Up From Orchard Street (44 page)

My favorite class that day was French. With adrenaline urging me on, I ran the full length of Grand Street to share my high spirits with Bubby. By the time I threw myself into her lap in the blue velvet chair, I had erased the memory of my mother’s preference for me. A repetition of the scene with the men who offered me a drama scholarship was unthinkable; beyond endurance.

Lil, who had forsaken Ada as no longer “in her element,” was now spending hours with Jack at Elite Fashions. After nervously rehearsing what I would say about my school program, I picked up the phone, praying that my father would answer. I drew back when I heard Lil’s voice, and told her quickly, “Mother, I’m in the rapid advancement program, all academic subjects.”

“If you want to break your head with that stuff, that’s your business,” she answered and never mentioned my classes again.

After our second summer in Connecticut, I had written careful letters to Hal, Gabe and Estelle and a postcard depicting a rosy red apple, the Big Apple, to Maurey. No replies.

In late March the weather turned springlike: warm, sensuous days, unaccustomed sunlight. One Friday, the phone rang in late afternoon and Lil answered. She reached for a chair, sat down hard and put her hand over her heart. The veins in her neck pulsated; her voice quivered.

“Yes, it is short notice. Yes, I usually work on Saturday. Yes, I’ll take the day off. Lunch is fine. Yes, I’ll bring my daughter. Twelve thirty would be perfect. Across the street from Saks on Fifth Avenue.” Pause. “Maurey, I can’t believe it’s you. You sound like you’re in this room. You have a surprise for me? Can you give me a hint?” Pause. “All right I’ll wait until tomorrow. We’ll see you then. Without fail.” Pause. “Me, too.”

Lil drew my hand and held it to her heart. It thumped savagely. “Mother, do you need your digitalis?”

She attempted to raise herself from her chair without success. “Don’t be silly, no pills. Just water.” I ran to the kitchen. “Don’t bother with the water. Dial Saks. No, I’ll do it myself. What’s Mrs. Dixon’s extension? I have it. It’s here in the phone book.”

“Mother, take some deep breaths, let the air out slowly. Count from one to ten. You have to calm down.” I brought her an aspirin and water.

“Mrs. Dixon? Lilyan Roth here. I’m terribly sorry. We have a family emergency. It’s my mother-in-law. I won’t be in tomorrow. I’ll work Friday and Saturday next week. Thank you for being so understanding.”

Bubby wiped the flour from sugar cookies from her hands and came into the dining room. “Who called you?”

“Someone from Connecticut.”

“Estelle?”

“One of the Pankin boys.”

“The doctor?”

“I’ll call Pandy and find out when she can take me. What should I wear for lunch uptown?”

“One of your designer suits,” I suggested.

“I’m tired of my suits. A dress would be better. More feminine.”

No one could deal with Lil when she became agitated, lost focus, changed her mind from minute to minute.

Unfortunately she rejected every outfit my father selected from her closet. One was too severe, the other too matronly, still others too long, too short, too wrong. Jack declined further involvement. She picked a red dress with a gold thread, a deep V neckline, a peplum front and back.

“Mother, that’s a cocktail dress. It’s not a dress for lunch.”

“I’ll tone it down with my hat and purse.”

The hat consisted of a brown beanie placed on top of the head like a yarmulke, from which hung a veil decorated with brown felt circles that cast an unbecoming shadow on her skin. The envelope purse had a gold chain, making it a casual accessory that clashed with a cocktail dress.

Neither my grandmother nor I had the courage to disparage her outfit. We shared one thought; one of her magnificent coats—she owned a closetful—would obscure the pieces of her costume that didn’t go together. We hadn’t counted on Lil’s stubbornness—she refused to wear a coat.

“It’s summer weather. Who needs a heavy coat? It’s not the season.” Translation: she wanted to show off her eye-catching figure. She radiated confidence; she believed her outfit was ravishing.

Promptly at 11:30, Abe picked us up in his taxi. As a result we were a half hour early. Because of the unseasonable weather, Fifth Avenue bustled with shoulder-to-shoulder strollers, New Yorkers basking in the fame of their most renowned thoroughfare.

I held my mother’s free hand as she craned her neck, searching in the direction of uptown for Maurey.

“What do you think the surprise is?”

“Maybe a comb that he bought in Paris.”

“Maybe it’s Chanel.”

“Maybe it’s something we never imagined.”

I thought the wind was lifting me on high. Two strong arms whirled me around. It was Maurey, hair trimmed though curling at the neck, a flash of a navy blazer, a red and blue rep tie, light gray trousers. His face was still suntanned, the lips full, receptive, the eyes piercing. He turned heads as he set me down, lifted my mother and spun her to the sky. She could have been a thistle in his hands, light, airy, ready to be blown away in the unseasonable breeze. “And this,” he announced, “is Linda.”

We saw flaxen hair, a mile of white teeth, a pale pink sweater highlighted by a thin rope of seed pearls. A red and pink plaid skirt fell almost to her ankles; her feet were shod in flat-heeled ballet-style shoes. She wore a maroon blazer that echoed Maurey’s. She smiled and said nothing. I didn’t dare contemplate what she thought of my mother’s attire, though it’s unlikely she gave it more than a glance. Her eyes were fixed on Maurey. Both of them gave off ferocious heat.

“Isn’t she wonderful? What do you think of her hair?”

“Corn silk,” I replied, as I recalled the sunlit afternoon during the summer when we stood in the cornfield and devoured fresh young corn plucked from their delicate green husks.

“Exactly.” He buried his face in Linda’s hair.

“Linda and I study together,” he said. “Can you picture me studying hour after hour? With Linda there, it’s relativity. An hour passes like a minute.” He leaned over and sucked her eager mouth into his.

The wind sharpened. My mother’s hat with its absurd veil seemed on the verge of flying off. She had the sense to remove it and jam it into her purse. I threaded my arm through hers.

“Hey, where’s your coat?” Maurey asked.

Lil nodded in the direction of Saks across the street.

“What a couple she and her husband are,” he said to Linda. “Talent, talent galore.”

I could feel the quiver in my mother’s arm. Whatever fantasies she had indulged in about this afternoon lay underfoot like dust.

Maurey emitted his charming laugh. “Which brings me to a slight change of plans. Would you two lovely ladies forgive us if we didn’t join you for lunch?” He dangled house keys that he extracted from his blazer pocket.

“We discovered Chip Richmond isn’t coming in this weekend so he’s lending us his parents’ apartment on Park.”

We weren’t sure whether he meant Park Avenue or Central Park.

“We thought we’d catch up on some sleep, then have a snack before we take the train back to New Haven.”

Both Linda and Lil remained voiceless. Linda continued to smile. Lil’s mouth was frozen, clenched.

To break the silence Maurey asked, “Where were you planning to eat lunch, the Carnegie Delicatessen?”

“That’s for tourists,” I said.

“Where then, Longchamps?”

“No, the new French Pavilion in Rockefeller Plaza. We read a review and thought you would like it because of Paris. Our treat.”

“Wait until I tell this to Hal! He sends his love.” Even as he spoke, Maurey had stepped off the sidewalk and raised his arm for a taxi. The moment it drew up, he helped us inside, pressing his cheek against my mother’s and kissing the air. “It was truly wonderful to see you. Until this coming summer in Connecticut.”

My mother pulled herself together and with as much jauntiness as she could muster replied, “See you in Connecticut.”

Her words hung midair. We beheld Linda and Maurey hasten into the next cab and watched as it drove away.

“Where are we going?” Lil asked me.

“Home. Let’s take this taxi home.”

“No,” she replied firmly, “get out! Driver, we’ve changed our minds.”

Luckily, the Forty-second Street subway station wasn’t crowded. Luckily, the car we selected had dozens of empty seats. I put my arm around my mother’s waist. She dropped her head on my shoulder.

In retrospect, it would be simple to admit that during the ride from Forty-second Street to Canal Street I became the mother of my mother, that my protectiveness, my empathy, my sorrow for her sorrow reversed our roles. The unadorned truth, hardly a surprise, was that she had rarely mothered me—she had left that to Bubby. People liked Lil immediately. They admired her, enjoyed her presence, yearned to soak up her vivacity. Say her name out loud, “Lil Roth,” and the response was almost always: “Isn’t she terrific, wonderful, enchanting.”

These remarks always reached my head, not my heart, though had I been asked, I would have said I loved my mother. But that day, on the rackety train ride that hurtled us home, suddenly and unaccountably, I fell in love with my mother, and all the bad and silly stuff tucked itself away in some remote corner of my heart.

Approaching Canal Street, my mother instinctively sat up, found her compact, freshened her lips, combed her hair and asked, “How do I look?”

“Beautiful.”

We climbed the steps slowly. A sharp wind came off the East River, whipping the silk dress around her shapely legs. I moved in the direction of our apartment, shivering from the cold.

“It’s early,” my mother said. “I’ll walk over to Daddy’s store. Maybe I’ll make a sale.”

“Mother, it’s freezing. Come home. You’ll catch a cold.”

“Not yet.”

The wind blew abandoned newspapers into the air and motes of dust into our eyes.

“What shall I tell Bubby?”

“You’ll think of something.”

“I’ll tell her they had theater tickets and didn’t have time for lunch.”

“Good. That’s very good.”

“Mother, you need a coat.”

“Jacob will lend me a jacket until I get to our store.”

I clung to her for a second without crying. She ran a finger over my cheek and walked on, resolute. At the first corner garbage can, I saw her remove the hat from her purse and drop it into the can. Then she walked on, a scarlet dot against a black landscape.

The next day it rained but we could not prevail upon Lil to stay away from Palace Fashions. Bubby appeared to have swallowed the excuse about Maurey’s theater tickets, but as she prepared soup for my parents’ return from work she asked, “Nu, vuz hut zach pasert?”

I didn’t lie to Bubby. There was no need.

“He brought along his girlfriend from law school, some tall shiksa, and he dumped us. He wanted frya libbe with his girl and after he put us in a taxi, they went off. From start to finish the visit was over in ten minutes, on the sidewalk across from Saks.”

“She needed a coat.” Pouring barley and dried mushrooms into the soup pot, Bubby added, “It happens. It happened to me. You were there. You saw.”

“Do you think of him?”

“No. That person doesn’t live for me anymore.”

Whether that applied to Lil and Maurey we never knew.

It rained for the rest of the week. Lil’s scratchy throat escalated into a wheezing cough and in one middle of the night we awakened to the sound of a brief, hoarse conversation, followed by a phone call. Bubby and I, whose sleep vanished faster than wet snow on a sidewalk, arose as one and dashed to my parents’ bedroom.

“She can’t breathe. She can’t catch her breath.”

“Steam?” Bubby asked.

“I turned on the hot water in the bathroom full blast but I can’t carry her. She’s like a dead weight. Dr. Koronovsky and Dr. Frank are on their way.”

“It’s four in the morning.”

My father pulled on his trousers and shirt. Lil lay inert, gasping, leaden.

During emergencies my grandmother glided about like a ballerina. In a few minutes, hair combed and face washed, she was prepared to greet the doctors. Her hands trembled. The sound of the downstairs bell brought her to the door. To our surprise the man to step out of the elevator was Scott Wolfson.

“I came first to do whatever is necessary.” He had never forgiven himself for his unavailability when Willy needed his tracheotomy. The other two doctors soon followed. It required no more than a few minutes for Dr. Frank to announce, “She needs oxygen, blood tests, whatever modern medicine can provide. I think Doctor’s Hospital because it’s where I work.” He picked up the phone and instructed firmly, “This is Dr. Bernard Frank. Emergency ambulance service? 444 Grand Street, downtown. Immediately. That’s fine. Straight to Doctor’s Hospital.”

“She has a broken heart,” I said. Fortunately, no one heard me.

Clayton brought us the coffee in Bubby’s tea glasses with their filigreed bottoms. Lil had gifted him with a mountain of old dresses, possibly to sell in secondhand shops, and he chose to sleep in some of them; in his haste to bring the doctors up to our apartment quickly, he forgot to remove Mother’s old polka-dot summer dress, a perfect nightshirt.

Tears were running down Clayton’s cheeks when the ambulance appeared. Since I invariably accompanied my mother to her doctor’s appointments, I had dressed quickly and I started out with my father as the hefty ambulance assistants carried my mother in the gurney. Dr. Koronovsky understood and whispered softly, “Not this time, darling. You have to comfort Bubby and Willy. Lil is going to the ICU—the intensive care unit. No children allowed there.”

“I’ll phone as soon as I can,” Jack told us. “Wait for my call. When I hear anything I’ll let you know.” He held an unlit cigarette in his hand to guide him down the elevator and into the ambulance. Dr. Koronovsky added, “Manya, she’ll have the best care, the very best.”

Bubby and I didn’t meet each other’s eyes. Willy, who hadn’t left his bed, was sobbing loudly. Scott went in to comfort him.