Up From Orchard Street (35 page)

It was painful to separate from each other. “We’ll be back two weeks from today, same time, same place, same station,” said Scott Wolfson, reassuring us, and handed Willy two one-dollar bills. “Treat the girls to ice cream,” he said.

We didn’t look back. We drove back past the snow-covered lake, the deserted skating rink, the lawns piled high with snow. None of us spoke. Perhaps Dr. Wolfson thought of his beloved. Perhaps Bubby remembered Odessa. I thought of Connecticut but didn’t shed a tear.

20

Exodus

IT’S POSSIBLE THAT we would have stayed at 12 Orchard Street forever if it had not been for Mrs. Rosinski. By postponing decisions about moving, we granted Bubby the illusion that Manya’s Restaurant continued to survive when for weeks on end we served as few as two customers a day. In spite of our impressive electric heater in the dining room and my grandmother’s energetic return to cooking, fewer and fewer customers permitted themselves the indulgence of four-course meals at midday or ventured into our dismal hallway.

We broke even on the takeouts—beef brisket sandwiches proved our best seller. Our haphazard accounting system of placing the daily receipts under the candlestick prevented Bubby from realizing that our profits were nil. Our recent round of family illness had sent our followers not to The Grand Canal and the various delicatessens in the neighborhood, but to a brand-new restaurant, Emil’s, shiny, modern, with bustling waiters, chandeliers and a sign in the window that read In and Out in 20 Minutes, or Your Money Back. Its location on Canal close to Broadway attracted a wide clientele, including women who worked in the financial district. There appeared no reason for customers to struggle up two dark flights of treacherous steps when they could frequent Emil’s, which offered a large printed menu and let its customers leave with toothpicks wrapped in cellophane.

Uncle Goodman sorrowed because the site of Emil’s was the one he had suggested to us well over a year ago. Even my mother’s younger brothers boasted of Emil’s wonders.

In truth, Bubby could not have managed a large operation, one that included several chefs, busboys, waiters and cleanup staff. She accommodated the exact amount of business that her health permitted. The early morning bustle kept her happy, and if Weinstock and her writing buddies from the
Forward
benefited from free food, it was still the cooking that shaped her days. Both Jack and Uncle Goodman indulged her and didn’t press her to change, even as they acknowledged to each other that we were operating at a loss.

Bubby was following her salt-free diet as carefully as possible. She fell from grace every now and then by dashing into Saperstein’s for a slice of smoked sturgeon with a dollop of caviar, but in general she obeyed doctor’s orders and lost weight. Everyone except my mother recovered fully. Her convalescence was lingering, so one morning Dr. Wolfson, Lil and I descended on Dr. Bernard Frank, a cardiologist, whose sumptuous office on lower Fifth Avenue had first-rate equipment—including machines that did EKGs and took X-rays of the heart and lungs.

Dr. Wolfson had explained that the important thing about having a specialist for a doctor was his skill at accurate diagnoses. There were few medications to work with for heart problems other than digitalis and nitroglycerine tablets. Mostly doctors recommended bed rest, a healthier diet, reduced stress.

Talking a mile a minute, Dr. Frank assured my mother that he rarely had patients in his office who passed for movie stars, that he would fix her up in a jiffy, that she was too young to have anything serious.

How did I know he was lying? For one fleeting second as he wrote on Lil’s chart, I saw the mask of geniality dissolve. He appeared stricken. Frank was not a two- or three-dollar doctor. He examined hearts a dozen times a day, maybe more. You sensed at once that you were in the care of an expert. “Allez oop,” he then said, “now for some machinery.” A nurse led my mother away for blood tests, the EKG and the X-rays.

“It’s a ghetto heart,” Dr. Frank said to Scott Wolfson as if he had forgotten that I was present. “Very early damage and no care. She told me she had a weak heart. Weak is not the word for it. The arrhythmia is alarming, the heart enlarged—size of a grapefruit. I’ll tell you more after I read the tests.” He disappeared into the X-ray room.

Within a half hour Dr. Frank led my mother back into his office. Of course he smiled, patted her back. Her purse bulged with so many free samples of medicine she couldn’t even snap it shut.

“Ask for a leave of absence from Saks for a few months. The trip by subway during rush hour is too stressful and you stand in high heels eight to ten hours. Is there any chance that you could give up your career and rest?”

“Oh, I couldn’t! What would I do with myself?”

“What other women do. Meet friends for lunch, shop, take your children to their after-school lessons. Fix the evening meal and wait for your husband.”

“Dr. Frank!” My mother burst out laughing. “Why would I spend money for lunch when we own a restaurant? I don’t prepare any meals. Manya does that. What you describe, it would last for one day, then I couldn’t stand it.”

“You don’t know these women,” Dr. Wolfson chimed in. “They are work machines. Manya stayed at Dr. K.’s apartment for one week and she described herself as a caged animal.”

Dr. Frank scrutinized me carefully. “You’re not as driven, are you? Are you still reading
Gone With the Wind
?”

I realized the doctors in this group shared information about us. “I finished it,” I replied. “My father is reading it now.”

“How does he like it?”

“He loves it. He told us he could play Rhett Butler in the movie. We couldn’t stop laughing when he said it.”

“Why, is he short and fat like me?”

“Oh, no, he’s tall and handsome. He writes beautifully. He directed a whole vaudeville and wrote a song about Connecticut. He did it in one day.”

“I hope I have the chance to know every one of you. Lil, when you’re feeling better, return to your weekend job on Division Street. Less wear and tear. On days when you are wiped out and tired stay in bed. Take digitalis at least three times a week.”

My mother did not return to Saks for the rest of the year. Quietly she slipped into her weekend routine at Palace Fashions. Mr. L. expressed his gratitude. The rest of us were ecstatic, especially Jack. He now regarded store ownership as his birthright. It not only provided him with additional security, but he loved the sight of his wife walking into Palace Fashions on weekends. Without fail, at the close of the day they walked home together arm in arm. Under these circumstances, the talk of moving from Orchard Street receded.

The day before Willy was to return from the convalescent hospital in Lakewood, New Jersey, Bubby was in the kitchen humming tunelessly while she cut out cookie dough with the rim of a glass. As a homecoming present, we had bought Willy a single folding bed and a new mattress. Bubby, Clayton and I couldn’t wait for his reaction to the gift.

Mrs. Rosinski appeared at our door. Because of our week of recovery at Dr. Koronovsky’s we hadn’t encountered her for some time. Thinner and paler than ever, her transparent skin reminded me of the tiny lanterns that tourists bought for a nickel in Chinatown. The lanterns survived a few hours before their waxy paper tore and the cheap wire spines collapsed. Mrs. Rosinski’s face resembled one of them, cracking under strain.

She and Bubby conversed in a combination of Polish, Russian, broken English and Yiddish—everyone on the Lower East Side interspersed Yiddish with eccentric English. Mrs. Rosinski explained that she hadn’t been well—she had obviously contracted the same infection as ours—and asked whether Clayton would return her unfinished pants to Mr. Yang in Chinatown.

In her many years in our building, not once had Mrs. Rosinski failed to complete her work. She held on to our kitchen chair as she talked to us. The realization that she might not have eaten for several days came to me and Bubby simultaneously. My grandmother immediately filled a jar with vegetable soup and boiled chicken. Overcome with guilt because I hadn’t distributed the mail for two weeks, I said, “I’ll see if you have a letter from Poland.”

Mrs. Rosinski shook her fragile head; her wispy gray hair showed patches of bare scalp. She held up three fingers. “Three weeks?” I asked. She shook her head. “You haven’t had a letter for three
months
?”

Tiny tears filled the corners of her eyes as she talked. Bubby had to translate her narrative. Her two brothers and her sister had tried to leave Poland before Hitler invaded their country. She suspected that they were dead, frozen on some mountaintop.

My grandmother embraced Mrs. Rosinski, kissed her papery face, held her close. Clayton helped her up the stairs, I carried the soup. Bubby followed close behind, step by step.

Mrs. Rosinski’s apartment, perfect in its tidiness, was also perfect in its cold. Frost covered the windows, lay like an invisible blanket over the sparse furniture. Once in bed Bubby fed her soup from a dented spoon. “Clayton, bring the heater from our toilet to warm this bedroom.”

“There’s no outlet in the apartment, only an overhead light.”

“Find blankets. No. My seal coat. Like in Russia, where the blankets are fur.”

“Bubby,” Clayton protested, “that’s your best coat. What will you wear tomorrow when you pick up Willy in Lakewood?”

“My son,” Bubby answered, “will bring me a coat from his store.”

We wrapped Mrs. Rosinski in Bubby’s fur coat. “Like a dancing bear,” said Bubby, smiling at her neighbor. “In the morning we’ll see you again.”

We didn’t. Dr. Scott arrived early to drive us to Lakewood, Bubby ecstatic at the prospect of being reunited with her grandson. Lil spent a few hours at Palace Fashions. All together by evening, we ate dinner in the spirit of a holiday. Willy loved his new bed, the new electric wall heater, the heater in the toilet. He chattered on about the weeks of eating apple butter and white bread. We listened to the radio and the top ten songs of the week. By nine o’clock we bedded down, triumphant and exhausted by the day’s activities.

On Sunday morning, however, Bubby listened for Mrs. Rosinski’s light footsteps—she always walked to the Polish church on Avenue C on Sunday. Jack went off for a busy day, Lil slept until noon before setting out for Division Street. It was almost one o’clock before Clayton was instructed to knock on Mrs. Rosinski’s door. “There’s no answer. Maybe she’s still in church.”

“Maybe she didn’t go to church, maybe she’s too sick, maybe I should walk up. She’ll answer for me.”

The steps were difficult for my grandmother. Her breath came in small gasps; she leaned on Clayton. At Mrs. Rosinski’s door she knocked and knocked. No response.

“Maybe she fainted.”

“Maybe she’s dead.”

“Bite your tongue, Clayton, bite your tongue. You’ll climb the fire escape from our kitchen. You’ll look in the window.”

Clayton managed the slippery steps of the fire escape while Bubby kept her head out of the window lest anyone on the street cry out that a Negro was scaling the building for an attempted robbery.

“The window is covered with a blanket,” he called.

“Come down. We have to phone someone.”

To contact my father on Sunday was like crying “Cossacks” on Saturday at shul. Out of the question. “Call Abe,” Bubby instructed, “he knows what to do.”

We contacted him on his car phone. “I’m phoning the police,” Abe said. “Tommy O’Connor, the one who helps Dr. K. If we have to break open the door we need O’Connor.”

“Maybe it’s nothing, maybe it’s a false alarm,” Abe said when he arrived. Over his spiffy chauffeur’s outfit he wore his old lumber jacket. Despite the cold, his face glistened with nervous sweat. Close to the door, he said, “I smell gas.”

“Maybe she’s dead,” Clayton repeated. Bubby did not correct him this time. We strained to hear Officer O’Connor’s footsteps.

Abe telephoned O’Connor again. “Possible suicide,” he said in the manner of the movies. “The gas is leaking out. The whole building may blow up.”

That did it for O’Connor. He was at our house within minutes. The three men broke down Mrs. Rosinski’s door and shattered her windows. Bubby and I heard the breaking of glass, and suspected the worst.

“Sorry, Manya,” Abe called down. “She turned on the gas in the kitchen.”

Bubby wet her lips with slivovitz. She didn’t cry but her hand shook. Officer O’Connor asked when the deceased was last seen. We told him Friday afternoon. Bubby could scarcely speak. The neighbors appeared in full force crying, “The gaz! the gaz!” Characteristically, Mrs. Feldman announced, “By you is luck. On the first floor is no gaz.” Officer O’Connor, his face red with importance, asked, “Any relatives?”

“Call the priest at the Polish church on Avenue C,” said Bubby. “We don’t want her buried with bums. They have a Polish cemetery. The priest knows where.”

“Good head on you, Manya.”

She burst into tears.

And that was why and how and when we finally left Orchard Street. A suicide was the ultimate jinx, the stigma that could not be erased.

Via police car they transported Mrs. Rosinski’s body to the Polish church. Money for her burial was collected nickel by nickel. Jack wouldn’t allow his mother to wear her fur coat folded neatly on Mrs. Rosinski’s bed. He hocked it and handed the money to his mother for Mrs. Rosinski’s funeral, then tore the pawn ticket to shreds.

Bubby stuffed the bills into her apron pocket. “I called her boss, Mr. Yang, in Chinatown. She was the best worker in the factory. He’s sending white flowers to the church. White flowers are for Chinese funerals.”