B000FC0RL0 EBOK (4 page)

“I love you, Tessie. I’ll get a divorce,” the man’s voice pleaded.

“You lied to me, you SOB.”

“But I love you.”

“I don’t love you,” Tessie said. “Even if I’m carrying your child, I don’t love you. Understand?”

“
Make
her understand,” the man begged Tessie’s mother. “I’m good. I make a good dollar. Tell her not to treat me this way.”

As the argument grew more intense, we turned up the radio to blot it
out, so as not to be eavesdropping. We couldn’t help but notice through the frosted glass the shadows of Tessie, Mrs. Palazzo, and a small man moving frantically back and forth in front of the Christmas tree.

“Don’t you understand?” Tessie screamed again. “I’ll have the baby but not you.”

The man said, “I won the race today. I rode a winner at the track. I’m giving you everything.”

“I don’t want your fucking money!” Tessie screamed.

All of us in our own apartment forgot Eddie Cantor. We were now glued to the drama going on next door.

“Okay,” the man said. “If you don’t take the money I’m flushing it down the toilet.”

There was a silence, and then Tessie’s bathroom door swung open. We could make out the figure of the little man through the frosted glass of our own bathroom door as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. I could see him waving them over his head, as if it were some bomb he was about to throw. There was another silence, then the sound of the toilet chain. I could visualize the bills falling into the toilet. Without saying a word I yanked open our bathroom door and screamed, “Take the money, Tessie, take the money!” as the bills went swirling to a watery grave.

During those early days in Brooklyn the fights between my mother and father were almost always about money. When the battles became physical, I assumed the role of protector over Arnie and Doreen.

I remember pushing both of them under the kitchen table when fists started flying. I hoped that the sight of Doreen’s blonde ringlets and blue eyes streaming oceans of tears would cause my parents magically to kiss, make up, and live happily ever after, as in a fairy tale. Instead, it only seemed to intensify their combat.

My biggest dread was that the neighbors would hear. Jewish people don’t fight, I thought. I would tiptoe between my mother and father, acting as a buffer, hoping that would make them stop. They almost hit me as they flailed clumsily at each other.

It was usually my mother who would initiate the battle, daring my father to strike her. His response was to turn his back, in protection against the fingernails that tore at him. He was usually in some sort of undershirt, so a considerable amount of skin was exposed. He would duck his head
as her hands lunged for his face. “Why don’t you move?” my mother would scream at my father.

“And go where?”

“To the baths.”

“I’m going.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

During the Depression, many husbands left their homes and moved into the bathhouses, establishments normally occupied by alcoholics and womanizers drying out after a night in the bars. The spaces were just large enough for a cot covered with a sheet. It was just a place to dump your clothes while you took a steambath. For a dime, a Polish attendant would pour buckets of water on you and beat you with twigs and leaves, both cleansing you and punishing you. It was a sort of self-inflicted punishment for boozing and/or adultery, acts my father could never have committed.

“I don’t drink and I don’t fool around with other women,” he’d declare as Bella chased him around the kitchen.

“Why don’t you?” she’d yell. “Then I wouldn’t have to see your face.” She’d land a fist on his shoulder. He’d curse and start to strike back, with a cry that seemed to rise from deep within him. He’d hit her with the backs of fists curved inward.

“Ktsop!”
he’d scream. It was an expression used in the old country to describe Cossacks during a pogrom.

Arnie and Doreen huddled under the table, bawling.

“Greener Zoodic!”
My father, born in America, was falling back on Yiddish.

“Call the police!” my mother shouted at me.

“No,” I pleaded. The shame. Jews did not call the police—Jews fighting among themselves. The police would only watch and laugh. Encourage us to kill ourselves. How could my parents be so stupid? They’ve lost their souls.

“Not the cops,” I begged.

“Then make him get out.”

“Why don’t you leave,” I begged my father.

“Where can I go?” he asked me.

“Go to the baths!” my mother yelled.

“Okay.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Always tomorrow. And I want you to send money. Seven dollars a week for us to live on.”

“What am
I
going to live on?” my father would ask. “I can’t live on two dollars a week. I need at least seven dollars myself.”

“Stop smoking cigars!” my mother yelled.

“A nickel a day,” my father said. “I smoke two cigars for a nickel, and you want to take away my pleasure.”

It was the cigars that made her furious. Smoking cigars and listening to the radio as if there were no Depression, no troubles.

I loved the smell of my father’s two-for-a-nickel cigars. I remember the look on his face as he sat listening to Eddie Cantor on the radio while my mother snapped his cigars in two. My father switched to a pipe and Union Leader tobacco, a nickel a pouch.

My father, like many, wanted to work. When we moved from Williamsburg to East New York, he became part of the WPA, the Works Progress Administration. He helped build the Palisades Parkway. At 5
A.M.
I’d watch him get dressed. He’d put on huge leather lace-up boots that extended almost to the knee. I asked why he wore boots. “Copperheads,” he said. New Jersey had copperheads. A dangerous job, I thought. Deddy then waited for the truck that would pick him up and take him along with other men to New Jersey. My father had never held a shovel in his hands until then. When he got home from the Palisades he’d plop himself into a chair, light up his pipe, and turn on the Atwater Kent radio, a large metallic black box with a lid and a horn. Comedians were my father’s favorites. On different nights there were Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. He didn’t understand Fibber McGee and Molly.

Laughter seemed to dissipate the pain of being unemployed. Even my mother’s anguish subsided when Eddie Cantor sang, “Potatoes are cheaper, tomatoes are cheaper, now’s the time to fal-l-l-l in love.” More than anyone else, Eddie Cantor made us aware that the entire country was in a Depression and we weren’t alone.

My mind danced when Eddie was on. I wanted to be Eddie Cantor. I thought he could change the whole world. I too could change the world if I were a comedian. Eddie said, “When I’m the president, when I’m the president.” I thought,
Wow, what if we had a Jewish president?
We could
go down to Washington, D.C. We’d live with him in the White House. He’d take care of us like cousins.

My dreams were real to me. I wrote a letter to radio station WEAF, requesting tickets to see
The Eddie Cantor Show
live. Six weeks later five tickets arrived in the mail at our new apartment on Alabama Avenue, Brooklyn. Had Eddie Cantor read my letter? I felt like I had reached someone for the first time in my life. I was about nine years old.

The day we were to see the show I became the head of the family. We left from East New York, taking the subway at Livonia Avenue, then changed at Broadway Junction for the Broadway local, and went over the bridge into Manhattan. Life changed once I was over that bridge. It was a new world.

We arrived at Rockefeller Center and waited in the lobby with hundreds of other free-ticket holders. An usher, looking very formal, motioned to all of us and removed the felt-covered chain. Like a hungry army, we crowded into the elevators that took us to the eighth floor. There, in the studio where the Conan O’Brien TV show is broadcast today, was where we’d see and hear Eddie Cantor. We quickly moved into our seats, hungry for the excitement to start.

The clock on the wall said 7:00
P.M.
, an hour before the show was to go on. The musicians strolled onstage and took their places. Jimmy Wallington, the announcer, appeared before us. “Before Eddie comes out,” he said, “we want you to know this show is going out all over the country. So what we need is lots of applause, and we want you to laugh
loud
at the jokes. Let’s see you applaud.” Everybody applauded enthusiastically.

Suddenly, Eddie Cantor bounded onto the stage. Everyone clapped. His energy, his bulging eyes, his jet-black hair seemed to burst out of his body. Eddie talked directly to the audience.

“Would you like to hear a song?” he said.

“Yes!” the audience answered.

“How about ‘Makin’ Whoopie’?” he said. Big applause. “This is Bobby Sherwood, our orchestra leader. Bobby, take a bow. Bobby’s from the South. A lot of you are probably from the South. South Brooklyn.” He continued speaking to the audience. “How did you get here tonight?”

“Subway!” somebody yelled out.

“Was it crowded?”

“No.”

“Did you pay?” Laughter.

“Come on, who went under the turnstile? You, what’s your name?” Eddie Cantor was talking to my brother Arnie! “How old are you?”

“Seven,” Arnie replied.

“Are you married?”

“No,” Arnie said shyly.

“I’ve got five daughters,” Eddie Cantor said.

The audience laughed.

“I’m just looking for a
shiddach
”—the Yiddish word for a marital match. “How much time do we have, Jimmy?”

“Half an hour.”

“Let’s do ‘Susie.’”

More applause. Cantor started to sing. His body seemed to surge as if it had been hit by electric current. His feet and hands were moving vertically and horizontally like piston rods. He looked like a puppet that had been given life and wanted us all to wonder at it.

I saw my mother and father turn to each other. They smiled. I had brought them together. I had done something that seemed impossible. Eddie Cantor could bring peace to my family.

From that moment I really wanted to become a comedian.

At three minutes to 8 o’clock, just before the show went on the air, Jimmy Wallington said to all of us out in front, “Remember, you’re supposed to laugh.”

Eddie ran across the stage, took a flying leap into Jimmy Wallington’s waiting arms, and kissed him on the cheek just as the program went on, live.

To call it a radio show was a misnomer. When Eddie came to a joke he’d roll his eyes, which meant for us to laugh. He nodded his head when a joke didn’t go over, which meant laugh anyway. When the show ended, Eddie seemed exhausted, but he performed a few encores. He gave us a great show, a great evening.

It was late when the Stiller family arrived home. I had gotten my family out of Brooklyn to see the world’s greatest comedian. My mother and father had an unwritten truce; there were no fights for three whole days. I felt I had accomplished something wonderful.

Years later, when Eddie Cantor died, I wondered why there wasn’t a national day of mourning. He died as if he had never been around. What
he did for my family that night was never expressed in the obituaries, but my memories of Eddie Cantor—and my debt to him—never died.

I still remember the clang of the wheels of what we referred to as the Tanta Annie train, which ran along Pitkin Avenue, taking us to the home of the Citrons. The wheels clanging on the track sounded like the beat of a snare drum, din-da-din-da-din-da-din.

“We’ll be going on the din-da-din train,” I’d told Arnie and Doreen, excitement in my voice. “Let’s be in the first car.”

My father and mother sat with my little sister Doreen on the seats made of woven, wicker straw while Arnie and I became explorers discovering America through the front window. The thrill of being in the first car was heightened when we emerged from the tunnel. As the sunlight hit us, we marveled at how we could go from darkness to the fullness of light.

We were heading to the Citrons for Passover. Since my father never conducted a Seder, each year the five of us would take the subway to the home of someone in our family. This was done without an invitation. This particular year we arrived unannounced at my Uncle Charlie and Tanta Annie’s house, 965 Sutter Avenue, Brooklyn. The Seder dinner was already on the table. The sight of five hungry faces standing at the door triggered a burst of laughter. Their smiles removed any embarrassment we might’ve had. The warm and effusive welcome, this year as all other years, filled us kids with the belief that our not being there would cause disappointment, heartbreak, grief. To this day, I wonder what really went through the minds of my various uncles and aunts.

Uncle Charlie and Tanta Annie’s children were our cousins Joe, Dottie, and Jeanette Citron. They were older than us, and when we were at their house they became our loving caretakers. They seemed to enjoy taking us by the hands, buying things for us as if they were our mothers and father.

My Uncle Charlie had a seltzer route. He supplied families in East New York with the elixir of the poor: carbonated water in a bottle. He owned his own truck. Boxes of seltzer sprouted on two sides at 45-degree angles, making the truck look like a portable pagoda. The truck had non-inflatable hard-rubber tires. The cab stood above an engine that gasped when it turned over, then sputtered without letup, once started. I always
recognized the sound when the truck was near our house, and I’d run into the street to greet it.

When I spotted my uncle he was usually on the way up to an apartment with a seltzer box on his shoulder. On his return he’d ask me how everyone was, and reach deep into his pockets and pull out a fistful of coins. He’d invariably hand me half a dollar.

“Here, buy something,” he’d say. “For everybody.”

The amount was unbelievable: a half dollar. On one occasion I immediately ran to the candy store and bought twenty-five pieces of penny gum that came with Indian picture cards. I knew my mother would kill me if I told her in advance, so I didn’t. When I arrived at our apartment with twenty-five pieces of gum and pictures of Indian chiefs, my mother was furious.