When Skateboards Will Be Free (14 page)

The waitress materializes beside our table. “I’m sorry,” she says to my father, nodding first at the carafe of chardonnay in her hand and then at the vacant space in the center of the table. It is her turn to hope my father intuits. He does not.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. Then her voice lowers to just above a whisper. “We are unable to exchange this for red wine.”

My father’s brown eyes stare up at her impassively as the words settle. Then he chortles as if he has just been let in on a good joke.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats hopefully, “because the bottle was opened, you understand, and the bartender won’t be able to resell this and—”

“Resell.” My father luxuriates in the word.

The waitress smiles a reasonable smile, a no-hard-feelings smile. My father looks at me thoughtfully as if I might intercede, then he nods his head once, twice, tucks his chin
against his chest like he is about to take a nap—then quickly looks up at the waitress.

“Bring the manager,” my father says.

The waitress is nonplussed.
The manager?
It has quickly, unexpectedly come to this. The tiniest of tiny smiles flashes across her lips, as if this is all just poor communication that we will soon laugh about. But seeing that my father’s face no longer betrays any expression of humor, she turns and hurries away, carafe in hand.

“Do you see?” His eyes are flashing in anger, as if I’ve participated in committing a crime. Then with great sympathy he reverses: “They’ve put her in a bad situation.” Then to himself, despondently: “What is it to them?”

There’s an awkward silence after this. My father absent-mindedly moves his finger back and forth over the candle, causing the flame to bend and dance. Then he examines the daisy in the vase and asks, “Is this real?” We adjust and readjust the silverware.

Finally, as an icebreaker, my father says, “Do you know about the history of the Garment District, Sidsky?”

“Not really,” I say.

“Women,” he says. “Poor women …” He trails off. I wait for him to go on. He moves his finger over the flame. “Have you read
The History of the Russian Revolution
, Sidsky?”

“I haven’t read that, Pop.” I have a flinching awareness that I have yet to answer in the affirmative this evening.

“Trotsky explains how the revolution began with the seamstresses. Do you have a copy? Next time I’ll bring you
a copy. Don’t start with chapter one. Start with chapter six.” And, as if reciting poetry, “The struggles of the seamstresses are like rising suns for the world to see.”

My father knows nothing about the history of the seamstresses, of course. I’m sure he’s never read a book about them, or seen a film, or gone to the library to look up an article. He just knows implicitly. Lack of knowledge is not a deterrent. My father will gladly hold forth on the largest of subjects: the social evolution of human beings since
Homo habilis;
the materialist underpinnings of ancient civilization; the French Revolution; the Cold War. He’ll even talk to me about theater. The subjects he chooses are usually so vast, so breathtaking, that one can be forgiven for failing to realize how hollow the information is that he imparts. Try mentioning to him the Ottoman Empire and the way it was divided up by the victors of World War I, and he will blink back at you as if he has grown weary of discussion. “Is that so?” he will ask from far away. But in the most general of terms he can speak about imperialist oppression of the Middle East with great verve and for many hours. It’s his job. He’s a socialist missionary among proletariat savages, and all social intercourse presents itself as an opportunity for conversion. It doesn’t matter if he himself knows the intimate details of the topics on which he expounds; his concern is with Truth. He has heard things said about the seamstresses by comrades who have heard things said by other comrades, and he can understand that they are more than likely correct, that they do not demand a major reordering of the world as he perceives it. Beyond this hearsay, though, he has never ventured independently. Such exploration would be redundant and an
egregious waste of time and might, at some juncture, challenge the conclusions he has already comfortably settled upon.

And just at that moment the restaurant manager arrives at our table. I can see now that his unblemished white shirt will indicate to my father how little the man labors. It is obvious the manager is the one who has issued the dictum about the wine and is now prepared to stand behind it in the most diplomatic of ways. Behind him stands the waitress; she could be a schoolgirl visiting the principal’s office with her father. In her white hand is the carafe of chardonnay, which she is clutching by the neck as if it’s a chicken she’s selected to strangle for supper. The manager smiles at us with that same warm, solicitous air he had when we first arrived. Now he has become the enemy.

“Because, you understand,” he embarks with great gentility, “the bartender had to open a new bottle of wine in order to pour—”

“Okay,” my father says, dismissing the finer points of the argument with a wave of his hand, “then I tell you what we do. This is what we do. I tell you. You bring us the check for the wine. We pay for the wine. And then we go.”

A deft bargaining strategy on my father’s behalf.

“Perhaps you would also care to order dinner?” The manager presses his luck.

And in response my father calmly reiterates the game plan: “The check. We pay. We go.”

The entire restaurant seems to have fallen silent as the manager and his waitress make their way to the back, where our bill will be tallied. Where will we go now, my father and
I? Where will we find food? There is ponderous silence between us. I wait for an icebreaker but my father says nothing. It’s my turn.

“That’s really interesting about the seamstresses,” I murmur. “About how the seamstresses started the revolution.”

“What’s that?” My father lifts his head.

“I was just saying that it’s really interesting what Trotsky said about the seamstresses starting the revolution and that I want to read
The History of the Russian Revolution?
” My voice has grown louder. “Chapter six.”

“Yes,” my father says with fatigue.

“I was thinking that it’s—”

But before I can continue, from out of the swampy darkness the waitress emerges, holding, surprisingly and miraculously, a carafe filled with red wine.

“Zinfandel” is all she says, and pours like a defeated soldier forced to serve the enemy king.

There is contrition on my father’s face, and he crosses his hands in front of his belly as if to assure her that despite his victory he has no intention of gloating.

“Look how she fills the glass all the way to the top,” he says, thinking this will be seen as some sort of an accomplishment by the waitress. She smiles meekly.

“Some people say the glass is half full,” my father presses, “but when it is wine it should always be filled to the top.”

She reads the specials in an automatic voice. The dishes have Persian names. I bury my head in the menu, pretending to be considering the full range of options. The foods are unfamiliar. They are unfamiliar because I am my mother’s
son and my mother is Jewish and the one time she attempted to cook an Iranian meal was a disappointing failure. And we both knew it.

My father listens to the waitress intently. He asks if this dish has eggplant, if the other dish is fried. He orders for both of us. He says thank you a lot, smiles a lot, bats his eyelashes a lot, asks for extra rice and a side of onions—if it’s not too much trouble. When she’s gone he raises his glass to me. “A toast to your belated birthday.”

I raise mine.

“To the young man,” he says.

“I’m almost thirty-one, Pop,” I say. “I don’t feel like a young man.”

“That’s the contradiction,” he says. “I don’t feel like an old man.”

Clink
,

Then my father spills the red wine down his shirt.

I was nine years old the first time I came back to New York City. My mother had packed a bag and put me on an airplane and sent me by myself for the weekend. Why she didn’t come with me, I do not know. I had never been on an airplane before, and I had the expectation that I would be able to see the entire earth the way astronauts do. But it was cloudy the entire way, and the only things I could make out from my window were white marshmallow mountains. The flight attendant gave me peanuts and I ate them and then she
gave me more. It was my brother who met me at the airport and took me home. He was eighteen now and living with his girlfriend in an apartment a few floors above my father’s apartment in Brooklyn. My father was nowhere to be seen the entire weekend. Nor was my sister. Perhaps they were out of town. Perhaps they were at meetings. As for Dianne, she had already been dropped by my father, who had moved on to other women. And a few years later, after an unsuccessful run for governor of New York, Dianne would make the mistake of organizing an event for International Women’s Day, be tried for violating Article VIII, Section II of the Socialist Workers Party charter—collaborating with nonmembers without authorization—and be expelled.

It had been three years since I had left New York City, and I no longer recognized it. Everything seemed louder, faster, dirtier than I remembered, and my life from that time felt like it had happened long ago and to someone else. I saw it only as a dream. During the day, my brother and his girlfriend took me to the Botanical Garden, and we walked around and looked at the flowers and they bought me ice cream. I kept thinking I might see my old friend Britton there somehow, some way, but it never happened. My brother talked about the time we had visited the garden with my father and sister and Dianne. “Do you remember that?” he asked. “Do you remember the turtle, Zero, that we buried?” But I didn’t remember. That night his girlfriend and he made dinner, and then the three of us lay in bed and watched television for hours, laughing and joking. When
The Incredible Hulk
came on, I jumped up and down on the mattress as if I
was the Incredible Hulk and my brother was the bad guy and his girlfriend was the damsel in distress. In our rowdy excitement, my brother accidentally punched his girlfriend in the breast and she squealed in pain. “I’m so sorry!” he cried out, and put his arm around her and cradled her breast. Then the two of them got quiet. When the weekend was over, I didn’t want to leave. My brother sat with me on the subway to the airport and I said nothing. He kept trying to make jokes to cheer me up, but I just stared out glumly at the advertisements on the wall. “Look,” my brother exclaimed as the subway surfaced from underground, “there’s not a cloud in the sky today. You’re going to be able to see the entire earth.”

It’s nearly midnight when we leave the restaurant. My thirtieth birthday dinner is now officially over. I’ve overeaten as usual, and I feel bloated and heavy.

“Good night, sir,” the manager says at the doorway, bowing toward my father and me.

“Good night,” my father says, bowing in return. They have let bygones be bygones. My father says something in Persian and the manager smiles and says something back. “Shh,” my mother would tell me if we ever approached dark men on the street conversing in a foreign language. And when we had passed she would say to herself, “They were speaking Persian.”

Once outside, my father puts the baseball cap back on.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
,

There’s a nice mist covering everything, softening the
streets and the buildings. It’s quiet. We pass an old-fashioned lamppost.

“That’s very nice,” my father says with genuine appreciation.

“It’s real nice, Pop.”

“I think it’s gas,” he says. “Sidsky, did you know that when I was a little boy in Tabriz we never had gaslights?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Tabriz went directly from no light to electric lights. That’s the kind of thing that happens in a backward country. The Law of Combined and Uneven Development.”

“What’s that, Pop?”

“The Law of Combined and Uneven Development,” he says again.

“What’s it mean?”

“Trotsky writes about it. Two countries—one that exploits and the other that… you know. There are things that develOPED unevenly. But combined. Trotsky writes about it…” He trails off.

A few cars pass, then someone on a bicycle. My father and I walk in silence. Each in our own thoughts. What are his thoughts? We pass Bryant Park, and in the darkness the trees look like hands. Across the street is my office. I’ll be back there tomorrow morning at nine.

And then the subway station looms before us. My father stops and stands in front of me, the splotch of red wine, now dried, running like a birthmark across his chest.

“Sidsky,” my father says excitedly, “we should do this again soon.”

“Sure,” I say.

Then he ponders for a moment, calculating in his head. “Maybe the week after next. Maybe then.”

“That sounds good,” I say. I know what will happen, of course: Things will come up and the week after next will turn into the month after next, which will turn into six months. I will turn thirty-one. “The week after next sounds good,” I say.

“It was nice walking with you, Sidsky.”

“It was nice walking with you too.”

“Happy birthday, Sidsky.”

“Thanks, Pop.”

He holds out his hand and we shake like friendly acquaintances.

“Good night,” I say.

Then he pulls me to him suddenly, catching me off balance, and he hugs me awkwardly, his stubble brushing against my face. We hold each other tightly for a moment, slightly off center, twisted like metal, his elbow poking into my chest, a vague approximation of an embrace.

“Be good,” he whispers in my ear.

The subway is empty except for a few bored souls. I take a seat across from a black man covered in a fine gray dust and wearing construction boots. He watches me closely as I unfold
The Militant
—the first issue of my twelve-week subscription. Two thoughts of equal weight appear in my brain
simultaneously. One is that I will be hailed by him for being a liberator who understands his plight and the plight of all those who labor. The other thought is that he is an informant for the government.