never sure who Bloomin’ Ed was, and why Sam broke him. Maybe he was one of Sam’s toys? But she liked him. She loved singing ‘DAMN your eyes’, as loud as she could, and then when there was a pause at the end of the stanza she’d repeat it quietly, savouring the phrase. ‘Damn’ was a curse word and only Addie was allowed to curse, though Becca didn’t know what most of her curses – you could tell they were curses – meant.
By the end even Addie was singing lustily and off key; it was impossible not to love dear Sam Hall, to celebrate him.
‘And it’s up the rope I go, up I go, up I go
‘And it’s up the rope I go
‘And I sees the crowd below
‘Sayin’ Sam we told you so!
‘DAMN YOUR EYES!’
Everybody’s eyes were getting damned! The following three verses were bellowed at increased tempo, Ben leading the singing with his free hand, waving it like a conductor, Addie with tears in her eyes, laughing. In the lane beside them the family in a station wagon with three surly kids in the back gazed at them, rolling with laughter, singing their hearts out. The parents turned to their kids in the back seat and you could almost hear them recommending such a display of family togetherness. It was a great show! They smiled at Addie through the window. She kept singing. Nothing like an unrepentant murderer to bring a family together, she thought.
They subsided happily.
‘Now can we sing “Clementine”?’ Jake asked, slyly, looking sideways at Becca.
‘No! No!’ said Becca. Sam Hall made her laugh, however grisly it was, but Clementine reduced her to tears, every time. The poor old miner, and his poor drowned daughter! She couldn’t bear it.
Addie immediately reassured her.
‘It’s all right, darling, don’t fret.’
But it was too late, and it was too good a song, and the sun was at its height, and they were tired and hungry and over-stimulated, all, and they were almost there, they’d come together for a few moments over Sam Hall, there was more fun to be had.
‘In a cavern, in a canyon . . .’ Ben began.
Becca started to make a noise, tried to suppress it, the kind of sound that dogs make when they want something they are not allowed to have, high-pitched, back of the throat, filled with longing and disappointment.
As they entered Cedar Valley Lane, Addie turned and said, ‘Kids, we’re here, time to wake up!’ They’d knocked themselves out with the one thing and the other, were groggy and uncomfortable, but the magic took over as they turned left into Lane L and peered out the window expectantly. Poppa would be waiting for them! Ben gave a honk as he drove into the driveway and parked in front of the garage.
Perle emerged from the front door of the bungalow, her face a rictus of delight, Maurice behind her, arms outstretched as if he could hug the children from twenty feet away. The kids burst from the back door of the car, raced across the few feet and embraced each grandparent – Becca with Poppa and Jake with Granny. Apportioning their love. Addie smiled to herself as she got out. She’d raised good kids. Ben didn’t notice, having given a wave and a cheery hello, was immediately busy unpacking the trunk.
Poppa had painted the house, the geraniums glowed against the fresh white, the table inside would be filled with Wolfie’s best; Addie made a resolution to be more positive. It was summer, they were on vacation. Nobody was ill, nobody died. When her mother heard the phone ring, she always muttered to herself, ‘So who died?’ It was a terrible example to put before her children, this fearfulness, this distrust of life, though God knows she had her reasons. But there was no reason to be like that herself, to presume looming catastrophe. It would be a terrific summer, it could be.
Fat chance. Start as you mean to go on. Be resolutely positive and prepare to be disappointed. Her mother embraced her, rigid as ever, that capacious bosom hardly compressed by the contact. Even in her middle sixties she still had the body of a high school line-backer, squat and powerful, leaning slightly forward, ready for contact, however violent. Add a face that would have given a mugger second thoughts and she was a formidable presence.
She and Maurice were physically alike – perhaps his unlikely initial attraction to her was based on some obscure self-recognition? His pals joked that the thought of him on top of her was more like bricks getting laid than people.
Her hair was always pinned carefully into a bun that looked like a helmet, strikingly silver, stronger than grey, suggesting not decline but power. Her eyes, perched below thick brows, had a surprising authority. Perle looked at people directly, met their eyes until they were uncomfortable meeting hers, summing up. Keeping her counsel, judging. Insolent, almost. She made her friends and family uneasy, her stare suggested not so much intelligence, a quality that she had in abundance and kept to herself, but an inquisitorial intensity.
She knew who was leading who on, whether by the schnozzle, the kishkas or the schlong, knew the fumbling and stumbling, the evasions and self-deceptions, could project light into the dark places of the heart, locate the sharp corners and cut corners, took no one at their own estimation. Nor did she spare herself the same scrutiny. ‘I will never die of enlargement of the heart,’ she observed almost proudly, nor did she wish to. She felt safe in the depth and acuity of her observations. She knew things, your things, but never said so, which made it worse.
‘Addie!’ she said. Warmly enough, you couldn’t fault it for warmth. Could you? Addie hugged her firmly, drew her in, Perle acceded, they kissed each other’s cheek.
Their arrival at the bungalow was always timed for lunch: meeting, greeting, seating and eating went together naturally, and if the initial contact was strained – everyone had been anticipating it for too long, Maurice shopping anxiously, Perle setting the table just so, the family just arrived after a tedious ride, everyone on edge and uneasy – then it was natural, it was ordained, that they should sit down together, right away. No need to unpack, to freshen up, to change into casual clothes. A quick visit to the bathroom was allowed, make sure the children had sisses, washed their hands. Then sit! Eat already!
It was the moment at which Perle came into her own, as they sat and helped themselves, groaning with anticipatory delight. DC had nothing like this, no pickles or chopped liver, nothing worth calling a bagel, nothing so delicious and comforting, and real. This was not merely Wolfie’s triumph, but Perle’s as well, though it passed too quickly. She had no idea how to talk to children, it made her stiff and uncomfortable. Them, too. They passed the first few minutes loading their plates and answering the usual questions. How was the ride? How are things at school? What are you studying this year?
Fine, good, dunno.
Perle counted to ten, took a deep breath, carried on to twenty. She wasn’t so rude and uncommunicative when she was a girl, she’d been brought up properly, respected her many aunts and uncles, parents and grandparents, would never have silently shunned contact, eaten so greedily, taken things for granted. Next thing they’d be asking to butter their bagels! She’d been looking forward so much to seeing them and she was already disappointed. It made her feel ashamed. She never learned.
Maurice, in stark contrast, which galled her, was a natural wi
th the children, made up nicknames for them (Sport! Freckle-face!), threw them in the air (but not while eating!), tickled them under the table – he called it giving jimjees – teased, wheedled, cajoled, yugged them up until everyone else got cranky.
‘Maurice! Enough already!’
He was delighted when Addie came – Adds, he sometimes called her – was as warm and enveloping as her mother was stiff and retracted, made sure she sat next to him, squeezed her arm as she ate. He found Ben, seated across the table next to Perle – good luck to him! – a little hard to talk to, though they had the state of the nation to discuss and could play pinochle together in the evenings. Ben had learned the game just to be agreeable, but he was not a man’s man, had no interest in baseball, preferred martinis to beer, spent too much time reading. In the daytime, even at the beach, always with a book, or even worse a pad and pencil writing something or other in his minuscule hand – he would never say what.
‘Just a bit of work.’
Addie would scowl. Why wouldn’t he put it away, join in? He was only going to be there for two nights, for God’s sake!
Ben was as stiff with Perle as she with the children, what was there to say? What are you going to cook? What are you knitting? He didn’t know her, had made little effort, and she’d given up with him. And Maurice? He wondered whether his reflexive dislike – no, not dislike but discomfort – in his father-in-law’s presence wasn’t to a degree envy. The old man was so vital, jolly and warm, so engaged with people and things and projects, so delighted by food and drink – every meal was pronounced ‘best I ever ate!’ If he was often full of shit, he was also full of life, and full of stories. His words stuffed the air, all eyes were on him, he was the fulcrum on which the family balanced.
