Up From Orchard Street (42 page)

“No ice cream, but lots of talk. That’s why it’s called the talking cure. Sybil wounded me deeply when she accused me of not being able to free myself of old habits. More important was the issue of my medical specialty. I found out I didn’t have to study cancer in order to save my mother.”

“Your mother is dead. How can you save her?”

He grazed his knuckles on my head. “It’s all in the mind, dear, all in the mind.”

Hal taught me the power of silences. I sat quietly, not sure of the meaning of this conversation, but realizing its importance.

“By the way,” he asked, “how was Willy’s year? He seems less anxious, freer.”

“He had emergency surgery, a tracheotomy, but he liked the radio Dr. Wolfson bought him.”

“How did he adjust to the move from Yonkers?”

Again a black cloud suddenly appeared in an otherwise faultless sky. Hal had complimented my honesty. Would I ever be able to tell him the truth about Orchard Street?

“Willy loves the movies downtown and my father’s store. He’s terrified of Little Italy, Chinatown, the crowds in the streets and the subways.”

“Any bad traumas, things that frightened him, sent him into a panic?”

“Clayton was almost killed in Harlem. It was scary for all of us, and Willy couldn’t stop crying. He cried and cried.”

“Willy is lucky that you’re his older sister.”

This mistake would last a lifetime; I lost interest in correcting people.

“Would you still like to live here?”

“I asked my grandmother last year; maybe she could open a restaurant in the village. But they’re New York City people. My mother calls Brooklyn ‘a day in the country.’ They couldn’t live without Manhattan.”

“And you?”

“I’m leaving New York as soon as I can. The sky is always dark there. I’m afraid it will fall on my head and crush me.”

“You are a funny duck. I missed you all year.”

“You mean my family?”

“No, you.”

We walked side by side toward the main house. “I’ve decided on pediatrics,” Hal confided. “I think I’ll enjoy taking care of children.”

“That will be better for you, less depressing.”

He bumped into me deliberately, throwing me off my stride. “Last year you told me you couldn’t be a doctor, it was too depressing. Now you assure me pediatrics is less depressing than cancer studies. What’s with you and depression?”

“I wish I could be like my mother. A musical comedy makes her happy. Singing makes her happy. Also a sunsuit with an uplift bra.”

“Lots of things make you happy. They’re different than your mother’s. The books I gave you . . .”

“They made me very happy.”

“Remember what I told you. Read them again and again. They’ll save your life.” He ran off, darting toward an errand he didn’t share with me.

I wandered into the hotel’s kitchen because it reminded me of Orchard Street. I missed our old kitchen there, it’s intimacy, the heady smell of cooking food, the presence of my grandmother’s friends. I missed our open door, the merchants, the gossip that flowed in several languages.

No, I didn’t miss the rats and roaches, the windows thick with frost, the cold. But I longed to see my grandmother pouring hot water over my father’s hair before he left for work. I longed to peek at Clayton as he washed himself in the kitchen, and how his chocolate lollipop stuck out from beneath his fuzzy bush as he oohed and aahed. I missed everything about that kitchen, even the charred, dented pots and pans that new ones could never replace.

The farm kitchen delighted me because of its chaos—not to mention the baskets of newly harvested tomatoes, string beans and baby cucumbers.

“My grandmother would love those baby cukes!” I confided to Belinda.

“You help with the cooking?”

“No, never.”

In a gesture reminiscent of Bubby, Belinda fanned her face with her apron. “Your grandmother spile you?”

“She spoils everyone. My mother is a great helper with pastries but she doesn’t cook either.”

“You find the food here funky?”

“Very. We lose weight in Connecticut.” I studied the crusted gas burners, the oven doors with a summer’s worth of spilled gravy on them, the sticky floors. “Don’t you have anyone help you clean this place?”

“What for? Either next week or next year, they tear the whole kitchen out. Throw it all on the junk heap. Like we should throw out these chickens. Kosher chicken, she’s dry as an old lady’s satchel.”

We laughed and laughed. This year when the phone rang I no longer had to stand on a stool to reach it.

“Pankin’s Farm,” I said.

“I’d like to speak to Lil Roth, Mrs. Roth.”

“Daddy! Is it really you?”

“Where’s Lil? I have news that will knock her out of her socks. Aunt Bea and her children are here on Grand Street with us. She walked into her room at the Roney Plaza and found Geoffy with the manicurist. Dead to rights. In the act and in the flesh. Bea started screaming. Geoffy told her he would never give up Sharon, that she could take it or leave it. So Bea left it and came to us.”

“Why didn’t she go to her house in Brooklyn?”

“She wants to give Geoff a hard time. Says it’s the principle of the thing. She hasn’t been sleeping or eating, just crying. Her children hate it here. I’m sending her to Connecticut. Abe is finding her a driver. She’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

“Daddy, I want to speak to Bubby.” I poked my head through the kitchen door. Gabe stood in the lobby. “Gabe, please, would you find my mother? It’s important.” Then I shouted, “Bubby, what do you think?”

“He was a fool to tell her he wouldn’t give up the manicurist,” Bubby replied. “She was a fool to say she was leaving on principle.”

“They were just being honest.”

“Honest? Honest gives heartburn, heartache, hartz-klopinish. The worst pain comes from honest. They both should say less. Where can Bea go and what can she do with two children? And that other woman, the manicurist, in a few months it’s over. You can’t eat kugel every meal.”

“Bubby, is this a don’t-tell?”

“One look at Bea’s face, the whole world will guess.”

Gabe yelled, “Your mother is waiting in the library. She’s on the phone now.” I hung up the receiver in the kitchen and zoomed into the library, where I stowed the envelope of photos and my new books on a low shelf for the moment. I saw Lil cover her heart with her hand as she listened to Jack.

“Dead to rights? In the act and in the flesh?” she repeated. “What does Manya say? Forgive and forget? How can she make believe it didn’t happen? How could Geoff be so foolish to do it in his own room? What do you mean, maybe he wanted to be caught? How could he want such a thing? Jack, you’re too deep for me. Yes, Bea should have come to Connecticut in the first place and my brother kept his pants closed in the second.” She hesitated and added, “Jack, when we’re here and you’re in New York, no flirting.”

From where I stood, I could hear his answer: “Flirting? You think I’m a no-goodnik like your brother?” It may not have been the truth, but the words calmed her.

Gabe came up to Lil with an aspirin in hand as she hung up. “Take this and walk over to my mother, Estelle. You two may have a lot to talk about.” I gathered up my possessions, told Lil about the architecture magazine, and crossed the lawn with her.

You could see evidence of Estelle’s calm self-assurance in her cottage. Along the window seats were pots of fresh wildflowers, and every surface—the chest of drawers, nightstand, small table—was covered with new books, paperbacks, magazines.

Throwing herself at the foot of the bed with its white coverlet, my mother recounted what she regarded as the messy story of her brother’s misbehavior, and her fear that it might lead to divorce, or to “terrible public opinion.”

“Public opinion is not at issue,” Estelle told her. “Only what happens to Bea and the children.”

My mother began to cry. Too many Hollywood movies and tabloid articles had convinced her of the horrors of divorce.

“These infidelities happen.” Estelle spoke carefully, smoothing her hair away from her face. “It even happened to me. I was unfaithful to my first husband, to Joe, on the very day he died.”

My mother sat up, eyes brimming with astonishment. I was stunned. Estelle recounted her story without asking me to leave the room or resorting to language that masked the truth.

“Joe was at home with a nurse around the clock and enough equipment to put most hospitals to shame. The doctor told me it was a matter of hours, not days, and he suggested that I speak to our son, to Gabe. I expected Gabe from school at any minute—but when the door opened it was Philip, Joe’s partner and best friend.

“I couldn’t stop crying. Phil tried to comfort me. One minute I sobbed into his neck because Joe was dying, the next Phil was kissing me, saying how much he loved me, that he hadn’t married because of me. Suddenly we were making love standing up, with Joe in an oxygen tent and the nurse in the next room. It was the most amazing sex I ever had—I thought the top of my head would come off.

“Then the front door slammed and somehow we straightened up. Phil said to Gabe, ‘I’m sorry, son, your dad is in a bad way and your mother is taking it hard.’ Phil, the trial lawyer, gave an Academy Award performance.

“I staggered into my own bedroom and called Hank’s wife, Paula Pankin. Paula was like Manya, very open-minded and wise. She said, ‘Don’t feel guilty. Death and sex go together, one takes away the pain of the other.’ Then she advised me, ‘Out of respect for Joe you should follow the Jewish law. Wait one year and one day before you marry Phil.’

“But he hasn’t asked me,” I said.

“Of course he did. The minute he opened his pants.”

“And did you wait a year and a day?” asked Lil.

“To the minute. Gabe was thirteen and our best man. A Reform rabbi officiated. Hank and Paula and their two boys were the only others at the ceremony.”

My mother sighed. “I love happy endings.” She debated her question. “No offense for asking, does Philip ever have a nosh?”

“A nosh? You mean a sweet?”

“I mean . . .” My mother stumbled and forged ahead. “Does he have a quickie, like with a client, a secretary?”

Estelle could not suppress her laughter. “We were unfaithful to Joe that one night. Enough for a lifetime.”

Lil had the good sense to change the subject by taking out the architecture magazine with the photographs of our home. I scampered out, my head a jumble of all the sexual stories I had heard over the years. Despite the open talk in our house, I never really absorbed them. Pandy, the hairdresser, and her grief over her unfaithful husband, my father’s criticism of Ada Levine, even his confession to my Bubby about his noshes—all sailed in and out of my head. Clayton’s saga about three in a bed, Hal’s puppetlike lovemaking with Sybil last year, Dr. Wolfson’s hugging and kissing at his engagement party—the images came to me from a distant shore, through mist and fog, and vanished as quickly as they appeared.

As I headed for my room, I wondered why my idea of an intimate evening consisted of talking to Hal Pankin about books. No question about “all the good things” was left unanswered at my house, and now I watched my mother lost in a dream state with Maurey, but it never occurred to me to seek these emotions for myself.

Of the many incidents of lovemaking that I heard, I realized that the one that moved me the most was the story of Estelle and Philip as her husband lay dying in the next room and what Paula Pankin said: “Death and sex go together. One takes away the pain of the other.” As quickly as I was able, I climbed to my quiet attic hideaway. Carefully I opened
Anna Karenina
. My eyes glazed over and I fell into a deep sleep on the cot.

The following day Aunt Bea, Cousin Alice and Lenny spilled out of a hired car. Aunt Bea looked dreadful, puffy-eyed, wan, her hair disheveled. The moment she greeted Lil they went up to our room to talk undisturbed, two childhood friends with no friction between them. Their dinner was sent up on a tray. Neither touched the food.

In contrast, there was Cousin Alice, impervious to her mother’s despair, who emptied out what she had stuffed into one of Lil’s old purses. “Look at what Bubby Manya bought me.” Onto the porch floor fell a half-dozen lipsticks in colors ranging from near white to deep purple, a clutch of nail polish bottles in varied hues, polish remover, a box of mascara, another of rouge, a wand of eyelash enhancer, barrettes, colored bobby pins, an eye pencil.

“They’re all for me,” Alice cried. “Bubby Manya said I didn’t have to share. We went to Woolworth’s and I picked out whatever I wanted.”

In my many years with Alice she had never talked as much as she did while we sat on the floor of the porch. Since we had last met, she had grown taller and thinner, and two points blossomed from her blouse. She cupped her hand over my ear and whispered, “I have cucumber hair. I’ll show you later.” Then she rouged her cheeks and her knees. “Flapper dapper,” she sang out and turned a somersault. Alice may have had no interest in reading books, but she certainly seemed to have acquired or inherited her father’s appetites.

Pankin’s Follies was performed on Saturday night. It wasn’t the same without my father, but he was stuck in New York this year, preparing for the fall season. Hal acted as master of ceremonies, and while the program was ragged and often chaotic, its success could not be denied.

Reluctant as I was to recite the Shakespearean sonnet that I had memorized for Miss Sussman—it didn’t seem appropriate for the evening—Hal persuaded me that it would set the tone for the other performers. My red velvet dress, the gift from Rocco, no longer grazed my ankles but it was much too hot. Still, it did have a Shakespearean air, and when I concluded with, “For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / that then I scorn to change my state with kings,” the applause gratified me.

Willy whistled “I Can Dream, Can’t I” with absolute pitch and tempo. The med students, led by Hal, roared, screamed and sang off-key, “I can’t give you anything but love, baby” until they grew hoarse. Alice pirouetted alongside them.