Winter came early that year. By Armistice Day the lawns in front of the Court House were covered with a foot of snow and the long, plaintive notes of "The Last Post" cracked and wavered, one moment loud, the next moment distant, in a wind that blew from all four directions at once. The following week the storekeepers along Queen Street began to unpack cartons of Christmas decorations that had spent ten months in the dampness and dust of their cellars; decorations that looked like used greeting cards, weary greens and faded reds of lifeless streamers, shrivelled tinsel, water-stained posters wishing one and all a Merry Xmas, reminding mankind that it was time once again to celebrate the birth of "X". It was an annual commercial ritual, performed without any apparent trace of spiritual energy by the men and women of the shops. Yet, there was a kind of bravery and optimism about it. It would have been so natural, in that heartless November of 1941, as one arose in the morning to the bad news from Europe and Asia, and looked out the window at the bad news in the sky and in the streets, to say, "To hell with it, to hell with everything;" so natural to crawl back into bed and hide under the blankets hoping that by the time the day had arrived at its fullest light, the world would have gone away, far far away. Instead, the town dressed itself for Christmas, turned on its strings of coloured street lights, somehow forced a smile on its face for the yuletide season.
Everywhere, that is, except at the Ritz Cafe.
If that restaurant showed few effects from the changing seasons, it showed none at all from the changing moods of man. It mattered less than a palmful of salt to the management and staff, and to most of the clientele of the Ritz Cafe, that battles were being lost and won overseas, that hopes were being dimmed and awakened at home, that people were determined at all costs to pretend that there was peace and goodwill mixed in with the blood and mud of war.
Besides, Jimmy Lee had his own problems to worry about concerning the Larue affair.
Jimmy Lee's multiple contusions and swellings had put an end to the casualness with which his neighbours regarded the goings-on at the Ritz. Perhaps such activities were, after all, a serious threat to the good order of the neighbourhood. Perhaps there was a profoundly sordid side to Jimmy Lee's affairs with his waitresses that might tend to deprave the populace and should be expurgated from the Christmassy streets lest it pollute and ruin this holy season. Perhaps the storekeepers on the block resented the fact that they—Christian and Jew alike—took the trouble to adorn their establishments with the required festive trappings, while Jimmy Lee sold his vegetable soup by the gallon and his roast beef by the hundredweight and spent not so much as a penny in the observance of Christ's miraculous arrival. Whatever the reasons; Jimmy Lee's neighbours whispered into life a quiet campaign to get the Ritz Cafe closed.
The anti-Ritz conspirators met twice daily during the morning and afternoon coffee breaks at Herman's Grill, and for the time being the usual business gossip was suspended. Like stockmarkets that rise and fall upon the temporary indigestion of a single president or prime minister, the fortunes of Queen Street had suddenly become highly sensitive to the amorous entanglements of a single Chinese restaurateur. The selling of shoes and hammers and cough syrup and haircuts depended upon the eradication of the Ritz Cafe and the particular brand of society who ate—and did other things—therein. In the booths at Herman's, pointed questions were asked in low but very determined voices. "What about calling in the Sanitation Inspector?" ... "Isn't this sort of thing under the control of the Health Department?" ... "Maybe we should consult old Doc Gimby, the M.O.H.?" ..."Couldn't the clergymen in this area get together and put some pressure on Council?"
Throughout these deliberations my father sat silent, careful not to commit himself to any plan designed to rid the block of the Ritz Cafe, but at the same time just as careful not to defend Jimmy Lee, at least openly. So nobody really knew how my father felt about the subject of Jimmy Lee's thornlike presence—nobody except me. To me my father confided his attitude about Jimmy Lee, an attitude that hadn't changed a fraction despite all the ugly stories. It was still: "Don't worry about Jimmy Lee, he's just as much a mensch as any of us."
And then—a few days before Christmas—the moment of truth arrived.
A group of storekeepers sat in a booth at Herman's stirring their coffee. "Hey, look at Harry," one of the group said, pointing to the man who had just come into the restaurant and was approaching them. "Looks like he's ready to commit murder.''
Harry, who sold hardware a few doors down the street from the Ritz, came over to the booth and sat down without removing his overcoat.
"Do you know what that bastard Chinaman has gone and done now?" he asked, his voice quivering with anger. "He's gone and thrown out that nice little lady from the Salvation Army. You know, the one that goes around collecting at Christmas. Practically tossed her out on her ass and yelled at her that if she ever came into the place again he'd take a butcher knife to her."
"My God!"
"The sonofabitch!"
"That's gotta be the last straw!"
Still shaking, Harry pressed on, determined to take ad vantage of his audience's outrage. "I say we should call the police and lay some kind of a charge against him. That's gotta be assault, isn't it? I tried to get the Salvation Army woman to do it, but they're so goddam full of charity. So I say it's up to us."
One by one the other men voiced their agreement. But when it came my father's turn to speak up, he looked straight at Harry.
"Why did he throw her out, Harry?"
Harry stared at my father. "Now how the hell would I know? I wasn't there when it happened. Anyway, what's it matter? The point is, he was abusive and threatened her. If you could've seen the look on her face when she came into my shop, you wouldn't give a damn why he threw her out. No sir, you'd just want to go straight into the Ritz and punch the bugger right in the mouth, just like those Indians did."
"Then why didn't you?"
"Why didn't I what?"
"Go straight in there and punch him in the mouth? I mean, if you were that upset."
Harry twisted one side of his mouth into an expression of contempt. Without looking at my father again, he spoke to the others. "Will somebody please tell our friend here that maybe that sort of thing's okay where he and his pal across the street come from but—"
Before Harry could utter another word, he found himself drenched in coffee. It trickled down his forehead and cheeks and chin onto the front of his overcoat where it soaked into the heavy wool fibres forming massive blotches. The coffee had come from my father's cup which caromed across the table and landed on the floor breaking into several pieces. At the sound of the crashing coffee cup, Herman came running from· behind the soda fountain, a wet towel clutched in one hand.
"For Godsakes," he cried, looking at the mess on the floor and shaking his head. "What do you think this is, the Ritz?"
My father held a telegram in his hand. "They think she's dying, I've got to go and make arrangements."
He was speaking of my stepmother as he did always, flatly and without emotion. I had come home from school to find him packing a few things in a small club bag.
"Is that all you're taking?" I asked, nodding toward the couple of shirts and some toiletries in the bag.
"I won't need more than that. I intend to get it all over with one-two-three. Just like that. One-two-three and goodbye once and for all." He snapped the club bag shut. "Come say goodbye at the station. We don't have much time."
On the way to the station he mumbled, "Just my luck. Right in the middle of stocktaking." It was late January, 1942, the sacred time of year when a merchant communed with his inventory, fingering each ticketed garment, and wondering whether it would still be around a year from now.
On the fifth night after his departure for Winnipeg, he returned. I had heard no news whatsoever; indeed, I had no idea when he would return. I was in the kitchen of our apartment, doing my homework, listening to the snow rattle against the skylight over my head. Suddenly the apart
ment door opened and my father was home. I rose to greet him but could think of nothing more appropriate to say than "You're home."
He put down his club bag. "Sit down," he said, "I have something to tell you." We sat at the kitchen table.
"She's dead. She died before I got there. I took care of the funeral and came back here on the first train I could get. And now I think it's time you knew something. We were never married. Everybody thought we went away and got married in Detroit after she came here from Winnipeg. Well, we did go to Detroit, but the truth is, never got married. I think you are old enough now to understand the reason why. You see, she came here by boat from Port Arthur—the same god dammed boat that took her away, as a matter of fact—and I was all dressed up fit to kill—new suit and all—to meet her. I was like a young bridegroom, that's how anxious I was to see her and to have her here. But when the boat pulls in toward the dock, I see she's standing at the rail and there's some smart-looking guy standing beside her with his arm around her, and they're smiling at me and laughing, and smiling and laughing at each other. He didn't get off here; he was on his way to Toronto. But when she's finally off the boat I ask her 'Who's the fellow who was with you?' and she says they were once friends when she was teaching school in Portage La Prairie. 'From the looks of it, you must have been awfully good friends' I say to her, because I'm burning up a little. Anyway, it turns out that they were more than just friends. And I knew then, that very second, that I didn't want her anymore. She wasn't... do you know what a virgin is?"
"I'm not sure. I guess I know; yes."
"Well she wasn't a virgin. Understand?"
"Yes."
"And I wanted a virgin. I didn't want somebody else's secondhand merchandise. I was entitled to a virgin. It was coming to me. You understand, don't you?"
He paused, waiting for me to agree.
"Yes."
"That same day I told her 'I can't go through with it and I want you to go back to Winnipeg' and she said she'd rather jump into the St. Mary's River than face the trip back to Winnipeg. I offered her money—anything—if she'd leave, but she insisted she really loved me and wanted to be your mother. You know what common-law is? Well, that's how we lived, common-law. Nobody else knows the truth about us. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"
"Yes."
I said nothing more, just sat staring at the top of the kitchen table, remembering—of all things—that it had been a long time since I'd seen a family-size bottle of Kik.
Passover came in mid-March and with it came invitations for seder meals from solicitous housewives-invitations my father dreaded because they were invariably tinged with rachmonas; moreover he felt compelled to reciprocate and this created a burden. In the past, though he would have preferred to decline, he usually did the graceful thing and accepted, often disclosing after the meal in the privacy of our car that he felt as if he was choking with every mouthful. But this time, he turned down every caller. The caller would plead, "But it's Pesach! You can't eat in a restaurant on Pesach. It's just not right." "Thank you," he would reply, forcing himself to be polite, "it's really so kind of you to be concerned, but my son and I have made arrangements ..."
I had nothing whatever to do with the arrangements, of course; my father made them all, such as they were. On the first night of Passover—a night that was rainy and foggy—we dined across the street at the Ritz Cafe. It was a seder night different from all other seder nights in my memory. My father excused me from the traditional Four Questions ("Wherefor is this night distinguished from all other nights of the year?"); Jimmy Lee's one ritual query ("What you gonna have?") sufficed.
There were no more Doris Larues in Jimmy Lee's life now; various local armies of righteousness had combined forces to see to that. Assisted by his recently-hired helper, a Chinese by the name of George who looked as though he had just completed one life sentence at hard labour and was about to begin a second, Jimmy Lee served this Passover meal.
Instead of matzohs we ate soda biscuits; Jimmy Lee's watery vegetable soup was the broth of our affliction; his apple pie-just as tinny-tasting as ever-our bitter herb, reminding us of the days when our people were slaves in Egypt.
From that Passover on, neither my father nor Jimmy Lee lived again with a woman. From that Passover on, under an arrangement unconsciously made between them, the Chinese restaurateur and the Jewish merchant became the inhabitants of a common desert, each retiring to his private sand dune, prepared in mind and body to survive there, if necessary, for the next forty years.
Press Pressure
So much has been written about the strength and influence of the Jewish mother that one is left with the impression that the Jewish father was nothing more than a grayish bug of a man who left his droppings—a bit of seed here, a bit of cash there—and vanished into some obscure corner of the family fabric; in life, a vague shadow; in death, the occupant of the rearmost provinces of his children's memories, recalled for twenty minutes annually with the burning of a candle and the mumbling of a prayer.
No doubt there existed such mediocrities at the head of Jewish families. But they must have existed in some other part of the country, or perhaps on some other continent. Never in our town. In our town the father—in his house or in his store—was boss. If and when it pleased him, but only if it pleased him, he would condescend to share his throne with his wife; yet at all times he was the eminence, and on or off the throne he held his household in a firm grip.
There were few distractions for the father in those days; service clubs and golf and politics were strictly Gentile pursuits. Father could therefore be counted on to be at home for lunch (which was called dinner) and for dinner (which was called supper), and if business was a little slow, he could often be counted on to come home for an afternoon nap. Since home was usually an apartment over a store, or a dwelling a mere block or two away, father could also respond promptly to a summons if things got out of hand on the domestic scene. Being his own boss, he didn't have to ask anyone for time off when such emergencies arose.
Fathers came in two varieties: Variety Number One was the benevolent (and sometimes malevolent) despot, a selfappointed governor-general who ruled by vocal decreesissued frequently and loudly—and who oversaw everything from the finishing of breadcrusts at breakfast to the smoothing out of a Czerny piano exercise before bedtime. Variety Number Two was equally despotic, but chose to remain uninvolved a good deal of the time, leaving it to his wife to play the "heavy" with the kids, concerning himself not with means but with ends, remaining aloof from the pettier details of day-to-day family life but descending like a ton of concrete if results were less than first-rate.
My father fell into the first category. Correction: My father invented the first category. A natural monarch, he was powerful of lung, sharp of tongue. At first his monarchy rested, secure and unchallenged, upon these two God-given attributes as well as upon his skillful employment of two basic tactics that enhanced his power and defeated my plans every time. The first was to manipulate my age to suit his case. One moment he would argue, "You're too young to decide such things. What does a little kid know about life anyway?" If that didn't discourage me, he would immediately switch tack, like a shrewd sailor on a sea of changing winds. "Look at you, almost a man already; it's time you put aside such childish ideas and faced responsibility." My age was thus a relative concept; it depended at any given moment upon who wanted what to be decided which way.
His other tactic was to ask, after I had gingerly announced some controversial plan or another, "Are you crazy, or are you out of your mind?" The question, of course, presented an impossible choice and stumped me every time. I carried on in this state, a boy one minute, a man the next, never completely sure whether I was in or out of my mind, launching youthful schemes and watching them sink in the tidal wave of his personality.
Then, one day, I discovered in a Reader's Digest article the theory that insanity and genius often go hand in hand. Comforted by the thought that wh
at my father took for madness on my part was in fact sheer brilliance, I began the slow painful process of ascendancy, discarding with increasing boldness questions of age and lunacy as irrelevant and immaterial. By the time I was twelve we co-existed, father and I; gasoline and fire housed side by side under the same roof, combustion never more than a tiny spark away.
Minor conflicts now were usually resolved after a short sharp clash of tempers by whoever managed to shout loudest and longest. Occasionally, when such confrontations were staged in father's store, the saleswomen would discreetly declare a half-hour holiday and retire to the coffee shop next door until the "All Clear" was signalled.
Conflicts of a medium size—the sort that couldn't be settled on a one-to-one basis—were submitted for arbitration to a neutral third party, usually one of father's neighbouring businessmen: the druggist, the barber, the manager of the liquor store across the street. This particular forum suited my causes best, for almost always I emerged the victor. There is no appeal like that of a tear-stained boy who wants a box camera or a dollar to go to the circus. Besides, it's so easy to be permissive with somebody else's kid. Inevitably the arbitrator, playing the role of nice guy to the hilt, would wink at my father and say, with incredible good nature and understanding, "Aw, let the kid have what he wants."
A Good Place to Come From Page 9
