Frog (46 page)

“‘You won't believe this,' my mother told me. ‘No one would if I swore on a stack of bibles and had motion pictures with sound on them plus six of the most reputable witnesses. Your father called his mother on our wedding night to say I was a virgin. Right from the hotel room. It must have been 2:00 a.m., or maybe it was seven or eight, so the next day. He thought I was still asleep. He just sat at the edge of the bed, placed the call through the lobby desk and whispered in Yiddish to her “She's all right, one piece.” Then I heard her say back in Yiddish “Good, for tragedy for you and me and everyone connected with your marriage if she was anything but.” Your father taught me Yiddish just so I could speak to her. I'd taken German in high school and did well at it so I had a head start. Every other day for an hour he sat down with me for conversation in it. First the curses:
Gehn bud
and so on. Then a few weeks before the marriage he asked me to have my father get me tutors for several hours a day because I wasn't learning fast enough to be fluent by the time of the wedding. She was an ignorant woman. Let's face it: a tough shrewd illiterate peasant who loved what she was and never wanted to be anything else. Who wouldn't even learn our yes or please or thank you. His father, who got out in the world more as a darner and weaver, at least spoke some broken English and apologized for not knowing more. You of course know you're named after her: Hinda—Howard. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but she died three months before you were born. I always hated to say this, but that was the happiest pregnancy I had. With Vera, which should have been the best since I had nine months free of my mother-in-law, your father was already in trouble.'”

“My mother talking: ‘My mother and mother-in-law were sitting at the main wedding table with me. “Let me see the nice jewelry Simon gave you,” my mother-in-law said. So I held my hands out to show her the diamond watch and engagement ring, both of which she'd seen ten times before, but never in front of my mother. I say “my mother,” since if my father were at the table at the time she never would have asked it. She knew he'd see right through her immediately and tell her off. Oh, my father was on to her from the start. He was born of peasants but moved himself to the city quickly and became a man of the world. Anyway, all this was in Yiddish, you understand. Not my mother. Besides English she spoke Polish and German, but never in front of us. That they only did when they got into fierce arguments. Then my mother-in-law said “Why don't you take them off so I can really have a look at them?” So I took the ring and watch off and held them out. She took them and turned them over and over and said things like “Very nice, very expensive, my son has very good tastes and knows how to take care of a lady. Listen, my darling,” she said, “let me hold them for you while you're on your honeymoon. I heard those Spanish islands can be very unsafe places for Americans,” and she started putting them in her bag. Did I let her? You must think I was crazy. She wanted to keep them to see if I was going to be a virgin that night. If your father told her I wasn't, and he'd never lie to her on anything, she would make him leave me and she'd keep the jewelry. And if she was told I was a virgin, which I was but she never believed him because of my good looks and dancing in all those Broadway shows and with almost nothing on sometimes, she would have kept the jewelry anyway because she would have said he was lying to protect me. So I told her no, if I feel unsafe before we go I'll let my mother hold them for me. And if I don't feel unsafe till we're on the cruise, I'll leave them in a safe they must have on the ship. That way I kept my jewelry. And when he told her the next morning I was a virgin-called her just for that purpose, right from the hotel lobby phone before we went in for breakfast—she had no reason to argue with him about it. As it was, I had to sell all my good jewelry months after your father went on trial, as the lawyer costs and your father not working had made us almost dead broke. Good thing she was gone by then or she would have died during the trial or when he went to prison. What am I saying?—she'd never let anything hurt herself. She would have just pretended she got some kind of heart attack, and then he would have got very sick over it in prison and perhaps died. Maybe I'm being too hard on her, but for the first ten years of my marriage that woman ruined my life. If ever there was a real witch in this world…. Well, I could tell you stories'”

“A story his mother liked to tell. ‘Make what you want of this. I suppose it shows what a devil I was. I was playing hooky. First time too, and I walked around the neighborhood, feeling free but not really finding anything interesting to do—I always had to be stimulated—so I walked around my school a few times. Dumb of me when you think of it, but I was probably trying to make some point. I was pigheaded and a tomboy too. So I yelled up to Miss Brody's window—the assistant principal and a real doll. She'd say “Your principal is your pal; that's also how to spell it.” I loved her. Always very kind to me. I yelled “Miss Brody, Miss Brody, here I am”—she wasn't Irish, you know. Brody could be a Jewish name. From a town in Poland where they congregated. They came over here. The immigration official would try to pronounce their names—Dyzik, Pytzik—and say “I can't say it, how am I supposed to spell it?” So he'd look at their cards which had where they were from and what shots they got and say “Brody, you're from Brody so your name's now Brody, a good American one.” You didn't fight it, if you could in English, since you were afraid of being detained another week or sent back. She was the first Jewish assistant principal in the system, it was said. The public schools were dominated by the Irish then. They probably thought she was one, with that name, but it's surprising it first went to a woman. Maybe because there were so few Jewish men teachers because the pay was so bad. Worse than anyone's. But if they didn't know she was Jewish, then really no surprise, because they probably had about a dozen Irish women assistant principals by then, so what was one more? But I yelled “You can't see me, Miss Brody, but I can see you.” I couldn't, but that's what I kept yelling to get her attention. “I'm playing hooky, Miss Brody, what do you think of that? I'm not going to school today or any other day, or if I do, only for a day a week and only the day I want.” I'm telling you, I was something. She finally came to the window and said “You come straight upstairs, dear, or you'll be in deep trouble, I hate to say.” I said something like “Why should I? I'm having too much fun walking around free as a bird.” Just then she said “Watch out, dear, someone's coming,” and slammed the window. Everyone knew my father and was afraid of him. He was out for his daily hour stroll from his café. Cane he didn't need, for show, always the freshly blocked homburg. I thought it was the truant officer she meant and started to run. But he had already come up behind me and put the hook part of the cane around my neck, grabbed me by the scruff of it and marched me into the school right up to Miss Brody's office. Then he threw me on the floor there and said “You're too easy on her. She yells like that from the street at you or stays out of school without our permission, this is what you do,” and he lifted me up by my hair and slapped me hard on my left ear. Oh, I heard ringing and buzzing, besides all the pain, and when the noises stopped I heard him saying “And maybe even harder to her, maybe much harder. She'll learn, and her parents will only thank you if you smack her like that. That's a promise.” I was deaf in that ear for weeks, but he wouldn't let my mother take me to a doctor for it. I still only have about ten to twenty percent of my hearing there. Maybe it was because of his slap. But maybe it was bad before that and his slap made it worse. I don't want to apologize for him but I do want to be fair. Or maybe it was always that bad, from birth, or even before, and we only became aware of it after he slapped me and I started complaining I couldn't hear in that ear, to take some of the blame of playing hooky off me. And then who knows? Maybe I was a hundred percent deaf in that ear before he hit me and his hitting me improved it by ten to twenty percent, but still made us realize my hearing problem. I don't remember any hearing problems before, but that's not saying there wasn't. Probably not. But Miss Brody. She was a lovely person. The first to urge me to be a doctor or lawyer or something substantial. But she never so much as touched me after that when before she used to hug me whenever she saw me in the halls or so. And other times shove or nudge me gently when she thought I wasn't doing things just right when she knew I had it in me to.'”

“His mother: ‘Something very eventful early in my life? Let me think. Anything—right?—but which stuck and not just remembered now. This one I've thought of a hundred times since. I was no more than thirteen. My mother sent me to Fourteenth Street to buy dresses for my sisters, both the older and younger ones. I took the trolley and went to Rothenburg's and Hearn's, the two big stores there. Off Broadway. They had a walkway a number of floors up connecting across the street two of the buildings of one of those stores. A very new thing for its time and I liked looking at it and imagining things.' ‘Like what?' ‘People walking across, looking down at me, wondering what I was looking up at. I think the walkway is still there. I went to both stores to comparison shop. Then after seeing what they had in dresses, I bought them, maybe stopped at some outside stand-up place for a tea and cake, for she also gave me money for that, and went home.' ‘Yes. So?' ‘That's all. It was a pleasant day that I took the trolley and did all this. I don't remember that but she wouldn't have sent me in the snow or rain. I would have got wet, then a cold because I was so prone, and the trolley stop was three blocks from our building, so the boxes would have also got soaked.' ‘You had to carry all this. Wasn't it too much?' ‘I was always very strong, and at thirteen, maybe near my strongest.' ‘Did you resent doing all this while your sisters weren't?' ‘Why? It was probably only two or three boxes with the five dresses in them—four for my sisters and one for me. So with twine holding them both or two and one for each hand or all three together, it couldn't have been too hard. Besides, the trip was interesting—the building bridge, the trolley rides—so something I'd say they missed out on.' ‘Did anything happen on the trolley? It break down? Something you saw from it like a horse from a horsecar bolting or breaking loose and you got scared?' ‘Not that I remember.'Did you get lost or anything like that?' ‘Depends which time you meant. I did this every spring for about five years till I was eighteen.' ‘Then the first time. For instance, maybe you forgot this but did a man make a pass at you on the trolley or streets or in a store because you were already so beautiful and filled out, according to your photos? Or someone molest you, even, let's say, or just winked at you and you didn't know what it meant and got scared?' ‘No.' ‘Then someone try to cheat you out of your money in or out of the stores?' ‘I'm sure people didn't do that as much then, at least to young and old people. I told you what happened on the street and then with the bank last month with my checkbook and a Ginnie Mae?' ‘Unbelievable. I don't know how it could have happened.' ‘What don't you know or believe?' ‘I mean I know it happened and how. But that someone would try to take out, or whatever one does with a Ginnie Mae, though I'm not quite sure what a Ginnie Mae is, and not get caught when he was standing next to the banker at the time she called you to see if you had authorized that check? That's what happened, right?' ‘First he ripped the handbag off my arm. So fast I didn't even see his face. I've no idea even how old he is, and nobody else did who saw him, or they wouldn't say so. My shoulder ached from that wrenching for a week. Then the same day, maybe four hours later when I'm still shaking over it, he or one of his pals tries to open a Ginnie Mae with a check that was in my bag. The banker only called me because there's a state or federal law—something—maybe that particular bank's policy after seeing so many people like me swindled like this—saying any check five thousand and over has to be cleared with the account's owner. Suppose he'd just made the check out for four thousand nine-hundred and nine-nine?' ‘Maybe there's a five thousand minimum on a Ginnie Mae.' ‘Anyway, I said no, that I'd never written a cheek that high in my life and for her not to accept it,' and hung up and only then realized it had to be from the checkbook in my stolen bag. And also that I hadn't only not asked what her name was but what bank she was with, though she did give me all that when she first got on and say it was way out on Long Island. You know, me and memory, which with new things only get further apart. Maybe, because she said she'd get back to me in a day or so, I didn't ask her name and bank again, but she never did. I've a strong feeling she was in on the whole thing.' ‘Why?' ‘That she never called back. That I never heard from the police. Five thousand. That's major fraud. You read where the FBI comes in on things that high. Besides, as a banker she has ways of checking if I have five thousand and over in my account, which I do but shouldn't. People say I should put most of it in Money Market or CDs.' ‘Well, if you do have more in it than you need for your checks, sure. But if she was involved, why would she have first called you? And why would the check have been made out for five thousand instead of four thousand five-hundred, for instance?' ‘What do you mean?' ‘If banks only make these authorization calls for five-thousand-and-over checks, then she wouldn't have had to call you if this one was for forty-five hundred.' ‘That I haven't figured out yet. Maybe she doesn't have a bank way of finding out how much I have in my account and was only finding out this way.' ‘How?' ‘By saying “Did you make out a check for five thousand?” And if I had said “Five thousand? I'm lucky to have five hundred in my account,” she wouldn't have bothered. No? Wrong? Anyway, that's not what I said. And I never got back the check she mentioned or heard anything more about it from anyone. If they caught him, this check swindler, or even if he ran away when she was making that call to me, she still would have had the check he left, if he left it, and I should have got it back by now, right?' ‘I'd think so but I don't know.' ‘So where is it then? She's in on it, I'm telling you, and I'm worried for my money. For myself too, because just by talking to me she knows I'm an old muddleheaded cow and therefore vulnerable, and she also knows a lot about how much money I have. Not just the checking account but probably the savings, stocks, how much Social Security I have coming in. She could use her expertise and all those computer machines banks have and pull the wool over my eyes.' ‘Really, I'm sure it's nothing like that. But maybe I should phone all the banks on Long Island till I get one that knows what happened to your check.' ‘Sure, call, run up a two hundred dollar phone bill for yourself. Suffolk and Nassau counties are long distance and unreasonably high compared to phone rates for places of much greater distances. And what'll it get you? Even if you get the right bank, think you'll get the right person? And if you do and it's our Miss Possibility Bank Fraud, think she'll give you the right information? You won't even know you got her, is what I'm saying, and she'll steer you around till you're dizzy and lost and give up hope. The truth is, so you won't be worried about me, I'm not that worried, as I closed the account right after her call and opened another one. So she couldn't touch my money with the old check if she tried, and with the new checks I'm never going to carry the checkbook around. Just one or two checks from it in my wallet, which will be one less load to carry in my bag.' ‘But if they get your bag they'll get your wallet. Did you have your wallet in the bag that guy stole?' ‘Sure, with everything—money, laundry tickets, library card, card to get me on the subways and buses for half price—but no credit cards. Those I keep in their own pouch that I'd forgotten at home.' I was wondering, since you never spoke of it. But I just thought of something. Did you have your checkbook balanced on its transactions' page?' ‘Yes, always. I do it after I write each check. You know me: meticulous.' ‘Then that's how the thief knew how much you had in it. Believe me, take out three-month CDs with most of your money in it. Keep two thousand at the most in your check account. Then if you need cash suddenly, other than what your Social Security brings, use one of the CDs after it matures. And if it's two months away from maturing and you don't want to be penalized for cashing it in early, borrow from me till it matures. Or I'll give you whatever you need when you need it—no borrowing. You were plenty generous with me when I was short or broke, so why not, when Denise and I can afford it? But you won't go for that idea, so the best thing is to have several three-month CDs running in a way where one matures every month or semimonthly. That way you'll always have cash available. And it won't get complicated, as the bank lets you know a week or so before the CD matures and then rolls it over automatically if you don't cash it in.' ‘I'll think about it.' ‘Please. Or do something, if not that, with most of your checking money so it earns a good interest. But listen—about the other thing. I'm still not clear why the shopping-on-Fourteenth-Street story stands out in your mind so much.' ‘When?' ‘The one you gave me when I asked you to tell me something memorable—eventful—from your childhood. Your mother—the dresses and trolleys.' ‘Maybe because she trusted me and liked my tastes. She always did.' ‘That's fine, and it must have made you feel very good that she did and not the others, your sisters, but is that really the only reason you remember so well the first time she asked you to do it?' ‘That's all. I think it's enough.” OK, but I'm not going to use it. No disrespect to what you remember and how you value it and such, but nothing there or just not enough.'”